Researcher: Jesse Driscoll (GPS)
Location: Ukraine
Trends in social media provide social scientists with access to unprecedented quantities of data. Cell phones and data promulgation applications are now ubiquitous, even in conflict zones and extremely remote or poorly governed parts of the planet. As distant observers attempt to make inferences about what people living in war zones were thinking at the time, the ability to retroactively analyze samples of self-created propaganda is an important research frontier. As of yet, there are no established best practices for this kind of work.
Many young Ukrainians used social media in 2014 to document their country's slide into war. Individuals produced and reproduced Ukrainian- and Russian-language propaganda in near-real time, and distributed it through their social networks.
This project collected systematic data on the characteristics of people who participated virtually in the “Euromaidan” events of November 2013–February 2014, before the start of the mobilization campaign that toppled the Yanukovych government. It performed a user analysis of every tweet (approximately 20,000) that was generated within the territory of Ukraine related to the protests that became known as #Euromaidan. It used time and geography trends to explore spatial and geographic variation in revolutionary uses of social media.
Analysis of the use of social media in these events contributes to our understanding of how technological changes facilitate contentious politics.
Driscoll, Jesse, and Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld. “Alternative Facts: Social Media as Propaganda in Post-Maidan Ukraine.” Working paper, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California San Diego.
