Language Identity and Foreign Propaganda: Evidence from the Russia-Ukraine War
Sergey Sanovich (Stanford University); Andrey Simonov (Columbia University)
Abstract
Since before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia sought to use its capabilities in cyberwarfare and digital propaganda to divide and destabilize Ukraine. We measure the ability of the Russian government to spread its propaganda in Ukraine, leveraging the popularity of news on the Telegram app in the country. Historically, most Ukrainian Telegram news channels have been in the Russian language, due to the bilingual Ukrainian population living in the south and east of the country. Since February 2022, these proportions have reversed to 70% of news in Ukrainian, due to a strong preference for the Ukrainian identity. Using detailed Telegram API data on news production and readership, we show that this language transition has decreased the engagement of news readers with the content, presumably since it is harder for traditionally Russian-speaking Ukrainians to switch their news consumption to the Ukrainian language. We then measure the substitution patterns of these readers, checking if some of this substitution happened to Russian propaganda news groups focused on Ukraine and measuring the unintended consequence of helping Russian propaganda to reach more Ukrainians.