Constructing childhood in the Russian-Ukrainian War: UNICEF’s Instagram representations of children

Humanitarian organizations play key roles in protecting children and shaping public, political, and media understandings of, and responses to, humanitarian crises and the people affected. Yet, representations of children in humanitarian social media communication – especially concerning crises in the global North – remain understudied. This study examines how UNICEF represents children affected by the Russian–Ukrainian war on Instagram from 2022 to 2023. Through a historical–diachronic Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of 150 posts, the authors found that UNICEF initially represented children primarily as vulnerable “ideal victims”, reinforcing saviour–saved divides. However, from May 2022 onwards, children were mostly portrayed as resilient individuals, presumably to engage audiences. Post-humanitarian appeals, including carousel formats and audience-centred calls, were barely used. This study extends previous research demonstrating that traditional humanitarian imageries still predominate on Instagram, nuancing the often-assumed importance of post-humanitarian appeals on social media. Humanitarian organizations should adopt more nuanced, contextualized representations.