What America Must Learn from Ukraine’s Information War
Ukraine is embroiled in an information war, and it’s not alone. In a survey conducted earlier this year, 65% of Russians polled supported what Russian state media described as “a special military operation” in Ukraine. A majority of U.S. adults say misinformation around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a major problem, and they largely fault the Russian government — which characterizes its war in Ukraine as a "special military operation” in its public statements and through state-controlled media — for spreading these falsehoods. At the same time, in one survey only 55% of Americans polled accepted Joe Biden as having legitimately won the 2020 election. It was the culmination of a complex, years-long effort to undermine our faith in the integrity of U.S. elections. Americans need to recognize that disinformation is a significant and dangerous problem here in the United States. We, too, are engaged in an information war.
Propaganda has been a weapon of war in Ukraine since at least 2014, when separatists backed by Russia forced two regions in the eastern part of the country to break away from Ukraine. Today, the war in Ukraine has been called “the TikTok war” as Ukrainian citizens have picked up their phones along with their guns and used social media to portray the reality of what they’re experiencing to counter threads of government-backed disinformation from Russia. Both countries’ leaders have been actively involved in managing information to engage citizens and spur action by global powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin was already known for his use of state-orchestrated disinformation campaigns to further his geopolitical aims, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been praised for his skillful use of the media and extreme transparency of what’s happening on the ground to gain global support for the Ukrainian position and its people.
For the first several months of the war, the nonprofit organization I work for, Public Knowledge, monitored and reported on networked disinformation associated with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (For clarity, by “networked disinformation,” I refer not to opinions or views we may disagree with, but deliberately false information that is seeded and networked to gain power or profit. Thanks to contemporary research methods and tools developed since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016, there are now organizations focused on understanding the sources, patterns, and, often, the motivations for this type of content.) There were some distinctions from our tracking of past crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election that culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol. For example, encrypted platforms like Telegram and short-form content platforms like TikTok are most important in Ukraine because the dominant platforms (like Facebook) were blocked; different platforms are most popular in eastern Europe to begin with; and TikTok in particular is most conducive to the type of intimate, emotional, and impactful footage the Ukrainians are sharing to enlist the world’s support. Unfortunately, this means that platforms with the least sophisticated and most opaque approaches to content moderation are playing an outsized role.
But while the platforms may be different, the themes of our findings about Ukraine’s information war are the same as they were in past crises and in the United States. We’ve learned again that most social media platforms lack clearly articulated, stable policies with clear conditions for action on content that may cause harm. Their results (which are often revealed by researchers rather than the platforms themselves) demonstrate their chronic underinvestment in languages other than English, cultural understanding, and on-the-ground context for both automated and human moderation. They need more consultation with stakeholders on policy development, and they need to provide greater access to actions and outcomes for researchers, and for legal entities that may require evidence of war crimes and human rights violations. But this isn’t just about online platforms: Themes of disinformation often originate in either domestic or foreign fringe sites, but they get amplified in partisan media (including cable TV and talk radio) or by the bully pulpit of world leaders, and then get spun back out online. Most importantly, we’ve learned again that online disinformation can produce extraordinary real-world harm. Individuals can be manipulated into destructive action, suffer the life and death consequences of false information about health and treatments, or be subjected to racism, discrimination and hate speech.
Besides harm to individuals, networked disinformation poses a potent threat to our trust in institutions, our ability to solve pressing global problems, and even our ability to democratically govern. Efforts to mitigate the climate crisis, get people vaccinated, bring citizens to the polls, and conduct a peaceful transition of power have all been undermined by networked disinformation campaigns. And that’s the lesson for Americans: We are just as vulnerable to networked disinformation in the United States as people are in Russia, even if we are less inclined to collectively acknowledge the role of our own leaders in spreading it. We, too, are entangled in a bitter information war waged against our democracy. It’s time for the United States to take an active role in supporting the free press it guaranteed its citizens in the First Amendment.
