Wednesday, December 4, 2024 | 12pm to 1:30pm
About this Event
1 AMHERST ST, Cambridge, MA 02142
https://ssp.mit.edu/events/2024/stoprussia-weaponizing-social-media-for-foreign-supportProf. Roya Talibova from Harvard University will speak at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.
Summary/Abstract:
When engaged in external wars, governments around the world seek to build foreign support for their people and policies. Although significant research has investigated how political actors use social media to influence domestic politics, we lack similar evidence on the objectives, strategies, and efficacy of social media messaging when directed at foreign audiences. Why and when do political leaders direct content to their foreign followers on social media? What explains why some externally targeted messages amplify and others do not? We use the war in Ukraine to understand why social media strategies tailored to promote foreign support succeed or fail and how the content and sentiment of these internationally targeted postings impact their efficacy. We gather the universe of Twitter behavior by the top several hundred Ukrainian officials both before and after the 2022 Russian invasion. Combining network analysis and Natural Language Processing tools, we assess how Ukrainian elites’ postings on distinct political, military, and social issues changed in response to the war. The findings demonstrate that after the invasion, diverse pre-war social media communities that reflected different domestic Ukrainian constituencies converged into a single community with strong links to the international community.
(no dial in possible, livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG5ooD8Ydk4vd83Ac8VNEoQ )