War with Russia accelerated use of Ukrainian language on social media

Shift to Ukrainian is major behavioural change - Twitter study may signal shift to greater Ukrainian self-identification - Published on Wednesday 10 January 2024 Last updated on Monday 15 January 2024 - Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 significantly accelerated the shift from Russian language to Ukrainian on social media in what may signal a move towards greater Ukrainian self-identification, according to new research from the University of Bath, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, and the Technical University of Munich. Researchers examined nearly three million tweets from nearly 42,000 Ukrainian citizens from January 2020 to October 2022 and confirmed that the slow drift away from Russian observed since Ukrainian independence sped up dramatically following the invasion in February 2022. In 2020 there were over 2,000 tweets daily in Russian compared to around 1,000 in Ukrainian and around 400 in English. By March 2022, the numbers of tweets in Russian and Ukrainian were roughly equal at around 1,000 a day, with around 250 in English, but by November of that year, Ukrainian tweets had surged to nearly 2,500 a day while Russian and English language tweets were now around 500. "The data also shows that, of the people predominantly tweeting in Russian before the war, roughly half of them are now tweeting more in Ukrainian. And it is striking that around a quarter of them have performed a 'hard switch' to tweeting predominantly in Ukrainian," said Dr Brit Davidson of the University of Bath's School of Management.