As the Russian invasion in Ukraine continues, it becomes clearer that the war doesn't just unfold on the roads leading to the cities, in the streets or in the sky, but also through social media and the Internet.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy perfectly masters the art of Instagram posting, video messaging and online meeting (today he addressed the US Congress). He usually addresses his audiences with simple direct language often characterized by style figures like anaphoras and quotes and delivers his messages directly looking at the camera (skills that probably enrage Putin who doesn't certainly have them and seems to prefer sitting at his massive and solitary table...).
Zelenskiy is cleverly using social media, but Russian propaganda, disinformation and fake news are spreading through the same channels.
If you have a Twitter account you may have noticed how the thousands of tweets by no vaxxers that were active till a few weeks ago (Italian Twitter users may remember the daily barrage of tweets against vaccines and the Green Pass, the certification proving you have been vaccinated), have now turned into pro-Russian invasion accounts, attacking Zelenskiy and Ukraine. This is somehow the final proof the no vax accounts were not real messages from real people against vaccines, but tweets sent to spread disinformation and confusion, the sort of powerful and invisible weapons that allow the Russian invasion to invisibly spread on the Internet.
You can easily spot which are false messages on social media: in them Russia usually portrays itself as a victim, accusing other people, manufacturing an alternative narrative that states the war is actually a "special military operation", the maternity hospital in Mariupol was a base of far-right radical fighters and the pregnant blogger was a crisis actor.
Earlier on this month, the government in Russia blocked the access to Netflix, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Apple and foreign news outlets and passed a law that may land people spreading "false information" about the invasion in Ukraine or calling "war" what the Kremlin calls "special military operation", to 15 years in prison.
All these decisions were taken to cut off Russians from reliable information and silence media. Yet, as it is often the case, censorship and repression lead many to actually find the strength to speak up and that's what happened to Marina Ovsyannikova.
On Monday the Russian state television producer interrupted Channel One's news programme (the first time that such public denounciation happened on Russian TV) to protest against Putin's invasion of Ukraine holding a "No to war" sign and saying "Don't believe the propaganda. They're lying to you here. Russians against the war."
In a pre-recorded video message released via the OVD-Info human rights group Ovsyannikova, wearing a necklace that featured all the colours of the Ukrainian (blue and yellow) and Russian flags (white, blue and red) to symbolise her origins (her father is Ukrainian and her mother Russian) said she was ashamed for having spread Kremlin propaganda while working at Channel One and ashamed for the lies told from the television screen and for allowing "the zombification of the Russian people."
Arrested after the protest, taken to a Moscow police station and interrogated for 14 hours, she was fined 30,000 roubles (250 Euros) for the video statement, but she could still face prison time under a newly introduced Russian legislation that criminalises spreading so-called "fake news" about the Russian military.
Yet, for one person who shows resistance, another shows allegiance and the Russian Army have a media ally - Lu Yuguang of Chinese news outlet Phoenix TV. A former navy officer in the People's Liberation Army, who lived in Moscow for several decades and received multiple awards from the Russian government and military for his war reporting, is the only reporter who can interview Russian soldiers. He appears in perfectly co-ordinated outfits and mirror shades, at times swinging a helmet from his arm, like you would sport a luxury bag, betraying in this way a war casualness that proves he is welcomed by the Russian authorities as he will not say anything negative about Russia.
In between Ovsyannikova's act of rebellion and Lu Yuguang's allegiance stand tech companies who are still very slow at checking, verifying accounts and removing potentially damaging ones. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube do have rules about state-sponsored content, but policies are often poorly enforced or posts are taken down after they have already started to widely circulate, allowing propaganda to reach out to people all over the world. Zuckerberg's Meta currently allows users on Instagram and Facebook in 12 eastern European and western Asian countries to call for death to Russian soldiers, but users still cannot call for the death of Vladimir Putin or other leaders.
In a way for what regards technology, maybe hacktivists are doing a better job at the moment to contrast the Russian invasion and Putin's lies: the group of hackers Anonymous launched a a cyber warfare campaign against Putin and his allies as soon as the war started, disabling sites including the state-controlled Russian news agency, the Kremlin's official site, and Russian internet service providers.
Besides, a hacking group dubbed "Squad303" recently created a platform that allows to send SMS and WhatsApp messages and emails in Russian from your phone or email account to randomly selected numbers/email accounts in Russia in an attempt to provide information about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The tool, hosted at the domain 1920.in, sends out messages such as "Hey! How are you? How is life in Russia now? I live abroad and I am writing to you to find out what you are saying on TV about Russia's attack on Ukraine. Many soldiers and civilians die there." So far the group says they have sent out already seven million messages. Looks like propaganda, disinformation and fake news may be out there, but resistance in our times takes many forms.
Comments