#HaStatoPutin Affinity Space: From Political Work to Autotelic Humor

Abstract

This article reports the findings of a diachronic sociopragmatic study on the politically loaded Italian hashtag #HaStatoPutin based on an automatically generated corpus of tweets (N = 31,334), encompassing two datasets from before and after what Putin originally called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine that commenced on 24 February 2022. #HaStatoPutin appeared on Twitter in 2015 to mark tweets criticizing what Italian users considered to be unsupported conspiracy theories targeting Vladimir Putin, viewed by these users as a scapegoat in mainstream political rhetoric spread in the Western world. As this comparative study shows, the emergent applications of the hashtag are hardly affected by the events of 2022, indicating the stability of the expression and the political opinions of polarized Italian society, regardless of the socio-political context. Specifically, four tweet categories, which express tweeters’ political opinions or serve humorous purposes, are identified in both datasets: dissociative echo, counter-criticism, mock conspiracy theories, and metacomments. Given the specificity of #HaStatoPutin, its political contextualization, and applications, with which the users need to be familiar to create and understand tagged tweets, it is proposed that the tweeting practice makes for a “hashtag affinity space” on Twitter.

Introduction

This article investigates the use of an offbeat, iconoclastic hashtag #HaStatoPutin (an ungrammatical statement meaning “Putin did it”) salient on the Italian cultural panorama. According to a tweet posted on 19 March 2022, “In the Italian tw [Twitter] space we used to joke with an [sic] hashtag, #hastatoputin, to ironize against Western propaganda habit, to attribuite [sic] to Vladimir Putin every bad thing the West, itself, causes or doesn’t achive [sic].” A pending question, which this study seeks to answer, is whether Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 did indeed put an end to the use of the viral pro-Putin hashtag when there was no denying what Putin had done. The central objective is to examine the categories of tweets bearing the #HaStatoPutin hashtag, with an eye to detecting potential changes in its use starting on the invasion day, which marks a watershed in contemporary world history.

A contribution is thus made to the research on distinctive politically loaded hashtags (e.g., De Cock & Pizarro Pedraza, 2018; Hayes, 2017; Johansson et al., 2018; Ross & Bhatia, 2019; Zappavigna, 2018) that evince humorous potential and that epitomize the contemporary participatory culture as facilitating civic engagement (Jenkins, 2009). In the light of this empirical analysis, it is argued that Italian Twitter users build an online affinity space (Gee, 2004, 2005, 2007) based on their mutual learning and sharing of compatible tweets. This theoretical proposal of a hashtag affinity space (see also Dynel & Ross, 2022) is offered as an alternative to what has been previously considered hashtag-based “Twitter communities” (e.g., Bruns & Burgess, 2011; Ross & Bhatia, 2019; Zappavigna, 2018). This is partly in line with the approach taken by Hayes (2017, p. 119), who presents a selected hashtag through the lens of an affinity space (characterized by several related features of varying significance), which, as she claims, “may constitute a public through participants’ mutual affinity.” The proposal put forward here focuses on the joint learning of the hashtag and the communicative product, that is, hashtag use in tweets, rather than participants’ learning about any underlying social phenomenon or their relationship building.

This article is structured into seven sections. Following this introduction, the second section showcases the pertinent socio-political context of the hashtag’s emergence as a response to anti-Putin conspiracy theories, which is the focus of the following section. Further, I explain the “before-the-invasion” and “after-the-invasion” corpus data generation, tagging, and presentation. Then, four overarching categories of #HaStatoPutin tweets in both subcorpora are depicted. The discussion offers central findings about the sociopragmatic functions of the hashtag, and a proposal to view the hashtag’s use as being conducive to a hashtag affinity space. I propose this notion to capture #HaStatoPutin, as well as other hashtags, especially those which escape qualification as simple topics of interest and require pragmatic awareness. The article closes with conclusions about the hashtag’s use (in the context of diverse political discourses and opinions) and suggestions for future research.

Socio-Political Context of #HaStatoPutin

To understand the rationale behind the virality of #HaStatoPutin, it is crucial to appreciate the relevant socio-political context of the hashtag’s emergence and use. Over the past two decades, the relations between the United States, the European Union and the Russian Federation have been worsening (Foglesong, 2018; Harrell et al., 2017). This is due to unquestionable political facts, such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the long-lasting armed conflict in Donbas, which culminated in Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. However, besides these unquestionable facts, allegations about Putin’s influence on the international arena have abounded for years. These include concerns about Russia’s presumed intervention in the 2016 US presidential election and in EU elections in 2017, as well as Russia’s alleged support for President Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2017. Consequently, mainstream Western-centric rhetoric has traditionally depicted Russia as a threat to international peace and security. ¹ Part of these incriminating claims and speculations about Russia’s interference do not appear to have been supported by any solid evidence, and thus they cannot be considered convincing.

