Between humanitarian crisis and Instagram

In the aftermath of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost 12 million people were forced to leave the country, resulting in the largest migration and humanitarian crisis since World War II. Poland has welcomed an unprecedented number of almost 3 million refugees and has seen a civic spontaneous mobilization to support arriving refugees. Social media influencers (SMIs), were also heavily engaged in aid and solidarity actions, by communicating about solidarity initiatives on their online channels. There is a growing body of literature studying celebrities' involvement in promoting humanitarian causes and first aid practices. However, to date, little research has studied the communicative roles of SMIs during migration and humanitarian crises. Therefore, this Master’s thesis aims to discover about which themes of solidarity actions for the crisis after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine do the influencers communicate through their Instagram posts of 2022. Moreover, this paper researches the interactions of platform affordances with certain solidarity practices and shaping humanitarian discourses. To this end, this thesis applied a qualitative content analysis on 150 Instagram posts and stories of 9 renowned Polish Instagram influencers published in the first 3 months after the beginning of the humanitarian crisis. The study found in influencers' communication four main solidarity actions: promoting, raising awareness, solidarizing, and giving financial or material resources. The results highlight that SMIs mainly increased exposure and publicity of existing solidarity practices, especially fundraisers and local food and clothes collections. Their Instagram communication was found to mostly reflect and reproduce depoliticizing humanitarian discourses, by shedding light on spontaneous, bottom-up provision practices and sharing stories of war victims. This study gives a mixed picture of influencer engagement in solidarity practices, with some of them confined to low-risk participation, and others committed to resource- and time-intensive practices. Moreover, the interactions between platform affordances and certain solidarity practices were discovered. Overall, the study proposes a new typology of SMIs’ communication about solidarity practices and confirms the growing and diverse involvement of influencers in social justice communication. Given the main results, this research contributes not only to the state of art but also provides practical implications for NGOs and humanitarian aid organizations.