#ukrart : Digital Painting on Social Media as a Contemporary Mode of Cultural Production

This thesis adopts a case-study approach to explore how digital painting shared on microblogging platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) mediates cultural expression in the post-digital era, focusing on the Ukrainian digital art community formed around the #украрт (#ukrart) hashtag. The research design combines manual curation and automated retrieval to assemble 104 artworks by 24 artists. Public posts discussing the hashtag’s purpose, values, and informal rules supplement the main corpus to understand how the #ukrart space operates and evolves. The analytical framework integrates narrative analysis, visual (formal) analysis, and context analysis to explore how digital artworks function as both aesthetic objects and cultural artefacts within digitally mediated networked environments. Findings show that #ukrart operates without formal gatekeepers yet depends on informal recognition systems and participatory practices – art shares, trains, and challenges – that structure creative practice and ground it in collective values. Eight thematic rubrics were identified, showcasing how digital painting becomes a medium of cultural storytelling, identity negotiation, and emotional solidarity. The artworks reflect a strong engagement with Ukrainian folklore, often reimagined in hybrid forms that translate traditional motifs into visually engaging formats that resonate within networked publics. This study argues that digital painting shared under the #ukrart hashtag is a form of everyday cultural labour through which Ukrainian artists represent themselves and co-create a distinct visual language in response to a shifting cultural and political context shaped by the further collapse of a shared post-Soviet cultural space. Ultimately, it positions digital painting on social media as a significant mode of cultural engagement that warrants deeper academic and public attention.