UK Partner
Sercan Ozcan, Dr. , (Assoc. Prof.) in Innovation & Technology Management, Associate Head of Research and Innovation, School of Strategy, Marketing and Innovation
UK Partner
Yurii Kovtunenko ,Professor, Head of the Department of international management and innovations, Institute of Economics and Management
Co-Investigators
Ella Haig, Reader in Artificial Intelligence School of Computing
Oleksandra Kovalchuk, Reader of the Department of international management and innovations, postgraduate student Institute of Economics and Management
Vasyl Sprinsian, Head Department of Information Activities and Media Communications Institute of Humanities
Tetiana Luhova, Associate professor of the Department of Information Activities and Media Communications, candidate of art history, deputy director of the Institute of Humanities, Institute of Humanities
Olena Shevchenko, Professor of the Department of Information Activities and Media Communications, Doctor of Science in Social Communications, Institute of Humanities
Svitlana Melnyk, Associate professor of the Department of Information Activities and Media Communications, candidate of philological sciences School/Faculty Institute of Humanities
Project objectives
Stakeholder engagement is a crucial aspect of modern warfare because it involves the participation and collaboration of various parties at the national and global level, including military personnel, government officials, and civilian populations. Social media platforms offer faster, wider, and more cost-effective communication with relevant stakeholders. Governments can use these platforms to gather intelligence about potential threats, develop strategies, and engage with relevant stakeholders in real-time, allowing citizens to quickly respond to changing circumstances and emerging threats.
This study aims to explore the strategic approaches and tactics used for stakeholder engagement during warfare. This study can promote the economic development and welfare of Ukraine in several ways. First, effective stakeholder engagement can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of military operations, which can help to secure the country's territorial integrity and sovereignty. This can create a more stable and secure environment for economic development and growth. Second, social media platforms can facilitate the flow of information between the government, military, and the general public, which can help to build trust and strengthen the relationship between these parties. Finally, social media platforms can help to raise awareness about economic development initiatives, which can encourage greater public support and participation in these programs.
Project goals
The aim of this study is to explore the strategic approaches and tactics used for stakeholder engagement during modern warfare. This study also aims to examine how social media platforms can be used as a source of intelligence during war.
Specifically, the following research questions will be addressed:
• How can social media platforms be used to effectively communicate with and involve stakeholders in military operations?
• What are the strategic communication and intelligence approaches for stakeholder engagement?
• What are the potential challenges and limitations of using social media for stakeholder engagement in modern warfare? To address the research questions, this study will employ a mixed-methods approach, including both qualitative and quantitative methods. The following methods will be used:
• Literature review: A comprehensive review of the existing literature on the use of social media for stakeholder engagement, especially during war will be conducted.
• Social media intelligence: using text intelligence and NLP approaches, the relevant social media data will be retrieved and analysed focusing on successfully used microblogs.
• The data will be examined using both quantitative (clustering analysis) and qualitative (thematic analysis) methods to identify type of strategies and tactics that used for stakeholder engagement.
• Interviews: In-depth interviews will be conducted with key informants to gather detailed insights and perspectives on the use of social media for stakeholder engagement.
It is expected that this research will provide valuable insights into the potential of social media for stakeholder engagement in modern warfare and provide recommendations for social media as a tool for stakeholder engagement and will provide recommendations for best practices in this area. The expected findings of this study to cover the use of social media platforms for communication, dissemination, community building, crowdsourcing, collaboration and real-time engagement for warfare related activities and operations.
Role of each Partner
Considering the partnership, academicians from both universities could provide valuable support to the proposed project in several ways. For this project, the academicians in the UK can implement data retrieval process for the social media analysis (Ozcan et al. 2021). The Ukrainian partners can help to analyse and interpret the data to establish strategies and tactics that are used via social media platforms and help with the in-depth interviews. Both parties can collaborate to write up the work and disseminate the findings.
This study is important for our Motherland since at present, its fate is being decided and each citizen depends on being an independent and democratic Ukraine. Unfortunately, we moment there is no nationwide social environment, network, or platform for a prompt solution of information, social and managerial tasks, and instead there is a great variety of local channels on various platforms, trusted and popular among different populations. So if we will find and study algorithms for the functional unification of society with the help of social networks to improve the efficiency and speed of the decision of wartime tasks being at the epicentre of events and practising working with “live” data, this can become a key factor in our inevitable victory and saving many lives. And in the future, such strategies will help in the speedy restoration of Ukraine, its digital transformation, and the consolidation of society in building an exemplary new world. And these are just most of the key factors in this work!
We offer the following areas of scientific research:
• Media terrorism and manipulation of consciousness in today’s social media: Ukrainian realities
• The role of messengers that sped up the online creation of news content.
• Trust in social messengers: how to counter misinformation and manipulation.
Within the framework of the project, we offer the involvement of patriotic youth among students of the Department of International Management and Innovation in the process of social media intelligence during modern warfare through:
• the creation of monitoring groups of student support to explore social networks according to thematic areas of research of social media platforms;
• popularization of the importance of intelligence on social media platforms among patriotic youth during the modern war through the publication of articles.
To solve the research questions in this study, we propose the use of competitive intelligence tools, the research of which was carried out within the scope of the research topic: "Competitive intelligence in the security-oriented management of innovation and investment development of enterprises of strategic importance for the national economy and state security" (state registration number 0019U002005, term of execution 01.01.2019 - 31.12.2021).
Timing
Project Start Date: 01.03.2023
Project End Date: 31.08.2023.
Expected results
1. Conference paper: Social Media Intelligence: The Conceptual Framework and Model for Modern Warfare Strategies
2. Research paper: Social Media Intelligence: The Strategic Approaches and Tactics used for Stakeholder Engagement during Modern Warfare
3. Further research bid applications to extend the social media intelligence model in other fields.
