Over a year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, how are Ukrainian journalism scholars and media makers thinking about the conflict and where do they see it going next? Annenberg student and Center for Media at Risk steering committee member Liz Hallgren sits down with the Center’s visiting scholars, Yevhen Fedchenko, Olena Lysenko and Dariya Orlova to unpack the state of play. Keeping a clear-eyed emphasis on the decade of conflict that led to this tipping point, Fedchenko, Lysenko and Orlova address the pivotal role of media – both in Ukraine and abroad – in the making and breaking of Ukraine’s war effort, including how Ukrainian journalists have managed tensions with their Western counterparts and what changing narratives around the war say about Russia’s grip on the information environment.

Liz Hallgren is a PhD student at the Annenberg School for Communication and a member of the Center for Media at Risk Steering Committee. She studies the intersection of collective memory and national identity as it plays out in (and is enabled by) the news media. She is especially interested in the linkages between journalism and culture, and what these linkages mean for political subjectivity, the public sphere and democracy globally.

Yevhen Fedchenko is the co-founder and Chief Editor at StopFake.org, a fact-checking website and leading hub on Russian disinformation. He is also the Director of the Mohyla School of Journalism at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine. A hybrid scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Media at Risk, Fedchenko was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He is a prolific commentator on Ukrainian politics, media literacy and disinformation, which can be found in major outlets including the New York Times.

Olena Lysenko is a documentary filmmaker, producer, fixer and freelance journalist from Ukraine. This year, she is also a visiting practitioner with the Center for Media at Risk at the Annenberg School for Communication. Just this year, her short film, I Never Had Dreams of My Son, received the Special Jury Recognition Award for Best Documentary Short at the 2022 New Orleans Film Festival. In 2016, she received her PhD in Law from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

Dariya Orlova is a media researcher and Senior Lecturer at the Mohyla School of Journalism, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Dariya studies the transformation of Ukrainian media and journalism, journalists’ professional identity in post-Euromaidan Ukraine and media use amongst Ukrainian border populations. Prior to her academic career, Orlova worked as a journalist for the Kyiv Post and served as editor of the European Journalism Observatory in Ukraine. This year, she is a visiting scholar at the Center for Media at Risk at the Annenberg School for Communication. Dariya will also be teaching a graduate class at Annenberg next spring, entitled Media and Journalism in Central and Eastern...