Ben Brennan: Far from being frustrated by the propaganda war, brigades of social-media users have joined in
The internet’s response to media covering Russia’s horrific invasion of Ukraine has been very different this time, writes Ben Brennan.
Opinion
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It was a harrowing image of a Ukrainian woman, bloodied and bandaged, standing on the street after Russian attacks destroyed her home.
The picture was on the front page of The Advertiser last Friday. It was also published around the world and became an early flash point in an information war that erupted online as soon as Russian tanks rolled over Ukraine’s borders.
There were pretty swift murmurs that the image might be fake. This photo was legitimate and was taken in Kharkiv by Wolfgang Schwan. And it was one of many legitimate pictures taken in the first couple of days that were hotly contested in some busy parts of the internet.
The facts the images portrayed were inconvenient to pro-Putin online trolls who needed to paint the murderous dictator as some sort of humanitarian liberator of a “nazified” nation.
The problem, of course, is that plenty of other images and videos circulating actually are dodgy.
The BBC and others have tried to keep a running tally. But for anyone hanging on the latest shred of detail from Kyiv or Kharkiv, the torrent of real and fake news has been dizzying.
War is different in 2022, apparently. These days the latest propaganda storm can make it all the way from St Petersburg to Adelaide in a seconds.
Comment thread skirmishes have broken out over almost every detail to emerge amid the catastrophe in Ukraine.
The Snake Island 13 - who famously, allegedly, told a Russian warship to go f**k itself - have been at the centre of one brawl. Are they alive or are they dead? If they’ve survived, could the story be false? Does that even matter if it raises the spirits of Ukraine’s defenders and helps rally more international support?
The story of the “Ghost of Kyiv” is also hotly contested. This tale of a phantom Ukraine fighter ace downing Russian jets in his ageing MiG-29 is difficult to believe. The videos claiming to show the mythical jet have been linked to a video game. But even the Ukrainian defence ministry has tweeted about the story. So who knows? It’s a good story and probably frightens Russians and emboldens Ukrainians.
It’s almost impossible to know what to make of it all. Depending on where you’re getting your news, you could almost conclude that a comically inept Russian army is about to run home to Moscow while farmers steal their armour, or you could – probably more realistically – believe that the brave Ukrainian people are facing a decade-long fight for survival.
If Vietnam was the first war broadcast into western lounge rooms, this is the first one where Westerners get to play along at home.
Because, far from being frustrated by floods of propaganda, brigades of social-media users have enthusiastically joined in the bulls--t war with their eyes wide open.
Equipped with the knowledge that truth is definitely the first casualty of war, hordes of redditors and Twitter, Facebook and TikTok users are tackling conspiracy theories about everything from infestations of Ukrainian Nazis to this all actually being Joe Biden’s fault because “something something Donald Trump”.
But they’ve also been doing their level best to amplify anything that might boost Ukrainian support or morale, or harm Russian efforts.
The social-media front has hammered western companies to shut down the spread of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nonsense. A campaign to shut down the pro-Russian forum on Reddit saw quick success. And Russian state mouthpieces RT and Sputnik got the boot from YouTube’s European platforms in quick order.
Ukrainian forces themselves appear to have weaponised communications technology early too, reportedly using Tinder and TikTok to circumvent Russian state media. They probably got the idea from Russia, which has been spamming their media for the past eight years.
It also appears to have taken little more than a tweet for Elon Musk to aim his Starlink satellites at Ukraine and send hardware to Putin-proof their internet, while hackers have also made unverified claims of having taken down Russia’s space agency, and its spy satellites with it.
It’s also easy to believe that this conspicuous outpouring of support for Ukraine has helped embolden western leaders to take a harder line against Putin.
But even in a rare week dominated by righteous keyboard warriors around the world, it still got out of hand in Adelaide.
While huge numbers of pro-Ukrainian commenters reinforce the need to laud surrendering Russians rather than humiliate them, some have apparently decided they should threaten death to some Adelaide salon workers because their shop was called “Killer Russians”.
So it really does pay to ask: Whose side are you on when you’re jumping into a social-media brawl? Because this doesn’t look like your usual Facebook flame war.
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