The Discourse of Peace and War in Digital Narratives on the Russian-Ukrainian War: A Network and Content Analysis of U.S. Mediation as a Case Study

This study analyzes digital narratives on American mediation in the Russian-Ukrainian war by deconstructing the discourse circulating on the "X" platform (formerly Twitter). The aim is to understand how dominant and counter-narratives are constructed regarding the roles of international actors, particularly the United States and European parties, and the extent of public engagement with them.
 The study highlights the importance of analyzing digital networks and understanding dominant narratives in shaping public opinion and shaping perceptions of the roles of international actors. It also presents a methodological model that can be employed to understand contemporary wars as symbolic conflicts.
The study relied on a dual approach that combines narrative analysis and social network analysis. A sample of tweets related to the Russian-Ukrainian war hashtags was collected and analyzed using the BERTopic model to extract different types of narratives. The TextBlob model was also used for sentiment analysis, and the NodeXL program was used to extract interactive network properties and metrics (such as centralization, clustering, density, and centrality).
The analysis highlighted the presence of dominant narratives represented by calls to support Ukraine and emphasize the American role as a guarantor of security, contrasted with counter-narratives criticizing American intervention and accusing it of prolonging the war. Generally neutral or anti-war narratives were also observed, with no clear bias toward any party in the conflict.
The analysis was theoretically supported by the theory of narrative warfare, which explains how discourse and evidence are used to build legitimacy for conflict or mediation. In addition to the digital polarization approach, the data revealed that some accounts promoting dominant narratives belong to closed networks characterized by echo chambers, where high levels of internal retweets are prevalent. This reinforces the polarization of audiences around these narratives, as they remain in a state of network isolation within their network group, without external interaction.