A competitive view holds that, for decades, Russia has been a political scapegoat and a bugbear conceived by politicians and mainstream media, mainly in the United States and the European Union, ² which has threatened Russia’s national security. ³ The various accusations of Russian trolls (Putin’s mouthpiece) sharing disinformation and fake news to garner public interest and influence politics (Brattberg & Maurer, 2018) have been conceptualized as a global plot to vilify the country and its leader (Kovalik, 2017; Simons, 2019). According to this view, the neo-liberal Western mainstream media have built a negative picture of Russia to cause moral panic and justify the thorny political decisions in Western countries (Simons, 2019). The opponents of this view, however, frame it as a long-standing argument used by most nationalist/expansionist authoritarian one-party states to justify and shore up the legitimacy of their actions. There is no denying that this skepticism seems appealing especially in the light of the 2022 invasion commenced on the pretext of rescuing the Russian people allegedly subjected to 8 years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine’s government. ⁴

These clashing perspectives on the Putin-led Russia reflected by international media rhetoric translate into divergent sentiments expressed by citizens from various countries. What is crucial here is that a 2015 Ipsos survey ⁵ reported Italians to regard Russia as the most influential country globally and Putin as a strong political leader. Also, Pew Research Center’s 2020 Global Attitudes Survey ⁶ showed that, among Western countries, Italians had the highest confidence in Putin. Moreover, according to a 2021 Demos survey, ⁷ Italian center-right and right-wing politicians considered the Russian President the best leader. Shockingly, according to a 2022 poll for SGW, ⁸ approximately 12% of all Italians and as much as 36% of right-wing Italian voters deem the Russian invasion of Ukraine justified.

This positive evaluation of Putin popular among Italians, as well as Italian-Russian political connections (Makarychev & Terry, 2020), may explain the emergence and prevalent use of the catchphrase “HaStatoPutin” as a tool to display support for him. Over the years, the expression “HaStatoPutin” has featured on many Italian news websites, such as Ricognizioni, Scenari Economici, L’Impaginato, VoxNews, Il Tempo, L’Antidiplomatico, and Formiche, ⁹ which engage in non-mainstream right-wing media rhetoric. Most importantly here, #HaStatoPutin is a viral hashtag on Italian Twitter, accompanying tweets primarily from Italians or users fluent in Italian and immersed in the Italian lingua-culture.

#HaStatoPutin as a Response to Anti-Putin Conspiracy Theories

A query submitted through Twitter API on 26 March 2022 for all #HaStatoPutin tweets since 2006 (Twitter’s beginnings) yielded the harvest of 31,334 tweets and indicated that the first tweets bearing #HaStatoPutin appeared in 2015, while the year 2016 saw a surge of over 800 such tweets. The first tweet (from April 2015) is not very telling for it amounts merely to “#HaStatoPutin,” but the second one (from October 2015) reads, “I sottotitoli saranno anche fasulli, ma sono estremamente ‘realistici.’ #hastatoputin” (“Subtitles must be fake, but they are extremely ‘realistic.’ #hastatoputin”) and provides a link to a now deleted YouTube video. This tweet comments on some peculiar subtitles, for which the blame is humorously placed on Putin. These first two instantiations of the hashtag seem to indicate that the expression had already come into existence outside Twitter. Regrettably, unlike in the case of some other hashtags inspired by specific events with traceable origins (see, for example, Hayes, 2017; Ross & Bhatia, 2019), the exact provenance of #HaStatoPutin cannot be determined.

As reported by non-academic sources, ¹⁰ “HaStatoPutin” was designed to mock those who view Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as a secretive power attempting to sabotage international politics, especially in Western countries. This hashtag involves a deliberate grammatical error, being an incorrect form of “è stato Putin” (“Putin has done it” or “Putin did it”), based on the purposeful confusion of two Italian auxiliary verbs, “essere” (“to be”) and “avere” (“to have”), which uneducated Italians tend to mistake unwittingly. Thus, this expression was coined to mimic the discourse of a naïve person that can endorse what Italian users consider unfounded conspiracy theories shared across mainstream media that hold the Russian President accountable for various problems in the socio-political arena.

A conspiracy theory may be defined as a narrative that attempts to explain a socio-political fact, practice, or future event as a negative outcome of powerful people’s clandestine machinations and secretive self-serving acts (see Fenster, 1999; Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009; Uscinski & Parent, 2014). In both popular parlance and academic discourse, the notion of a “conspiracy theory” functions mainly as a pejorative term (see, for example, Bjerg & Presskorn-Thygesen, 2017; Martin, 2020; Wood, 2016). According to deHaven-Smith (2013), the term “conspiracy theory” was popularized by the CIA’s propaganda in 1964 concerning President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, being promoted as a stigmatizing label for any hypothesis that challenged the official government-endorsed explanation. Calling an idea a “conspiracy theory” typically means that the speaker finds the labeled suspicion ridiculous and scoffs at it (Sunstein & Vermeule, 2009). Interestingly, conspiracy theories need not come from stigmatized sources inherently associated with misinformation, as the data in the present project indicate, often referring to conspiracy theories from (seemingly trustworthy) politicians and journalists voicing their views on mainstream media.

Also, it needs to be underscored that the intuitively felt pejorative undertones of the label “conspiracy theory” are, at least partly, unwarranted, because narratives known as conspiracy theories (whether or not widely endorsed) may actually represent the truth, which is never to be categorically known. The crux of the matter is that individual people make their own decisions about whether or not a given thesis is sound and whether they believe it to be factual, based on the evidence at hand, or whether they dismiss it as outrageous. This latter path is taken by those Twitter users who deride conspiracy theories against Putin presented in mainstream media reports, indicating their intent with #HaStatoPutin. The empirical focus of this article is Italian users’ tagged tweets, with no judgment being passed by the present author on the factual adequacy or otherwise gauged appropriateness of the tweets or any conspiratorial discourse echoed within.

As is the case with other hashtags (cf. De Cock & Pizarro Pedraza, 2018), the uses of #HaStatoPutin have gone beyond directly criticizing conspiracy theories targeting Putin and veered into other directions, which are examined here.

