The EU as a Public Diplomacy Actor in Ukraine

Professor Natalia Chaban, PD-PCF UC/ UC Department of Media and Communication

Professor Ole Elgström, Lund University, Sweden

Professor Michèle Knodt, TUD, Germany

Professor Svitlana Zhabotynska, Cherkasy National University, Ukraine

This research collaboration has two directions to it. The first direction of our research collaboration develops our original theoretical model -- a perceptual approach to EU foreign policy studies.  This approach hypothesizes different types of gaps linked to perceived distance in terms of ‘Otherness’ between the third actor (Ukraine in this case) and the EU. We aim to understand and theorise the correlation between the degree of externally perceived ‘Otherness’ when it comes to norms, and the likelihood of EU external action to be considered effective. We offer a set of new concepts, namely, a perception gap, as well as expectation-performance, hope-performance and critical expectations gaps adding new facets to understanding third actors’ reactions to the EU’s positions and actions.

The second research direction of our collaboration engages with novel theorisations of narratives in international political communication and develops and tests new methods in the study of narratives. In this direction, we aim to contribute to the “narrative turn” in IR and offer an answer to the question ‘What makes a strategic narrative efficient?’. We explore the interplay of the three projection properties: (1) content accentuation and priming, through iterations; (2) content contextualisation, through historical and cultural resonance with the consumers’ memories; and (3) content verbalization, through narrative tactics that evoke a range of the consumer’s involved attitudes to the framed image. We examine how this interplay may get traction in the case when the antagonistic narratives are employed.

Our research collaboration argues extensive changes to the EU’s public diplomacy following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The changes have created important opportunities for diminishing, or even closing, many of the perceptual gaps that existed between the EU and Ukraine following the annexation of Crimea. We apply our original theorisations to understand the transformation of the EU’s public diplomacy in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Chaban, N., S. Zhabotynska, M. Knodt (2023) What makes strategic narrative efficient: Ukraine on Russian e-news platforms. Cooperation and Conflict, first online https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367231161

Chaban, N and O. Elgström (2023) Russia’s War in Ukraine and Transformation of EU Public Diplomacy: Challenges and Opportunities, Journal of European Integration 45(3), 521-537.

Chaban, N. and S. Zhabotynska (forthcoming) Narratives of Ukraine on the information battlefields of global media”, in M. Knodt and C. Wiesner (eds) The War Against Ukraine and the EU - Facing New Realities. Palgrave Macmillan.

Zhabotynska, S., Chaban, N., Chaban, A. (forthcoming) Ukraine’s Self-Narrative on the European Perspective: Reminiscences of the Future, New Zealand Journal of Research on Europe

Chaban, N and O. Elgström (2023) “Theorising Expectations-(Threat) Perceptions Gap: Evolving Images of the EU’s crises in Ukraine (post-Maidan and during the invasion)”, Conference paper at UACES, Belfast, the UK, September.

Chaban, N and O. Elgström (2023) “Theorising Expectations-(Threat) Perceptions Gap: Evolving Images of the EU’s crises in Ukraine (post-Maidan and during the invasion)”, Conference paper, ISA 2023, Montreal, Canada, March.

Chaban, N.  and O. Elgström (2022) “Critical Expectation Gaps: Advancing Theorization of the Perceptual Approach in EU Foreign Policy Studies”, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13445

Chaban, N. and O. Elgström (2021), ‘Politicization of EU development policy: The role of EU external perceptions (case of Ukraine)’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 59(1), 143-160, first on line https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13137 (in the Special Issue “Politicization of EU external action – European development policy at the crossfire”)

Chaban, N., & Elgström, O. (2021). The Ukraine Crisis and EU Foreign Policy Roles: Images of the EU in the Context of EU–Ukraine Relations. Cheltenham, UK/Northampton, US: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Chaban and O. Elgström (2021), “Theorizing External Perceptions of the EU”, in S. Gstöhl and M. Schunz (eds.), Studying the EU's external action: concepts, approaches, theories, Palgrave, 265-277

Chaban, N. and O Elgström (2020) “A Perceptual Approach to EU Public Diplomacy:  Investigating Collaborative Diplomacy in EU-Ukraine Relations”, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 15(4), 488-516.

Chaban, N., S. Zhabotynska, A. Chaban (2019-2020) “Visual and Emotive: Russian E-news Coverage of Ukraine's No-visa Entry into the EU”, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 53-54 147-173