1188 | 232 | Political graffiti in Prague as a Central European reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

In February 2022, the Russian army attacked Ukraine which aroused resistance across Europe through massive protests. Political crises of this nature are the precise moments when most political graffiti appears in democratic urban space. The aim of the contribution is to discuss spatial concentration and the meaning of associated political graffiti in Prague, Czechia representing reactions in Central Europe, which had a similar experience with Russia. We have mapped it a month after invasion in areas where we previously noted a concentration of political graffiti in 2019 and 2020 that was associated with differences in political symbolic space. This concept of political symbolic space is based on political relations between inhabitants and objects in urban space. Symbolism may strongly affect political graffiti placement and meaning. Thanks to these two timelines, we have monitored the development of political graffiti before and after the invasion. The role of political symbolic space has been verified by spatial analysis, improved by semiotic analysis according to the Peircean model of sign. We have discovered what opinions resonate in Czech society and how meanings of signs change over time, space, and between objects of reference.

David Hána
Department of Social Geography and Regional Development, Faculty of Science, Charles University

ID Abstract: 232

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