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Paper short abstract:

In March 2022 the Estonian Folklore Archives created a public Facebook group "Ukrainian Memes" to collect war-related memes and other folklore. The paper observes the group’s activities from the perspective of the administrators and highlights the factors with the greatest impact on collecting.

Paper long abstract:

The group "Ukrainian Memes" (https://www.facebook.com/groups/534314991238265) is very popular, it has 8,500 members and had 7,600 posts by 1 January 2023. At times, however, the need to intervene makes it impossible to combine the roles of administrators and neutral archival workers. Although the initial aim was to record the meme lore, the group has become a site of communal interaction on the topic, allowing the members to express themselves and let off steam, Although the group’s rules specify that the memes are being collected for research purposes, some group members consider it important to share their opinions and obtain a broad resonance to these. As could be expected, the news and memes posted are predominantly anti-war.

The presentation will also discuss Facebook as a site for folkloristic collecting activities. The group members are dissatisfied with Facebook’s (AI) activity in selecting what constitutes spam and blocking posters; under the conditions of war of aggression observing Facebook’s principles regarding hate speech may prove a problem. On the other hand, many group members’ sense of justice is hurt when memes condoning the aggression are retained. On many accounts seeking a balance is very subjective, which is why having several administrators is useful.

The war in Ukraine is a topic that people care about. An archival worker cannot initiate folklore collection on the topic and remain a bystander. As many other collecting activities, conducting folklore collecting in a Facebook group means participating in the life of a (virtual) community.