An Analysis of Twitter Discourse on the War Between Russia and Ukraine

TL;DR

This paper analyzes Twitter discourse surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war, examining content and user participation, including the role of bots and new users, to understand the social media ecosystem during the conflict.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of Twitter discussions on the Russia-Ukraine war, focusing on content sharing, user behavior, and the influence of bots and new users.

Findings

High volume of pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian tweets.

Significant presence of bots and new users in the discourse.

Analysis of hashtags, toxicity, and media sharing patterns.

Abstract

On the 21st of February 2022, Russia recognised the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, three days before launching an invasion of Ukraine. Since then, an active debate has taken place on social media, mixing organic discussions with coordinated information campaigns. The scale of this discourse, alongside the role that information warfare has played in the invasion, make it vital to better understand this ecosystem. We therefore present a study of pro-Ukrainian vs. pro-Russian discourse through the lens of Twitter. We do so from two perspectives: (i) the content that is shared; and (ii) the users who participate in the sharing. We first explore the scale and nature of conversations, including analysis of hashtags, toxicity and media sharing. We then study the users who drive this, highlighting a significant presence of new users and bots.