Russia has begun its attack on Ukraine, and social media is lighting up with videos alleging death, destruction, and damage in the region. But experts urge caution, warning that not everything circulating on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook should be shared or treated as fact.
To be sure, there are images coming out of Ukraine that are harrowing and real. Russian tanks are rolling through Ukrainian streets, missiles are dotting the sky, and cars are backed up for miles trying to get out of Kyiv. But at the same time, some videos going viral are false. Some claim an American journalist has been killed, others are footage of Ukrainian battles from years ago, and some are manufactured altogether, and are actually scenes from video games.
Joan Donovan, an expert on disinformation at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said on Twitter that much of social media is a “wasteland” right now, with hoaxes gaining traction, and old battle footage being “decontextualized and shared as evidence of ground war.” For those trying to keep updated with the events, she offers an old-fashioned suggestion.
“Best to turn on cable news,” Donovan wrote.
In some ways, the crisis in Ukraine has laid bare the realities of fighting, documenting, and following a war in the age of social media.
On one hand, there are first-person accounts of Russian troop movements near Ukraine that have shown up on Twitter, which have been authenticated and used as an important source of intelligence for journalists, human rights experts, and government officials tracking events in the region. (Twitter removed some of these accounts from its platform, which it later called an error.)
On the other, Russia has relied on debunked videos of border shelling and Ukrainian infiltrations, along with an influx of social media messages, to drum up a pretext for war, experts said.
Going forward, as the invasion plays out, experts have recommended that people follow basic social media principles when consuming the news amid this landscape: Don’t repost information unless you’re sure it’s verified; be wary of images and videos that could be photoshopped; seek out multiple, credible, sources to verify news; and, as Donovan said, “Be skeptical!”