Pavlo Kazarin on War and the Media: When I Leave the Army, I Won’t Have Anywhere to Return

Before the war I worked in television. And when I joined the army, television was the hub of all things political.

Every major channel had its own talk shows. Political heavyweights appeared on them—and that is where in the broadcasts everything was said that later became news and media fodder. Of course, audience migration to the internet was ongoing throughout the prewar years, but the television giants still kept a large portion of media primacy.

Now I often think that after the war I won’t have anywhere to return to. The telethon pushed politics off the TV airwaves. The biggest channels are now indistinguishable by content. Over the war years they all launched duplicate channels, but newcomers focus only on entertainment. Politics left television and moved to the internet. The political hub became YouTube and Telegram. Written by a serviceman, formerly a journalist, Pavlo Kazarin, for Ukrainska Pravda (UP)

The war and the telethon accelerated the death of television in our country—pushing political discourse from screen to online. And this is just one of the changes happening to us now.

Monopoly of Monologues

YouTube has never been an ideal place for political conversations.

Any country is a diversity of people, ideas, and viewpoints. People argue about their pictures of reality. About the desired contours of the future. About the distribution of resources and powers. Parliament was invented precisely to balance various interest groups and immerse them in seeking compromise. And political discourse in the media was needed so that we could learn from it about the existence of a collective “other”—and could compare our own understanding of reality with it.

The rules of social networks differ from the rules of traditional media. Not surprising—their inner architecture is built so that they become not a space for everyone to talk to everyone, but a territory for conversation among insiders with insiders.

Social networks inevitably create a bubble of like-minded people around you. The algorithms quickly leave in search results only those views that most closely align with yours. On social networks it’s easy to find allies—and to receive social stroking and approval from them. But all of this is far from the political discourse that should illustrate the complexity and multifaceted reality of the world.

Despite all warnings, political debate in traditional media had to be conducted in a single studio among supporters of different views. But social networks are devoid of such obligation. They were not created for polyphony, and this is the realm where the space of dialogue is replaced by a monopoly of monologues.

Besides, the rules of conversation differ as well. Primarily it was accepted that there are refined intonations of the classic media—and emotional registers of bloggers and social networks. The migration of media content to YouTube did not bring new rules to social networks. More likely, the opposite.

Games on Others’ Rules

Social networks changed not only the format of talking about the future. They also rewrote its intonation.

Media migration to YouTube began before the war, but the invasion accelerated this process. The advertising market fell, grants ran dry, and for many YouTube became a livelihood. Many decided to play by the rules of this social network—and as a result there was a “Gordonization” of content.

Emotions sell well, and many media outlets decided that their mission from now on is to trade in anxiety. Ukrainian YouTube has turned into a library of neuroses. Editors justify themselves with a fight for viewer attention—and feed the audience headlines that require Valium. It happened before the war too—but now it has become the general rule with exceptions.

A war-scarred society is easily vulnerable to neuroses. A deficit of security, a short planning horizon, and falling incomes push people to seek certainty about tomorrow. But instead of calm conversations about today and the future, Ukrainian media often offer distilled emotions to their compatriots. The quality of an expert is determined not by their competence but by unwaveringness.

Healthy eating has trouble competing with junk food. And now we all watch how junk content pushes out common sense from our media field. The tone of Ukrainian headlines does not promise anything good to its reader—and it seems that society preserves residual sanity not thanks to its media landscape, but in spite of it. If the main task of content producers is to frustrate the audience, plunge it into hysteria, and deprive it of sleep, then nothing in this approach needs to change.

The main task of media was never to create content that sells. Complex issues require complex answers, but that only works until the number of views becomes the main quality criterion. The war has made every media outlet hostage to clickbait. Resisting this temptation is very hard—and the media have gone to YouTube to play by YouTube’s rules. Now they try to win against second-rate content with second-rate content’s rules.

And all these changes pertain not only to the media market itself. The migration online is also a story about transforming society and engaging in politics those who previously showed no interest.

The New Gutenberg

Today’s democracy design was built for a situation in which political discourse is formed by a dozen TV channels and three dozen newspapers. It was the traditional media in the West for decades that shaped the framework of discussion, defined discourse, and set trends. In recent decades communities formed around political parties and traditional media. And now technologies give the possibility to send the old rules to the scrap heap of history—opening the possibility for everyone who wants to create their own information realities.

Everything happening around us is another quantum leap unfolding before our eyes. And this is not the first one—the turning point six hundred years ago was the invention of printing. Gutenberg’s press removed the church’s monopoly on books, information, knowledge and engaged people who previously were not involved in it in the discussion. The results were the Reformation and capitalism, mass education and nation-states, scientific progress and civil identity.

Gutenberg’s technological solution changed the very medium of existence. It brought into public discourse a large number of people who were previously isolated from it. The result was the breakdown of old consensus and the emergence of new ones. New knowledge and new ethics. New wars and new frontiers. The printing press reshaped our world—and for centuries we lived in the Gutenberg galaxy.

The next stage of such transformation happened at the turn of 19 and 20 centuries. Earlier politics was the affair of a relatively narrow stratum of elites, and most people did not participate in political life. But then came the era of mass literacy and inexpensive press. Political parties and trade unions. Expanded suffrage and strengthened nationalist positions.

All of this drew millions into the discussion who previously delegated their right to vote and opinion to other players. The masses gained a political voice—and traditional democratic institutions failed to meet this demand. Thus the 20th century became a period of political experiments—and we saw how fascism, Nazism, and communism appeared on the wave of this new demand. By the end of the century the system began to come to relative balance, and this allowed many to say that democratic institutions adapted to new challenges.

And now mobile internet and social networks launch yet another wave of transformation. They allow involving into the political process all those who previously were ready to ignore elections and default to trusting representatives. As a result, every election in any country now becomes a factory of surprises—when marginal politicians then receive unexpected support from an audience that previously preferred to remain silent and delegate.

The old system ends up in crisis—along with the institutions that had served as its checks and balances. Social networks and the internet allowed the unrepresented to enter the political process—and now these people shake traditional electoral scripts with their behavior, and lines of fracture. Media lose to bloggers in competition. Political parties stop being long-livers. Large communities fracture into smaller ones—and argue with each other about identities.

And we return to the thesis with which we began. The current design of democracy was built for a space where the political contour, discussion, and agenda were formed by a small number of players. It was they who had the right to mediate between those who wanted to speak and those who wanted to listen. It was media and parties that were the heart of political identities—and shaped discourse and the frame of discussion. And now this monopoly is shattered—as is the old system of rules.

Social networks are now a tool of a new wave of political evolution. They break the old format of discourse. They separate communities. They raise the level of tone. If social networks have become the environment in which former “underrepresented” gain political subjectivity, then this environment from the start offers them not to talk, but to shout down. Not to bargain, but to oppose.

We are not alone in this transformation, at least because this is a worldwide trend. It’s just that for us this evolution overlays with war. Our turbulence only accelerates the crisis of classical media. It pushes audience migration to social networks. It allows freaks to find each other, unite into groups, and create political demand. And the former players lose the role that the old technological order gave them.

When I leave the army, I won’t have anywhere to return.

Pavlo Kazarin, for UP (Ukrainska Pravda)

Photo from Pavlo Kazarin’s Facebook page