Framing of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine

Transcription

1 Framing of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine Leyla Sayfutdinova PhD Student, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey 1

2 Introduction Orange revolution is the name given to the seventeen days of mass protest in Ukraine after the presidential election of November This election marked the end of 10 years of Leonid Kuchma s controversial presidency. During his term in power Ukraine has turned into a semi-authoritarian country, and its economy was divided by several oligarchical clans. In fact, Kuchma had a legal right to run for a third term, but he chose not to do so because of his extremely low ratings. In this election there were two major candidates. One was Viktor Yanukovich, Primeminister and former Governor of Donbas region of Ukraine, an industrial region heavily populated by Russians. Yanukovich was supported by the authorities and Leonid Kuchma himself. The other candidate was Viktor Yushchenko, a former head of Central Bank ( ), a former Prime-minister ( ), and leader of opposition bloc Our Ukraine and its faction in the Parliament. For the presidential election Yushchenko managed to unite with other opposition leaders, Yulia Tymoshenko (Tymoshenko Bloc) and Oleksandr Moroz from Socialist Party. In the official results of the first round of election that took place on October 31, Yushchenko was leading with 39.9% against Yanukovich s 39.3% (Wilson, 113). The second round of election was held on November, 21. Next day Yanukovich was declared a winner with 49.5% against 46.6% for Yushchenko (Wilson, 116). However, several exit-polls showed that this result was not correct. Opposition refused to accept the defeat, and mass protests began. Yushchenko supporters set up a tent city in Maidan Nezalejnosti, (Independence Square) in central Kiev. People were coming by trains and buses from all over Ukraine, and at the peak of the protests there were up to one million protesters (Wilson, 127). In the result of the seventeen days long peaceful protest the election was declared null and void, and a new election was 2

3 run, where opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko won with 51.9% as opposed to Yanukovich s 44.2%. This election result signified the victory of opposition, the success of the Orange Revolution, and of the social movement that brought it about. However, the Revolution was but an episode in a much longer process that involved long-term preparation and cooperation between several key actors: political opposition and Yushchenko camp in particular, civil society organizations, media, and law-enforcement bodies. There are, of course, many factors that contributed to such mass mobilization. But one of them is definitely a collective action frame that is, interpretation of the situation as one requiring mass involvement and action. This paper will look at the framing processes that preceded and accompanied the Orange Revolution and made it possible. In particular, I will be concerned with the framing by the civil society organizations active in the Revolution, as they were the major movement actors. The paper will also look at the content of the collective action frame, and its interaction with other factors and processes, such as political opportunity structure. Framing the Orange Revolution According to Benford and Snow, framing in social movements is production of mobilizing and countermobilizing ideas and meanings. This production is performed by movement actors meaning social movement organizations and movement activists. The products of these framing processes are called collective action frames (Benford and Snow, ). The framing process involves three core framing tasks : diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational (Benford and Snow, 615). Diagnostic framing refers to 3

4 identification of a problem and of the sources of causality of the problem, that is, of who is to blame for the problem (Benford and Snow, pp ). Prognostic framing refers to proposing of a solution for the problem, or at least a plan for change, and the strategies for implementation of the plan. Finally, motivational framing refers to providing of motives and rationale for mobilization of people. In case of the Orange revolution, the diagnostic framing began long before While recovering exact origins of the frame is an impossible task, since frames don t come ready made, but are produced and reproduced interactionally, adding to and transforming already existing ideas, several key issues in the framing process may be identified. One such issue was the so-called Kuchmagate. In September 2000 Heorhiy Gongadze, an independent journalist who published some unflattering material about one of President Kuchma s aides, disappeared. His corpse was found fifty days later in the woods outside of Kiev. Several days after the dead body was recovered Oleksandr Moroz, leader of the opposition Socialist Party of Ukraine, disclosed audio tape recordings of President Kuchma s private conversations made between October 1999 and October The recordings were passed to Moroz by Mykola Melnychenko, formerly an officer in Kuchma s Security service. The over 1000 hours of recordings contained conversations about Gongadze where Kuchma expressed his desire to get rid of him, discussions of 1999 presidential election and much more. The disclosure of tapes led to beginning of campaign entitled Ukraine without Kuchma. A tent city was set up in central Kiev, but the numbers were never large. The largest number of people in the streets was estimated at 10,000 (D Anieri, 2006, p. 343). The movement failed to gain wide support from the opposition, and especially from Yushchenko, then member of Kuchma s cabinet. The elites, including militia, security 4

