This dataset consists of open source user data collected from the Russian social media platform VKontakte during two periods. The first period of collection was between November 2019 and January 2021, while the second period was between September and October 2022.
In the first period, target groups were monitored for slightly over a year, and new users were collected in batches. As a result, there should theoretically be no duplicates, as each subsequent tranche of collection should consist only of new users who joined since the prior collection period.
In the second period in 2022, user lists for target groups were identified once in early September, and collection on those groups proceeded for two months due to the time required to fully collect data from the target groups.
In both phases of collection, we targeted VKontakte groups of interest associated with communities of Russian paramilitary groups and/or ultranationalist activists, finding considerable overlap in membership among these groups.
During the 2019-2021 collection, we targeted the then-principal VKontakte group associated with the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, called "PMC Wagner-Military Review" (ЧВК Вагнера - военное обозрение), along with associated groups such as the Nordic Resistance Movement (Nordiska motståndsrörelsen), Evil Novorossiya (Злая Новороссия), Rusich (ДШРГ Русич), the Russian Imperial Movement (Русское Имперское Движение), and others. In this period, we collected data from 11,071 users in the Wagner Group, 3,368 from Rusich, and 3,582 from the Russian Imperial Movement.
In the 2022 collection, we targeted only three groups: the same "PMC Wagner-Military Review" VKontakte group, the largest existing group for Rusich, and the main group for the Russian Imperial Movement. In this later phase, we were able to collect the complete membership of the Rusich and Russian Imperial Movement groups, consisting of 10,139 and 21,296 users, respectively, but only a subset of the Wagner Group, representing around 10 percent of its then-membership (23,181 users out of a total of approximately 220,000), due to changes in the group's privacy settings. Note that some of these collected users were deleted or banned, resulting in blank data for those accounts. The significant increase in group membership between the two collection periods demonstrates the considerable expansion of these groups in the interim period.
These groups were specifically targeted due to their association with Russian paramilitary organizations and ultranationalist activism, which are of significant interest to researchers studying these phenomena. As stated in the related report, "Our initial questions about the motivations and social ties of Wagner fighters had led us to a cadre of individuals who appeared to perform military tasks that were similar to that of Russian special forces field commanders. Moreover, the sheer volume of data they posted and the clues extant in both the content and the metadata of their posts in many cases allowed us to trace their movements in space and time in Ukraine and in some cases hotspots around the world. We decided, therefore, to focus on analyzing user profile information and demographics that might reveal more about the strength of network ties between the Wagner Group, Rusich, and the Russian Imperial Movement."
However, it should be noted that the data collection process was limited by the privacy settings of some groups and the availability of data on the platform, particularly in the case of the "PMC Wagner-Military Review" group in the 2022 collection period.
(2024-12-09)
