Processos educativos em tempos de guerra e a emergência das pedagogias ciberbélicas : o presidente Zelensky e as redes sociais.

Abstract

This thesis, situated at the interface between Education, International Relations, and media studies, analyzes how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's Instagram posts operate pedagogically in the production of subjectivities in a context of war, taking the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began in 2022, as a scenario for the emergence of new ways of teaching and learning about/for the conflict. Guided by a post-structuralist perspective, especially from Michel Foucault, the work develops the concept of cyberwar pedagogies, articulating three main axes: cultural pedagogies, cyberspace, and war dimensions, to understand digital social media as spaces for the contestation of truths and the formation of ways of being, seeing, and existing in the world. Methodologically, the research is anchored in a Foucauldian approach, mobilizing the operational concepts of subjectivation and the production of truths to select and analyze posts from Volodymyr Zelensky's official Instagram profile as pedagogical artifacts, considering captions, images, and discursive framings that circulate amidst algorithms, engagement logics, and the dynamics of Information Warfare. The analysis reveals Zelensky as the leader of a nation at war, as a patriotic president-educator, and as a producer of narratives that expose, in an affective and moral key, a "naked truth" of the war, constituting followers as subjects who learn to interpret the conflict from specific positions of enunciation, identifications, and enmities. The results indicate that cyberwar pedagogies materialize in communication practices marked by the intensive circulation of images, emotional appeals, mobilization of national symbols, activation of historical memories, and calls for international solidarity, operating in close relation to algorithms, bots, echo chambers, and processes of emotional contagion that amplify the reach and effectiveness of these discourses. It is argued that digital social networks, far from being mere channels for disseminating information, configure educational environments that permeate schools and other formal spaces, producing subjects, normalizing sensibilities, and disputing truths about armed conflicts on a global scale. The thesis concludes that the concept of cyberwar pedagogies contributes to complicating the understanding of educational processes about/for war in digital social media, offering an analytical tool to consider how political leaders and their communication apparatuses subjectify audiences in times of hyper connectivity, as well as to problematize the challenges posed to education in the face of wars that are increasingly documented, transmitted, and contested on digital platforms.