5 forces, and city authorities, also remained loyal to Kuchma. However, in these protests some important alliances were formed, namely between Ukraine without Kuchma and For Truth groups, which were in fact coalitions of youth and civic organizations. Several leaders of the movement later became important figures in the Pora movement and the Orange revolution (Karatnycky, p. 33). Kuchmagate greatly contributed to the construction of a frame where existing political situation in Ukraine was seen as undemocratic, and ultimately, unjust. Thus, an injustice frame was created. The cause of the problem was attributed to Kuchma regime. The evidence of electoral fraud in the 1999 election combined with low credibility of the regime produced an expectation that the new 2004 election will not be fair either. Another important issue for the diagnostic framing was the differences between personalities of Yushchenko and Yanukovich. Yanukovich was famous for his lack of education, poor command of Ukrainian language, and worst of all, he has a criminal record. In his youth he was in prison twice, both times for robbery (Wilson, 8). He is also known for his rudeness. In contrast, Yushchenko had a more sophisticated and intellectual image; he had no criminal record and he even managed to avoid involvement in shady economical affairs, unlike his main ally, Yuliia Tymoshenko. Thus he had a much cleaner image. These differences were framed so as to make the electoral struggle a fight between good and evil. Once the diagnosis was completed, the prognostic element solution was formulated. In general terms, the solution was not to allow the regime to steal another election. Practically, it involved a long and labor intensive preparatory process. But before the actual strategy of the Orange movement is discussed it is useful to look into the nature and characteristics of the Ukrainian civil society. In the post-soviet world 5

6 Ukraine possesses one of the most developed networks of civil society organizations (Diuk, 75). Since the early 1990ies Ukraine has also developed a specific type of civic organization a think tank. These groups of young analysts have grown to become rather professional and reliable sources of research and analysis on the political situation. Another type of civic organization that has proliferated in the past 10 years are the organizations that deal with election campaigns and monitoring. These were greatly supported in terms of financing and training by western organizations such as International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute (Diuk, 73). By 2004, these groups had gained considerable experience in matters related to electoral processes. Finally, one category of civil society organizations that was especially significant in the Orange revolution was the youth organizations. Pora (It s Time), Znayu (I know), Chysta Ukraina (Clean Ukraine) and others emerged from the participants of For Truth campaign of Another important factor was that the civic organizations in the period between 2002 parliamentary elections and 2004 were able to create coalitions among themselves and also to cooperate effectively with the opposition. All of these allowed Ukrainian civil society organizations create a coherent strategy to counteract the expected electoral fraud. This strategy was entitled Wave of Freedom. The activities planned within the program included analytical and monitoring projects, voter education, recording of electoral violations. Pora, the best known and most visible of the Orange Revolution s organizations, was responsible for voter information and social mobilization. In fact, Pora was not one organization but two. First of them, also referred to as Black Pora for its black and white logo, was an offspring of radical parts of the Ukraine Without Kuchma movement. Most of its membership came from more radical Western Ukrainians. The main message of this organization was opposition to 6

7 Kuchma and his regime which they termed as kuchmizm. (Wilson, 74, Diuk, 86). Yellow Pora (named so after its yellow logo) appeared a little later. Its membership is mostly from Kiev. Yellow Pora was openly pro-yushchenko. The two groups more or less formally united on August 19, 2004, but they had coordinated their activities long before that. Pora devised a campaign strategy comprised of several stages (Demes and Forbrig, 89-96) First stage ( It s Time to Stand Up! ) sought to attract and train volunteers who would collect election related information from all possible sources such as NGOs, candidates, authorities, analytical centers, etc. The collected information would then be processed by Pora and disseminated to the citizens this stage was called It s Time to Think! Third element of the strategy ( It s Time to Vote! ) was concerned with mobilization of citizens to vote. Finally, the last element It s Time to Keep Watch! intended to inform public in the event of violations and manipulation of the electoral processes. Pora has been quite effective in accomplishing all the stages. 300 volunteers were trained in specially organized camp. Instructions for volunteers were published. During the It s Time to Think! stage volunteers distributed information in the form of leaflets, stickers, publications from door to door. Pora sent personal letters to representatives of local, electoral and other authorities warning them of the legal liability for violation of electoral laws. It is estimated that during the campaign Pora organized 750 regional pickets and public activities and 17 rallies (Demes and Forbrig, 94) Organizationally, Pora divided Ukraine into 78 kushches with about half a million inhabitants. Each kushsh was assigned a leader who overlooked the activities and coordinated about volunteers. This structure allowed sufficient autonomy while at the same time ensuring easy coordination between kushch leaders. 7

