1. SCIA-2025
  2. Proceedings
  3. The Persuasive Discourse of War: Practices of Framing, Interdiscursivity and Social Moderation on Reddit (r/Europe)

The Persuasive Discourse of War: Practices of Framing, Interdiscursivity and Social Moderation on Reddit (r/Europe)

SCIA-2025.
2025;
Volume 4107
Authors: 

M. Butyrina1, O. Kulyna2, V. Shabunina3 and O. Tur3

  1. Dnipro University of Technology
  2. Zuyd University of Applied Sciences  
  3. Kremenchuk Mykhailo Ostrohradskyi National University

This article examines the persuasive dynamics of war-related discourse on Reddit, focusing on the r/Europe megathreads that emerged during the first month of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Through critical discourse analysis, the study identifies how practices of framing, interdiscursivity, and social moderation shape a collective European perspective on the conflict. The findings demonstrate that users combine rational argumentation with intertextual references to political statements, statistical data, and media reports, alongside emotionally charged appeals, irony, memes, and popular-cultural allusions. Such multimodal strategies generate discursive synergy and consolidate pro-Western, anti-imperial, and anti-populist positions. Network effects and the platform’s affordances enable the construction of a solidaristic community that frames the war through problem, responsibility, and moral lenses, while leaving solution-oriented frames comparatively marginal. The analysis shows that Reddit operates not merely as a forum for opinion exchange but as a media aggregator and reflexive moderator of European digital discourse on war, fostering both moral mobilisation and symbolic resistance to Russian aggression.

reddit
war discourse
framing
interdiscursivity
digital mobilization
social moderation
European public sphere
online communities
megathreads
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