| dc.description.abstract | Comedy is a neutral tool or "double-edged word" that can reinforce or challenge dominant groups' cultural hegemony and social structure. This master thesis aims to analyze Russian-speaking stand-up comedy content in the post-Russia-Ukraine war context to determine the expression of group identities and categorize the relationship types between the identities in relation to social justice. The study employs mixed methodology from sustainability research, post-positivism, qualitative tradition, social constructivism, and the critical tradition resulting from long-lasting ethnography. A non-systemic explorative literature review developed an eclectic conceptual framework to analyze comedy in broad socio-political, economic, and cultural contexts. The latent content analysis method focused on a sample of individual stand-up comedians' expressions in pro-state, private, or independent comedy production venues inside and outside Russia. The units of observation are mentions of group identity in stand-up comedy content that were categorized into relationship types with the help of the analytical framework, specifically developed to analyze ambiguous comedy content in relation to social justice. The findings support the thesis that comedy is a neutral tool of social groups to reinforce, negotiate, or challenge cultural attributes or primitive classifications (orientation and piety), group affiliation, exclusion, cultural hegemony, or social structure. The findings indicate ambiguous comedic expressions inside Russia that can subversively protest the current regime neutrally reflect social structure, negotiate differences between traditional identities, and reinforce the dominant groups' orientation (education, language, patriarchy, or patriotism). There is more consistent anti-authoritarianism outside Russia against traditional family values, official historical narratives, traditional gender roles and sexuality, and the construction of new alternative identities and structures. | |