The Eurovision Song Contest usually attracts the attention of music lovers. However, the last contest sparked a discussion in Russian society about social issues related to xenophobia and gender issues. The Russian representative Manija Sangin, an ethnic Tajik, attracted the attention of politicians, public figures and even clergymen, as well as the general public not only in Russia, but also abroad.
In particular, Manizha became the Eurovision contestant with the most queries in search engines around the world. In the joint voting of the jury and Eurovision fans for “Best Text”, Manzha’s song “Russian Woman” came in 2nd place, behind the winning song “Zitti e buoni” by Maneskin.
There was a lot of controversy among Russian-speaking commentators. The most important debates concerned Manizha’s ethnic identity and her active social stance in defense of women’s rights.
In Russia as a whole, sociological surveys show a high level of xenophobia among Russians toward Central Asians. According to this indicator, Central Asians (Uzbeks, Tajiks) are among the three least desirable ethnic groups for Russians.
To understand the sentiment around the song “Russian Woman”, which represents Russia at Eurovision, better this article will examine:
The reasons why this song generated such a large stream of political commentary;
An analysis of the comments under three of the singer’s competition videos on YouTube;
A frequency analysis of words related to ethnicity and gender;
Why Manizha’s song caused a public and political backlash
In social networks, the news of Manizha’s nomination for Eurovision caused a flood of comments, including those containing xenophobic staements. She also was criticized for the feminist attitude of the song.
Liberal publications called the song “Russian Woman” a manifesto of feminism and “a complete undermining of patriarchal foundations”.
“Not only is the song called ‘Russian Woman,’ but its message is openly feminist and mocking of the established “way of life” in Russia,” said Vyacheslav Polovinko, a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta.
Dynamics of commentary activity under Official Video Russia (infographic)
The graph of the dynamics of commentary activity under the video Official Video Russia clearly shows the trend of gradual politicization of the song. On the first day, the video gathered up to 8,000 comments, and then there was a gradual decrease in interest.
Then, on March 16-18, we saw a new rise in commentary activity. On that day it became known that the editors of “Veteranskie Vesti” (Veteran News) applied to the Russian Investigative Committee (IC) with a request to institute criminal proceedings for incitement of ethnic hatred in connection with the release of the song “Russian woman”. “Veterans’ Vesti is a media partner of the Federal Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.
Since then, the situation around the song “Russian Woman” has become so politicized that interest in the video increased only after certain politicians made statements.
The next rise in commentary activity came on March 31, when Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko criticized the lyrics.
Thus, the measurement of the commentary activity shows that Manizha’s performance is significant not only musically, but also from the public and even political point of view.
Analyzing commentary tone using machine learning models
Three videos of Manizha’s performance at Eurovision alone on the official Eurovision channel on YouTube gathered a total of about 40 million views and about 300,000 comments.
At first glance, watching the comments, one might get the impression that a negative attitude towards the performance of the singer Manizha prevails among them. But is this really the case?
To answer this question, we have extracted 94,107 comments from three main videos of Manizha’s performances uploaded on the official Eurovision channel on Youtube service: Official Video Russia (42948 comments), Russia First-Semi-Final (41238 comments) and Russia Grand Final (9921 comments).
We used the Dostoevsky library in Python to evaluate the tone of the text; the comments were classified into three groups: positive sentiment, negative sentiment, and neutral speech.
In the analysis, we excluded particular speech segments – official greetings, gratifying and congratulatory messages, and omissions (comments in which the classifier could not identify the sentiments).
Note that using the Dostoevsky library for sentiment analysis is the most optimal choice for this study. At the same time, it is quite difficult to assess the accuracy of the degree of classification of this model.
Analysis of the Tone of Russian-Language Comments (infographic)
From the chart of the results of the analysis of the tone of the Russian-language comments under the three videos, we can see that about 40-50% of the comments under each video were classified as neutral, about 26-36% as positive, and about 18-21% as negative.
Comparing the indicators of the three videos, we can see dynamic changes in the sentiments of the commenters.
The first video (Official Video Russia) received relatively many “dislikes,” which accounted for more than half of the positive ones (194,000 dislikes versus 361,000 likes). This video also received the largest number of negative comments, 20.93%. There were 25.99% of positive comments and 47.74% of neutral comments.