8 In creating their strategy Pora was not inventing something from a scratch. On the contrary, it built upon available experience of other protest movements, in particularly, experience of Otpor in Serbia and Kmara in Georgia. Like these movements Pora used G. Sharp s book Politics of non-violent action in designing its activities. (Binnendijk, Marovic, 2006, 415). Otpor and Kmara activists also participated in Pora s trainings and shared their experience (Kuzio, 2006, 48). This is an example of frame diffusion, a process of adapting and accommodating of movement frames from a different culture (Benford and Snow, 627) The prognostic frame constructed during these activities thus contained several key elements. First, a solution to the problem had to be achieved by democratic means. Second, a need for wide ranging cooperation involving the civic organizations sector, political opposition, and media was acknowledged. Third, the movement activists realized the importance of organization and planning. However, the movement frame was neither uniform nor uncontested. In fact, at least three different frames within the Orange movement can be distinguished: anti- Kuchma and Yanukovich; pro-yushchenko, and pro-fair elections. Anti-Kuchma frame is best represented by Black Pora, as shown above. Pro-Yushchenko frame is represented by Yellow Pora and of course the Yushchenko camp that cooperated with the movement. Finally, pro-fair elections frame is represented by organizations like Razumkov center (a think tank) and other election monitoring groups. However, one of the main strengths of the movement s general frame was that it was able to overcome these differences. The general frame was sufficiently inclusive and flexible to incorporate the common traits and overcome the differences. The movement s frame was also contested by the opponents, namely, the government and Yanukovich camp. Counterframing refers to the opponents efforts to 8

9 refute the logic and efficacy of the solution proposed by SMO. The government and Yanukovich s team did this in several ways. One was to frame Pora activists as terrorists. During September and October 2004 more than 300 Pora activists were arrested, several students were expelled from universities, and searches of the Pora offices and its leaders apartments were performed. These attacks were accompanied by state media campaign claiming Pora s terrorist activities. (Demes and Forbrig, 94). Pora responded by emphasizing that it is a democratic student movement and stressed transparency of its activities. Eventually, Pora s response proved more convincing than the state media campaign. Yanukovich s team s main counterstrategy was to frame Yushchenko and his supporters as puppets of the West, and specifically of the US and George Bush personally. Posters and slogans emphasizing Yushchenko s relations with the US were published. One of them called Yushchenko Bushchenko ( from Bush+Yushchenko). Another poster showed Our Ukraine s slogan Yushchenko nash prezident (Yushchenko is our president) with n crossed out and changed to v : vash prezident, (Yushchenko is Your president), all of these against the starred and striped background of American flag. (Wilson, plates 11-12). This strategy was in line with the Yanukovich s stress on ties with Russia and his emphasizing of the historical east/west divide of Ukraine itself, which is discussed in more detail below. In the Orange movement it is difficult to clearly distinguish prognostic framing from motivational. Most of the prognostic activities described above were in fact motivational as well. This has to do with nature of the movement - mobilization of people which is usually considered motivational task was in this case incorporated into prognostic framing as an integral part of proposed solution. Without mobilizing people the aim free and fair elections and overcoming of electoral fraud would not 9