Methodology

The description of #HaStatoPutin offered in this article capitalizes on an automatically generated corpus of tweets in Italian. Based on a previously obtained permission, these Twitter data were crawled on 26 March 2022 with the use of the official Twitter API through a Python source code. The aim was to extract all tweets (excluding retweets) divided into two subsets: before (N = 30,791) and after (N = 543) the early morning invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Each set was saved in an Excel file to guarantee the data’s stability (with tweets being easily deleted by their authors on a daily basis).

The bigger subcorpus (N = 30,791) covered the period of nearly 74 months (between 1 January 2016—the year when the hashtag started to grow in popularity following the first two 2015 tweets—and 23 February 2022), with an average of approximately 416 tweets per month, and was not amenable to manual analysis in its entirety. Hence, a randomized sample of anonymized #HaStatoPutin tweets (n = 1,000) was extracted. Thus, any bias that could have arisen if this dataset had been limited to a specific timespan was minimized. Contextualized tweets coming in reply to previous ones and/or not representing free-floating meaningful units that could be made sense of (e.g., posts amounting only to the hashtag or the hashtag and emoji) were discarded from the dataset (with the preceding tweets not being ethically retrievable), and other ones were randomly added to reach the number of 1,000. This is what was considered both sufficient to guarantee the saturation of description and manageable, that is amenable to manual discourse analysis. The comparative subcorpus encompassed all tweets posted within a month after the invasion, that is between 24 February 2022 and 25 March 2022, when user reactions to the shocking news about the war were expected to be the strongest. Consequently, if there were any changes to take place in the pro-Putin hashtag’s use, the data collected from the first month after the invasion would have shown this. Given its smaller size, this subcorpus was considered in its entirety (N = 543). As in the other subcorpus, ambivalent, or semantically empty tweets were deleted to arrive at a set of 437 relevant examples, constituting meaningful, independent posts.

The manual analysis of the examples in the entire two-fold dataset (translated from Italian to English) focused on the central verbal part of the tweets, as well as any accompanying multimodal material (images, GIFs, together with linked tweets and newspaper articles), which could be vetted based on the links compiled in the database. The data were examined in line with the premises of multimodal critical discourse analysis, which sees the combination of multiple components across modes as the source of the communicated meaning (e.g., Machin, 2013; Machin & Mayr, 2012). Following a grounded-theory approach and an iterative procedure, the author and her co-researcher (working independently) did provisional open-coding of the tweets in terms of the form and function and discussed the emergent patterns to jointly arrive at the four mutually exclusive categories of tweets, which were duly validated as being exhaustive of both datasets.

The anonymized tweets used for exemplification in the course of the analysis below are presented in the original form (including their linguistic infelicities) but are limited to the main verbal component and emoji. However, if present, any multimodal content attached or linked to the cited tweets is briefly depicted as much as necessary for the import of the tweets to be understood.

Categories of #HaStatoPutin Tweets

In both pre-invasion and post-invasion datasets, the tweets with the #HaStatoPutin hashtag fall into four overarching categories described in the four sub-sections below.

Dissociative Echo

The first major category of tweets encompasses user posts, ranging from bare links to, or reposts of, items of news or previous statements, which are commented on solely with #HaStatoPutin, to tongue-in-cheek explanations, elaborations, or extrapolations based on the encountered conspiracy theories and other claims often embedded in the tweets. The invoked news reports, claims, or statements are dissociatively echoed and thus criticized as being unfounded by the tweeters.

The notion of dissociative echoing involves disagreement with, and negative evaluation of, a previous thought, whether or not explicitly expressed. This notion has been used previously with regard to the figure of irony (for an overview, see Piskorska, 2016), as well as parody (see Dynel, 2020, 2021), but it can easily manifest itself otherwise (see also Diez-Arroyo, 2018), as the data at hand indicate. The “dissociative echo” label is used here in reference to tweets that target specific conspiracy theories or claims, where #HaStatoPutin unequivocally signals the tweeter’s dissociative attitude. Examples 1–3 come from before the invasion.

(1) Se non vince il candidato scelto dalla élite allora è colpa di Putin #HaStatoPutin https://twitter.com/Corriere/status/828745539718115329 . . .

 If the candidate chosen by the elite does not win, then it is Putin’s fault #HaStatoPutin https://twitter.com/Corriere/status/828745539718115329 . . .

The tweet in Example 1 dates to the time of the 2017 French presidential election contested between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. It takes as its point of departure rumors about Russian dossiers containing plans to discredit Macron’s candidacy and promote Le Pen, regarded as the anti-establishment candidate, as reported by Corriere in the embedded tweet that offers a link to the relevant article. Hence, the tweeter summarizes a possible accusation that might arise if the mainstream “candidate chosen by the elite” should not win. The use of #HaStatoPutin indicates that the tweeter does not endorse the preceding statement and echoes it dissociatively. Thereby, the tweeter expresses their critical attitude towards this unfounded, in their view, accusation and the reported conspiracy theory, which must have originated from the connections between Le Pen and Putin. ¹¹

A topically related tweet in Example 2 concerns German elections and illustrates a different application of the hashtag, namely as if “HaStatoPutin” is uttered by the proponents of the conspiracy theory.

(2) Se le elezioni non andranno come vogliono loro, le annulleranno dicendo che #hastatoPutin. https://twitter.com/FT/status/814798958946086912 . . .

 If the elections don’t go the way they want, they’ll cancel them by saying #hastatoPutin. https://twitter.com/FT/status/814798958946086912 . . .

