1/ When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, we started collecting tweets in order to be able to identify propaganda. The (very long) thread below covers the story of #istandwithrussia and #istandwithputin. Inspired by @marcowenjones' work.
2/ First about the data: we collected ~210k tweets for #istandwithputin, ~120k tweets for #istandwithrussia, plus about 20k attached images. There is significant overlap between the two hashtags, but there are also differences.
3/ I'm going to try to answer the "when, who and what" for these two hashtags. All results are preliminary, still some work planned.
4/ The most intense activity happened on the 2nd and 3rd of March, with a peak of over 100k tweets for #istandwithputin and over 50k tweets for #istandwithrussia. One day before Twitter was banned in Russia.
5/ First, let's look at the accounts interacting, starting with #istandwithputin. This is the mentions network, including (some) retweets for the tweets we collected. Still working on the retweet network itself.
6/ Here are the top 10 tweets for #istandwithputin from our data. About half of the accounts started tweeting in early 2022, have very few followers, yet were apparently very successful.
7/ The lonely top tweet against Putin belongs to @NickKnudsenUS, but there was a significant effort to spread anti-Putin messages on these hashtags from other users as well (@AndrewOnSeeAIR was another significant account).
8/ We know from media reports that the hashtag was most popular in India and our data confirms that. More details below on the actual content.
9/ The mentions network for #istandwithrussia is less dominated by Indian users, with much more African users participating.
10/ A notable participant in the conversation is Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former South African president Zuma. A lot more anti-Putin voices are visible, with @KylaInTheBurgh and @AndrewOnSeeAIR (again) being the most mentioned.
11/ So what are the topics discussed? We extracted named entities using an AI text processor (hello @spacy_io), created co-occurrence networks and here is what we found:
12/ For #istandwithputin the entities strongly point to - surprise - a lot of whatabout-ism. All NATO/US wars are referenced, plus a lot of India-related content. More details below.
13/ For #istandwithrussia it's more of the same, but with more references to Africa.
14/ We identified 6 big topics in the combined tweets: Russia is good, Ukrainians are nazis, the West is bad, the West is bad to Africa, India and Russia are best friends, plus assorted general conspiracy content.
15/ Let's start with "Russia is good". These two images are, by far, the most prevalent. I'm guessing the two bear cubs are the Donetsk and Luhansk republics?
16/ A lot of V-s and Z-s with a strong Call of Duty vibe.
17/ Even more Z-s, but in color.
18/ Lots of Putin & the elements, the Putin in the rain image was very popular.
19/ Last but not least, a lot of Russia fighting bravely agains its enemies.
20/ The "Ukrainians are nazis" topic is very repetitive, with the same images of the Azov battalion being reshared.
21/ "The West is bad" is the main topic, at least media-wise.
22/ So many lists of what the West did.
23/ Palestine is a significant topic, probably the most memes for any country.
24/ "The West is bad to Africa" has a lot of Gaddafi, enough for it to deserve its own collage.
25/ Lots of maps referencing Africa's colonial past and European exploitation.
26/ Lots of references to Western racism towards Africa.
27/ Russia is presented as a good friend of Africa, with an emphasis on Putin's years in Tanzania and his current good relations with African leaders.
28/ "India and Russia are best friends" is composed primarily of photos of Putin and Modi, plus references to "akhand bharat" (Undivided India) and "akhand USSR" (i'm guessing Undivided USSR).
29/ The evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine also featured prominently.
30/ Historical & international relations references are also plentiful.
31/ To conclude, there's plenty of the conspiracy tropes we all know and love.
32/ If you've reached this far, thank you, hope this was informative :).
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