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Topics of Ethnic Discussions in Russian Social Media

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Book cover Digital Transformation and Global Society (DTGS 2018)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 859))

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Abstract

The paper reveals the topic structure of ethnic discussions in the Russian-speaking social media and explores how these topics are related to the post-Soviet ethnic groups. Analyzed more than 2.6 million texts from Russian-speaking social media published for two-year period from 2014 to 2015 and contained at least one of the post-Soviet ethnonyms, we conclude that ethnic discussions in these media are full of socially significant and potentially problematic topics (15 topics out of 97 can be regarded as problematic comparing to the 4 out of 150 topics on random sample from VK.com). The most salient topics are the topics about Ukraine-Russia relations over the recent conflict between two countries. We also found the racial bias in criminal topic towards peoples of the North Caucasus which are often mentioned in the context of crimes and terrorism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Russian language the term “Caucasians” denotes the peoples of Caucasus region.

  2. 2.

    An early medieval group, who lived in a large area of what is now Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.

  3. 3.

    Hostile designation of a person non-Christian faith.

  4. 4.

    Turkey denies the word “genocide” is an accurate term for these events.

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Acknowledgements

This article is an output of a research project implemented as part of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Oleg Nagornyy

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  1. Oleg Nagornyy
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Correspondence to Oleg Nagornyy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Daniel A. Alexandrov

  2. Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexander V. Boukhanovsky

  3. Saint Petersburg State University of Information Technologies, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Andrei V. Chugunov

  4. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yury Kabanov

  5. National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Olessia Koltsova

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Nagornyy, O. (2018). Topics of Ethnic Discussions in Russian Social Media. In: Alexandrov, D., Boukhanovsky, A., Chugunov, A., Kabanov, Y., Koltsova, O. (eds) Digital Transformation and Global Society. DTGS 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 859. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02846-6_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02846-6_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02845-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02846-6

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