Personalized, war and peace journalism on Twitter: The Russo-Ukrainian War through the lens of political journalists

Abstract

This study compares communication patterns of German political journalists with correspondents assigned in covering Russia/Ukraine regarding the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War discourse on Twitter (now X). During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Twitter has been an important platform for (European) politicians, journalists and other stakeholders to share their views on the war. In general, journalists differ largely in terms of Twitter activity and in posting individual contributions. This comparative research delves into the analysis of journalistic communication in 4,460 tweets, focusing on war and peace journalism framing. The study also investigates the personalization characteristics present in these tweets, considering individual-level influences through the hierarchy of influence model. Specifically, the work employs both peace journalism theoretical framework and the hierarchy of influence model to scrutinize the communication strategies of German political journalists and correspondents covering Russia/Ukraine on Twitter amidst the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War discourse. So far, both approaches have not been combined for the analysis of conflict and war communication in social media. We tracked journalistic tweets for five months from September 2022 to February 2023. Our content analysis shows that, within the journalistic contributions, a peace journalism framework dominates. More than three-quarters of the tweets contain an expression of opinion and around one-third evaluations. Personalization characteristics of politicians are present in almost one-quarter of the tweets.