Russia invading Ukraine wasn’t the first war to occur during social media, but it was the most impactful, coming at a time when apps like TikTok had a significant impact in terms of how content is seen and shared. Social media’s role in war is, of course, well known; back in Arab Spring during 2011, images of the uprising filled Twitter and Facebook, news of chemical weapons in Syria spread like wildfire on Facebook. But the current coverage of Ukraine has been unprecedented; actual footage of war can be seen in short vide form; TikTok feed is filled with trending videos about Ukraine, as the algorithm rewards content which gains traction. The average social media feed has seen a rise in the past week about videos of bombings, explosions, and Ukrainian people recounting their war experiences.
For the past few years, social media has grown a lot in terms of being the primary news source for people, notably because of how visual and easy it is to access, short videos serve as explainers for current events for a large no of people, who have grown used to it because of their attention span. Ukrainian social media influencers who previously uploaded all kinds of content like fashion, fitness, etc., have now switched to reporting about the war. Videos of these influencers going to bunkers or showing tanks rolling down the streets are quite common to see in their feeds.
Social media's primary importance in this time of war, though, is a voice for people; not only does it serve as a platform for Ukrainian people to show their struggles, it is a platform for everyday Russians not associated with the government to speak about their stance as well. Millions of young Russians use social media platforms like TikTok.
Many of them have tried to talk about the war, from videos documenting anti-war protests in St Petersburg to Russian influencers explaining their stance about the war; it is clear that the idea of invading Ukraine is not uniformly popular across Russian youth. Even the daughter of Russian press secretary Dmitry Peskov posted the words “no to war” on her Instagram page, which was deleted shortly afterward.
Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor, ordered apps to stop including military-related content to minors. They believed a lot of it is anti-Russian in sentiment, saying much of the content was anti-Russian in character. Russia’s image in this war is under even more increased scrutiny because of social media and how accessible it is. Even to the extent, circulation of this content also poses a threat to them internally because of growing dissent against the invasion of Ukraine. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appealed to "TikTokers" to end the war as a means to appeal to those inside Russia who opposed the war. Needless to say, both factions are realizing the power of social media in propagating narratives.
The risk for Russian influencers, celebrities, and journalists in speaking out against the Russian authorities is very obvious – those who dissent against the government can find themselves arrested or worse. But they still pose a threat to the government; their messaging in social media can cause considerable damage to Putin’s claims of unity behind his cause. Russian bots have been trying to mass report accounts that speak against Russian effort in a bid to get them suspended.
But not every form of war activism on social media is good. The internet is a strange place to navigate for. When people see thousands of videos about something, they feel obligated to say something or show solidarity about it at the risk of not looking ignorant. However, this is maybe good in some cases in terms of increasing awareness but is often not when people end up sharing false news or misinformation. In past weeks thousands of videos showing conflict in Ukraine have been shown, a lot of which were not about Ukraine at all but were rather old videos about the Gaza strip and various other regions. A lot of people use this sort of misinformation to gain traction and thus, end up monetizing their content due to misinformation just spreading like wildfire. People are also susceptible to a lot of scams on these platforms. TikTok has a feature wherein. You can send a “gift” to live streamers that amounts to actual cash with the click of a button. Some accounts explicitly called for donations, while false videos about the crisis, videos which are years old, were taken in other cities during some other conflict. Some videos are literally footage from video games. Even though social media has tried to regulate content, the seeming fact that millions of videos are shared everyday, makes it impossible to regulate everything accurately.
From Arab Spring to Ukraine, recent years have shown us that social media platforms always will stay a place for activism, propaganda, and commentary due to the nature of how we interact with content, the recent days being a prominent example of that. Being able to witness a war-torn region straight from the very people who live there is a very intriguing aspect that has changed the way a lot of people see and perceive these issues, either making them more empathic to the problem or more susceptible to misinformation.
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