{"id":22927,"date":"2024-08-21T19:03:53","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T19:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=22927"},"modified":"2025-02-09T14:33:29","modified_gmt":"2025-02-09T14:33:29","slug":"new-paper-digital-battleground-an-examination-of-anti-refugee-discourse-on-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2024\/08\/21\/new-paper-digital-battleground-an-examination-of-anti-refugee-discourse-on-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"[New Paper Alert] Digital battleground: An examination of anti-refugee discourse on Twitter against Ukrainians displaced by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes<\/a>, 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\u2014particularly from pro-Kremlin sources\u2014which aim to portray Ukrainian refugees as a destabilizing force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a new study recently published in First Monday<\/em>, titled \u201cDigital battleground: An examination of anti-refugee discourse on Twitter against Ukrainians displaced by Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d 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 \u201cMigration Narratives on Social Media: Digital Racism and Subversive Migrant Subjectivities.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the study, the researchers collected and analyzed 811,933 Twitter posts shared between February 24, 2022 (the date of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine) and February 22, 2023 (nearly a year after the invasion) that mentioned the word \u201cUkraine\u201d and either \u201crefugees,\u201d \u201cimmigrants,\u201d or \u201casylum seekers\u201d in 10 European languages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n