Journal article
Violent conflict and online segregation: An analysis of social network communication across Ukraine's regions
Journal of Comparative Economics, v 44(1), pp 163-181
01 Feb 2016
Abstract
Does the intensity of a social conflict affect political division? Traditionally, social cleavages are seen as the underlying cause of political conflicts. It is clear, however, that a violent con fat itself can shape partisan, social, and national identities. In this paper, we ask whether social conflicts unite or divide the society by studying the effects of Ukraine's military conflict with Russia on online social ties between Ukrainian provinces (oblasts). In order to do that, we collected original data on the cross-regional structure of politically relevant online communication among users of VKontakte social networking site. We analyze the panel of provinces spanning the most active phases of domestic protests and military conflict and isolate the effects of province-specific war casualties on the nature of inter-provincial online communication. The results show that war casualties entice strong emotional response in the corresponding provinces, but do not necessarily increase the level of social cohesion in interprovincial online communication. We find that the intensity of military conflict entices online activism, but activates regional rather than nation-wide network connections. We also find that military conflict tends to polarize some regions of Ukraine, especially in the East. Our research brings attention to the underexplored areas in the study of civil conflict and political identities by documenting the ways the former may affect the latter. Journal of Comparative Economics 44 (1) (2016) 163-181. Department of International Relations, Lehigh University, United States; Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University at Buffalo, SUNY, United States; Lehigh University, United States; Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, The University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. (C) 2015 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Details
- Title
- Violent conflict and online segregation: An analysis of social network communication across Ukraine's regions
- Creators
- Dinissa Duvanova - Lehigh UniversityAlexander Nikolaev - University at Buffalo, State University of New YorkAlex Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy - Lehigh UniversityAlexander Semenov - University of Jyväskylä
- Publication Details
- Journal of Comparative Economics, v 44(1), pp 163-181
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Number of pages
- 19
- Grant note
- 268078 / Academy of Finland; Research Council of Finland 268078 / Academy of Finland (AKA); Research Council of Finland
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000371843900010
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-84958594136
- Other Identifier
- 991021863514604721
InCites Highlights
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Economics