Under the Conditions of Non-Agenda Ownership: Social Media Users in the 2019 Ukrainian Presidential Elections Campaign

Abstract

Owing to its history and challenging circumstances, social networks community in Ukraine is a very interesting polygon for the study of communications in the constantly changing environment, especially in the political discourse. This unique environment requires three dimensions to ascertain the political position of its participant. But 2019 presidential elections made this object even more spectacular. The winner of elections comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyi reached 73% of votes without any issue ownership, with empty agenda, and this influenced the electoral content of social networks and their authors behavior. We saw, that the issue ownership by other candidates succeeds in making their issues more salient in social networks. But the new phenomena, the non-agenda ownership, overcome any ideological influence, especially under the conditions of punishment mechanism applied to old politicians. Analyzing social media content and users behavior in the period between two rounds of elections, we found considerable overlaps between this campaign and the 2016 Trump campaign. We approved the widespread of filter bubbles, negative campaign messages, fake news and conspiracy theories. Active and powerful core of Ukrainian Facebook that was responsible for the Revolution of dignity now became less significant and even turns into the huge filter bubble of active people. We also proved that manipulations and fake news in the environment of private groups may be as much powerful as in a case of classical communication based around the opinion leaders.