New Issue of the Czech Journal of International Relations (59:2)

The two full-length research articles were written by Alina Mozolevska (Petr Mohyla Black Sea National University) and Elzbieta Olzacka (Jagiellonnian University Krakow). Mozolevska’s article, titled Unveiling the War and Constructing Identities: Exploring Memes in Ukrainian and Russian Social Media during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, analyses the deployment of visual narratives in Ukrainian and Russian mediascapes to show their similarity in mobilizing and conveying political messages. It also shows, however, that Ukrainian visual narratives often serve as trauma coping and collective identity construction mechanisms. Olzacka’s piece is titled Ukrainian Wartime Posters as a Tool of Participatory Propaganda During the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, and explores the role of war-related posters in the war-torn Ukraine to show both how they transfer boundaries of online and offline media, and how they are used to mobilize war-related sentiments.

The forum on Degrowth in Central and Eastern Europe features four articles revolving around the issue of how is the idea of degrowth interpreted, and politically implemented, outside of its “core” countries in the Global North. Analysing degrowth in the global semiperiphery (and particularly within the CEE) brings new perspective to the theoretical study of degrowth, and also new empirical investigation of its implementation outside of the usual suspects. The four articles were written by a team of authors including Lilian Pungas, Ondřej Kolínský, Thomas S. J. Smith, Ottavia Cima, Eva Fraňková, Agnes Gagyi, Markus Sattler, Lucie Sovová, Pengfei Hou, Josef Patočka and Martin Čech.

Lastly, the issue offers a book review of Jakub Eberle and Jan Daniel’s Politics of Hybrid Warfare by Chiara Libiseller.

Dear readers, we hope you will find the issue intellectually stimulating.

Pleasant read,

Michal Kolmaš,

CJIR Editor-in-chief