Ehsan Shahghasemi
Abstract
When the war broke out in Ukraine, this eastern European country started a successful resistance that pinned down the Russian army in many regions and created a stalemate that has sparked ...
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When the war broke out in Ukraine, this eastern European country started a successful resistance that pinned down the Russian army in many regions and created a stalemate that has sparked a war of attrition not only in Ukraine, but also on social media territories in other political spheres. This study investigates the way in which Ukraine war is represented -or to be more precise, fought- in the Iranian X. Data mining methods were employed to search, find and extract posts including “Ukraine war” -or “جنگ اوکراین” in Persian. Our main question was, how did Iranian X users position themselves with regard to war in Ukraine? Using Python, a popular social media research tools, 2027 relevant posts were extracted to show the way in which Iranian users position themselves with regard to Ukraine war. Results revealed that the two Iranian main political factions -namely Reformists and Fundamentalists- see this war not as a war of other countries, but that of their own. The pro-Western Reformists favor the Ukrainian side of the war and the pro-Eastern Fundamentalists favor the Russian side of the war. They fight on social media as though the Ukrainian war is their own war.
