A Longitudinal Study of Italian and French Reddit Conversations Around the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

TL;DR

The paper investigates how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected conversations in two European Reddit communities (r/italy and r/france) over 2022, using a dataset of over 3 million posts. It integrates war-topic identification via keyword sampling, multilingual sentiment and toxicity analysis, and network-based socio-demographic inference to examine moderator behavior, user interactions, and potential homophily. Key findings show a surge in war-related discourse around invasion day, increased moderation activity in Italy, significantly more negative and toxic war conversations, and only weak evidence for demographic-based homophily, suggesting the war did not create strong echo chambers in these communities. The study contributes a longitudinal, cross-country methodology for examining online discourse during global events and highlights the nuanced roles of moderators and sentiment dynamics in shaping public conversations with practical implications for platform governance and information ecology.

Abstract

Global events like wars and pandemics can intensify online discussions, fostering information sharing and connection among individuals. However, the divisive nature of such events may lead to polarization within online communities, shaping the dynamics of online interactions. Our study delves into the conversations within the largest Italian and French Reddit communities, specifically examining how the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected online interactions. We use a dataset with over 3 million posts (i.e., comments and submissions) to (1) describe the patterns of moderation activity and (2) characterize war-related discussions in the subreddits. We found changes in moderators' behavior, who became more active during the first month of the war. Moreover, we identified a connection between the daily sentiment of comments and the prevalence of war-related discussions. These discussions were not only more negative and toxic compared to non-war-related ones but also did not involve a specific demographic group. Our research reveals that there is no tendency for users with similar characteristics to interact more. Overall, our study reveals how the war in Ukraine had a negative influence on daily conversations in the analyzed communities. This sheds light on how users responded to this significant event, providing insights into the dynamics of online discussions during events of global relevance.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Time series showing the 7-day moving average of the daily number of comments, submissions and active users in r/france.
• Figure 2: Time series showing the 7-day moving average of the daily number of comments, submissions and active users in r/italy.
• Figure 3: Daily proportion of war-related comments (Top) and removed comments (Middle), and daily average sentiment (Bottom) for r/france. We show a 7-day moving average. We report the Pearson correlation (computed on the daily observations and not the moving average) between each time series and the proportion of war-related comments in the legend of each panel.
• Figure 4: Daily proportion of war-related comments (Top) and removed comments (Middle), and daily average sentiment (Bottom) for r/italy. We show a 7-day moving average. We report the Pearson correlation (computed on the daily observations and not the moving average) between each time series and the proportion of war-related comments in the legend of each panel.
• Figure 5: Distributions of the daily average sentiment in r/france (Top) and r/italy (Bottom) computed for non-overlapping subsets of comments corresponding to specific topics. Outliers are not shown, and the red cross indicates the mean value of the distribution. Medians for r/france are: War=-0.19, Other=-0.1, Elections=-0.14, Eurovision=-0.001. Medians for r/italy are: War=-0.16, Other=-0.03, Elections=-0.08, Eurovision=0.006.