The war in Ukraine began on February 24, when the country was invaded by the Russian army: in over a month of clashes, social networks were at the center of the debate referring to the conflict, between accusations of being a vehicle for spreading fake news, amplification of solidarity initiatives and the role of so-called influencers. Which, however, have devoted very little space to the war.
To prove it, an interesting one research carried out by Intwig for the Parole OStili association on the occasion of Festival of Non Hostile Communication, scheduled for the end of April: from what emerges, only 25% of the Italian influencers on Instagram and only 14% of those of TikTok showed attention towards the conflict. In particular, in the period between February 24 and March 21, most of them spoke very little about the subject, perhaps with messages of solidarity or calls for action: this is the case (for example) of the Ferragni sisters, who in a month they published a single post to invite followers to make donations.
The case
From Russia and then against Russia: Telegram’s role in the war in Ukraine
by Emanuele Capone
Instagram, space for politicians and activists
In detail, the top 25 Instagram influencers who talked about Ukraine published 130 posts and reels on the topic, against 530 dedicated to other topics. Against the tide and definitely first, unsurprisingly, was Matteo Salviniwho dedicated 70% of the contents of the period to the conflict, followed by Mara Venier (35%), Federico Bernardeschi (33%) and Luciana Littizzetto (29%).
Stories were excluded from the analysis, but the performance of posts and reels partly explain the reasons for this choice by the creators: on average, the engagement rate (i.e. level of involvement of the public) of each of the 130 contents on the war was 118 thousand interactions, compared to 240 thousand generated by posts and reels dedicated to other things. Among all, the results of the two posts by Khaby Lame (first for the number of fans, with over 73 million followers), which obtained a total of over 9.8 million interactions, followed by Maneskin (660 thousand interactions) and Giorgio Chiellini (384 thousand interactions).
TIkTok: fewer posts but more engagement
Their TikTok, the social network that currently has the fastest growth rate, only 14% of the top 100 Italian influencers talked about the topic in the first 4 weeks of the conflict, for a total of 25 posts, compared to 382 dedicated to other things. And yet, the contents related to the war obtained a higher average engagement rate than those related to other topics: each post on the conflict has an average of 211 thousand interactions, compared to 132 thousand of the others. Here too, Khaby Lame was the one who got the most views (again with two posts, the same ones published on Instagram): over 3.2 million in total, followed by Drew Nori (647 thousand interactions) and Vincenzo Tedesco (334 thousand).
Twitter and the drastic drop in interest
On Twitter, which is the social network with the lowest numbers but perhaps the most used when it comes to current affairs and politics, the decrease in interest detected in the period under analysis is significant: in total, the Italian tweets dedicated to the war were 7.3 millionbut with an intensity precipitated by 55% from 468 thousand on the first day to 212 thousand on 21 March.
Of these, only 1 in 5 contained an image and less than 1 in 10 appeared a video; the first influencers who spoke of war, in order, were Pope Francis, Laura PausiniMatteo Renzi and Giorgio Chiellini.
The conflict
Influencers on TikTok: the new battlefield of war in Ukraine
by Francesco Marino
What are we talking about when we talk about war
According to Rosy Russo, president and founder of Parole OStili“Choosing not to tackle a topic that is as current as it is important (such as war, ed) brings with it a series of double-sided evaluations: on the one hand, the creators are aware that a military conflict is not a topic they have competence on , on the other their role as intermediaries failsuseful for bringing these issues closer to everyone’s sensibility “.
That said, the most discussed topics related to Ukraine were, in order of quantity: thoughts for civilians and the difficulties they are experiencing, slogans calling for an end to the war and spreading messages of peace, comments on domestic politics, support for associations and anti-war demonstrations; to a lesser extent, there was no shortage of posts on the conditions of animals on war territories, explicit messages against Russia and against Putin and also comments on the possible high cost of living.