Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes, seeking refuge in neighbouring countries. This mass displacement has placed significant strain on EU countries already struggling with immigration and refugee integration challenges. The humanitarian crisis has been further worsened by a surge in anti-refugee rhetoric, driven by misinformation and targeted disinformation campaigns—particularly from pro-Kremlin sources—which aim to portray Ukrainian refugees as a destabilizing force.
In a new study recently published in First Monday, titled “Digital battleground: An examination of anti-refugee discourse on Twitter against Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” researchers Anatoliy Gruzd, Philip Mai, and Omar Taleb, investigate the nature and prevalence of anti-refugee sentiment on X (formerly Twitter) targeting Ukrainian refugees. This study is one of seven recently published in a special issue of First Monday edited by Anna Triandafyllidou and Stein Monteiro, titled “Migration Narratives on Social Media: Digital Racism and Subversive Migrant Subjectivities.”
For the study, the researchers collected and analyzed 811,933 Twitter posts shared between February 24, 2022 (the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine) and February 22, 2023 (nearly a year after the invasion) that mentioned the word “Ukraine” and either “refugees,” “immigrants,” or “asylum seekers” in 10 European languages.
The study sought to determine the prevalence and types of frames employed by X users when discussing issues concerning Ukrainian refugees. The objective was to understand how these frames might influence public discussions and societal attitudes surrounding refugees.
The chart below, organized from left to right, maps the frames identified in the literature (left-center part of the chart) to the narratives found in the Twitter dataset used for this study (on the right, C1-C5). On the left, it begins with a list of highly cited references/papers in the field (e.g., Reed, 2017) and links them to key concepts related to how immigrants are typically framed in social and mainstream media (e.g., National Security and Crimes, Cultural Threats, etc.). These concepts are further connected to more specific narratives about Ukrainian refugees. For example, a false narrative that “Ukrainian refugees are untrustworthy or dangerous” is related to two frames found in the literature: “National Security & Crimes,” as defined in Reed (2017) and a related frame, “Security” which was used by Douai et al (2022), Kellings & Monroe (2023) and Moen-Larsen (2020).
The Results
Using frame analysis, the researchers identified and then manually coded 2,045 toxic posts that likely expressed anti-refugee sentiments. The content analysis of these posts showed that most prevalent posts were politically motivated and included partisan content (33 percent), followed by posts containing expressions countering anti-refugee narratives (20 percent). These findings highlight the escalating politicization and polarization of discussions about Ukrainian refugees both online and offline.
Furthermore, 53 percent of the sample aligned with pro-Kremlin narratives against Ukraine. By exploiting anti-refugee sentiments and leveraging existing political and cultural fault lines in the West, pro-Kremlin messages on Twitter contribute to diminishing support for Ukrainian refugees, minimizing the severity of the war, and undermining international support for Ukraine. These findings are consistent with previous research identifying similar pro-Kremlin narratives on social and mainstream media.
As we and others have documented, Russia has a long history of deliberately creating and exacerbating refugee crises to sow discord and destabilize its enemies. In its war on Ukraine, Russia has weaponized the plight of Ukrainian refugees and migrants, seeking to use it as a tool to destabilize the West and erode public support for Ukraine. This strategy highlights the multifaceted nature of modern warfare, where military actions are often intertwined with social, political, and humanitarian provocations designed to exploit vulnerabilities in target nations and alliances.
In short, this case study documents alarming trends in the politicization of refugee and immigrant-related topics by partisan and state actors. It also demonstrates the vulnerability of open discourse on sites like Twitter to manipulation and reminds us why we cannot rely solely on social media to gauge public sentiment on topics of public concern.
The study is part of a new initiative to study the impact of mis- and disinformation on immigrants and immigration policies, led by the Lab’s co-directors, Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai. The initiative is a part of the larger Migration Integration in the Mid-21st Century: Bridging Divides research program funded by a $98.6 million grant from the Canadian government and led by Toronto Metropolitan University with partners from universities across Canada.
Citation:
Gruzd, A., Mai, P., & Taleb, O. (2024). Digital battleground: An examination of anti-refugee discourse on Twitter against Ukrainians displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. First Monday, 29(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v29i8.13734