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Framing the revolution: the role of social media in Ukraine's Euromaidan movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lena Surzhko-Harned  and
Andrew J. Zahuranec
Lena Surzhko-Harned*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Andrew J. Zahuranec
Affiliation:
Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: lsurzhko@pitt.edu
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Abstract

The role of social media as a tool of mobilization, communication, and organization of social movements has been well documented since the Arab Spring. The public information posted on social media sites also presents researchers with a unique tool to study protests movements from within. The proposed study utilizes the theoretical foundation of issue framing literature and examines the social media framing of the Ukrainian Euromaidan protest movement. The original dataset traces the activities of the users on the social media site Facebook from 21 November 2013 to February 2014. While foreign media sources portrayed the Ukrainian crisis as a geopolitical struggle, the results of our analysis show that the participants of the protest conceptualized their movement in terms of domestic issues and an anti-regime revolution rather than a geopolitical crossroad between the EU and Russia. This study contributes to our understanding of the role social media sites play in the activities of protest movements, such as Euromaidan. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of social media as a tool of issue framing on par with the traditional sources of framing such as mass media and political elites.

Keywords

social mediaEuromaidanUkraineissue framingsocial movements
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 5 , September 2017 , pp. 758 - 779
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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