Digital Fear and Loathing: Emotional Signatures in Social Media Discourse about the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

We explore public emotions surrounding the Ukraine-Russia conflict by analyzing over 1.1 million English tweets from the first 36 weeks, focusing specifically on fear and anger responses. Using LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count), we assess these primary emotional responses that characterize conflict-related discourse. Our analysis includes tweets from the U.S., East and West European NATO countries, Ukraine, and Russia. Tweet volume spiked initially but stabilized by week ten. Results show that anger consistently exceeded fear across all regions, indicating that the conflict primarily evoked mobilizing rather than paralyzing emotional responses. Russia showed substantially lower levels of both emotions than other regions, while no significant differences emerged among the U.S., NATO countries, and Ukraine despite their varying proximity to the conflict. This analysis offers a nuanced understanding of how fear and anger shape regional emotional responses to ongoing international conflict.