Social media in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, 2022–2025

The study aims to identify the role of social media in the Russian–Ukrainian conflict from 2022 to 2025 and to determine the mechanisms of their influence on the formation and consolidation of the enemy image. Social media are viewed as a specific type of media structure embedded in digital platforms and characterized by the features of unregulated media channels that perform the functions of informing, engaging, and organizing audiences. The methodological framework combines information-communicative, socio-communicative, and instrumentaltechnological approaches, which makes it possible to interpret social media as structures of symbolic influence, to analyze ritual forms of audience participation, and to explore algorithmic mechanisms of content dissemination. The research applies methods of secondary analysis of statistical data on media consumption and trust in information sources, linguistic studies of the enemy image and conflict discourse, as well as a comparative analysis of the media systems of Russia and Ukraine. The findings show that Telegram has become the central infrastructure for the dissemination of news content and symbolic confrontation, while the growing trust in social media is accompanied by the institutionalization of state control over the media sphere. In the conflict discourse of both countries, there is active use of hate speech, ideological labels, and invectives that contribute to the intensification of polarization. Based on the analysis, a ritual-algorithmic model of consolidating hostile representations is proposed, including the stages of informational presentation, symbolic conversion, ritual confirmation, and algorithmic amplification. The theoretical significance of the study lies in refining the concept of social media and integrating three analytical approaches into a unified model of digital communication. The practical significance consists in the potential application of the results for analyzing conflict-related content and developing tools to monitor polarizing discourses in the media environment.