10 have been achievable. The huge turnout of people at the Maidan shows that the movement was quite successful in mobilization, although other factors contributing to mobilization should not be disregarded. These are discussed in the next chapter. Prognostic and motivational framing tasks are related to the element of agency proposed by Gamson and taken on by Klandermans (Klandermans, 18, 41-42). The idea of agency in the frame construction means a perceived belief on behalf of the public that the existing status quo can in fact be changed by collective action. At the time of 2001 protest this element was clearly lacking, while in 2004 it was present. The strategic activities of the movement activists did play a role; however, another important factor was probably the parliamentary election of 2002 and the success of opposition. The experience of change contributed to the belief that change is possible generally. The success of the Orange Movement s frame is also due to its resonance. According to Benford and Snow (p ), frame resonance depends on a number of factors: frame consistency, empirical credibility, credibility of frame articulators, and frame salience to the targets of mobilization. The Orange movement frame was clearly quite consistent. The movement actors have managed to create a coherent set of meanings, building upon the faults of the existing regime and proposing an adequate solution. The articulated beliefs were consistent with the tactical actions: transparency of Pora s activities and insistence on democratic nonviolent methods. The frame was also empirically credible the movement s claims apparently corresponded to the actual events in the world. For example, Ukrainian voters have for many years observed manipulation of elections and use of administrative resources by the candidates supported by government. Therefore the movement s claims at the possible electoral fraud were consistent with 10

11 the actual experience. Finally, frame articulators, both opposition leaders, and students and young people, appeared more credible that the state media. Frame salience has three dimensions: centrality, experiential commensurability, and narrative fidelity (Benford and Snow, 621). Apparently, the issue of possible electoral fraud was quite central during the time of presidential election. The faults of the regime alone could not have achieved such mobilization, as the events of 2001 showed. Experiential commensurability is related to the empirical credibility of the frame. The previous experiences of Ukrainian voters with elections, as well as the general experience of Kuchma s regime, resonated with the movement s framing. The issue of narrative or cultural fidelity is of particular importance in the Ukrainian context. Ukraine has a long history of ideological and cultural difference between its Eastern and Western parts. Although according to some scholars this East/West divide is oversimplification (Wilson, p. 36), and in reality Ukraine is rather divided into four culturally different regions (Western, Central, Eastern and Southern), still the differences between East and West are the most apparent and visible. These differences have played an important part in every significant political event of the post-soviet Ukraine, and the election under consideration is no different in this respect. East and South are heavily populated by Russians and Russianspeaking Ukrainians, those who prefer Eastern Slav identity to the Ukrainian one. All of Yanukovich s support in fact came from Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Hence his promise to strengthen ties with Russia and make Russian a second official language. Yanukovich, in fact, tried to emphasize the division in his campaign. In contrast, Western and Central Ukraine is where most of Ukrainian nationalism originates. Although Viktor Yushchenko s main support came from this area, he also won in 11

12 three Left Bank regions. This albeit partial overcoming of the historical divide is one of the major achievements of Yushchenko s campaign and the Orange movement. Some observers even termed Yushchenko s victory in these regions as a tectonic shift in Ukraine s regional balance (D Anieri, 2005, 242). This was also a result of deliberate framing tactics, aiming at creating a unifying rather than dividing frame. Opposition deliberately chose to stay away from the colors of the now official flag yellow and blue. These are the colors of Ukraine s national independence movement since 19 th century. In the post-perestroika period the colors were monopolized by more nationalistic strains of opposition which alienated the East and Slavic/Russian oriented citizens. Orange was chosen as the campaign color because it lacked any ideological baggage; also, the decisive phase of the campaign was expected to be around the time of the first round of voting in October, when central Kiev is orange with the autumnal leaves of chestnuts (Wilson, 72). Wilson also claims that the orange color helped attract some easterners because it is the color of Ukraine s second football team, Shakhtar Donetsk. Donetsk is also the hometown of the rival, Yanukovich. Another set of processes to consider in the analysis of the framing is frame alignment, including frame bridging, frame amplification, and frame extension (Benford and Snow, 624). The cooperation of Black and Yellow wings of Pora with their anti-kuchma and pro-yushchenko frames, respectively, is an example of frame bridging. In the context of presidential election and the perceived common threat of electoral fraud the two groups were able to combine their frames and unite within a more general pro-democracy frame. Frame amplification involves processes of stressing, highlighting, invigorating existing issues and beliefs. This process was performed throughout the presidential 12

