The Russian invasion shows how digital technologies have become involved in all aspects of war
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, we keep hearing that this war is like no other; because Ukrainians have cellphones and access to social media platforms, the traditional control of information and propaganda cannot work and people are able to see through the fog of war.
As communications scholars and historians, it is important to add nuance to such claims. The question is not so much what is "new" in this war, but rather to understand its specific media dynamics. One important facet of this war is the interplay between old and new media鈥攖he many loops that go from Twitter to television to TikTok, and back and forth.
We have moved away from a relatively static communication model, where journalists report on the news within predetermined constraints and formats, to intense fragmentation and even participation. Information about the war becomes content, and users contribute to its circulation by sharing and commenting online.
Modern warfare and media
Modern warfare and media technologies have a long and complex history. During the First World War, airplanes served both as weapons and media by taking aerial photographs and drop propaganda pamphlets over enemy lines. Soldiers commonly used their personal cameras in the first months of the war .
During the Second World War, each division of the German army had . In 1943, when the army lacked resources, thousands of soldiers participated in the filming of Kolberg, .
The Vietnam War is often presented as the first "uncensored" war, as media scholar Daniel Hallin . During the Gulf War in 1991, the 24-hour coverage by cable news channels conveyed a different impression of war. Confronted by the neat videos images furnished by the military, journalists soon referred to it as the "." Since then, the .
The development of cyberwar
is a key component of the current war. It refers to all operations taking place on the internet, and to the physical infrastructure that supports it. This includes network disruptions, website jamming, and so on.
Cyberwar occurs alongside classic media censorship, and includes the accelerated distribution of information. It comprises between people and machines, and can be intentional, coordinated and deliberate鈥攐r not.
Cyberwar in Ukraine occurs at different scales. Drones can capture enormous data sets for analysis by artificial intelligence, and use that for precision targeting. This includes pinpointing the location of soldiers or civilians by heat maps, digital signals or social media posts.
Many historical propaganda techniques extend into cyberspace, but an emerging new extension is the means to target and personalize disinformation. Aggressive military propaganda techniques combine with tools for online marketing.
The ability to identify soldiers and their family members means that actual or fake threats can be made to persuade people to surrender. This strategy also includes circulating an insidious deepfake video of the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky asking the Ukrainian people to surrender to the Russians.
Censorship in Russia
All official TV channels in Russia (TV1, Russia, Zvezda) have : there is no war led by Russia, only a special operation. The Russian government focused on an unprecedented disinformation campaign targeting its own population, and muzzling independent media that had been already persecuted as so-called "."
A few days after the beginning of the invasion, the Kremlin the to "prohibit the dissemination of fake news about the special operation" as well as use of words such as "war" (voina) and "invasion" (vtorzhenie)鈥攐ffenses are punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
Official Russian television is broadcasting images of the Russian military as
Russian television by extensively using fakes and triggering panic by referencing nuclear contamination. The audience is .
Staged scenes are used to create a desirable image of Russian "liberators." One of them , happy to meet Russian troops and receive generous humanitarian aid. However, as a friend in Ukraine wrote to one of us on Telegram, after filming, .
Finally, Russian television uses "denazification" in . This is intended to evoke a regressive nostalgia for the victory over Nazi Germany, .
The international state propaganda channel RT (formerly Russia Today) is now banned in and .
Battle for truth
On March 9, . The hospital's infrastructure was destroyed, . President Zelensky condemned the attack, referring to it as "."
Official Russian television claimed that , and that the devastating photos of the destroyed site contained many inconsistencies.
One of the photos who was recognized as a . Hundreds of internet trolls immediately accused her of being a paid model to create fake news about the bombed hospital.
Accusations of fakery, propaganda and censorship have always been part of war, but cyberwar includes additional complexities. The intensive and fast dissemination of both fake and real information, the amounts and types of data collected, and the extensive and real-time documentation of events reveal the integration of information and communication into all aspects of war.
Provided by The Conversation
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