Features

How Young Ukrainians Are Documenting The War On TikTok And Shaping Our Perspectives

Eleanor Ames

Young people in Ukraine have been using TikTok to record and share their experiences of Russia’s invasion of their country. This video content varies widely, from satirical humour that draws on the difficulties of day-to-day life, to personal stories of evacuations and families splitting up, and video footage of missiles and damaged buildings. Across the world, adults spend an average of almost 20 hours a month using TikTok, and, with the TikTok algorithm currently pushing out content relating to the conflict in Ukraine, these videos have the real potential to shape our perspective of the war. Eleanor Ames discusses.

Valeria Shashenok is one Ukrainian who has been posting videos on TikTok about the war – some of which have been viewed millions of times. She has now fled the country, but uploaded several videos, laced with dark humour, satire, and trending music, documenting her experience in an underground bunker in Chernihiv, a city to the north of Kyiv which has suffered ongoing airstrikes.

One video, which showed her ‘typical day in a bomb shelter’, has over 45 million views, and is captioned ‘Living my best life. Thanks Russia!’.In another, she described the bunker she and her family are living in as a ‘5 star hotel’, showing viewers her ‘jacuzzi for hot girls’, a small tin bath; her ‘personal Michelin restaurant’, who is her mother, cooking on a small portable induction heater; and a ‘place for reading books’ – the toilet.

For Valeria, these humorous videos are also a way of showing people the real, human side of the conflict

Aimée Morrison, an internet culture scholar at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, points out that comedy has always been important to those on the frontline of a tragedy. She said: “Turning things that are out of your control into things that are funny is exactly what social media is built on. It’s what youth expression is built on.”

For Valeria, these humorous videos are also a way of showing people the real, human side of the conflict. She said: “On TV, they show how people cry in Ukraine, that we are so poor, that everything is so awful. I’m so scared that when I move to another country, if I say I’m Ukrainian, they’ll say, oh my God, Ukraine? Like that’s a bad thing.”

The videos also give viewers an understanding of the day to day realities of living through the war in Ukraine. Valeria shared with viewers, for instance: ‘how I live without electricity in a bomb shelter’. In one video, she showed her father heating coffee with a blowtorch. The next step, she told viewers, as she sipped her coffee: “then imagine u r drinking coffee in Paris and say thanks to Putin”.

“I can’t believe that it’s happened in my native city, where I live, where I spend my school time, childhood.”

Valeria’s hatred for the Russian president is played out as a comical trope in several of her videos, but a real strength of feeling is also clear. She told The Cut: “I wanted them to know that one man, one Russian man, president, stupid man, destroyed my native country.”

Valeria also documented days when she leaves the bomb shelter to discover the damages that have been wrought overnight. In one, she showed beautiful footage of her home city, and then, in stark contrast, its buildings destroyed by war. In another, she documented the destruction inside a children’s hospital. Valeria told the BBC: “Everybody needs to see. Because it looks like third world war – in the 21st century.” She added: “I can’t believe that it’s happened in my native city, where I live, where I spend my school time, childhood.”

Diana is another young Ukrainian who has been documenting her experiences of the war on TikTok. On the second day of the conflict, Diana’s parents decided they needed to leave the country, and Diana filmed this journey. She is visibly and audibly upset throughout, but felt that that events needed to be documented. She said: “In the second world war, there was no gadgets and no filming … I knew that these videos would be like, historic. I thought, ‘I’m going to show these videos to my kids and say that that’s what we had to go through’.”

Diana fled Ukraine with her mother and sister, but the country’s new wartime laws meant her father was unable to leave with them. On TikTok, Diana even recorded the heart-breaking moment that she says goodbye to him, a fence between them. The video of Diana’s father kissing her forehead goodbye through a gap in the wire has been viewed over 20 million times.

“We imagine ourselves in the terrible situation they find themselves in, it becomes real to us.”

For Diana, filming this terrifying moment helped her process it: “It feels just like a horror movie, and I don’t know, filming is just one of the ways I can just put everything that’s going on my mind, like, in order”. She added: “I was crying and having a panic attack … I was so frustrated and scared. Still to this moment I’m not sure if I’m going to see him [again] or not.”

This kind of video diary footage feels personal and intimate. Professor Morrison said: “We imagine ourselves in the terrible situation they find themselves in, it becomes real to us,” she says. “Even the vertical orientation of [the] screen changes things … it feels like you’re friends with this person because they are close to the camera.”

Marta is a young Ukrainian living in London, who has also been sharing videos of the conflict on Tiktok. When she heard about the invasion of Ukraine, Marta began scrolling through Telegram, a popular messaging app in Ukraine, on which people were uploading videos of the war. She began reposting these videos on TikTok; they now have tens of millions of views.

TikTok videos shot by young Ukrainians do offer audiences across the world a real insider’s perspective into what is happening on the ground

Experts stress that while TikTok can provide first-hand video footage of the conflict, content on the app comes with the risk of misinformation. Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, said: “The algorithm is currently aggressively promoting Ukraine-related content, irrespective of whether it’s true or not. Unlike other platforms, it also provides users with little metadata with which users can do their own verification work – or even find out where this footage is coming from.”

Marta attempts to verify the videos before she posts them to TikTok. While some of the videos she has shared have been confirmed by news outlets as genuine, Marta admits that she is not expert at verifying video content. However, she said: “Some people don’t trust even professional journalists, even verified sources”. She believes that being Ukrainian herself makes people trust her more.

“The collateral damage can speak back now”

TikTok videos shot by young Ukrainians do offer audiences across the world a real insider’s perspective into what is happening on the ground, and how ordinary people have been affected. Professor Morrison believes that these videos are “absolutely going to change the way we think about conflict. War has traditionally been written as the history of great men making military decisions.”

She added: “So much of what we’re seeing online now has been described in the past as [the] collateral damage of war … but that’s people’s lives and the collateral damage can speak back now.” Amidst the life-changing destruction of this brutal war, TikTok has given young people a means of showing the world what they are going through. Valeria told CNN: “I feel like it’s my mission to show people how it looks in real life. That it’s real life, and I’m here.”

Eleanor Ames 


Featured image courtesy of Solan Feyissa via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image. 

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