Azov Crisis and Ukrainian Pre-Election Campaign on Twitter: Formal Analysis of Political Texts (On the Case of Petro Poroshenko's Account) [Research Article]

2020;
: 14-20
https://doi.org/10.23939/shv2020.01.014
Received: January 03, 2020
Accepted: March 21, 2020
1
Vasyl Stus’ Donetsk National University

Petro Poroshenko is one of the most popular Twitter-bloggers in Ukraine with 1,1 million followers. Thus, he actively exploited Twitter, as well as more wide spread in the country social networks as Facebook and Instagram. Dealing with Twitter and other social networks studies, scholars claim that political communication nowadays has been becoming more personalized, emotional and populist. All these considerations were made on the accounts of Western European leaders. Thus, Petro Poroshenko’s Twitter posts analysis will be useful to expand the discoveries about political communication.

The objective of the study is Petro Poroshenko’s Twitter account formal analysis, particularly, calculation and dynamics’ study of indicators: personalization, emotionality and communication intention existence. The author uses the method of study, which is a computer program (Python language) and it was designed especially for this study.

25% of Petro Poroshenko’s Twitter posts are personalized. The reaction on Russian aggression in November-December 2019 has low indicators, whereas the second tour of the election – high ones. It’s also possible to discover the change of communication strategy before the first tour of the election.

Azov crisis doesn’t lead to the high emotionality indicators. And the active phase of pre-election campaign before the second tour of the election has low emotionality. The significant growth of the indicator is fixed before the second tour. As for the communication intention existence indicator, there is negative correlation between the indicator and emotionality. Thus, Azov crisis and the first tour of presidential elections have gained reaction that is more rational.

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