Mobilising solidarity in crisis: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of Wartime online communication

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has drawn global attention, particularly as Ukrainians continue to resist against expectations. Central to this is President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who plays a fundamental role by using X (formerly Twitter) to construct collective identities and mobilise support, providing a direct channel of strategic communication. This study aims to investigate how President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s tweets during the 2022–2025 invasion construct persuasive political communication, with particular attention to how power dynamics and issues of social (in)justice are discursively framed. The focus is on how interactional functions and evaluative meanings operate as key communicative resources for constructing solidarity in wartime discourse. This study also examines claims that Zelenskyy’s discourse is exclusionary during his presidency. To achieve the aims, the study adopts a Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study approach (CADS), integrating both quantitative and qualitative techniques to provide a comprehensive analysis of a purpose-built corpus of tweets (2022-2025). Quantitative