The war in Ukraine on the social media front

• Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine on Thursday February 24, 2022.

• Images of Russian bombings in Ukraine are already circulating on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

• How has military propaganda been disrupted by social networks?

A war, two hours from Paris, which can be followed live on social networks… Since the start of the invasion in Ukraine launched this Thursday by Vladimir Putin, images of bombings have already been circulating on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

"Historically, states have always wanted to control the representations of war", recalls Arnaud Mercier, professor of information and communication sciences at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas and co-author of

, (CNRS Editions).

This strategy of control and propaganda turned upside down in the era of social networks.

Explanations.

The way of showing and telling the war began to change during the first Gulf War, from August 2, 1990 to February 28, 1991. For the first time, we could follow the war “live” on television.

"[The American journalist] Peter Arnett, in a hotel in Baghdad (Iraq), comments from the only place where we are able to produce live information, which will be broadcast on the CNN channel and around the world", summarizes the researcher .

"There is no longer a monopoly of the major Western media"

During the Iraq war in 2003, the situation changed again.

“There is no longer a monopoly of the big Western media.

Al Jazeera was created and films the footage from the victim's point of view.

The Qatari channel acquires a certain form of credibility unlike Iraqi television”, accused of propaganda.

It is the birth of a “form of global pluralism which means that today you can have the point of view of Russian television, Ukrainian television, Polish television, etc.

“says the expert.

As for the traditional media, the situation has not changed.

“Television premises in Kharkiv, Ukraine were attacked.

It's something quite classic.

The Russians consider that the Ukrainian media must be neutralized.

NATO did the same thing in Serbia by bombing Serbian television.

There is something that does not change: the media are considered a legitimate target, not to try to influence a representation, but so that there is none”, explains Arnaud Mercier.

"Any individual can become a source",

The advent of social networks is reshuffling the cards.

From now on, “any individual can become a source”, emphasizes professor of Information and Communication Sciences.

From then on, “it becomes very complicated to fully control the representations”.

Thus, during the civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad controls the Syrian Internet by relying in particular on Russian or Chinese telecommunications experts, but the Syrian rebels manage to circumvent it by using satellite devices, to communicate to the outdoors and on social media.

Another change: “satellite imagery is no longer the monopoly of States”.

Approximate framing, jerky images, lack of editing, etc.

With these videos made by amateurs, the aesthetics of war images change.

The latter are perceived as a “guarantee of objectivity, non-manipulation and therefore veracity.

There is this idea that it is not tampered with, that it is raw formwork, that we are in the testimony.

And all the more so since there is no commentary and we can form our opinion for ourselves,” analyzes the researcher.

“War is always confusion”

He adds: “I don't think you can say that you have access to

truth because war is always confusion and opposing points of view.

What is certain is that we can, if we wish, have access to a plurality of points of view.

»

The short videos posted online by the population, showing an explosion, a few tanks or military trucks in motion are far from the reports made by journalists.

"It's piecemeal and it's difficult to then draw some sort of lesson from it", considers Arnaud Mercier.

Especially since many fake videos are also circulating on social networks.

These images refer to a more general question: “not that of representations of the war, but that of the value of the testimony of individuals on social networks and their use by journalists.

»

“Journalists do not use the power of social networks enough”

Many traditional media take over these amateur videos, by sourcing these images.

"A way of saying: 'What you see are not our images.'

There is a form of distancing, ”notes the expert.

At a time when images can be geolocated and checked using tools such as Google Street or Google Earth, the researcher believes that "journalists have not changed enough and do not use enough power social networks as a source of information.

There is always this idea that we can be manipulated with social networks.

»

While journalists on the spot often have only limited access to events, social networks are full of "extremely reliable sources" and "eminent specialists on Russia, smugglers, between a Russian-speaking world and the Cyrillic alphabet and an English-speaking world and therefore the Latin alphabet.

“The whole thing requires” scouting work, which is not easy,” he warns, however.

“The Russians tried to limit the expansion of Facebook”

In the age of the Internet, social networks have become a new battlefield.

“The Russians tried to limit the expansion of Facebook in favor of their own social network, VKontakte, which incidentally looks suspiciously like Facebook.

The Russian power has made sure to limit the influence of Western imagery on its people, ”recalls the expert.

What counts for the Kremlin is the support of the Russian people.

On February 5, 2003, Colin Powell presented a false dossier before the United Nations Security Council on a program to manufacture weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Like the American government for the war in Iraq, the Russian government does not hesitate to lie in order to obtain the adhesion of the Russians to its project of invasion of Ukraine.

“All they do is communicate internally to the Russian people, with a whole rhetoric of justification, including myths that the Ukrainian regime is Nazi or that there is a genocide against Russian-speakers", summarizes the expert.

"There are two forms of propaganda, that of the rear, to obtain the support of the population, and on the other side, a counter-propaganda facing the adversary", explains Arnaud Mercier.

A field that Russia is abandoning.

“Vladimir Putin, obviously, does not care at all about Western representations of the conflict.

He assumes everything and he doesn't care!

concludes Arnaud Mercier.

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• 20 minute video

• Vladimir Poutine

• Media

• Social networks

• War in Ukraine

• Russia

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