Evolution of the Digitally Mediated Public Sphere in Russia, 2012-2018

Abstract

This paper uses a social media perspective to describe the evolution of the Russian social and political landscape in cyberspace over a period of seven years, which no other paper to date has mapped and explored. We use network analysis and language models to compare Russian users of Twitter and Facebook from 2012 to 2018. Over this period, politically active communities grew ten-fold in prevalence and presently dominate discussion in Russian cyberspace. Russian state-sponsored media and disinformation outlets monopolize the Russian landscapes of both Twitter and Facebook platforms. For example, content pushed by pro-Putin communities is highly focused on the Ukraine conflict and supported by official government accounts, whereas content from anti-Putin communities is on a wide range of topics and lacks official government support. These advantages enable pro-Putin communities to reach a bigger audience and influence the Russian population more effectively relative to anti-Putin communities. Language models corroborate these findings and show an increasing prevalence of political topics in communication among both groups over time. Together, these results expand our understanding of political communication in cyberspace via network and language dynamics and provide a richer context for understanding and explaining the results of recent work on the social effects of online disinformation campaigns and government efforts to shape social media and discourse.

Keywords: Russian cyberspace, social media, polarization, propaganda, network dynamics

JEL Classification: C60