Everybody In
Calling Russia-Ukraine the ”first social media” war distorts this fight for power
A Politico headline reads Social Media Goes to War. The New Yorker says Ukraine Becomes the First TikTok War. Facebook and Twitter make headline news by removing disinformation from their platforms.
In the past week, dozens of news outlets contextualized the events in Ukraine and Russia as the “first social media war.” This conflation of social media with technology and the Internet misses the bigger, more far-reaching develoment.
Russia-Ukraine is the first digital “distributed war” where authoritarian military machines and online guerilla forces fight for power across different digital fronts. “Digital” is now an adjacent arena involving the public in global, all-in conflict. The story is deeper than propaganda warfare and more expansive than the platforms where it takes place.
In my own attempts to gain perspective, research has focused specifically on “new agents” engaged in the fight. Studying new actors, methods and motives are foundational to making sense of information conflict.
“In-network” fighting has simmered for years, now pushed into public view. McLuhan predicted modern wars would be a borderless, guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation. Russia-Ukraine validates his vision.
Before looking at new properties, consider the last major military invasion that captured world attention. The Iraq invasion was a made-for-TV event, so overtly made for transmission, strategic planners billed it as “shock and awe.” There were only three broadcast transmitters: the U.S administration, the U.S. military, and Iraq information ministers. A finite number of global news agencies supplied news coverage.
The environment then was structured and controlled. Now it’s expansive, formless, and chaotic. When the Iraq war concluded in 2011, nightly news broadcasts attracted roughly 20 million viewers. Cable TV reached approximately 2.7 million. Last week, this “Dear Mister President Vladimir Putin” meme got 23 million views in a single day (along with plenty of hate).
The view of conflict gets more nuanced as you parse the range of participants, practices, and motivations. This war also involves hackers, indie reporters, freelance analysts, opportunists, streamers, and more. Yes, they use social media accounts, but also other tools in a digital programming arsenal. They coordinate efforts with no central planning or control.
On both sides, platforms are used for battle planning, to signal intention, diversion, or censorship. In just a few days, Russia pressured networks to censor content. Meta barred Russian state media from running ads. Russia blocked Twitter as disturbing images played back into the country. Twitch and OnlyFans allegedly blocked users from Russia. It’s as if a set of “master switches” turns on and off as conditions change.
Meanwhile, private messaging accounts like Telegram operate as planning cells and base stations for pro-Russian propaganda. In response, state and non-state actors have jammed information lines and infiltrated Russia’s communication. The hacking collective, Anonymous, declared ‘cyber war’ against Vladimir Putin’s government and took down Kremlin-backed channels last weekend.
To counter Russia’s disinformation, volunteer analysts have banded together to investigate content, including altered photos and videos. They debunk and show the presence of Russian propaganda, from an exploded car with mysteriously swapped plates to Putin’s misleadingly-timed security council meetings.
New data sources feed group analysis, including surveillance satellites showing detailed views of movements within Ukraine. Other organizations, such as the Center for Information Resilience, actively geolocate and verify satellite footage posted on social media. Perhaps most telling of indie-fighters, this teen-created Twitter account tracks and publishes movements of planes owned by Russian oligarchs.
Untold numbers of independent voices report, pass on media or commentate on events. They’ve accumulated massive reach on Reddit, Twitch, Substack, and Twitter. GenZ creators have also flooded TikTok, engaging in games of meme warfare. While news coverage highlights first hand-accounts on TikTok, satirical memes are flourishing in number.
And then there are opportunists. Some quickly assembled new “war pages” on Instagram. Other grifter accounts engage in a war for likes, gaming attention for followers, and ad revenue.
By no means exhaustive, the sample range of participants and motivations change the grammar of war and information operations.
The whole system, structure, and language — the view — have new characteristics only seen as a complete, paradigm-shifting picture.
A prismatic “perspective war,” with new modes of thought, tactics, and narrative frames, is an effect of new energy unleashed. It’s too early to predict what the impact will eventually be.
The first ‘everybody-in” digital fight has just begun.
This piece began as a post on my substack, Perspective Agents. It’s clearly a fluid, fast-changing development. I’d appreciate any thoughts to build on this expansive picture in the comments. You can reach me at cperry248@gmail.com or on Twitter @cperry248.