In the other two videos, the situation was much better for the singer. In Russia First-Semi-Final, the number of positive comments has already almost twice exceeded the number of negative comments – 35.91% vs. 18.10%.
In the third video Russia Grand Finale, the ratio slightly changed not in favor of the singer Manizha – 32.01% of positive comments against 20.62% of negative comments.
In the posts under the first video, many commenters, including positive ones, doubted the prospect of the song “Russian Woman” to make it to the finals. Therefore, we can very cautiously assume that the positive changes were also due to the fact that Manizha’s song was able to overcome this bar.
Thus, the total number of non-negative comments fluctuates between 78-81% and they clearly prevail (about 4 times) compared to 19-22% negative comments.
This means that the initial opinion of a clear predominance of negative comments was wrong.
Perhaps the initial evaluation of the video was influenced by the presence of Internet trolls in the comments, which distorted the overall picture and created a false impression that negative sentiments prevailed.
An Internet troll is a user who leaves an intentionally annoying or offensive message on the Internet in order to upset someone, attract attention or cause problems.
The average number of comments written from one unique account is 1.12-1.24 posts. However, the three most active commenters wrote 333 posts under the first video (Official Video Russia). All of these posts were negative.
In the other two videos, the number of comments written by trolls decreased significantly.
Table
The average number of comments written from one unique account is 1.12-1.24 posts. However, the three most active commenters wrote 333 posts under the first video (Official Video Russia). All of these posts were negative.
In the other two videos, the number of comments written by trolls decreased significantly.
Ethnicity and Gender
In the comments, especially under the first video, Manizha’s ethnicity is often mentioned. In this study, a frequency analysis of the roots of the following words was conducted.
Frequency analysis of words related to Manizha’s ethnic origin (Infographic)
For example, the comments under the first video often mention words with the roots “Taj” (over 1,200 words), “migrant” and “black” (74 words), “Oriental” (57), “Asian” (48).
In the comments under the second video, words with the root “taj” are already less frequent (882). Moreover, the second video has 6 million more views. The third video has even fewer words with the root “taj” (169).
In general, the words with this root were around 3.1 to 4.8% of all comments (4.8% under the first video, 3.8% under the second and 3.1% under the third).
Often, offensive slang words were used in such comments.
Frequency analysis of words related to the civic position of the singer Manizha (Infographic)
Also in the comments, there are relatively frequent words with the root “feminine” – 907 and LGBT, which reflects the public stance of Manizha to combat domestic violence and increase the role of women.
Approximately 2-3% of all Russian-language comments contained words with these roots (the first video 3%, the second video 2.23% and the third video 2.2%).
In general, comments that used words related to ethnicity and the singer’s civic position ranged from 5.3% to 8% of the total number.
In our opinion, this indicator is important for a music video.
Conclusion
Of course, the results obtained should be treated with a certain degree of caution, as they cannot be unequivocally projected onto any one country or another, since the Internet is a global phenomenon.
Nevertheless, it is possible to draw some conclusions. The opinion that the majority of Russian-speaking users of YouTube criticized the Russian representative Manizha is wrong. Negative comments do not make up even a third of the total number of posts. Thus, the analysis using ML (machine learning) models, with all its shortcomings, allows us to give a more objective assessment of the situation.
Of course, we cannot say that all the commenters who left negative posts under the video “Russian woman” are xenophobes and sexists.
However, judging by the frequency analysis of words, we can confidently conclude that for a significant number of Russian-speaking users ethnicity is still important. This analysis also shows a high level of sexist attitudes among Russian-speaking users.
However, based on the indicators of the three videos we can also conclude that these sentiments are not a constant. The situation can be influenced and these attitudes can change in one direction or another, including through the influence of the media and social networks.
The controversy surrounding the song “Russian Woman” that reached the Russian Senate shows that the arts are increasingly influencing politics. The significance of some such incidents is exaggerated deliberately to divert public attention from more significant issues – corruption, unfair election results, torture in prisons, etc.
However, in the author’s view, this does not apply to the song “Russian Woman. Manizha’s manifesto speaks of the unacceptability of the dictates of “traditional” gender stereotypes, the most important and urgent issue of the modern world.