Ukraines Invasion

Ukraine's Invasion

Immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, a survey reported that most Russians supported Putin, with around 58% of citizens indicating that they endorsed Putin. However, some resisted this movement claiming it would result in more harm than good, and for that reason, they were more scared by the situation.

Research Background

Public Opinion and Journalism

The decision to invade Ukraine was no aberration, and it entirely consisted of longstanding public statements since they claimed that this was their war as much as it was Putin's. The public citizens have been gearing more efforts that contributed to the facilitation of the war. That is evident in the "Z" branding that the Russian force uses has become increasingly ubiquitous across the country, symbolizing support from the public (Dickinson, 2022). For instance, it was reported that 250 Russian universities published an address that influenced the people to rally around Putin. Although 58% of the Russians have approved the Ukraine invasion based on the statistics, domestic opposition has been. There have been public protests in some cities; however, it has attracted only a few people, failing to gain momentum. The country's mainstream media have been reported to navigate propaganda and access alternative sources of information if they are inclined. However, the media is the major influence that shares sentiments expressed by the country's pro-war cheerleaders with claims that Ukraine is their younger brother in need of discipline and guidance. Therefore, it can be concluded that the media deprived the public of accurate information.

Therefore, because the majority of the Russians are supporting the invasion, it will be unrealistic to expect sanctions or global condemnation to convince Putin to invalidate his policies. Also, the rising cost that the international community has triggered will encourage the Russian citizens to back the war and persuade them that every existence of independent Ukraine is an anti-Russian conspiracy. Thus if the world needs to stop Putin, it must abandon the mission of using the Russian citizens to oppose the war since most of the citizens share Putin's unhinged obsession. Putin is enjoying the emphatic backing of the Russian people (FRIEDMAN, 2022). Instead, they can opt to deprive revenues used to fund Russian war machines and increase Ukraine's ability to defend itself.

The New York Times and its Audience

The New York Times article "Putin Has No Good Way Out, and What Scares Me" has a pro-American tone. President Putin's open support of Russian rebels fighting against Ukraine makes him a military aggressor. It also makes Putin an existential threat to the stability ofthe U.S.-lead NATO alliance. The New York Times has always been a place for truth, for facts. Thus, based on their news, the trajectory of the Russian inversion to Ukraine has been happening for weeks without any support from the rest of the world to intervene in the situation. There have been hopes and expectations that the western countries should put boots on the ground to help defend Ukraine because there were no treaty obligations. According to New York Times, had the military of the West invaded the war, Putin would have retreated from launching his vanity invasion (FRIEDMAN, 2022). But because no one was willing to help Ukraine, and they...

…page and the articles "Putin Has No Good Way Out, and What Scares Me" and "I See Three Scenarios for How This War Ends" by Thomas L. Friedman. Measurements were based on the truth the data had as they were presented.

Expected contribution

Having a clear, concise, and focused research question has helped to ensure that I have broken down the project into manageable tasks, and thus handling them becomes easier and helps me complete them in time. Using this approach, the research question defines the topic, giving one a direct approach to their investigations. Also, it provides one to strive towards and always remain relevant to their study topic.

Expected challenges

There are often specific challenges that arise when using social media platforms and, more so, Twitter as your data source. First, there are ethical issues, especially when handling sensitive topics like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which needs to be handled with care. Also, because many people tweet about that particular topic, collecting and retrieving data from all the participants becomes hard. Thus, your data might be influenced by biasness. Also, there are legal issues and concerns since sharing of datasets are not allowed under Twitter's API terms of services, making it challenging to share tweet IDs. This might make researchers obtain similar datasets, making the research not comprehensive. Also, it is costly to conduct the fundamental research and requires sufficient capital because the licensed reseller of Twitter data are expensive to purchase. Furthermore, it is difficult to ascertain whether the information collected is genuine since popular topics on Twitter might attract a large amount of spam, making it hard to…