The user cheekily claims that if Merkel and her party should not win the—at the time—forthcoming German elections, these will be canceled on the pretext that the results have been rigged by Putin. Thus, this tweet echoes dissociatively the allegation shared by Financial Times in the embedded tweet about Russian hackers, as a metonymic extension of Putin, in control of free elections (cf. “Angela Merkel and her ministers fear Russian hackers are already trying to disrupt the German elections”). The sarcastic wit of this tweet may indicate the tweeter’s sense of frustration or irritation at the behind-the-stalls machinations of those in power. Interestingly, as signposted above, this user attributes the utterance of the hashtag to those endorsing the conspiracy theory as if they could produce “ha stato Putin” sincerely, without the tongue-in-cheek attitude that the hashtag typically carries when used by tweeters. The incorrect grammatical form of this expression used in this type of voicing manifests itself as an indication of the stupidity of the generic advocate of what the user considers an unsupported conspiracy theory against Putin and the ridiculousness of the accusation. Needless to say, no advocate of any conspiracy theory will sincerely use this expression.

A marked realization of this dissociative echoing category involves tweeters constructing absurd, and hence utterly unbelievable, scenarios that serve as the cues to dissociation besides the hashtag, as in Example 3. It opens with a quotation attributed to Joe Biden, the US vice-President at the time, about Putin’s influence on the negative result of the constitutional referendum (concerning a law that was to reform the composition and division of powers) held in Italy on 4 December 2016. As if in a dialogic reply (indicated by the quotation marks) to this conspiracy theory, the tweeter concocts an absurd explanation to account for their negative vote. Thereby, the user dissociatively echoes and ridicules the conspiracy theory concerning the referendum result.

(3) Biden: “Russia ha agito per influenzare il referendum in Italia.”

 “Lo ammetto, il 4 Dicembre di un anno fa in cabina elettorale a tracciare la croce sul NO non ero io, bensì un sosia di nazionalità russa mandato da Putin.”

 #hastatoPutin #Referendum #Biden

 Biden: “Russia acted to influence the referendum in Italy.”

 “I admit it, on 4th December last year in the voting booth it was not me who traced the cross on the NO, but rather a double of Russian nationality sent by Putin.”

 #hastatoPutin #Referendum #Biden

The same use of #HaStatoPutin has been detected in the post-invasion dataset, addressing the relevant socio-political issues, not necessarily concerning the invasion, as Example 4 illustrates.

(4) La scusa pronta per i disservizi italiani #hastatoPutin

 https://t.co/qxkBruYgZ0

 The ready excuse for Italian inefficiencies #hastatoPutin

 https://t.co/qxkBruYgZ0

This tweet includes a link to Rai’s news reporting on a cyberattack disabling railway ticket sales and the already disconfirmed allegations spread by Italian security that this malfunction was of Russian hackers’ doing. The tweeter thus critically comments on the easy blame-calling and scapegoating Russia for Italy’s internal problems, such as the national railway ticket system.

What comes to the fore in the post-invasion subcorpus is dissociative echoing of the prevalent rhetoric which does not qualify as conspiracy theorizing about the attack as such (there being no questioning of the origin of the “special military operation”). Instead, the critical tweets target political claims about, and accounts of, the war and the current socio-political and economic situation consequent upon the decisions made outside Russia in the wake of the invasion.

(5) E dopo il merdone pestato a grande richiesta torna un classico intramontabile: #hastatolaRussia #hastatoPutin https://t.co/DPqmkKMMab

 And after the shit repeated on popular demand a timeless classic returns: #hastatolaRussia #hastatoPutin https://t.co/DPqmkKMMab

Example 5 contains a repost of La Stampa’s tweet advertising an interview with its editor-in-chief Massimo Giannini, who dispels previous doubts against his newspaper and asserts that it reports the horrifying war reality, while it is Russia that spreads misinformation. This is the sentiment that the tweeter censures as misinformation meant for the masses. The accompanying hashtags are echoed dissociatively as falsely accusatory clichés against Russia. This tweet represents an ongoing rhetorical battle about misinformation in the media and testifies to the polarization of Italian society in their perception of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its ensuing political and economic consequences.

Counter-Criticism

Tweets coded into this category encompass users’ reports on what they deem socio-political facts, picturing Russia as an unfairly accused and disparaged scapegoat, marginalized by Western countries operating on double standards. The hashtag is used primarily as a representation of the prevalent anti-Russian bias, which the users defy. Also, #HaStatoPutin marks tweets addressing the perceived hypocrisy of the Western world, finding fault not with Putin but rather with the accusers, as Examples 6 and 7 (before the invasion) and Examples 8 and 9 (after the invasion indicate).

(6) Gli hooligans inglesi devastano Marsiglia. Arrivano i russi e gli danno una lezione . . . . Indovinate la #UEFA chi inquisisce? #hastatoPutin

 English hooligans devastate Marseille. Russians arrive and teach them a lesson . . . . Guess who is #UEFA prosecuting? #hastatoPutin

Closing with a rhetorical question, Example 6 offers an implicit critical commentary on what the user considers the unfair treatment of Russian fans in comparison to English ones, who got scot-free after devastating Marseille. By contrast, Russian fans got prosecuted by UEFA for a violent clash they had with the former after a draw in the England versus Russia match at Euro 2016. As indicated by the emoji, the user finds amusing both these double standards and the perceived discrimination against Russia, which contrasts with the Russian President’s status as the clichéd political culprit.

Moreover, apart from pointing to double standards, the hashtag in the focus of attention marks tweets that offer counter-conspiracy theories targeting the West, as Example 7 demonstrates.

