Crowdsourcing Platforms for Ukrainian Refugees: Meaning Making in Infrastructures of Problem-Solving

This study focuses on crowdsourcing platforms developed by the Romanian government and civil society for the support of Ukrainian refugees to gain an understanding of the symbolic battles, contested problematizations, and discourses about Ukrainian refugees in the Romanian public sphere. We take these crowdsourcing platforms as dispositives that have a strategic function. They are both infrastructures of problem-solving and discursive fields constituted around the public problem of refugees. Our methodological approach, derived from a semiotic perspective on dispositive analysis, explores how meaning is built on crowdsourcing platforms and what strategies are employed to mobilize the public toward politically significant action. We construct a typology of crowdsourcing initiatives and identify two distinct categories of actors that gain visibility in the public arena: crowdsourcing professionals and aid entrepreneurs. Overall, our analysis highlights that actors employ a variety of semiotic resources and strategies to educate the public and get them involved in humanitarian action.