Ukraine is the start of Tiktok warfare

The conflict in Ukraine has been dubbed “the first TikTok war”, and rightly so. Scrolling through the app, the typical influencer videos and comedy sketches are punctuated with explosions, dancing soldiers and civilians filming their lives in bunkers. The hashtag #Ukraine has been viewed 22.1 billion times.

Some users may be seeking out the content, but TikTok is unique in its “For You Page” feature (FYP) which generates an endless algorithm-driven stream of content to put strangers’ videos in front of you without requiring you to follow anyone. This means the majority of TikTok users are likely to have come across this content, intentionally or not. 

On one hand, TikTok is reaching a younger demographic who might be less likely to watch the news or pick up a newspaper (63 per cent of the app’s global users are under 29) and the content provides almost real-time access to current affairs. But the impact of social media in wartime is still a relatively new topic, especially when it comes to TikTok. Will this unparalleled insight into the war educate and connect us, desensitise us or turn serious conflict into a spectacle and opportunity to attract views and followers? 

The argument for desensitisation seems obvious; memes depicting Ukrainian President Zelensky and Ukrainians standing up to Russian forces as Marvel characters have gone viral over the last few days, with people using the fictional superhero series to explain the conflict. Whilst these memes are seemingly harmless and rightly praise the bravery of Ukrainians, simplifying a historical conflict into Marvel “good guy versus bad guy” tropes removes vital historical and geopolitical context to the conflict (and ignores the fact that many Russian troops may have been drafted and are fighting against their will). 

Then there’s the issue of influencers. The success of any “social media personality” or “influencer” relies on jumping on the latest trends to go viral, attract followers and increase reach or audience; the problem comes when the “trending” topic of the moment is war. One account on TikTok, Nick Murray (@nickreptv), a 21-year-old British “prankster and social media personality”, usually posts first-person videos miming songs, dancing with his girlfriend or completing challenges. Since Monday his account has looked very different.

After returning from a ski holiday in Norway, Murray posted a video explaining that he was flying to Ukraine to help defend the country. “I’m ready to go,” he wrote over one video, despite Defence Secretary Ben Wallace asking Brits to donate to the Ukrainian embassy or join our forces, rather than heading out alone with no training to a dangerous conflict zone. Murray has since been vlogging his journey through Poland to Ukraine, reaching up to 4.9 million views on some of his videos. 

Whether Murray’s actions are merely foolish or fame-chasing, the presence of an untrained young man who makes videos for a living seems unlikely to help the situation in Ukraine. The idea that influencers might begin mining geopolitical crises for content is extremely dangerous and acts as a stark warning of the perils of living life too much online; always looking for the next way to go viral and disconnecting from reality. 

Another big issue is misinformation and lack of verification. One now-deleted TikTok purporting to be from Ukraine showed a couple experiencing a loud explosion but was later found to have been audio taken from YouTube from the 2020 Beirut explosion and added to the platform by a video creator from Peru. This is happening constantly across social media with videos and pictures being wrongly identified as being from Ukraine, with the majority of users having no means of verifying the origins of the content. 

Russia has also been accused of using social media to promote misinformation, causing the prime ministers of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to send a joint letter to the chief executives of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, asking them to suspend accounts that deny, glorify or justify war crimes. Meanwhile, Russian state regulator, Roskomnadzor, has partially banned Facebook in the country and is asking TikTok to censor military content after multiple videos of Ukrainian soldiers went viral.

The Russian concern over social media content is well-founded and exposes the other side of the argument; social media provides a platform for those wishing to speak out against Putin’s actions. One such user, Andrey Zubov, a Russian academic living in Moscow, has been using Facebook to regularly condemn Putin’s actions and offer support to Ukraine:

In one of his posts to his 50,000 followers, Zubov writes: “For the sake of God and Russia, for the sake of humanity, we must stop the military invasion, withdraw troops from all the territory of Ukraine in its borders, defined by international treaties, and send treasures of those people who decided to invade Ukraine well, for the restoration of this country. HANDS OFF UKRAINE!”

For better or for worse, social media, particularly TikTok, will play a role in all future conflicts. More vigorous fact-checking and better content verification is unfortunately in the hands of the tech giants, but there is an opportunity for journalists to embrace the app and provide trustworthy and educational news and analysis through unconventional means. This is something Sophia Smith Galer, a journalist from VICE News, is leading the way on; her recent TikToks explaining the latest news often reach hundreds of thousands of people.

Away from the tech companies and journalists, there is a need for social media users to be educated on the significance of what they post. As Elisabeth Braw, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), wrote in a piece for Engelsberg Ideas, the usefulness and success of social media in times of crisis relies on civic responsibility: “Governments can, however, encourage their citizens to be judicious in their sharing of sensitive information. ‘Think before you speak,’ generations of parents have told their children. Today citizens of all ages can learn to think before they post.”