Shakal-Express as a Political-Affective Technology: Cancel Culture, Moral Judgment, and Digital Activism among Ukrainian Generation Z during Wartime
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18523/2414-9942.11.2025.140-154Keywords:
Shakal-Express, Cancel Culture, Digital Publics, Political Participation, Generation Z, Influencers, Affective Politics, Moral EconomyAbstract
This article conceptualizes the “Shakal-Express” – a wartime term from Ukrainian Twitter – as a localized form of digital moral sanctioning and a political-affective technology. Rather than simple online outrage, it functions as a mechanism of horizontal moral governance, blending reputational control, affective mobilization, and non-institutional political signaling.
Analyzing seven cases from Ukraine’s public sphere (2022–2025), the article explores how Generation Z draws symbolic boundaries of acceptable behavior during crises. Each case is examined through four criteria: trigger, affective frame, response strategy, and consequences. This framework reveals how online judgment is structured and evolves.
The study offers four hypotheses on the motives, impacts, and shifts within “Shakal-Express” as a practice of informal digital justice. It also highlights its dual nature – positioned between cancel culture and bullying, empathy and cruelty.
Ultimately, the article proposes “Shakal-Express” as a useful model for examining new forms of youth political participation in an age of digital affect, symbolic violence, and social upheaval.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Ihor Tsyhvintsev
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