Words of Warcraft: Experimental Evidence on State Framing in the Ukraine War

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Communication 2

Abstract

How do relevant parties communicate with the public about ongoing geopolitical crises? In the wake of a geopolitical crisis, individuals are presented with a wide variety information -- especially through social media. We investigate the effects of framing in the context of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. We begin with an exploratory analysis of over two million Twitter posts collected in the period directly before and after the invasion. This motivates our main design, a survey experiment which uses mock Facebook posts to assess the impact of a country’s varying use of normative principles on respondents’ geopolitical beliefs. We manipulate the country posting the content as well as the normative principle invoked to justify action in the Ukraine War. Pilot results from Hungary show that individuals supporting democratic erosion at home are likewise less likely to sanction transgressions of the liberal international order (LIO); that is, they fail to recognize the subversive use of norms justifying military aggression. We expand the analysis to a set of three countries in Europe: Germany, Hungary and Poland. Our results suggest that lack of support for democratic erosion at home is not confined to the domestic sphere, with implications for our understanding of growing discontent with the LIO and the potential consequences of foreign disinformation campaigns on third-party public opinion.

Authors

• Melissa Jane Pavlik, Yale University

• Ryan Pike, Yale University