13 the campaign and process. Pora had employed various tactics, including use of slogans, songs, jokes, etc. There was a large number of jokes making fun of Yanukovich. They targeted his criminal background, lack of education, and his mistakes in the campaign. For example Yanukovich spelled word Professor on his application to the Central Electoral Committee with two F s. Following this, a cartoon series Operation ProFFessor was released and distributed through Internet (Kuzio, 2006, 59). Especially popular were so called yanukdoty from Ya (Yanukovich) and anekdoty (jokes) a collection of jokes mocking the unpopular candidate (Kuzio, 2006, 59). The incident when Yanukovich collapsed after being hit with an egg became another popular target of jokes. The video clip of the incident was posted on the Internet; an Internet site devoted to the incident and entitled Ya I tse (meaning Yanukovich and so on, but also using word play yaitse egg) was started. If jokes mainly targeted Yanukovich s faults, slogans were used to emphasize positive messages: We are together, The World is with us, Together we are many. The latter was in fact a line of a song by a popular West Ukrainian band; the song became an unofficial anthem of the Orange Revolution (Kuzio, 2005, p. 42). The process of frame extension in case of Orange Revolution can be seen in the way how the interests of the opposition (to win the election) were extended to include wider concerns of society, namely, lack of democracy. Framing and other movement processes It would be an oversimplification to fully attribute success of Orange Revolution, and even of mobilization, to the efficacy of Pora strategies and civil society cooperation. Other factors contributed to the eventual success. These factors 13

14 included the role of media, political opportunities structure and cooperation of the security forces. The role of media in the Orange Revolution should not be overlooked. Media is an important actor of social movement processes for at least two reasons. First, it provides an arena where movement actors and their opponents can express their frames. Second, media provides its own framing of the movement processes which interacts and influences the frames offered by other actors (Noakes and Johnston, 19). In the Orange revolution print media did not play an important role. Instead, two other outlets were the arenas of contest: Internet and TV. Internet was the main space through which the movement disseminated its information. There were different categories of Internet sites covering the electoral campaign. There were official sites of the opposition, such as Our Ukraine official site and personal sites of Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and other personalities. In addition to the bloc program and other election related information, the sites also provided up-to-date news (Prytula, p. 109). There were sites of the movement organizations (Black and Yellow Pora), and also specially created satirical sites. Finally, there were anti-government online news sites, such as Ukrainska pravda, an online newspaper launched by the late Gongadze. These sites actively cooperated with each other. News, articles, jokes published on one were reproduced by the others. Opposition leaders held Internet conferences. Finally, Internet was used to organize rallies, as it provided information on the time and place of events. The other side also tried to make use of Internet. A number of Internet sites were opened by Yanukovich and its supporters, but it is widely accepted that the Internet war was won by the opposition. Internet access grew multifold between the 14

15 months of September and December, with most hits on the opposition sites (Wilson 132). In contrast, television mainly remained pro-government and pro-yanukovich space until the beginning of protest on the Maidan. With one exception, all private TV channels in Ukraine belonged to the pro-government camp. The only exception was Channel 5, owned by Petro Poroshenko, one of Yushchenko s allies. Channel 5 was relatively small, it had limited territorial coverage, and its financial situation was difficult and therefore the quality of its production was often low. But it covered the other point of view and became a source of famous hits, such as Yanukovich s incident with an egg, and image of Yuliia Tymoshenko giving a flower to militia men. Internet was used to reproduce the information from the Channel. During the actual protest opposition installed TV unit on the Maidan and Channel 5 broadcast the events. Then, starting from November 25 a growing number of journalists from other channels refused to dub the official information. From that point on the coverage of the protest became widely available. Thus, the revolution on the streets spread onto the media space; in the contest of frames the Orange movement frame took over. Political opportunity structure (POS) is a broad concept encompassing both formal institutional or legal structure of a given political system and informal structure of power relations in the system (McAdam, 27). A few issues concerning the POS of Ukraine in 2004 can be highlighted. First, the election itself is a natural opening in the institutional POS, offering a potential for change. Both opposition and movement organizations made use of this opening. In comparison, the protest of 2001 happened in the middle of the presidential term; there was no such an opening, and eventually, the protest faded away. Second, the movement managed to create additional openings in the POS. An example of such created opening was support of 15

