Framing the Frontlines: Great Power Narratives on Facebook in India about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine not only initiated a devastating ground war, it also ignited a competition on social media over foreign audiences' perceptions of the frontlines. India, which is officially neutral and has the world’s largest number of Facebook users, is a prime battleground for this competition. This thesis examines how actors from Russia, the United States, and China influenced narratives on Facebook in India leading up to and immediately after the invasion. By analyzing roughly 300,000 Facebook posts in India, it uses thematic analysis to identify dominant narratives from actors from each state and a topic classifier built on a state-of-the-art language model to measure the alignment of narratives between states. Actors from India overwhelmingly drove Facebook conversations, and, despite India’s neutral stance, discussed narratives that frequently aligned with those propagated by US-based actors while rarely aligning with narratives from China- or Russia-based actors. Chinese state-controlled media targeted India with narratives that closely resembled those from users in Russia. However, this thesis finds no evidence of state-controlled media from Russia or the United States targeting India on Facebook. Policymakers should be cautious about overstating the role of Russian or Chinese state-controlled media on Facebook and should focus on understanding the diverse foreign policy interests of the Indian public in shaping narratives around international conflicts such as the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Publication date | June 6, 2023 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Small, Chase |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth |
| Thesis advisor | DiResta, Renee |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University |
| Department | Center for International Security and Cooperation |
Subjects
| Subject | India |
|---|---|
| Subject | Propaganda |
| Subject | Machine learning |
| Subject | Russia |
| Subject | Ukraine |
| Subject | |
| Subject | Natural language processing |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Small, C. (2023). Framing the Frontlines: Great Power Narratives on Facebook in India about the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/rk793qg5671. https://doi.org/10.25740/rk793qg5671.
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- cpsmall@stanford.edu
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