‘Things that can only happen on . . . TikTok’: A case study of a female Ukrainian refugee’s use of a voice-enabling platform

Abstract

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, more than 6 million Ukrainians have been uprooted and made refugees, while many more have been displaced (both in Ukraine and abroad). The war in Ukraine has been termed the world’s first ‘TikTok war’, placing TikTok as a central site which contains various perspectives and information about and from the frontlines of the war. This article focuses on Valeria Shashenok, a Ukrainian photographer who uses TikTok as a platform to convey the story of the Russian invasion from her perspective and to document her daily life during the war and as a refugee. This study examines how Valeria uses TikTok as a voice-enabling platform by analysing 62 clips she published during the first 9 months of the war. Our findings demonstrate that Valeria takes advantage of TikTok’s unique affordances to express her political agency through what we have defined as ‘political playfulness’. In addition, we show how Valeria negotiates her gender identity, navigating between the various components of her identity as a woman and as a refugee, while not letting herself be limited by either of the two. This article offers a novel perspective on how refugees use a new social medium to negotiate their place in their world and counter long-held forms of representation by others.