From moral indignation to affective citizenship: public shaming of celebrity emigration from Russia during the war against Ukraine

Abstract

The paper analyses the public shaming campaigns that emerged around celebrity emigration following the Russian invasion in Ukraine. It examines how the individual commentators on social media have been conducting symbolic destruction of these celebrities’ moral character and social status while at the same time constituting the moral meaning of emigration from Russian Motherland as an act of betrayal and reconstructing a national civil contract of national belonging. Thus, through interpretation of the social media discourse on celebrity emigration we reveal the affective relations of Russian patriotic citizens to their nation and the state