(7) Americane che scianguinano dal naso mentre corrono in bicicletta. Ma squalificano le russe! #hastatoputin #Rio2016

 Americans who bleed from their noses while riding bicycles. But they disqualify Russians! #hastatoputin #Rio2016

Example 7 implicitly comments on an incident from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. US athlete Kristin Armstrong developed a nosebleed (a potential indication of doping) during the race but won with her Russian rival Olga Zabelinskaya, while several Russian athletes had been banned from Rio 2016 altogether, following accusations of doping. Thus, through making this juxtaposition, the tweeter points to the double standards and suggests the political rationale underlying the disqualification of Russian athletes. According to the tacitly put forward conspiracy theory, Russia and its sportspeople were deliberately penalized at the sports event for political reasons.

Not surprisingly, the post-invasion subcorpus contains similar examples that address specifically the topic of the invasion. While some of the users concentrate on criticizing Italian affairs, as in Example 8, others adamantly take the Russian side, as in Example 9.

(8) Some’ll say, fake news. . .

 Certo è più comodo usare l’#HaStatoPutin piuttosto che addossarsi la responsabilità di scelte economiche suicide che ci faranno tornare alle macerie del dopoguerra

 https://t.co/hvr9duHtNB

 Some’ll say, fake news. . .

 Of course it is more convenient to use #HaStatoPutin than to take responsibility for suicidal economic choices that will make us return to the post-war rubble

 https://t.co/hvr9duHtNB

This bilingual tweet encompasses an embedded tweet from @LaStampa advertising their article which quotes Putin’s statement that the increase in petrol and gas prices does not depend on Russia. Whether or not the tweeter endorses the sentiment expressed by Putin (who disavows any responsibility for economic problems and points to the sanctions imposed on his country), they criticize the government’s economic decisions and policies, as well as their rhetorical strategy that lays all the blame on Putin.

(9) Quindi gli europei mandano armi all'Ucraina, che non fa parte della NATO e della UE e sta armando mercenari NAZISTI o cittadini inermi.

 Ma poi se succede una strage #hastatoPutin.

 Ecco a voi la solita viscida e schifosa ipocrisia occidentale.

 Non c'è nulla da salvare.

 So the Europeans are sending weapons to Ukraine, which is not part of NATO and the EU and is arming Nazi mercenaries or defenceless citizens.

 But then if a massacre occurs #hastatoPutin.

 Here is the usual slimy and disgusting Western hypocrisy.

 There is nothing to rescue.

In this unequivocally pro-Russian tweet, the perceived Western hypocrisy is explicated (with the logic of the argument being open to doubt). The user sees it in the EU’s and NATO’s different treatment of the conflicted countries: supporting Ukraine with weapons while blaming Putin for multiple deaths (i.e., the genocide of Ukrainian civilians). The tweeter also seems to endorse the Russian rhetoric and Putin’s pernicious propaganda concerning “Nazi” Ukrainians. ¹² Even though a far-right movement has been reported to exist in Ukraine (see Katchanovski, 2016), Putin appears to have hyperbolized its size and influence to legitimize his military invasion. The tweeter, however, takes Putin’s argumentation at face value and legitimizes it, pouring scorn on the Western world instead.

While the pro-Russian political thrust of this and the previous category of tweets cannot be denied, it is not intrinsic to the tweets falling into the remaining two categories.

Mock Conspiracy Theories

HaStatoPutin also marks inherently humorous tweets that can be considered mock conspiracy theories. Specifically, the tweeters present various public non-political facts or personal issues (typically, insignificant and, likely, fabricated), purporting to attribute them to Putin even though he cannot possibly be, or have been, involved. The tweeters must wish other users to recognize that the accusations are absurd and that they are not sincerely proposing that the Russian President is to blame, which would be irrational. The qualifier “mock” proposed here to conceptualize this practice reflects the two senses of the word’s dictionary definition: not genuine/sincere but only purported, and to mimic based on copying and making fun of someone. Posting mock conspiracy theories, users seem either to poke fun at the (totality of) accusations leveled at Putin through offering these mock accusations, presumably considered to be as preposterous as the sincerely endorsed conspiracy theories, which are thus implicitly derided; or to use the hashtag non-politically as autotelic humor, that is, humor for its own sake (see Dynel, 2018), merely to manifestly display their knowledge of the hashtag and its application. In either case, the hashtag is deployed as the central sense-making component of the tweets, as Examples 10 and 11 (from before the invasion) illustrate.

(10) Stamattina il cane si comporta in modo strano . . . #HaStatoPutin

 This morning the dog is behaving strangely . . . #HaStatoPutin

The tweeter overtly pretends to blame their dog’s strange behavior on Putin. Whether or not the user could indeed observe the dog’s peculiar behavior, the invocation of the hashtag brings in an implicit accusation that cannot be sincerely made. The absurdity of this conspiracy theory offered with humorous intent is evident given the triviality of the personal problem (cf. the tweeter cannot possibly believe that Putin is responsible for their dog’s behavior). However, it is not clear whether the non-humorous thrust of the humorous tweet is criticism of anti-Putin conspiracy theories taken as a whole. Such political import is more evident in Example 11.

(11) Il #TG5 ha detto che l’andata di freddo è colpa della Russia. Praticamente #HaStatoPutin

 #TG5 said that the cold wave was Russia’s fault. In other words #HaStatoPutin

Example 11 refers to what seems to be a genuine weather forecast (aired in an Italian news program called TeleGiornale 5) that attributed (in a non-political sense) the cold patch to a front coming from Russia. The tweeter employs this information to humorously poke fun at anti-Putin conspiracy theories by absurdly suggesting that the weather is subject to human (Putin’s) control and can be deployed as a political weapon.