16 the protest in the Maidan by Oleksandr Omelchenko, Kiev s mayor. He had been quoted to say: If you bring out 100,000 I m with you, we ll take power in one day! If it ll be 99,000 I won t be with you. (Wilson, 125). On November 22, the first day after the second round of the election, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people were out in the streets. Omelchenko kept his word and the Kiev authorities supported the protest. Another important issue was support by the security forces. This factor is also related with the Political Opportunities structure. In case of the Orange Revolution, security forces involvement was multifold. First, even before the tent city on the Maidan was set up, security forces did little to prevent the protest. For example, people started to gather around Central Electoral Committee in October 2004, right after the first round of voting. The city was flooded with security forces, and yet no attempts to disperse the crowds were made. (D Anieri, 2006, p. 344). According to D Anieri, this contributed to the feeling of security among the protesters, which further helped to mobilize people to come to the Maidan. When after the second round of election people started to come to Kiev from other parts of the country no attempts to stop them were made: the entrances to city were open, as well as the access to the city center and the Maidan. There is also evidence that officials of the Security Services of Ukraine were in contact with opposition leaders. This agreement, as well as the agreement with Omelchenko, are examples of importance of informal power relations for the success of the movement. It is difficult to assess how the movement and activities of Pora and other organizations contributed to the agreement with security forces; but there seems to be a kind of dialectic between opposition, movement organizations and elites, and this dialectic worked to produce the success of the Orange Revolution. 16

17 Conclusion Framing of a social movement is a process that is hard to describe it builds on every single activity of the movement actors, opponents, and the wider context. Furthermore, it builds on the whole set of previously existing cultural meanings, and complete reconstruction of those is an impossible task. It is therefore very difficult to assess the exact impact of framing on the movement processes. One thing that is clear about the role of framing in the Orange Revolution is that the Orange frame was crucial in mobilizing large masses of people; however, it is not clear whether this alone would be sufficient for the eventual success. Another issue to consider is that success of the revolution is actually quite relative. After the initial euphoria at the victory of democracy in Ukraine it becomes clear that the original contradictions that brought about the Yushchenko-Yanukovich conflict are not resolved. The continuous political crisis in Ukraine is a strong evidence. Those are contradictions between personalities, but also between their supporters, and, above all, constituencies; the infamous East/West divide of Ukraine continues to play an important role in its politics. So the Orange movement won, but did it bring the changes that it wanted to bring? The case of Orange movement and its success raises questions about the ability of a movement, even a large scale and a successful one, to promote long term sustainable transformation of society that it claims to seek. 17

18 References: Benford, Robert and Snow, David, Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26, pp Binnendijk, Annika Locke and Marovic, Ivan, Power and Persuasion: Nonviolent Strategies to influence state security forces in Serbia (2000) and Ukraine (2004). Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39, pp D Anieri, Paul, The last hurrah: The 2004 Ukrainian Presidential Election and the limits of machine politics, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 38 (2005), pp D Anieri, Paul, Explaining the Success and Failure of post-communist revolutions. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39 (2006), pp Demes, Pavol and Forbrig, Joerg, 2006 Pora It s Time for Democracy in Ukraine. In: Aslund A., McFaul M. (Eds.) Revolution in Orange, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, pp Diuk, Nadia, 2006 The Triumph of Civil Society. In: Aslund A., McFaul M. (Eds.) Revolution in Orange, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, pp Karatnycky, Adrian, 2006 The Fall and Rise of Ukraine s Political Opposition: From Kuchmagate to the Orange Revolution. In: Aslund A., McFaul M. (Eds.) Revolution in Orange, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, pp Klandermans, Bert, The Social Psychology of Protest. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK Kuzio, Taras, From Kuchma to Yushchenko: Ukraine s 2004 Presidential Elections and the Orange Revolution. Problems of Post-Communism, Vol 52, March- Apr 2005, pp

19 Kuzio, Taras, 2006 Everyday Ukrainians and the Orange Revolution. In: Aslund A., McFaul M. (Eds.) Revolution in Orange, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, pp McAdam, Doug, Conceptual origins, problems, future directions. In: McAdam, D., McCarthy, J., Zald, M. (Eds.) Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp Noakes, John and Johnston, Hank, Frames of Protest: A Road Map to a Perspective. In: Johnston, H., Noakes, J (Eds.) Frames of Protest. Rowman & Littlefield Publisher, Lanham, pp Prytula, Olena, 2006 The Ukrainian Media Rebellion. In: Aslund A., McFaul M. (Eds.) Revolution in Orange, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, pp Wilson, Andrew, Ukraine s Orange Revolution. Yale University Press, New Haven 19