Cluster Analysis of Discussions Change Dynamics on Twitter about War in Ukraine

Abstract

The article analyzes the dynamics of changes in the pace and directions of discussion of the russian-Ukrainian war on Twitter based on a set of thematic hashtags from February 23, 2022. A cluster analysis of popular tweets was conducted. The object of the study is the analysis of the discussion of the russian-Ukrainian war on Twitter. Data on the number of tweets and hashtags related to this topic of discussion from the beginning of the war were used for the analysis. The largest share of all hashtags was #Ukraine, followed by #NATO and #UkrainerussiaWar, respectively. At the beginning of the war (the first week), information about the situation in Ukraine became a kind of explosion in the media space of the world. The number of comments, posts, "tweets" on this topic reached a record high of 4,000,000. After a week, this trend changed dramatically - the number of discussions decreased significantly. This is due in particular to the fact that the crisis stage has passed (there has been a lot of information, it is no longer so "interesting" for the world). Although it is also worth saying that this decrease continued to a specific mark. For 50 days from the start of the invasion, the number of publications decreased from 4,000 thousand to 500 thousand. At the level of 500 thousand, the number is maintained until now (with insignificant deviations during certain military events). We can assume that under constant circumstances, without significant changes, this trend will take on a downward trend. At the same time, if the circumstances change, it is impossible to make objective assumptions. Another interesting conclusion can be that during the cluster analysis, it was found that the world focuses more on Ukraine, as a victim of the war, than on russia, as the aggressor. Also, a large share of foreigners supports the initiative to help Ukraine (in particular, the issue of joining NATO). On the contrary, it should not be forgotten that the assumptions "support" - "do not support" are not objective, since people tagging the NATO hashtag can also write negative posts. A fair statement would be the following: foreigners are concerned about the situation in Ukraine and its request for protection from NATO. © 2023 Copyright for this paper by its authors.