Information Flows of the Crimean and Ukrainian segments of the Internet: Content Analysis of Messages in social Networks Facebook and VKontakte

Abstract

The article analyses the content of Internet messages of the Crimean and Ukrainian segment of the network about events in Ukraine and the Crimea for the period from 2017 to 2019. The authors’ research interest is due to the degree of conflict and the ambiguity of the informational assessment of events on the Crimean and Ukrainian topics that took place during this period, and, as a result, the formation of conflicting information flows of the Ukrainian and the Crimean segments of the Internet network. In the course of the study, we used a system-efficient approach that studies the Internet space as a product of the social environment; comparative analysis, which we used to compare the content of Internet messages of online communities of Ukraine and the Crimea; method of content analysis, which made possible assessment of the social and political mood of the audience of Ukrainian and the Crimean Internet users. The authors present the results of a cybermetric analysis of messages from online communities of social networks Facebook and VKontakte. The tone of information flows on UkrainianCrimean themes remains negative, which is a consequence of the complex and contradictory relations between Ukraine and Russia in the realm of politics. We revealed the interest in social, cultural and linguistic discourses in the information flows of the Ukrainian and the Crimean segments of VKontakte and Facebook networks, which may act as a factor in combining Internet audiences with different political positions. However, it requires a separate in-depth cybermetric analysis.