Information Wars and Online Activism During the 2013/2014 Crisis in Ukraine: Examining the Social Structures of Pro- and Anti-Maidan Groups

Abstract

This article examines how online groups are formed and sustained during crisis periods, especially when political polarization in society is at its highest level. We focus on the use of Vkontakte (VK), a popular social networking site in Ukraine, to understand how it was used by Pro- and Anti-Maidan groups during the 2013/2014 crisis in Ukraine. In particular, we ask whether and to what extent the ideology (or other factors) of a particular group shapes its network structure. We find some support that online social networks are likely to represent local and potentially preexisting social networks, likely due to the dominance of reciprocal (and often close) relationships on VK and opportunities for group members to meet face-to-face during offline protests. We also identify a number of group-level indicators, such as degree centralization, modularity index and average engagement level, that could help to classify groups based on their network properties. Community researchers can start applying these group-level indicators to online communities outside VK; they can also learn from this article how to identify networks of spam and marketing accounts.

Political Interaction Beyond Party Lines: Communication Ties and Party Polarization in Parliamentary Twitter Networks

“…Moreover, we analyzed whether Dutch MPs’ communications on Twitter lead to political polarization. Theoretically, this study is rooted in two streams of research, one stream analyzing the formation of communication ties in online political networks (Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018b; Gonzalez-Bailón & Wang, 2016; Gruzd & Tsyganova, 2015) and the other studying the interplay between social media and political polarization (Barberá et al, 2015; Colleoni & Arvidsson, 2014; Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018a; Sunstein, 2017). As for the first, our analysis shows that, in line with findings by Song (2015), Mai et al, (2015), and Esteve Del Valle and Borge Bravo (2018b), communications in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network are affected by both endogenous network parameters (mutuality, reciprocity, and popularity) and exogenous (nodal) factors (participation in the parliamentary commissions, age, gender, and geographical area).…”

“…ERGMs are “tie-based models for understanding how and why social network ties arise” (Lusher et al, 2012: p. 9). These models are designed to test various network-based hypotheses by generating a large set of random networks based on a chosen set of network properties and node attributes and comparing these networks to an observed network (Gruzd & Tsyganova, 2015). The use of ERGMs allows us to test whether the presence of ties in the Dutch MPs’ mentions Twitter network is not based on chance but on network properties and the nodes’ attributes and which of these network properties and nodes’ attributes influence the formation of these ties.…”

“…The core concepts of SNA (such as nodes, relations, ties, and networks) can be used to describe and study interactions in Twitter political networks (Dubois & Gafney, 2014; Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018a; Gruzd & Roy, 2014) and in wider networks (see Haythornthwaite, 2015; Rainie & Wellman, 2012). Specifically, SNA can be employed to (a) discover factors explaining the formation of ties in political networks (Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018b; Song, 2015), (b) predict political outcomes (Wojcik, 2019), and (c) understand the nature and meaning of political ties (Gonzalez-Bailón & Wang, 2016; Gruzd & Tsyganova, 2015).…”

“…Many studies have examined issues related to the uptake of social media by politicians, the formation of communication ties in online political networks (Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018b; González-Bailón & Wang, 2016; Gruzd & Tsyganova, 2015), and the interplay between social media and political polarization (Barberá et al, 2015; Colleoni et al, 2014; Esteve Del Valle & Borge Bravo, 2018a; Sunstein, 2017; Takikawa & Nagayoshi, 2017). However, few studies have analyzed how social media are affecting communication in parliamentary networks (Borge Bravo & Esteve Del Valle, 2017; Hong & Sung, 2016).…”

Discussing conflict in social media: The use of Twitter in the Jammu and Kashmir conflict

“…While there is already an extensive body of literature on some conflicts in regard to the importance of social media, not all conflicts have received the same attention. On one hand, examples such as Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab Spring (Al-ani et al, 2012; Hafez, 2014; Kavanaugh et al, 2011; Lim, 2012; Lotan et al, 2011; Starbird and Palen, 2012; Wilson and Dunn, 2011; Wolfsfeld et al, 2013) or the conflict in Israel and Palestine (El-Nawawy and Khamis, 2013; Khoury-Machool, 2007; Wulf, Aal et al, 2013; Wulf, Misaki et al, 2013) have been broadly researched and some conflicts such as those in Turkey (Tufekci, 2017), Syria (Rohde et al, 2016; Shklovski and Wulf, 2018) or Ukraine (Gruzd and Tsyganova, 2015; Rohde et al, 2016) have only recently been studied. On the other hand, conflicts such as the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir have not yet aroused the interest of scholars in this field.…”