Since Feb. 24 last year, Ukraine has fought a multi-domain war to repel Russia’s invasion: on the ground, in the air, at sea, and online. While researchers have delivered valuable findings on the use of offensive cyber capabilities and influence operations, an overarching question remains unanswered: Who is winning the online information war? In this talk, members of Graphika's analysis and applied science teams will tackle that question using newly developed research methods. Our new content mapping approach allows us to track and visualize the spread of narratives across different social media platforms at the same time, revealing the proliferation of pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine conversations during one week of Ukraine’s ongoing counter-offensive. Among other insights, our research found that pro-Russia narratives were more prevalent in online discussions about the counter-offensive, the concentration of opposing narratives varied by platform, and polarized discussions formed visible hot spots of conflicting narratives. We hope the findings and research methods presented in this talk will contribute to a growing body of public research about the war in Ukraine and how it is unfolding on social media.
