Humanizing War and Ending False Patriotism: The Russia-Ukraine Info War

Salma Abouelwafa
@SalmaAbouelwafa 

Truth is the first casualty of war and this has been no different during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The “Our Weapon is Truth” webinar featured Journalism and Mass Communication (JRMC) Visiting Professor Gabriele Cosentino and Professor of Practice in the Department of Public Policy and Administration Karim Haggag who discussed the information war between Russia and Ukraine.

Khaled Ezzelarab, associate professor of practice at JRMC, moderated the talk where both speakers presented their opinions about counter narratives and influencing international support.

Cosentino believes that Ukraine is winning the information war by showing the world the truth through relatable social media engagement while Russia is being increasingly closed about their information.

“The playbook of Russian propaganda and information strategies has always been aimed at disrupting narratives, sewing doubts, disseminating confusion and certainty in order to disable political claims,” said Consentino during the webinar.

He also said that Russia has been perfecting a new type of propaganda different from what was used during the Soviet era, in which they challenge Western democracy as an “unreliable and unsustainable” form of governance.

Consentino added that even though the Russians are more attentive to what their government feeds them, especially after the 2016 elections and after the pandemic where people are more aware of fake news, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook has not changed, which has set Russia back in this information war.

Haggag focused on how narratives are shaped by information and media campaigns and how they can influence and direct the outcomes of war.

“It is not about who has more guns or the bigger guns; it is also very much about who has the most compelling narrative,” said Haggag.

He explained that Russia’s former success in weaponizing social media to promote its agendas had failed today because the narrative shifted from “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

This shift has made it possible for the United States to convince 141 countries at the United Nations General Assembly to vote in condemning the invasion of Ukraine because of Russia’s breach in international order and peace.

“The Ukrainian information campaign very much humanized the war, focusing on Russian’s acts of brutality against civilians, it focused in a very aggressive way on the civilian resistance to the Russian invasion, it focused very much on the daring heroism on the part of the Ukrainian army taking out much larger Russian forces,” said Haggag.

Haggag believes that this very narrative and information campaign has prevented the Ukrainian state and society from collapsing and denied Russia a swift military occupation.