By Arnold Schwarzenegger ai Pink Floyd(yes, they too have joined the field), many public figures, including singers, actors and artists of various kinds, have chosen to express their “sympathies” in what has already been renamed the “War of Communications”, where strategies are studied in parallel on the battlefield and on the keyboard.
Like it or not, in fact this is a”emotional warfare”or better still, a “social war” in which an unprecedented factor of “engagement” prevails on a global scale, which can count on more or less amateur photos being uploaded to social networks or fake videos exposed.
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Putin was surprised, not only by the resistance of the Ukrainian diehards on the ground, but above all by the cleverness of his direct opponent, who took up arms in the media war that he is waging in parallel with that in the big cities of tormented Ukraine. Not by chance Yuri Kostyukthe deputy head of Zelenskyy’s office, is considered the president’s “secret weapon” because he now plays a crucial role in communications.
The suspicion is that this is a conflict that has gotten out of hand from its own advocate, who, for that very reason, has run into tasteless and ineffective shelters, locked information in his country in a bubble, and enacted measures of anachronistic repression. It’s breaking news about the closure of some of the most popular social networks, such as Instagram after refusing to ban hate speech against Russian and Soviet troops and seems ready the Rossgram alternativeonline from March 28th.
This is the extension of the socalled “Putinian purges” to the elusive world of social media, but in this case the fight cannot be contained and turned against a handful of opponents of the regime. Perhaps someone should report to Putin that he is desperately trying to hunt down members of a vast community that “voluntarily” shares fake Russian videos, mocks the opponent, and weakens his political position internally and globally. Even if, as is well known, little happens by accident in the world of social media.
On the other hand Zelensky he knows how to deliver wit (perhaps stemming from his acting past) and skillfully plays with his videos, which he uses as powerful weapons to disarm Russian disinformation that uses digital channels too traditionally. Let’s not call it cyberwar, it’s not the usual war against web infrastructures by skilled hackers working on both sides, bringing down public and private computer systems on both sides. And so forth. As already mentioned, we are experiencing a real one Social “battlefield” that uses reality to sneak unexpectedly into our conscience, prompting us to take sides and arouse the fiercest resistance. And this increasingly explains the “social metamorphosis” of weapons used in today’s wars, such as Kalashnikovs with embedded streaming.
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This is undoubtedly a war of emotions, Zelesnky felt, beating his opponent, who is increasingly proving to be a clumsy giant with feet of clay, completely unresponsive in a digital world that is unfamiliar to him. And Zelensky’s demonstrative courage is shared by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, winning battles every day.based on the relevance algorithms of social media posts.
Thus, in its communication strategies, Russia seems incapable of, on the one hand, entrusting less and less convincing fake videos that populate regime television, such as the deepfake with Zelenskyi’s false surrender (immediately exposed and ridiculed on the Internet), and . on the other hand, an incredibly rigid and inconclusive communication on a social level. And these same platforms now enjoy easily bypassing the Putinian censorship veto, as in the case of the Tor version of Twitter. In short, Russia today appears increasingly lonely and ridiculed in its fierce censorship, while Ukraine opens up to the world and its sharing.
This war teaches the terrain of conquest in the age of surveillance and disinformation it’s not just physical anymore, but also multimedia, it is not only circumscribed, but global. We may not be aware of this, but this “social war” is changing day by day, even the concept “influence” in terms of international relations, i.e. politically and economically. Because the rulers of many countries are grappling with their own public opinion, which especially in social media is for the first time becoming a very powerful “target” and “weapon” of this conflict at the same time.
One thing seems to be safe: the real winner of this war will not be the one who will raise his flag on Ukrainian territory, but who has been able to use the new weapons of global communication in the most effective way.