TikTok War: How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Played on the Youngest Social Media Audience

March 1 – When Russia invaded Ukraine last week, some of the youngest social media users experienced the conflict on the front lines of TikTok.

Videos of people huddling and crying in windowless bomb shelters, urban explosions and rockets flying through Ukrainian cities have taken over the app from its usual offerings for fashion, fitness and dance videos.

Ukrainian influencers on social media have uploaded grim scenes to themselves, wrapped in blankets in underground bunkers and army tanks rolling through residential streets, compared to photos of blooming flowers and laughing friends in restaurants that honor calmer memories than family. their cities.

They called on their followers to pray for Ukraine, to donate in support of the Ukrainian military, and called in particular on Russian consumers to join the anti-war effort.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which she called a “special operation”, is the latest example of TikTok’s central role in delivering news and current events to Gen Z’s large audience. Its well-known algorithm is known to serve up-to-date content, even if users do not follow certain people, which allows topics to quickly go viral among its 1 billion users per month.

The application became so influential in this conflict that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turned to TikTokers as a group that could help end the war in a speech to Russian citizens. Some TikTokers continued where the politician had stopped.

A Ukrainian travel blogger named Alina Volik, who has more than 36,000 followers on TikTok, took a break from posting highlights from her travels to Egypt, Spain and Turkey to upload videos of life during the invasion, emergency backpacks , filled with first aid supplies and sealed windows to protect against pieces of glass in the event of an explosion. In videos published by TikTok on Monday, Volik also called on his international followers to watch her Instagram Stories to “see the truth” about Ukraine.

In an email to Reuters, Wolik said he wanted to fight disinformation in Russian news that the country’s actions were a “military operation” and not a war that hurt Ukrainians.

The installation of residential buildings destroyed by rockets, empty shelves of grocery stores and long queues of cars piled up in front of gas stations can be seen on the pages of TikTok of leading Ukrainian influencers.

“@zaluznik”, which has 2 million followers, published one such montage on Sunday with the caption “Russians open your eyes!”

Russian influential people have also visited the app to share their reaction. Niki Proshin, who has more than 763,000 TikTok followers, said in a video Thursday that “normal people” in Russia do not support the war.

“None of my friends and none of the people I speak to personally supported today’s events,” he said, referring to the invasion of Ukraine.

On Monday, Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor called for the application to stop including military content in recommended publications for minors, saying much of the content was anti-Russian. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read more

Online disinformation researchers have warned that false information about the conflict has already been mixed with authentic information and has spread widely on TikTok and other technology platforms, including Facebook’s Meta Platforms (FB.O), Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc (GOOGL). .O). ) YouTube.

Footage from the video game of the military simulator Arma 3, images of explosions from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Gaza Strip, old footage of heavy gunfire and animations of flying planes were shared on social media sites, as if depicting the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine last week.

“We continue to monitor the situation closely, with increased resources to respond to emerging trends and eliminate offensive content, including harmful misinformation and incitement to violence,” a TikTok spokesman said, adding that he was working with fact-finding organizations. .

Some Ukrainian TikTok users have gone on a mission to share information and spread awareness with Western audiences.

“I want people to understand that this is not a joke, this is a serious situation that Ukrainians are facing,” 20-year-old Marta Vasyuta said in an interview Monday.

One of Vasyuta’s videos on TikTok showed what looked like a rocket in the sky with the caption “Kyiv 4:23 in the morning.” As of Monday, there were more than 131,000 comments as users flooded the video to offer their prayers and express disbelief.

“I never thought I would get WAR updates on TIKTOK,” one user commented.

Report by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Elizabeth Couliford in New York; edited by Kenneth Lee and Sri Navaratnam

Our standards: ‘ principles of trust.