Filosofija. Sociologija

Title

Lietuvos mokslų akademija — 2025-12-17

From Heritage to Hashtags: Transforming Cultural Diplomacy on Instagram, TikTok and X

Oleksiy Hovpun — 2025-12-17

This article aims to analyse how Instagram, TikTok and X influence the forms, content and effectiveness of digital cultural diplomacy through a comparative analysis of Ukraine, South Korea and France. The study applies a mixed-methods approach combining content analysis, critical discourse analysis and quantitative variables such as engagement rate, virality, and audience growth. The dataset includes 150 Instagram posts, 120 TikTok videos and 200 tweets published between September 2024 and May 2025. The results demonstrate that platform logic determines narrative success significantly. In addition, cross-country comparison reveals four distinct models of digital cultural diplomacy: hybrid-network, coordination-commercial, institutional-curatorial and alternative-oppositional. Successful digital cultural diplomacy relies on the ability to integrate authenticity, emotional resonance, and platform-specific formats, transforming diplomacy from top-down messaging into collaborative cultural storytelling.

Friendship as a Framework: Emotional Solidarity Among Ukrainians and Lithuanians

Dainius Genys — 2025-12-17

This paper applies Georg Simmel’s sociological model of friendship and sociability to examine the relational dynamics between Ukrainian war refugees and Lithuanian hosts. Departing from formal or policy-driven integration models, it emphasises micro-level interactions – trust, sincerity and affect – as crucial indicators of lived inclusion. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Ukrainian youth and Lithuanian aid organisers, the research demonstrates how symbolic boundaries, emotional gaps and informal networks shape integration beyond legal access. Artificially constructed spaces, such as language courses and volunteer programs, can evolve into authentic arenas of emotional support and community when grounded in mutual participation. Simmel’s framework reveals how solidarity is co-produced and how sociability, not structure, becomes the key mode of moral incorporation.

The Formation of the Indian Diaspora in Lithuania: A Critical Perspective on Integration Discourse

Kristina Garalytė — 2025-12-17

This article seeks to fill the knowledge gap about Indian migrants in Lithuania by analysing the emerging Indian diaspora. At the centre of the analysis are the dynamics of the Indian migrant community and the particular features of their interconnectedness. The article draws on and contributes to the critique of integration discourse, interpreting the dynamics of the Indian diaspora in Lithuania as a form of convivial disintegration (Meissner, Heil 2021). This concept is employed to describe both the divide between national and regional identification within the Indian community and the shared understanding of belonging that unites Indian migrants, highlighting the importance of building communal ties and reconstructing cultural practices in the context of migration, with particular emphasis on cultural activity.

Freeing the Polyphony: Decolonising the Essentialised Identity Politics Towards Ethnic Minorities

Anna Ewa Pilarczyk-Palaitis — 2025-12-17

Coloniality in today’s world is a matrix of worldviews, shaping the mechanisms governing not only the coloniser’s but also the colonised mind, nevertheless, as well as ways of resisting it. In this article, we examine how coloniality, shaping the identity politics towards ethnic minorities, perpetuates relations of power and subordination through essentialism. As is widely acknowledged, essentialism can serve as an emancipatory and strategic tool for minority groups. However, as our research shows, it simultaneously often produces ‘ethnostress’ – a feeling of inadequacy to one’s own identity and pressure to meet one’s own group and coloniser’s homogenising expectations. We examine mechanisms of de-essentialisation and de-homogenisation, that allow for the decolonisation of identity politics, seeking to answer the question of how the polyphonic and pluralistic voices of ethnic minority members can gain greater visibility and be more valued. In this article, we introduce and juxtapose two different ethnographic cases: the indigenous Sámi minority in Finland and the Polish national minority in Lithuania.

Digital Inclusion in Old Age in Lithuania: Multiple Inequalities?

Vaida Tretjakova — 2025-12-17

Older adults in Lithuania are among the least technologically skilled compared to other social groups in the country and older adults in other countries. In this paper, we aim to investigate socio-demographic factors that facilitate digital inclusion in old age in Lithuania. We employ quantitative research methods and the data of the European Social Survey. We determined six significant factors of digital inclusion in old age: age, education, place of residence, economic activity, health, and Internet access at home. Considering all the factors of Internet use, we observe that older Internet users tend to be more privileged than non-users. They tend to be younger, have the highest education, live in urbanised areas, are employed, have access to the Internet at home, and have better health. Consequently, digital exclusion deepens the current cultural, social and economic exclusion of some older adults.

Researcher’s Dilemmas and Emotional Labour Challenges in Qualitative Research

Giedrė Plepytė-Davidavičienė — 2025-12-17

This article examines the challenges that researchers encounter in relation to power dynamics and emotional labour at various stages of research. Drawing on the personal experience of conducting qualitative interviews with self-help teachers in Lithuania, the article reveals that the unpredictability of power dynamics between researchers and participants can lead to ethical dilemmas and threaten researchers’ emotional security. It argues that researchers’ emotional exhaustion can stem not only from empathy with participants’ vulnerability, but also from direct challenges to their own beliefs and values, inducing internal dissonance. It highlights the important role of academic communities and institutional support in ensuring the emotional safety of researchers and asserts that self-reflection practices contribute not only to research quality but also help researchers to navigate the internal emotional tensions that arise during the research process.

Sociology of Tourism and Leisure in Lithuania: Research History and Perspectives

Darius Liutikas — 2025-12-17

This article reviews the development and research directions of the sociology of tourism in Lithuania, analysing the main academic approaches in this field. It discusses the scope of sociological tourism research and highlights the most relevant topics. The article also summarises key tourism statistical indicators and presents comparative survey data revealing the most common travel patterns from people’s places of residence, as well as the characteristics of trips with and without overnight stays during holidays, weekends, and other times. Finally, the article considers how the rapidly changing social and natural environment, climate change processes, and the development of new technologies and innovations may influence the evolution of tourism. These major changes are expected to shape future tourism research.

Professor Romualdas Grigas (1936–2025)

Lietuvos mokslų akademija — 2025-12-17

Professor Romas Vaštokas (1935–2025)

Lietuvos mokslų akademija — 2025-12-17

Filosofija. Sociologija

Title

Contents

From Heritage to Hashtags: Transforming Cultural Diplomacy on Instagram, TikTok and X

Friendship as a Framework: Emotional Solidarity Among Ukrainians and Lithuanians

The Formation of the Indian Diaspora in Lithuania: A Critical Perspective on Integration Discourse

Freeing the Polyphony: Decolonising the Essentialised Identity Politics Towards Ethnic Minorities

Digital Inclusion in Old Age in Lithuania: Multiple Inequalities?

Researcher’s Dilemmas and Emotional Labour Challenges in Qualitative Research

Sociology of Tourism and Leisure in Lithuania: Research History and Perspectives

Professor Romualdas Grigas (1936–2025)

Professor Romas Vaštokas (1935–2025)