Disinformation and the Media: the Case of Russia and Ukraine

MCS0010.1177/0163443716686672Media, Culture & SocietyMejias and Vokuev 686672research-article2016 Original Article Media, Culture & Society 1 –16 Disinformation and the © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: media: the case of Russia sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443716686672DOI: 10.1177/0163443716686672 and Ukraine journals.sagepub.com/home/mcs Ulises A Mejias State University of New York at Oswego, USA Nikolai E Vokuev Syktyvkar State University, Russia Abstract The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine can be analyzed as an instance where the Internet has strengthened the power of political actors to create disinformation. But it is no longer only the state-supported media monopoly that produces and disseminates propaganda. Citizens themselves actively participate in their own disenfranchisement by using social media to generate, consume or distribute false information, contributing to a new order where disinformation acquires increasing authority. This essay follows disinformation practices through the transition from broadcast to social media in post- Soviet times and theorizes how the coexistence of old and new media in the production of propaganda might inform our understanding of future scenarios, including in Western democracies. Keywords disinformation, Internet, propaganda, Russia, social media, Ukraine Introduction In the chaotic and complicated aftermath of the ephemerally named Twitter Revolutions – including the Occupy and Arab Spring protest movements – it seems pertinent to exam- ine not only how activists benefitted from using social media to mobilize and organize Corresponding author: Ulises A Mejias, State University of New York at Oswego, 222B Marano, Oswego, NY 13126, USA. Email: [email protected] 2 Media, Culture & Society but also how these tools may have been used to undermine the protests. While arguments that posit social media as the principal cause of revolutions are now largely dismissed as simplistic technological determinism, questions about the complex relationship between social media technologies and political actors on different sides of a conflict are still worth pursuing. To that effect, this essay examines recent events in the Russia–Ukraine conflict, in which the pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine was ousted and replaced by a pro-European party after a period of demonstrations known as Euromaidan, followed by the annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014. Our main thesis is that during these events, the use of social media gener- ally weakened the power of civil society by allowing for the rampant spread of disinformation. While repressive governments and their agents are traditionally seen as the sources of propaganda, the Russia–Ukraine conflict suggests that social media can also give ordinary citizens the power to generate false and inaccurate information. That such social media campaigns can be co-opted and redistributed via mass media channels to amplify their effect is cause to fear similar applications in other parts of the world. Thus, the lessons we derive about how authorities in Russia and Ukraine were able to disrupt protest movements, using the same digital media platforms activists and citizens were using, may influence our understanding of future conflicts elsewhere, including in osten- sibly democratic regimes. Because concrete evidence of the authorship of disinformation is difficult to obtain, our approach in this essay is to theorize what happens when propaganda is co-produced by regimes and citizens and disseminated through a combination of analog and digital channels including social media. However, we do not seek to dismiss the potential of digital networks to facilitate protest movements. While it is easy to ridicule the mis- placed faith on the Internet as a magical gravedigger of dictatorship, plenty of evidence suggests that new information and communication technologies (ICT) have helped protest movements by strengthening civic organizations, lowering the cost of communication, increasing the speed of mobilization, making fundraising and other forms of support more effective and so on. Since regimes were not prepared to contend with these effects, there is concrete evidence that social media have been effective in disrupting the status quo in the short term (Diamond, 2012; Howard, 2010; Lysenko and Desouza, 2014). It is, however, our concern with long-term effects, beyond particular moments of protest, that motivates us to question whether the Internet might actually better serve the interests of oppression, not democratization. We posit that, as with previous technologies like radio and television, the Internet is increasingly becoming – after a brief initial moment of radical possibilities – a conservative form of mass media (McChesney, 2014; Wu, 2010), reducing the political agency of individuals by socially alienating them. A commander in the US military described Russia’s ongoing disinformation cam- paign as ‘the most amazing information warfare blitzkrieg we have ever seen in the history of information warfare’ (Vandiver, 2014: para. 3). Hyperbole aside, it is important to theorize how new forms of control are being facilitated by media platforms in which citizens actively produce and share disinformation. Our approach consists in using different types of sources (scholarly, popular and observational) to chronicle the evolution of disinformation campaigns in the post-Soviet context. This approach allows us trace devel- oping modes of disinformation in the transition from broadcast to participatory media in Mejias and Vokuev 3 Russia and Ukraine. The emerging feature of these new forms of disinformation is that it is not only the state-controlled media organization that produces propaganda but citizens themselves who actively participate in the creation of disinformation by using new platforms to push their individual opinions to a point of excess, contributing to a new order where disinformation acquires a certain authority. Whereas information spread by governments or corporations can be skeptically dismissed, information produced and shared by regular users (or what are perceived to be regular users) acquires authenticity, and spreading this information is an act rewarded by social media platforms in terms of increased social capital such as attention, popularity and visibility. In this context, it might be instructive to recall what Deleuze (1997) observed of societies of control: that an increase in opportunities for expression (in this case associated with social media) does not necessarily mean an increase in opportunities for political empowerment: ‘Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves …’ (p. 129). Social media encourages this kind of self expression, and we see at least two important outcomes of disinformation acquiring authority through being shared online: first, activists who rely heavily on social media can develop a dis- torted sense of popular support for their cause that can politically backfire, and second, private ownership of the social media platforms used during protests can make it easy to co-opt and weaken social movements (Mejias, 2013; Morozov, 2012). More importantly, this analysis suggests that civil society can become an active participant in its own dis- empowerment by engaging in an excess of self-interested communication through the production and consumption of disinformation. This disembodied compulsion to express results not in the sharing of meaning, but in its obfuscation. It can lead to mistrust, inac- tion, nihilism, or violence and seriously threaten public discourse, as the Russia–Ukraine conflict has exemplified. From mass to social media in post-Soviet regimes Russian interference in Ukraine is sometimes discussed in western media circles as an affront to western values, as if the fall of communism had settled once and for all who was and who wasn’t on the right side of history. This is, unfortunately, a deficient histori- cal explanation. The fall of communism had less to do with the triumph of western values and more to do with fatigue over continued military failures in Afghanistan, destabilizing reforms imposed during Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule, and the re-emergence of Orthodox religion, which communism failed to stamp out (Gray, 2015). Ideologically, Russia has now positioned itself as a viable alternative to western civilization (Shevtsova, 2014), and this belief is supported by a socially conservative rhetoric focused on condemning non-traditional practices in faith, sex, education, art and culture (Lipman, 2014). It is in the context of this war against western ideas that Russia is keen on preventing Ukraine from becoming part of Europe. Furthermore, a shift in Ukraine’s alliances would send a very clear message to capitalists with investments in the region about the Russian state’s inability to protect their interests. Thus, the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was seen as a clear affront to the status quo, although it bears pointing out that the pro-European movement that led to his removal was deeply polarizing within Ukrainian society as well. The military intervention that 4 Media, Culture & Society followed, which resulted in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, launched a new stage of conflict between the two nations. But as important as the political ramifications

Load more