PARIS — Ukraine has succeeded in dominating
social media in the first days since the Russian invasion, in an intensifying
information war with Moscow that Kyiv so far appears to be winning, analysts
say.
اضافة اعلان
Even as President
Volodymyr Zelensky remains
bunkered down in Kyiv amid heavy bombardment and the fear of assassination, his
government has forced an all-out assault on social media to win supporters for
their cause.
Zelensky's daily video addresses, usually
published with English subtitles, have become viral sensations, while the
defense and foreign ministries tout the military resistance of Ukraine in
snazzy graphics.
Meanwhile,
Ukrainians have posted videos
showing the success of their forces that have become viral trends, including a
Ukrainian missile shooting down a Russian helicopter and a Ukrainian farmer
towing away captured Russian military hardware on his tractor.
Self-shot videos of Ukrainians sobbing amid
the ruins of their towns after Russia stepped up bombardments have also gripped
people around the world.
More unverifiable viral claims have included
the so-called "ghost of Kyiv", a flying ace said to have downed a
dozen
Russian warplanes, or the Kyiv woman who purportedly knocked out a
Russian drone with a jar of pickled cucumbers.
"In the first phase of the conflict, in
terms of international opinion, the Ukrainians are clearly ahead in
information," said Baptiste Robert, founder of Predicta Lab, a French
company fighting disinformation.
"The most impressive thing is that it
is organic," he said. "There is a real desire of the Ukrainians to
document this war. When something happens, they pull out their
phones."
'Readjusting and trying again'
Robert said the majority of pro-Ukraine
videos doing the rounds on Twitter are genuine, but there have been claims
which subsequent fact-checking proved to be exaggerated.
In the early stages of the war,
Kyiv hailed
as heroes 13 border guards who it said lost their lives defending a tiny Black
Sea island after swearing at the Russian forces over the radio.
They had in fact all survived, as the
Ukrainian authorities later acknowledged. Ukraine's embassy in Paris denies any
deliberate attempt to mislead, saying "we don't do fake news".
Russia, accused of spreading disinformation
in the 2016 US election to weigh the balance in favor of
Donald Trump, is seen
as a past master of such tactics.
But here, the balance is weighed against
Moscow. In addition to being deeply unpopular in the West, the initial phase of
the war has been far from successful for the Kremlin, according to independent
observers.
"I can see them (the Russians)
readjusting, refitting, and trying again" on the information front, said
Emily Harding, deputy director and senior fellow in the international security program
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"But it will still take a little while
to get things running."
She said she expected Russia to "push a
lot of disinformation into the ecosystem about how the war is going, showing
Ukrainian troops supposedly surrendering".
'Many Russians buy the narrative'
However, Russia does not seem hugely
concerned about public opinion outside the country, with efforts focused on
keeping domestic support behind President
Vladimir Putin.
To this end, Russia in the last days shut
down the final bastions of free speech media in the country, blocked Facebook
and restricted access to Twitter.
"It is true that they (the Ukrainians)
are winning, but at the end of the day, the audience Putin cares most about is
what his own people think about him," said Darren Linvill, lead researcher
at the Media forensic lab of
Clemson University in the US.”
"I think many, many Russians buy the
narrative."
He added: "For every narrative which is
pro-Ukrainian, such as stories about Russian soldiers surrendering without
fighting and Ukrainian heroes being lauded for their bravery, you see the same
thing in Russia, in the conversation among nationalists, for their own
side."
With Ukrainian resistance forcing Moscow
into a much longer war than the Kremlin wanted, a new phase in the information
war is likely to open up.
If more Ukrainian cities fall to
Russian forces, "there will be a new information war between those areas still
resisting and the counter-information that the Russians are imposing,"
said Robert.
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