[Commlist] Call for chapters: Narrating the Changing West - Global Media Views on the War in Ukraine

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Call for chapters

Narrating the Changing West: Global Media Views on the War in Ukraine

In times of conflict and war, it is common for a collective “us” to be 
evoked for purposes of identity and unity. Alliances are strengthened 
and narratives of belonging become pronounced. While the notion of “the 
West” (or “Western countries”) remains blurry, it has been a frequent 
concept describing a counterpart in Russia’s war on Ukraine. News media 
around the world have reported on Russia identifying the West as an 
enemy, and Ukraine aspiring to join the West, even though it is often 
unclear what exactly “the West” refers to. Sometimes the West has served 
as a valid and defined reference point, at other times it has been more 
of a product of rhetorical convenience, political intent, or ideological 
mobilization—whether to rally support, define a distinct adversary, or 
merely act as a framing device. One could say that the West has been the 
world’s largest imagined community, and it has been largely taken for 
granted.

However, political changes in the US and EU have challenged the 
(narrated) unity of the West. Donald Trump’s second term has caused a 
divide in the West, and when earlier, the West’s acts, role and plans in 
terms of Ukraine were constantly talked about in the media, it now seems 
as if the West has almost vanished from the news, and what is left is 
the US and the EU.  Moreover, the EU’s troubles with internal illiberal 
forces have caused worries about the Westernness of the EU as the last 
bastion of the West.

This is a call for papers for an edited volume examining how “the West” 
has been portrayed in news media around the world covering Russia’s war 
on Ukraine. Contributions are particularly encouraged to analyze news 
media content (newspapers, TV, radio, social media, etc.), but also 
analyses of their production (editors, journalists, reporters) or their 
reception (audience views, comments, etc.) are welcomed. Contributions 
based on original empirical research and content analysis are 
encouraged, but theoretical contributions and literature reviews can 
also be proposed.

Key questions include, for example, the following:

- How is the West (or Western countries) portrayed in the context of the 
war? E.g., which countries are included in or excluded from the West ‒ 
or exist somewhere in between? What are the geographical, political, 
economic, religious, racial/ethnic, and ethical demarcations of the West 
(and non-West)?

- How do narratives about the West at war characterize or define the 
West? How are, for example, “Westernness,” “Western culture,” “Western 
society,” “Western values,” or “Western people” (and/or their 
“non-Western” counterparts or opposites) reproduced?

- What responsibilities, roles, moral positions, and relationships do 
Western countries seem to assume in the war? How are the West’s actions 
explained and understood?

- How are the West’s internal and external relations narrated? For 
example, how is the West’s internal unity or disunity viewed? What is 
the West’s relationship with Ukraine, Russia, China, India, and other 
global actors?

- What kind of roles do international and transnational organizations 
and entities such as NATO, the EU, Europe, OECD, the UN, BRICS, or the 
G7 play in defining, understanding, and narrating the West?

- How is Ukraine’s Westernness/un-Westernness narrated by different 
observers? In what ways is Russia presented a non-Western/Western 
entity? How does the EU or the USA represent the West?

- Does the West have some sort of exceptional political, historical, 
economic, or moral role in the war?

- How have recent major geopolitical phenomena (e.g., Trump’s second 
term, the war in Gaza) been visible in how the West is narrated in the 
context of Russia’s war on Ukraine? How have narratives of the West 
changed during the years of the war?

- What do the narratives about the West and the war tell us about how 
populations, communities, nations, and peoples in general are imagined, 
contested, and socially constructed?

- What do the narratives about the West tell us about wartime 
imaginaries, community-construction, and us vs. them in general?

We encourage contributions from the point of view of social sciences and 
humanities that engage with, for example, the following themes and topics:

affect, agency, belonging, civilizationalism, collectivism, conceptual 
analysis, comparative media, conflict, content analysis, corpus 
analysis, cultural memory, culture, digital media, enmity, ethnicity, 
discourse, framing, identity, imagined communities, international 
relations, journalistic practices, language use, media ecology, media 
literacy, narrative inquiry, nation-building, (banal) nationalism, 
(banal) Occidentalism/Orientalism, politics, power, rhetoric, social 
constructivism, social ontology, stereotypes, symbolic construction of 
community, transmedia storytelling, transnationalism, tribalism, us/them 
divisions, values, and visual analysis.

The book is not intended to either critique or advocate the West—or any 
other entity—but rather to curiously examine the West as a concept, 
agent, and narrative which, despite its ambiguity, is tied to with real 
geopolitical power.

The edited volume will be proposed to a new Routledge series titled 
“Identity, Ideology, and Worldviews in Global Politics.” Contributing to 
the edited volume entails no author fees.

Timeline for the edited volume:

- Submit your abstract (max. 500 words) and bio (max. 100 words) by 
August 3, 2025 to (jukka.jouhki /at/ tuni.fi) <mailto:(jukka.jouhki /at/ tuni.fi)>. 
Please ensure that your submission includes a working title, a 
description of the method, data or other research material, and the 
possible theoretical context. Also, explain what “the West” means in the 
case of your proposed chapter.

- Notification of accepted abstracts by August 15, 2025

- Submit full manuscripts by December 31, 2025. Chapters should be 
between 5000 and 10000 words in length including references (subject to 
change as per publisher’s instructions).

- Intermal peer review ready by February 8, 2026

- Remote workshop for authors on February 20, 2026

- Chapters ready for publisher’s peer review by May 31, 2026

- Final versions ready by September 13, 2026

- The edited volume will be published by the end of 2026

The editors:

Jukka Jouhki (Tampere University), PI of “Imagined West” project 
(https://projects.tuni.fi/imagined-west/ 
<https://projects.tuni.fi/imagined-west/>)

Jere Kyyrö (Tampere University / University of Turku)

Inquiries: (jukka.jouhki /at/ tuni.fi) <mailto:(jukka.jouhki /at/ tuni.fi)>
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