Propaganda For Peace
2023 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 14 HE credits
Student thesis
Abstract [en]
The purpose of this paper was to examine how pro-Ukrainian versus pro-Russian propagandists wage information warfare on social media. A relevant topic for International Relations, where understanding information warfare has increasingly become central, as global political life is increasingly going digital. Various gaps, however, was identified in the previous literature on the matter: Primarily, a lack of insight into pro-Ukrainian propaganda, with the majority of the previous scholars covering pro-Russian examples. Furthermore, there were unsettled debates in the previous literature, questioning whether wartime propaganda is even conducted on any significant scale by democratic states, or whether it is primarily an occupation of authoritarian regimes. To help resolve these debates, this paper constructed a research design, where a mixed methodology of content analysis and social network analysis have been applied to analyze a total, representative sample of 1247 YouTube-comments debating allegations of war crimes in the Russo-Ukrainian War. The results of this analysis show that the pro-Ukrainian propaganda is significantly more prevalent in the online debates (based on quantities of comments) and are also remarkably more influential than pro-Russian propagandists (based on in-degree centrality). These findings are inconsistent with previous literature describing overt use of propaganda as a more common feature of authoritarian regimes, which could suggest that there are some exceptions to democratic nations’ otherwise highly valued principle of more liberal and pluralist communications, e.g., against illiberal regimes existentially threatening the peace of the democratic state (in line with the prepositions of democratic peace theory, describing how democratic states, generally, do not engage in unpopular and destructive warfare, expect in exceptional cases against authoritarian regimes who are threatening the liberal peace).
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 54
Keywords [en]
Russia, ukraine, war, propaganda, content analysis, social network analysis
National Category
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-60559OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-60559DiVA, id: diva2:1766841
Educational program
KS GPS International Relations
Supervisors
Examiners
2023-06-132023-06-132023-06-13Bibliographically approved