The Ukraine conflict has shaken Europe, and the world. The atrocities committed are difficult to deny, but then again, there are polar opinions, and stances, surrounding this conflict. For those who are not living under a rock, you might agree that disinformation is a big issue in today's world. It can maliciously affect the electorate's opinion, or influence individuals to commit irrational and harmful acts. On the other hand, it can be weaponized to discredit a group or an individual who has an unfavourable opinion. This problem is applied to the conflict in Ukraine. It is hard to know exactly which side has the "true" information as the two sides are giving polar opposite information on the conflict.

Knowing the problem stated above, Lex Fridman was astute enough to invite two individuals with polar opinions regarding the war in Ukraine on his podcast. At first, he had Oliver Stone (American film director, producer, and screenwriter) to discuss the issues surrounding the war in Ukraine. Stone has a very clear bias for Russia. Link to the interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygAqYC8JOQI

A few days later, Lex Fridman invited Stephen Kotkin (American historian, academic, and author.), to discuss the same topics. Kotkin is leaning towards the West and Ukraine. Link to the interview : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a7CDKqWcZ0&t=5128s

This effort by Lex Fridman to give his audience a better understanding of the conflict by inviting polar opposite views was personally enriching, but further analysis can be done.

The comment section is arguably as rich as the content itself, so I decided to scrape the comments and publish them so the community could draw analysis and exploit the data.

An idea would be to do a sentiment or polarization analysis with the two datasets, and see with which side the public agrees with.

License

CC-BY-NC

Original Data Source: Russia/Ukraine conflict - Youtube comments

This dataset provides values for GOLD RESERVES reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.