Přehled o publikaci
2023
Slovak MPs’ response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in light of conspiracy theories and the polarization of political discourse
LINTNER, Tomáš; Tomáš DIVIÁK; Barbora NEKARDOVÁ; Lukáš LEHOTSKÝ; Michal VAŠEČKA et al.Základní údaje
Originální název
Slovak MPs’ response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine in light of conspiracy theories and the polarization of political discourse
Autoři
LINTNER, Tomáš; Tomáš DIVIÁK; Barbora NEKARDOVÁ; Lukáš LEHOTSKÝ a Michal VAŠEČKA
Vydání
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, London, Springer, 2023, 2662-9992
Další údaje
Jazyk
angličtina
Typ výsledku
Článek v odborném periodiku
Stát vydavatele
Nizozemské království
Utajení
není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství
Odkazy
Označené pro přenos do RIV
Ano
Kód RIV
RIV/00216224:14210/23:00132073
Organizace
Filozofická fakulta – Masarykova univerzita – Repozitář
UT WoS
EID Scopus
Klíčová slova anglicky
Slovak politics; Ukraine; Russian invasion; political discourse; COVID disinformation; discourse network analysis
Návaznosti
LX22NPO5101, projekt VaV.
Změněno: 17. 12. 2024 00:50, RNDr. Daniel Jakubík
Anotace
V originále
The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine received widespread international condemnation. In Slovakia, the invasion became a subject of much political discussion with large number of MPs openly advocating Russian interests. This study investigates Slovak political discourse on Facebook in the weeks before and after the invasion began. We examine the discourse through the lens of Discourse Network Analysis, combining qualitative content analysis of MPs’ Facebook posts with quantitative bipartite social network analysis. During the two weeks, we retrieved all (n = 1880) posts from all (n = 117) MPs who had an active public Facebook page. We manually coded all posts and created a bipartite discourse network consisting of MPs connected to each other via shared discourse codes in two timepoints. We performed a series of exploratory analyses that identified the content of the political discourse, the structure of the political discourse network, and the mechanisms driving the change of the political discourse network. Our results show that the invasion dramatically changed political discourse in Slovakia, with the domestic coalition-opposition struggles losing prominence among the invasion-related topics. The structure of the political discourse network showed a strong coalition-opposition split. While coalition MPs had largely pro-Ukrainian sentiments, opposition MPs largely communicated pro-Russian propaganda. A cluster of opposition MPs consistently spread conspiracy theories both before and after the invasion began, supporting a “conspiracy singularity” theory—the tendency of actors to spread multiple different conspiracy theories and interconnect various conspiracy theories into one overarching narrative. The change of the discourse network at the beginning of the invasion was largely driven by the agenda setting of several parties, agenda reinforcement, and increasing political polarization. We discuss our findings in relation to the previous research on the spread of conspiracy theories among politicians and the polarization of political discourse during the invasion, and we suggest implications for future research.