Shakal-Express as a Political-Affective Technology: Cancel Culture, Moral Judgment, and Digital Activism among Ukrainian Generation Z during Wartime

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.