Using theories of rhythm, temporality and photography, this study explores how the rhythm of visual news flow is shaped in today’s newsrooms and how it affects the truth-telling mission of news journalism. The material on which the study is based was collected in 2024 through participant observation and interviews with visual professionals at a regional Finnish newspaper, at a national Swedish newspaper, and through interviews with Russian visual professionals working in newsrooms in exile. The results show that the 24-h news cycle of online news, where there is a constant need for new visual material, as well as new opportunities for slower visual journalism, creates a rhythm where images do not need to give evidence to certain specific moments in time. Although visual journalism professionals express a restrictive attitude towards AI-generated images and a protective attitude towards photography as a registration, truth claims tend to focus on ‘abstract’ and ‘emotive’ truths. New opportunities to obtain detailed information on user behaviour also affect the rhythm of how, what, when and where to publish, and newsrooms are struggling to find a rhythm that corresponds to users’ experience of living in media-saturated societies.

Kirill Polkovs doktorsavhandling Queering Images of Russia in Sweden: Discursive hegemony and counter-hegemonic articulations 1991–2019 tar ett kritiskt perspektiv på internationella relationer, särskilt med fokus på kulturella representationer av nationer. I en konfliktfylld värld föreslår Polkov att queer mångfald i föreställningar om sexualitet och nationer är ett svar på både den »homofobiska heteronationalismen» i auktoritära regimer och kolonialismen inom den västerländska HBTQ-rättighetsdiskursen.

Today the boundaries between professional and amateur photography are increasingly blurred. The ubiquity of amateur images raises concerns about the field's ‘de-professionalisation’ [e.g. Good and Lowe 2017; Josephi and O’Donnell 2023; Mäenpää 2023b; Nilsson 2021). This article explores perspectives on professionalism and non-professionalism from educators and students enrolled in full-time photojournalism and documentary photography programmes in Russia and Sweden. Through individual interviews and focus groups, this study shows that photography educators and their students are responding to the challenges of ‘de-professionalisation’ by seeking to better navigate the digital attention economy. They suggest to re-evaluate professionalism in photography through feelings, meaning-making and a ‘(r)evolution’ of photographic practice.

In a process of continuously adjusting to and counteracting the circumstances of conflict since 2014, the Ukrainian media community has become polarized (Budivska & Orlova, 2017). Nygren et al. (2018) observe a confrontation between the ideal of neutrality in coverage and favoring “patriotic journalism” in practice among Ukrainian journalists. This article takes this discussion further and highlights the role of professional journalism associations and international organizations in the struggles within the journalism culture in the situation of conflict. The article uses Ginosar’s (2015) interpretation of Hanitzsch’s (2007) model of journalism culture and Mouffe’s (2013) conceptualization of agonistic vs. antagonistic struggle to discuss the project Two Countries — One Profession is initiated and supported by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Finally, it draws on the reactions by the Ukrainian media community.

The transdisciplinary collaborative project “Propaganda and management of information in the Ukraine-Russia conflict” (2016–2018) that the authors were a part of, focused on Ukrainian actors and used ethnography, and particularly interview, as its primary methodology. We have been interviewing journalists, media experts, historians, etc. Many of the informants highlighted their roles as activists and change agents in the post-2014 society. Coming from different research fields (history and journalism and media studies), we have been reflecting upon the tension between our striving at academic neutrality and the different disciplinary approaches, as well as unavoidable emotional involvement in the subject we scrutinize. The chapter is based on dialogic autoethnography wherein we reflect on the challenges the researchers face when conducting ethnographic research on activists and dealing with such sensitive issues as information warfare and armed conflict. This becomes especially problematic when scholars come from the countries involved in the conflict, Ukraine and Russia. It continues the discussion about the role of emotions in ethnographic research. We aim to contribute to several discussions: field of conflict ethnography, work in multidisciplinary research environment, and particularities of conducting interviews with activists.

The Ukrainian Euromaidan protests in 2013, alongside the Brexit vote and the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, have strongly changed the imaginary of Europe. Apart from ideological shifts and geopolitical changes, the situation in Ukraine has led to a geographic relocation and displacement of media producers and audiences alike. Yet, in the Ukrainian context and beyond, little is known about dislocated journalists in conflict situations. This article addresses the specific experiences of immigrant and internally displaced journalists, their imagined audiences and the overarching construction of post-revolutionary Ukraine as an imagined community. The argument draws empirically from the dislocatory experiences and relocatory trajectories of two groups: immigrant journalists, who moved to Ukraine from Russia, and journalists who migrated internally – to Kyiv and other government-controlled Ukrainian regions from Crimea and non-government-controlled areas of Donbas. For immigrant and internally displaced journalists, the search for new identities and positions is strongly related to their imagination of the audiences. The journalists notice a simultaneous fragmentation and unification of the audiences driven by both top-down and down-up intentions of post-revolutionary nation building. They hope to contribute to turning the fragmented communities into a media nation that will perceive them as ‘us’.

The chapter poses a question whether and where in the situation of conflict there is a space for dialogue. What is the role of journalism and journalists in the discursive construction of the dialogic spaces? The chapter focuses on the discursive construction of the spaces for dialogue by international organizations, professional associations, and individual journalists in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.