Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Favorable international image is indispensable for political, socio-economic and cultural wellbeing of a nation in the globalization era.At wartime, however, the issue of positive national brand becomes ever-more strategic as foreign political and military support directly hinges on the ability of the state to attract allies among foreign elites and the public.Therefore, this article examines how nation branding approach could be used by a state to construct favorable perceptions of itself among key foreign audiences in wartime.Methodologically, critical discourse analysis was applied to analyze a case study of the Ukrainian government communication efforts during wartime (2022)(2023)(2024).The author addresses three main questions: How and why did the sociocultural context of Russo-Ukrainian war influence Ukrainian government decision to engage in strategic nation branding efforts?What institutional factors shaped the production of wartime nation branding campaigns by the Ukrainian government?How did the nation branding efforts managed to construct Western elite and public perception of the new Ukrainian brand to sustain vital military and political support?The results of the research reveal that Russian full-scale invasion and dependence over Western countries' military and political support have motivated Ukrainian government to strategically engage in creative nation branding.Institutional architecture of the communication consisting of effective state-private cooperation and personal branding created necessary conditions for the deployment of a tailored, emotionally imbued audience engagement tactic.Lastly, on the textual level, several examples are analyzed to illustrate how nation branding efforts benefited from the use of narrative tools and clever collaboration with a popular mass culture phenomenon.
Author: M. V. Omelchenko
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4396567425