Twitter discourse of diplomatic missions to the UN on the conflict in Donbas (2015–2021)

Abstract

The article reflects the results of a study of public political discourse about the conflict in the Donbass, formed by Twitter institutional actors (permanent missions to the UN) and political figures (representatives, their deputies, etc.) of countries — permanent members of the UN Security Council. Chronological scope of the study: from January 2015 (escalation of the armed conflict in the Donbass, starting with the shelling of the stop near Volnovakha and the aggravation of the fighting for the Donetsk airport) to the present (2021). By analyzing the messages in Twitter, some trends in the development of discourse have been revealed. We prove the hypothesis about the existence of two divergent variants of discourse, which in different ways characterize the participants in the conflict in the South-East of Ukraine. To confirm the hypothesis, we use a technique for analyzing political discourse, which includes two levels of analysis: the identification of key conceptual metaphors in both discourse options (positively or negatively characterizing the parties of the conflict) and the identification of the semantic opposition “we — they” realized within the metaphors. We identify the metaphorical images of the conflict parties as a whole and the concepts used, and then the conceptual metaphors they create. We conclude that in both variants of discourse, most conceptual metaphors are based on negative concepts that designate the opposite side of the conflict, and that the discussion is characterized by increased emotional tension.