-- KamilaKoronska - 30 Aug 2023

Title

Multi-layered Structure of Narratives relating to Ukrainian Refugees on Polish Telegram

Team Members

Maria Lompe, Kamila Koronska, Richard Rogers, Aleksy Szymkiewicz, Alexandre Delanoë

Contents

1. Abstract

The project's goal is to chart troubling portrayals of Ukrainian refugees from the start of the new phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war that commenced in February 2022. In this context, "problematic narratives" denote persuasive campaigns, whether organised or naturally emerging, that depict Ukrainian refugees as a "problem" for their host countries. These narratives label Ukrainians as extremist, perilous, economically opportunistic, corrupt, disease-ridden, or manipulated by Western powers. Such narratives wield influence, often supporting specific political stances that challenge support for the refugees in their host countries. In such instances, they merge into the ongoing "political campaigning" of existing political parties and movements. Our aim is to identify these narratives, expose their nature, and provide them to experts in verification—such as journalists, fact-checkers, disinformation researchers, human rights activists, and educators. These experts typically address individual posts, producing fact-checks or discredits for each piece. Nevertheless, these singular accounts can be vital to broader narratives as described earlier. We also like to explore their resonance and durability, delving into which narratives endure, perhaps by being “reshaped”, despite efforts to counter or debunk them.

2. Initial data sets

Our Initial Data Set contained 226,777 telegram messages from 22 Telegram channels.

List of Telegram Channels that were scraped by Telegram API:

Teleegram Channels
1. Zbrodnie, Polityka, Afery	Kanał informacyjny 🐸KJU🐸
2. Ruch Oporu	12 .💫Awakening Process💫 🧘‍♀️Proces budzenia 🧘‍♂️
3. Ucho od śledzia	13. ❤️Anielskie Siostry Jasnowidzki©
4. Ktoś	14. Sokółka Niezależna
5. Оlej w Głowie	15. NajNewsy - Archiwum transformacji 🌍 3 Wojna Światowa
6. Świadomi 🦉	16. Ukraina w Ogniu Total
7. Sprawa dla Jarosława	17. News Front Polska Total
8. Ciężka Artyleria - kanał	18. STRAŻNICY WOLNOŚCI
9. Nasza Wolna Polska 🇵🇱❤️	19. Pan Nikt
10. Ubojnia Polin	20. 𝐆𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐚𝐑𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐏𝐨𝐳𝐢𝐨𝐦𝐮 _Kanał
11. Dostawcy Wrażeń	21. 🔞 Info War Polska 🇵🇱 Total

3. Research Questions

1. What are the main problematic narratives about Ukrainian war refugees on Telegram?

2. How are Ukrainians framed as a “problem” for their hostland audience?

3. Can we distil larger narratives about Ukrainian war refugees?

4. What narratives are linked together in the messages?

4. Methodology and initial datasets

We sourced the problematic Telegram channels using a snowballing technique, here appropriated for querying social-media with account names, rather than queries. To get an initial list of problematic channels, we used TGSTAT Analytics view to find channels ‘mentioning’ and ‘mentioned’ by an alternative news channel - @ndp_pl, that was recognised as problematic by Polish mainstream media and disinformation researchers.

Data collection, curation and visualization: First relying on news or other authoritative accounts of Telegram channels with problematic content about Ukrainian war refugees, we sourced additional channels by capturing their incoming and outgoing mentions using tgstat.com. With the Telegram API, we downloaded the channels’ posts from February, 2022 to July, 2023. We subsequently loaded those posts in Gargantext, the text mining and analysis software, in order to group the terms that significantly co-occur with the words ‘refugee’ and ‘refugees’. We then selected keywords for each cluster qualified by GarganText and asked the GPT chat to list narratives based on them.

5. Summary and findings

During our exploration of post-truth spaces, we have discovered the presence of numerous interconnected narratives relating to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Among them we could distinguish core 9 themes:

• Ukrainian migration crisis and national security
• Influence of European Union and Other International Organisations
• Promoting a positive image or Russia
• Polish-Ukrainian relations
• Neo-Nazis movements
• Financial Aid, Assistance and Real Estate
• Political Figures and Foreign Policies
• Failure of Migration Projects in other countries
• Crime, violating law, controversial activities and behaviours

By closely examining these narratives through the lens of narratology and chat GPT, we have identified various "levels of narratives" that exist with an intention of bolstering often unrealistic or implausible claims made about Ukrainian refugees, or the war more specifically.

At each level, different narratives are being deployed to create necessary “perceptual background” for seeding pro-Kremlin propaganda [Branigan, 1992]. Therefore, we have clusters where claims about national security are being supported with claims about weakness of the European Union. In a similar vein, claims about Ukrainians allegedly pursuing prostitution or human trafficking are clustered together with those about national context and society. This, we think, allows us to shift and manipulate the attention of Telegram users from one perceptual context to another. What is remembered by the readers of these messages, is then systematic and not accidental. These narratives are designed to have an impact on behavior, with the intention of dissuading support for local government assistance to Ukrainian refugees and shaping particular perceptions that i.e. portray Ukrainian women (who constitute the largest group of refugees) as shameful and posing a threat to the stability of a monogamous family.

6. References

1. Gargantext: https://gargantext.org/

2. Chat GPT: https://chat.openai.com/auth/login.

3. Peeters, S., & Hagen, S. (2022). The 4CAT Capture and Analysis Toolkit: A Modular Tool for Transparent and Traceable Social Media Research. Computational Communication Research, 4(2), 571–589. Retrieved from https://computationalcommunication.org/ccr/article/view/120

4. TGstat.com: https://tgstat.com/

5. Rogers, R. et al. (2015). “Issue Mapping for an Ageing Europe”

6. Branigan, E. (1992). Narrative Comprehension and Film (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315003108

7. Posters all: https://www.figma.com/file/sy1baXdfxPEBjV7lOiDtFq/mapping-post-truth-narratives?type=design&node-id=58-8950&mode=design&t=Ay4NvjdLCpD1QUcT-0