The same types of posts feature in the after-the-invasion dataset as if these Italian tweeters were impervious to the grave events and the validated accusations leveled against Putin, as they light-heartedly deploy #HaStatoPutin with a humorous intent (Examples 12 and 13).

(12) La tua ragazza/moglie ti mette le corna #HaStatoPutin

 When your girlfriend/wife is cheating on you #HaStatoPutin

(13) Una domanda . . . ma la Macedonia sostiene la Russia o l'Ucraina???

 Dico, per capire se #hastatoputin  

 #addiomondiale . . . again

 #ItaliaMacedonia

 A question . . . but Macedonia supports Russia or Ukraine???

 I mean, to understand if #hastatoputin  

 #addiomondiale . . . again

 #ItalyMacedonia

In Example 12, the tweeter overtly pretends to propose an absurd generic cause of female infidelity, a potentially prevalent personal non-political problem. Example 13 has more political undertones. Referring to Italy’s failure to qualify for the second consecutive World Cup thanks to the match with North Macedonia held on 24 March 2022, it illustrates a political reason being purportedly sought for the football fiasco. This evidently humorous tweet, as signposted by the grinning face emojis, implicitly suggests that Putin might be absurdly blamed for Italy’s loss in the match. However, the tweet may also be taken to make light of the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, to which the tweeter alludes.

Metacomments on #HaStatoPutin

The fourth group of tweets comprises metacomments on the HaStatoPutin, that is, anti-Putin, ideology and/or the applicability of the relevant hashtag, made with various types of sentiment (positive, critical, or neutral). These tweets offer general comments on the tendency to blame Russia, and hence the contexts in which “HaStatoPutin” comes in handy as the metonymic summary of what conspiracy theorists tend to do, as illustrated by Example 14.

(14) Quando la situazione è fuori controllo e il popolo si incazza, #HaStatoPutin, come se la #Russia disponesse di fondi illimitati per pianificare tutto ciò di cui viene accusata. pic.twitter.com/CWxTePd7aF

 When the situation is out of control and the people are pissed, #HaStatoPutin, as if #Russia has unlimited funds to plan whatever it is accused of.

 pic.twitter.com/CWxTePd7aF

Following a news article citing Merkel’s statement that Russia could be responsible for Covid-19 protests in Germany, the tweeter makes a general remark on the standard reason behind reproaching Russia for socio-political problems. The tweeter explicitly claims that blaming Russia, captured under the blanket term “HaStatoPutin,” is an easy rhetorical strategy to manage internal stability problems in front of the general public. The tweeter also suggests that it is physically impossible for Russia to interfere as much as it is accused of doing for lack of sufficient economic resources.

Another tweet in Example 15 makes an evaluative comment on the conspiracy theories labeled HaStatoPutin, presenting it as both grotesque (shocking) and dangerous. This is, presumably, because—unlike other well-entrenched unbelievable conspiracy theories (that shape-shifting reptilian aliens control the human world or that the planet Earth is flat), which had better be labeled “conspiracy fantasies” (Allington et al., 2021)—these “plausibly real conspiracies” (Allington et al., 2021, p. 80) may reflect in some evidence and ring true, thus causing many people to develop what Italian tweeters consider false beliefs, harmful at that.

(15) Di tutti i complottismi diffusi su media e web, quello di #hastatoputin è in assoluto il più grottesco (e pericoloso). Sì, più del terrapiattismo e dei rettiliani.

 Out of all the conspiracy theories spread by the media and the Internet, the #hastatoputin one is by far the most grotesque (and dangerous). Yes, more than flat-earth and reptilians.

Yet another tweet in the pre-invasion subcorpus comes from the Russian Embassy in Italy, which recognizes the prevalent HaStatoPutin conspiracy theories and addresses the phenomenon with self-deprecating humor (see Dynel & Poppi, 2020), as Example 16 shows.

(16) Bloccato nel traffico? Perso le elezioni? Addossa tutto du di noi! #rassegnastampa #trollrussi #HaStatoPutin

 Stuck in traffic? Lost the elections? Blame everything on us! #reviewofpapers #russiantrolls #hastatoputin

In the promotional tweet (popularized in tandem with an offline campaign), the Russian Embassy humorously bills itself as an easy scapegoat for a whole host of problems, both political affairs and ordinary hardships, inviting Italians in a tongue-in-cheek manner (as signposted by the emoticon indicating the “only joking” intent) to blame everything on the embassy. The tweet thus pays heed to existing conspiracy theories, some alleged to involve “Russian trolls”, found in media reports. While displaying the campaign creators’ sense of humor, this tweet seems to wittily scoff at the various conspiracy theories spread by the media. This tweet testifies to the hashtag’s political power as Russia’s representatives in Italy appropriate it to deflect the mainstream Western criticism.

Metacomments on the use of the hashtag are also present in the post-invasion dataset, being indicative of the users’ awareness of the changing political context but, at the same time, their imperviousness to it.

(17) #Hastatoputin è tornato in tendenza?

 #Hastatoputin is back in trend?

While there may be metacommenting tweets that acknowledge the gravity of the situation and recognize the severity of Putin’s political decisions (cf. the tweet in English quoted in the first paragraph of this article), the Italian tweets in the post-invasion subcorpus can be humorous and light-hearted in tone. The tweeter in Example 17 perceives the invasion as the reason for the regained popularity of the hashtag and/or the underlying accusatory claims prevalent in public discourse. This tweet, submitted in a jocular tone (as indicated by the “zany face” emoji), seems to be in line with the current uses of the hashtag that not only express little sympathy for Ukraine but also favor Putin’s rhetoric and sanction his actions.

