Forced Migration and Information-Seeking Behavior on Wikipedia: Insights from the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis

TL;DR

This study investigates how the Ukrainian refugee crisis shaped online information-seeking on Wikipedia by analyzing daily pageviews of European city articles across language editions, with a focus on Ukrainian, Polish, German, Russian, and English. Using Wikipedia Pageviews alongside Eurostat, UNHCR, and national statistics, it demonstrates a strong, language-specific alignment between Ukrainian-language views and refugee stocks, especially for Polish and German destinations. Temporal analyses reveal that refugee border crossings into Poland Granger-cause increases in Ukrainian-language views of Polish cities, with an average lag of about eight days, indicating reactive information seeking after displacement. Overall, Wikipedia serves as a near real-time indicator of emerging migration patterns during crises and complements traditional official data for crisis monitoring and humanitarian planning.

Abstract

Gathering information about where to migrate is an important part of the migration process, especially during forced migration, when people must make rapid decisions under uncertainty. This study examines how forced migration relates to online information-seeking on Wikipedia. Focusing on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, we analyze how the resulting refugee crisis, which led to over six million Ukrainians fleeing across Europe, shaped views of Wikipedia articles about European cities. We compare changes in views of Ukrainian-language Wikipedia articles, used as a proxy for information-seeking by Ukrainians, with those in four other language editions. Our findings show that views of Ukrainian-language articles about European cities correlate more strongly with the number of Ukrainian refugees applying for temporary protection in European countries than views in other languages. Because Poland and Germany became the main destinations for refugees, we examine these countries more closely and find that applications for temporary protection in Polish and German cities are also more strongly correlated with views of their Ukrainian-language Wikipedia articles. We further analyze the timing between refugee flows to Poland and online information-seeking. Refugee border crossings occurred before increases in Ukrainian-language views of Polish city articles, indicating that information-seeking surged after displacement. This reactive pattern contrasts with the pre-departure planning typical of regular labor migration. Moreover, while official protection applications often lagged behind border crossings by weeks, Wikipedia activity rose almost immediately. Overall, Wikipedia usage offers a near real-time indicator of emerging migration patterns during crises.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Maximum relative change in the proportion of weekly views over the month following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, compared to the same period in the previous year. Results are shown for Wikipedia articles about the 19 most populous Polish cities and five of the most populous cities in the world (Beijing, Jakarta, Kinshasa, Lima, and Tokyo) across four languages (English, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian). As an example, we also show the relative change in the proportion of weekly views compared to the previous year of the Wikipedia article about Katowice across four languages (English, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian) from August 24, 2020, to August 24, 2023.
• Figure 2: Time series representing, in black, the daily number of Ukrainian refugees crossing the border from Ukraine to Poland (from February 24, 2022 to March 7, 2023) and, in colors, the proportion of the daily number of views of Wikipedia articles about Katowice across four languages (English, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian).
• Figure 3: Correlation between the numbers of views of Wikipedia articles about the 19 most populous cities in Poland, across different languages, and the numbers of Ukrainian refugees crossing the border into Poland.
• Figure 4: Distribution of F-statistics from Granger causality tests between time series of Wikipedia views of articles about Polish cities and Ukrainian refugees crossing the border to Poland. Each colored dot represents the F-statistic for a Wikipedia article about one of the 19 most populous cities in Poland, with blue indicating statistically significant relationships (p < 0.05) and red indicating non-significant relationships (p $\geq$ 0.05).
• Figure 9: Maximum relative change in the proportion of weekly views over the month following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, compared to the same period in the previous year. Results are shown for Wikipedia articles about the 40 most populous German cities and five of the most populous cities in the world (Beijing, Jakarta, Kinshasa, Lima, and Tokyo) across four languages (English, German, Russian, and Ukrainian).