Opponents often assert that any government policy designed to mitigate the harms of disinformation is tantamount to establishing a “ministry of truth.” But for those who seed and spread disinformation for power or profit, truth isn’t the point. The purpose of networked disinformation, whether it’s from foreign trolls or one’s own government, is not to convince citizens of any particular position but to sow panic, deepen divides, and erode trust in institutions, liberal democracy, the media, and other citizens. After distrust come exhaustion from the news cycle and disengagement from the political process, both of which also serve the purpose of those seeking to gain political power.
Former President Barack Obama has entered the space, admitting he underestimated the threat disinformation poses to democracy and choosing to focus one of his rare post-presidential policy discussions on its existential threat. But inevitably, and despite agreement among U.S. national security agencies and even the Surgeon General about the threat it represents, the fight against networked disinformation has become another partisan issue. We need to find paths we can agree on to fill information voids (like the one early in the COVID-19 pandemic), offset online disinformation, and inform citizens.
One way to do this is to ensure the continued existence of a free press. According to the latest report on the state of local news, the country has lost more than a fourth of its newspapers since 2005 and will likely lose a third by 2025. The American founders wrote in the Federalist Papers that the liberty of the press “shall be inviolably preserved” and enshrined citizens’ rights to a free press in the First Amendment. They found ways to provide content-neutral support — like postal subsidies — to ensure citizens’ access to the information they needed to engage in the democratic process. This wasn’t theoretical: Studies have shown that a free press serves as a control on corruption and that citizens without access to local journalism feel less of a sense of cohesion and community, vote less, are less informed, and are less likely to run for office. Locally generated news is more trusted than national news and tends to be less polarizing. In fact, some have argued that the Constitution demands a role for the government in solving the problem of news deserts, halting the amplification of harmful disinformation, and ensuring independent journalism.
Other democratic countries are more active and contribute more per capita to their democratic information systems. The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which takes effect by January, 2024, requires tech companies to more actively police their platforms for illegal content, including hate speech and terrorist content. The E.U. has also strengthened its Code of Practice on Disinformation, which calls for platforms to act and report on disinformation with the potential for harm. Countries like Sweden have civil agencies focused on making the country information literate and identifying and countering influence campaigns, and others have implemented news literacy for children as early as elementary school. Governments offer direct subsidies based on the number of journalists employed in Canada and Denmark; delivery and/or distribution subsidies in Norway, Sweden, and France; and reduced value-added tax in the United Kingdom.
There are multiple proposals for consideration floating around Washington. For example, Public Knowledge advocated for the inclusion of a payroll tax credit for news organizations to be included in the reconciliation package, which may be focused at least in part on managing the impact of inflation. In addition to its devastating impact on citizens, inflation in the form of newsprint cost increases and reductions in discretionary spending are wreaking havoc on newspapers. This provision is derived from the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, a bill we support that empowers citizens, small businesses, and news organizations themselves through a system of tax credits to encourage subscriptions, advertising, and employment in local news outlets. The bill enjoys bicameral, bipartisan sponsorship, including from Democrats Pramila Jayapal in the House and Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin in the Senate — votes that to date have proven hard to get. We also support the Future of Local News Act, a bipartisan bill in the House that would examine and report on the role of local news gathering in sustaining democracy in the United States.
Proposals to support local news have so far garnered support from both sides of the aisle. They should: Networked disinformation, whether in Ukraine or the United States, may be the greatest current threat to the democracy policymakers swore to uphold, and ensuring that people have the information they need to engage as citizens can help mitigate this significant threat.
About the Author:
Lisa Macpherson was a consumer marketing executive with a specialty in digital marketing transformation before participating in the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative as a Fellow in 2019. She was an ALI Senior Fellow in 2020 and 2021 while also working as a Senior Policy Fellow, and now Senior Policy Analyst, at DC-based nonprofit advocacy organization Public Knowledge. Lisa focuses on democratic information systems, including disinformation, content moderation, and policies to support local news. This opinion commentary was edited by the Social Impact Review Editorial Board and Editor in Chief.