Navigating the fog of war during the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: An exploratory network analysis of tweets about an alleged chemical attack in Mariupol

This claim was made on April 11 by Ukraine’s Azov regiment. At the time when this claim was first reported, Mariupol was surrounded by Russian troops, making it difficult, if not nearly impossible, for journalists to gain access to the city and to interview local sources.

We were interested in examining how this claim was discussed on social media because if it was true, it had the potential to galvanize the world’s sentiments in support of Ukraine and against Russia. Using Twitter’s Academic Track API, we retroactively collected 246,189 public tweets posted between April 6 and 13, 2022 to analyze how Twitter users were discussing this claim. We collected tweets related to this case a few days before and after April 11 to capture speculation before the accusation, and the reaction to it.