Between News Engagement and Disengagement Amid Disinformation and Distrust: The Contested Agency of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the Netherlands

In a time when migrants are increasingly portrayed as the “other” through distorted and negative media narratives across many European countries, Ukrainian diasporic communities navigate their liminal positionality amid precarious conditions—caught between maintaining transnational ties through doubtful news sources and seeking integration within the host society. This study examines how Ukrainian diasporic groups in the Netherlands encounter and interpret disinformation through news-seeking practices, and how they navigate their agency amid a landscape marked by uncertainty and distrust. Drawing on 22 qualitative interviews, our findings reveal that their news engagement was shaped by information overload, exposure to negative war news content, and widespread distrust toward formal news sources—including Ukrainian, Russian, and international media outlets. Rather than fully embracing or rejecting any single source, participants adopted a stance of pragmatic skepticism. They also adopted a diverse set of strategies to fluidly navigate between selective engagement and disengagement, as means of managing both the risks associated with disinformation and emotional strain. The study illuminated how participants' information-seeking practices were both enabled and constrained by networks of news-related actors—ranging from hardware and software-level technologies such as televisions, smartphones, laptops, and digital platforms, to institutional actors including state-sponsored outlets and western media, and individual actors such as personal contacts, political figures, and bloggers. While counter-disinformation efforts often focus on top-down interventions, this study contributes to the literature by foregrounding the everyday agency of a marginalized group as they navigate the complexities of disinformation and distrust during a war conflict.