Framing Shifts of the Ukraine Conflict in pro-Russian News Media

An important aspect of information operations (IO) are influence campaigns where a state actor or organizations under its control attempt to shift public opinion by framing information to support a narrative that facilitate their goals. If there is a playbook in operation, then in principle it should be possible to detect its signatures in mainstream media and to potentially provide early warning of malicious intent. This paper describes the results of a proof-of-concept effort where our goal was to detect framing shifts during the Ukraine conflict in pro-Russian news media surrounding the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Our results show significant framing shifts exceeding a smaller peak of 2010, in November 2013, and sharply spiking and trending again in Dec 2013, three-four months ahead of Crimea's annexation by the Russian Federation.