But there has been an explosion in this approach during the Russo-Ukraine War. The rise of citizen social media war commentators was noted in a 2013 paper titled The New War Correspondents. This has been complemented by the efforts of citizen journalists, hacktivists and other private individuals at home and abroad to transmit images, maps and commentary on the war.
Ukraine has executed a large-scale strategic influence program to shape the view of western governments and citizens in addition to gaining military and diplomatic assistance. President Zelensky, and other members of his government, have also mastered the leveraging of various social media to ensure Ukraine receives military, economic, intelligence, political and humanitarian aid from the West. These releases of information have discredited Russian narratives about the war, crowded the information space to degrade the impact of Russian influence campaigns, and sought to pre-empt the Russian use of weapons of mass destruction. Before the 24 February invasion of Ukraine, as well as during the first 500 days of the war, intelligence services from the United States and other nations have employed sensitive sources and reporting to attempt to pre-empt Russian operations. Although there are limitations placed on content in many countries – China has a state-of-the-art censorship regime – even authoritarian nations like Russia and China have their own versions of social media which are often used as tools of influence by the state and corporations.īut, as we have seen throughout the war in Ukraine, the ‘influence playing field’ is not entirely controlled by authoritarian regimes like Russia or China. In 2023, around 4.9 billion people are classified as social media users. It is highly democratised, and available to the vast majority of humans. As Peter Singer and Emerson Brooking have written, “You are now what you share.”
Social media is also more viral users are more likely to share content in their social networks. It has demonstrated a capacity for penetration and influencing perceptions of humans that is historically unprecedented, particularly when compared to other means of communication. Social media has revolutionised global communication, social interaction, marketing and professional discourse. Map from World War 2 Causeway Joint Operations Study
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