Discussion

The close analysis of the #HaStatoPutin tweets in both subcorpora has shown that they fall into four overarching categories: dissociative echoing of conspiracy theories and other anti-Putin communications, counter-criticism of the West (juxtaposed with Russia, the scapegoat), mock conspiracy theories, and metacomments about HaStatoPutin. The presence of this hashtag on Italian Twitter is the consequence of Italians’ favorable opinions about the Russian President, as testified by various surveys conducted also after the invasion of Ukraine. The shocking news about the 2022 attack does not seem to have discouraged the use of the hashtag, which exhibits the same general frequency and the same applications before and after the invasion. Thus, clearly, some Italian tweeters did not change their political views about Putin as the easiest scapegoat of the Western-centric politics despite the daily reports of his ruthless decisions and the atrocities committed by the Russian army.

Italian users’ #HaStatoPutin tweets run counter to anti-Russian mainstream discourse, whether (indeed) unsupported conspiracy theories that picture President Putin as the root of all evil, which the tweeters find ludicrous, or factual reports on the ongoing military invasion, which #HaStatoPutin users sometimes construe as misinformation, as evidenced by their tweets (cf. Ross & Rivers, 2018 on a similar tweeting practice). Essentially, the Italian hashtag users tend to display a negative stance towards, and sometimes go as far as to ridicule, anti-Putin conspiracy theories (that they consider unfounded) or, generally, any anti-Russian bias. Alternatively, such extreme pro-Putin sentiment may be absent from tweets, with their focus being the criticism of Italian or, generally, Western politics. Taken together, these political tweets represent “civic engagement” facilitated by digital participatory culture (Jenkins, 2009) and are indicative of the political polarization of Italian society. However, rather than tacitly communicate any specific political critique or endorsement, mock conspiracy #HaStatoPutin tweets may be submitted primarily for the sake of autotelic humor, albeit tactless especially in the grave circumstances.

#HaStatoPutin is used as part of the tweet content per se or as meta-information separate from the tweet’s main message (see De Cock & Pizarro Pedraza, 2018; Zappavigna, 2018). In the former case, metonymically summarizing the anti-Putin theories, “HaStatoPutin” can be presented in the voice of the advocates of anti-Russian conspiracy theories—even though this is not an expression those would actually use—with the tweeter’s clear dissociative attitude towards it. Used as meta-information, #HaStatoPutin functions as a tongue-in-cheek comment that carries an implicit message that the Russian President is, in the tweeter’s opinion, not to blame, and disparages the perceived naïvety or illogicality of the claim(s) referred to. This implicit negative evaluation arising from an overtly untruthful expression (cf. “Putin did it”) is the essence of the figure of irony (see Dynel, 2018). Therefore, #HaStatoPutin may be thought of as an ironic statement condensed into one expression.

Because of its political import, the background sociopragmatic context and pragmatic competence necessary to post and comprehend the tweets at hand, #HaStatoPutin sheds light on an interesting aspect of hashtag use. As Bruns and Burgess (2011, p. 7) aptly put it,

to include a hashtag in one’s tweet is a performative statement: it brings the hashtag into being at the very moment that it is first articulated, and—as the tweet is instantly disseminated to all of the sender’s followers [as well as other users who chance upon it]—announces its existence. (That said, the extent to which the community around the hashtag becomes more than an issue public of one depends on its subsequent use by other participants, of course.)

What can be contributed to this is that further use of a specific hashtag depends on users’ learning. Based on the tweets they encounter, users need to extrapolate the meaning and function of a non-literal, unobvious hashtag, as well as the sense of the tweet in which it occurs. This allows them to spread the hashtag further, whether having the same or a different application, with each being amenable to further re-use, multiplication, and transformation as the hashtag reaches further users. This process may be thought of as building a hashtag affinity space.

The pivotal premise in Gee’s (2004, 2005, 2007) proposal of an “affinity space”—originally made in the field of education and literacy (with reference to informal learning) and nowadays employed across disciplines—is that of mutual teaching and learning among interactants that do not form a community. These diversified interactants (regardless of any demographic variables or personal differences) use portals, that is, spaces of interaction (such as Twitter), to mutually share their knowledge and expertise of many diverse kinds. In the context of the present topic of investigation, the sharing of knowledge concerns the understanding of the meaning and application of the hashtag at hand. It is thanks to this mass learning that the #HaStatoPutin affinity space has grown from two tweets in 2015 to over 31,000 tweets (not counting retweets) in the first quarter of 2022.

To capture the totality of tweeters engaged with a chosen hashtag, previous studies have invoked the notion of a “hashtag community” (Bruns & Burgess, 2011) or an “ad hoc community” (Ross & Bhatia, 2019). Referring to previous research, Zappavigna (2018, p. 122) observes that “hashtags are instrumental in forming communities” acting both as virtual sites and as markers of community membership. However, submitting independent tweets with hashtags can hardly be geared specifically towards, or indicative of, community building. Hence, the concept of a “hashtag-based Twitter community” is not too appealing. This is because of the standard understanding of the notion of a “community” or, specifically, community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) as a group of people that develop their “ways of doing things, views, values, power relations, ways of talking” (Eckert, 2006, p. 683), which communication research commonly takes as its point of departure.

While endorsing the notion of a “hashtag community,” Bruns and Burgess (2011, p. 5) present sound criticism of the “community” concept per se, stating that participants are not necessarily aware of one another and nor do they engage with one another, while “hashtags are merely a search-based mechanism for collating all tweets sharing a specific textual attribute, without any implication that individual messages are responding to one another (this is most evident in the case of emotive hashtags).” In addition, the idea of a community places emphasis on personal ties and a sense of belonging (Gee, 2005). Moreover, vast social media platforms, such as Twitter, make a community’s boundaries of membership difficult to establish, casting doubt on the applicability of the notion (see also Angouri, 2016).

