The Impact of Events in the War in Ukraine on Pro-Russian Narratives: The Case of Twitter

Thus, our expectation is that: 1) The Kherson battle is likely to have an impact on increasing the frequency of pro-Russian narratives with themes of physical and cultural threat posed by Ukraine. [...] Overall, our expectation is that: 2) The Bucha massacre is likely to have an impact on increasing the frequency of pro-Russian narratives with themes of denial, positive gestures, physical and cultural threats posed by Ukraine, and Western rivals’ threat. [...] While there is a noticeable spike on the day of the event and immediately after, there are also two days with a substantial dip in the number of “rivals’ threat” theme in tweets and a day without any reference to the theme. [...] Our analysis of tweets and themes for this subset of the data is presented in a research brief: Berdusis, A. et al. (2024). [...] Asymmetric Threats Analysis Center 12 Bucha Massacre We find support for our expectation that to reduce domestic and international fallout related to committing a civilian massacre, the government and its supporters would ramp up the narratives of “denial.” The event has a statistically significant impact on increasing the volume of such a theme. [...] This increase is statistically significant at 0.05 level, in accordance with our expectations. “Physical threats” is also the second most dominant theme referenced in relation to this event; it constitutes 21.2 percent of all pro- Russian themes on and post event. [...] Our analysis of tweets and themes for this subset of the data is presented in a research brief: Berdusis, A. et al. (2024). [...] Asymmetric Threats Analysis Center 15 Figure 6: Bucha massacre: Network of tweets with different themes NATO Membership Offer Our results show that NATO’s announcement of extending invitation to Sweden and Finland to join the alliance had a statistically significant impact on change in the intensify of a theme related to a global threat posed by Russia’s rivals other than Ukraine but in t [...] Our analysis of tweets and themes for this subset of the data is presented in a research brief: Berdusis, A. et al. (2024). [...] Implications of a Swedish and Finnish NATO Membership for Security in the Baltic Sea Region.