That the war in Ukraine has just started is a known fact around the globe and doesn’t require any sources of information. Of course, in this context, it is interesting to throw a fast look at today’s digital and social media analytics to identify any potential trends in citizen search for information and diffusion of digital content.
When checking Google Trends for the trending searches in the US, Ukraine, and Russia in the last 24 hours of Feb. 24th, we can see the key trending topics below:
| US | Ukraine | Russia | |
| 1 | Fox news 1M+ | Transcarpathian News | Motor Sich • Investor • Ukraine • China |
| 2 | News 1M+ | Office of the President of Ukraine | Russia • Mobilization • Military service |
| 3 | Stock market today 500K+ | President | UEFA Europa League |
| 4 | Bitcoin price 500K+ | Flightless area | Rostselmash • Russia • Rostov-on-Don |
| 5 | Stock market 200K+ | Dollar exchange rate | Russia • China |
The American interest in financial topics (and Foxnews) is remarkable, compared to the topics in Ukraine focused on news coming from the Presidency, war-related news, and financial topics, while the Russians focused on various topics in their relationship with China, the cancellation of the UEFA game, and a potential military draft. Unlike in the US, in both Ukraine and Russia we see some general, public worries related to the war emerging. According to Google, some of the most in-demand pieces of content in the US included Stocks and Energy Markets Whipsaw After Russian Attack on Ukraine, and Bitcoin price falls after Russia attacks Ukraine – CNN On the other hand, in Ukraine, Dozens of people formed a queue on the Ukrainian-Slovak border, Head of State: Sanctions will be lifted from all citizens of Ukraine who … were some of the most read. In Russia, some articles of interest were Mobilization of reservists in the Tomsk region goes according to plan, Can they be called up from the reserve to participate in military special operations?and Cold weather hits 58,000 in southern China.
To assess social media sentiment in the US, we analyzed 18k tweets posted in the afternoon of Feb. 24 with the keyword Ukraine in English in the US. A content analysis of the tweets in NVivo and a lexical analysis in Leximancer, included below, reveal not only a focus on both side of the war, the Russians and Ukrainians, but also a thorough discussion of people and the effect the conflict is going to have on them
Figure 1: Content analysis results
The lexical analysis emphasizes the political polarization present in the US too, including the relation between former president Trump and Putin, but also a more activist movement in joining with protests and standing with Ukraine.
Figure 2: Lexical analysis results
A sentiment analysis also provides more information on American attitude towards the war in Ukraine, which, despite the American political polarization, still overwhelmingly emphasizes negative emotions towards the invasion of Ukraine, as seen in Figure 3. A greater dataset and more analysis of Russian and Ukrainian samples on social media, including on local platforms, could provide an even more interesting picture of information trends these days.
