Securitization of cyberspace is of great geopolitical concern. Behaviour on the Internet is not diminishing the influence of existing borders but can polarize society along territorial divisions. The paper explores territorial differences in the subscription to public pages and open groups in social networking sites (SNS), which emerged as a reaction to revolutionary events in Ukraine (known as Euromaidan or Revolution of Dignity) in 2013-2014 and Russia-backed armed conflict in the East of the country. The findings show differences in subscription to such pages in Vkontakte (the most popular SNS in Ukraine before a ban in 2017) among citizens of Ukraine and Russia, regional centres in Ukraine, cities in uncontrolled by Ukrainian government territories, reclaimed by Ukrainian army territories, territories of Lugansk and Donetsk regions which were not under substantial control of Russia-backed separatists, and peripherial cities of the neighbouring Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhya oblasts. The paper also analyzes the geopolitical narratives of pro-Russian public pages in Vkontakte and shows how SNS could be used as a geopolitical tool.

Nationalization of the party system and electorates not obviously results in the territorial homogenization of voting behavior or shifts from the territorial to functional cleavages. Elections outcomes in Ukraine are broadly analyzed from the perspective of regional divisions, compositional effects, cleavages, and polarization of political beliefs. However, we assume that spatiality of electoral behavior in Ukraine is more complex and might be better understood from the perspective of the TPSN framework – intertwined and mutually constitutive effects of territory (T), place (P), scale (S) and networks (N). The paper aims to analyze territorial homogenization, heterogeneity, and polarization of electoral behavior in Ukraine using data at polling stations level for 2002-2014 parliamentary elections. We use Lee index (the analysis of variance using mean absolute deviation divided by two to avoid double counting) to analyze territorial homogenization. The study reveals that in 2002-2014 Ukraine was continually territorially homogenized, while, at the same time, territorially polarized – national territorial homogenization index was decreasing (higher homogenization), while the index for particular regions (Galicia and Donbas) was permanently high (higher polarization) in 2002-2012 for Galicia and in 2006-2014 for Donbas oblasts. The cartographic analysis reveals that electoral behavior patterns and territorial polarization often follow administrative borders (oblast or rayon level) as well as historical borders (the interwar border between USSR and Poland and the border between Austrian and Russian empires). Analysis of Manafort trial court documents also reveals strategic deployment of geographical scale by Party of Regions. Despite being empirically very limited, this study shows that mutual effects of bounded territories, place contexts, scale, and networks are crucial for the understanding how parties territorially structure Ukraine.

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No abstract

The paper criticizes electoral geography studies of Ukraine, where the territory of the country is artificially divided into a number of regions following administrative divisions. The study reveals intraregional variability in the territorial patterns of voting behavior in Ukraine in 2002-2014. Zakarpattya, Chernivtsi, Sumy, Chernigiv, and Zhytomyr oblasts have the highest intraregional variance of electoral preferences for conventional “national-democratic” and “Communists and pro-Russian” political parties. All oblasts of Ukraine have internal variations of voting behavior. It was studied based on electoral results data for rayons and cities with special administrative status (n=675). Scatterplot with a time scale, filters for oblasts and rayons/cities, and the opportunity to draw electoral preferences trajectories from 2002 to 2014 parliamentary elections was used as a research instrument. The study also reveals region-specific voting patterns of cities and territorial outliers, which are bounded by administrative borders places with unique voting behavior. The paper accentuates place-specific and region-as-context understanding of electoral behavior as an essential conceptual framework for the further electoral geography studies of Ukraine.