Abstract
The internet has had a profound impact on how political scientists understand social movements. Using websites like Facebook and Twitter, demonstrators are able to share and organize their ideas, to develop political strategies, and recruit supporters. Activists communicate with one another and these messages can be analyzed to find patterns in how social movements frame themselves in reaction to current events. In short, the internet has an unprecedented capacity to show how political groups form. By examining posts on social media websites, this paper will assess the motivations of demonstrators involved in the Euromaidan protests and determine the movement’s ultimate focus. The emphasis was not, as many foreign outlets claimed, on the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, but on President Yanukovych’s general unpopularity. In this paper, I will discuss how an anti-Yanukovych focus came to dominate Euromaidan using social framework theory, as well as the role played by social media sites.
DOI
10.5642/urceu.201401.14
Rights Information
© 2014 Andrew J. Zahuranec
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Zahuranec, Andrew J.
(2014)
"Expectations and Reality: Opinion of the European Union in Ukraine,"
Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union:
Vol. 2014, Article 14.
DOI: 10.5642/urceu.201401.14
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/urceu/vol2014/iss1/14