Resettlement of Ukrainians Panel (ReUP) - Building an access panel in crisis regions on the basis of social media

The project “Resettlement of Ukrainians Panel (ReUP)” primarily pursues a methodological objective: it explores whether a robust online access panel can be built during an ongoing crisis—in this case, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine—using social media advertisements. Individuals in Ukraine and abroad are targeted via Facebook and Instagram ads, invited to participate in an online survey, and recruited for follow-up waves. This creates a panel that enables the tracking of attitudes, attachments, and mobility trajectories over time.

ReUP addresses a central challenge in empirical social research: in conflict and displacement situations, fast, flexible, yet systematic data collection tools are often lacking. The project examines how efficiently social media ads reach target populations in crisis regions, which groups are (not) recruited through this channel, and how stable participation in the panel remains over time.

Substantively, ReUP uses this methodological setup to analyze different dimensions of support for the European Union: support for Ukraine’s EU accession, general attitudes toward the EU, and emotional attachment to the EU. These are related to communal identity (e.g., attachment to Ukraine, language), regional origin, and sociodemographic characteristics. The results show a very high level of support for EU accession and largely positive attitudes toward the EU, alongside differentiated patterns by age, language, region, and gender.

• Methodological Gap: There is little systematic evidence so far on how social media can be used to build panels in highly dynamic crisis and war contexts. ReUP provides concrete experiences and empirical tests (reach, biases, panel attrition).
• Substantive Gap: Up-to-date, theory-driven analyses of support for the EU in Ukraine during the war are still scarce. ReUP demonstrates how different dimensions of EU support (policy preferences, attitudes, attachment) are intertwined with communal identity, region, and sociodemographic characteristics.

• Primary Objective (Methodological): Development, testing, and evaluation of a social media-based panel design for crisis regions that can be applied in other contexts (e.g., displacement, conflicts, natural disasters).
• Secondary Objective (Substantive): Improved understanding of support for the EU in Ukraine during the war and its drivers, particularly communal identities, regional embeddedness, and sociodemographic factors.

• Recruitment of participants via targeted social media ads (Facebook/Instagram) in Ukraine and abroad.
• Implementation of an initial online survey (including attitudes toward the EU, attachment to Ukraine, migration plans, and sociodemographic characteristics).
• Collection of consent for recontact and establishment of a panel with multiple survey waves.
• Analysis of methodological indicators (reach, sample composition, dropout, selectivity) and development of weighting and adjustment procedures.
• Substantive analyses of EU support along identity, regional, and sociodemographic dimensions.

• Methodologically, the results show that social media ads are a very fast and cost-efficient way to recruit large samples in a war situation. At the same time, selectivities by age, education, internet access, and region become visible and must be accounted for in analyses.
• Substantively, the analyses reveal a very high level of support for EU accession (over 80% of respondents), as well as predominantly positive attitudes toward the EU; differences are particularly evident along language, region, age, and gender.

• Walter, Lisa; Mayer, Sabrina J.; Dollmann, Jörg; Jacobsen, Jannes; Meth, Artem (2022): High levels of support for European Union accession in Ukraine during the war in 2022: An analysis based on the ReUP study. DeZIM.insights Working Paper 6, Berlin: German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/zqn9j.