Wars in Ukraine in the 20th and 21st Century: Media, Experts, Disinformation

Annual conference of the German-Ukrainian Historians’ Commission on "Wars in Ukraine in the 20th and 21st Century: Media, Experts, Disinformation".

The political legitimation of military action is necessary not only in Russia's current war against Ukraine in order to maintain social acceptance, loyalty and support for military violence and counter-violence in one's own country and beyond its borders. This applies to Russia's current war against Ukraine as well as to other or past wars. In modern societies in the 20th and 21st centuries, the mass media, i.e. the mass press, radio, film, television and, more recently, social media (Internet) are the decisive media to create this legitimation communicatively.

In times of war, the claim to truth is particularly important for the communicative production of political legitimation: truth and lies, information and disinformation, propaganda and counter-propaganda meet here in radical, differentiated and veiled forms. The home front must be mobilized, the enemy will be degraded. Apart from the responsible politicians and diplomats, the actors involved in this process include journalists (e.g. war reporters), experts such as historians and geographers, writers or artists and their works, as well as simple eyewitnesses to the events of the war.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, Ukraine has been the victim of imperialist wars in a special way. In the First World War, the main parties involved were Austria-Hungary, the German Empire and Russia, in the Second World War Hitler Germany and the Soviet Union, in the current war Russia

The annual conference of the German-Ukrainian Historians’ Commission is organized in cooperation with the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg (IOS) and the Ilya Mechnikov University in Odesa.

The organizational committee of the conference constitutes of:
Prof. Dr. Guido Hausmann (Regensburg), Prof. Dr. Polina Barvinska (Odesa, Regensburg), Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter (Heidelberg) and Prof. Dr. Yurii Shapoval (Kyiv, Tübingen).

Conference languages: English and Ukrainian.

Participation: The event is open to the public via Zoom.

Note: Panel V will be held at this Zoom link on Friday, October 21, at 3:00 p.m., simultaneously with panel IV.