Taking the above into account, the multiple (occasional) users of a given hashtag operating in an ephemeral interactional space on Twitter can hardly be seen as building a community of an indeterminate group of hashtag users. This is, among other things, because tweeters need not interact directly (cf. Zappavigna, 2018) or engage with one another as their central focus when contributing (or reading) a hashtagged tweet. It seems that people have the inner drive to share what they find worth their while and to generate interest, with trendy hashtags serving as the findability tool. In addition, users must be cognizant of the joint endeavor, that is, tweet sharing, but they can hardly appreciate all tweets, let alone build any relationships with their authors based merely on their engagement with one hashtag. While necessarily familiar with the nature of the hashtag-based practice, the users will be unaware of the content of individual tweets, given their sheer volume and constant expansion. However, while not directly interacting with each other, tweeters using a given hashtag interchangeably on the production and/or reception ends are engaged in a joint endeavor as the content is co-created and transformed through interaction, which is in line with the original definition of an affinity space.

The notion of a hashtag affinity space proposed here concerns the shared interactional space open to anybody interested and these interested users’ joint product, rather than their community membership, bonding, or solidarity building. Some hashtags, epitomized by #MeToo, may be inherently geared towards solidarity building. However, this is a matter of the import of the hashtag per se, rather than being the consequence of its occurrence in the interactional space, which is the current focus. Even if tweeters using #HaStatoPutin seem to tacitly subscribe to the opinion about anti-Putin bias, this does not suffice to view the tweets as being crucially a means of solidarity-building. Rather, the goal is to show an understanding of the hashtag and contribute to the interaction en masse.

As Gee (2007, p. 98) puts it, participants “‘bond’ first and foremost to an endeavor or interest” rather than to one another. This is because affinity spaces are loosely organized sociocultural settings where people interact “primarily in terms of common interests, endeavours, goals or practices” (Gee, 2005, p. 225), sharing and drawing on one another’s expertise. This is precisely what the ironic hashtag #HaStatoPutin represents as used in the four categories of tweets scattered on Twitter’s landscape. Rather than prioritizing interpersonal links (e.g., solidarity-building), the notion of affinity encompasses the idea of the understanding and sharing of content within a social space, which captures “the way in which people get and give meanings to signs within them” (Gee, 2005, p. 216). Some of the tweets from the metacomment and mock conspiracy theory categories must be motivated by the users’ wish to use #HaStatoPutin as if to manifest to other users that they know how to do it.

To summarize, the affinity space approach focuses on the interactional platform and the joint product (myriads of free-floating tweets) based on people learning from, and informally teaching, one another to negotiate and understand how an unobvious hashtag such as #HaStatoPutin is to be used and to what content it refers (involving pragmatic awareness of the specific hashtag and some socio-political insight). This kind of conceptualization enables eschewing the problematic notions of community, solidarity, or bonding among users.

Conclusion

This article has examined the sociopragmatics of the hashtag #HaStatoPutin based on an automatically generated corpus of tweets covering the period from 1 January 2016 to 25 March 2022, divided into two before- and after-the-invasion subcorpora. The hashtag at hand centers on a purposeful grammatical mistake, an indication of its ironic nature and users’ dissociative attitude, implicitly communicating that Putin cannot have done whatever he is being accused of and criticizing such claims. The tagged tweets fall into four categories, which bear out users’ learning-based joint activity that can be seen through the lens of a hashtag affinity space on Twitter, which is offered as the theoretical thrust of this article.

The diachronic comparative study reported here shows no change in the uses of #HaStatoPutin after the 24 February invasion and adduces evidence that most tweets serve as a means of voicing non-mainstream socio-political opinions. They constitute counter-discourse (Steger & Milicevic, 2014) and reflect the polarization of political vantage points among Italians. The tongue-in-cheek hashtag #HaStatoPutin continues to mark tweets that oppose the dominant discourse in which Russia’s leader is construed as the quintessential geopolitical villain. Some Italian users operating within the hashtag affinity space not only cast doubt on what they consider unfounded conspiracy theories or claims about him but also legitimize his military actions. Overall, the hashtag does complex political work by criticizing anti-Russian conspiracy theories and other claims that ritually attribute guilt for a plethora of social, political, and economic problems to Vladimir Putin, with the blame being sometimes laid on Western or Italian agents. However, part of the tweets may be taken only to indicate user awareness of the hashtag and its pragmatized meaning. This concerns some tweets that offer metacommentaries on the sociopragmatic practice with no pro-/anti-Russian political stance or apply it solely for humorous purposes with no political thrust, albeit exhibiting indifference to the grave events, as may be the case with mock conspiracy theories.

On a higher plane, trying to remain unbiased, the study has brought to the focus of attention the opposing views and discourses about Russia’s President, which must be approached with informed skepticism, especially when conspiracy theories are involved. The very existence of the hashtag at hand and its continued use after the February invasion indicate the plurality of political opinions on Russia (even) in the Western world. A pending question is whether the uses of #HaStatoPutin are ever amenable to change over time in the light of any future events. This is what further studies on the topic will be able to show. Another query submitted for future research is whether similar hashtags can be found in other languages, and thus whether the Russian President, or any other equally controversial political figure, has a similar following outside their country manifest in a hashtag affinity space, similar to the Italian one.