On March 4, the Russian parliament passed a law against “fake news.” Fake news includes calling the events in Ukraine “an invasion” or even “a war.” The preferred term is “special military operation.” Failure to comply could lead to a 15-year prison sentence.
The Russian government has cracked down on independent media outlets across the country. The Russian censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, has closed radio and television stations and blocked the websites of western media organizations. Facebook has been banned. For months, state-owned media has been paving the way to conflict by diminishing Ukraine as an independent republic and laying out justification for Russian intervention. Now it touts how the battle is really against the West, who has taken advantage of the innocent Ukrainians. Yet through this barrage, one can still hear independent voices on Telegram, a social media platform so encrypted that the government has not been able to block it. In recent years it has been used to organize protests; now it is conveying images of the war, with some racking-up hundreds-of-thousands of views.
Information is central to any war. Older Americans remember how media impacted the Vietnam War. In the 1960s, the news came on once a day; now, it stays on 24-hours, amping-up the power of information and the stakes for controlling it. Social media has emerged as a new information domain over the last ten years—analogous to the five combat domains of land, sea, air, space, and cyber. This one, however, is run mainly by civilians—yet it still has the capacity to shape wars.
The Russian government has countered the independent voices with its own videos and even its own media channel, WeExplain. However, poorly edited videos of a Russian bureaucrat droning on about the justness of the war have garnered little attention. The overall impact has been clear though: older Russians, who generally receive news from television and newspapers, support the war; younger Russians, who receive news online, are split. In the coming years, one can expect social media to be used even more dramatically to shape conflict. This is only the beginning.
Source:
Elahe Izadi and Sarah Ellison, “Russia’s Independent Media Teeters Under Crackdown,” Washington Post, 6 Mar 2022, A21; see alsohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/03/04/putin-media-law-russia-news/
Will Oremus, “Kremlin Facebook Ban Isn’t for Restriction—It’s for Intimidation,” Washington Post, 6 Mar 2022, A26.
Ian Garner, “How is the War Going for Putin on Russian Social Media? Not Great,” Washington Post, 6 Mar 2022, B1
Photo: Nieman Lab
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