The horror of war certainly overshadows everything – justifiably so – the last few days. At the same time, of course, without in any case missing the focal point, which is nothing more than the human tragedy that entails every war, the events in Ukraine are certainly food for thought from other, secondary aspects as well.
Being the first war to take place on European soil in the age of social media, it looks like a huge case study of how the public sphere has been transformed. It is like watching a second, parallel, underground war, with the aim of dominating the battle of shaping public opinion.
What is practically happening, is that mass internet access is dramatically changing the data. Each individual user can be treated as a “source” of information, posting videos and / or photos from the center of developments without of course any possibility of cross-referencing. Respectively, every user can easily become a “steamer” of fake news by rebroadcasting things that impressed him/her.
The supersonic speed of image and video virality, however, is crucial to shaping global public opinion, and so literally each of us can prove – albeit unintentionally – to be a valuable “ally” in the propaganda of one side or the other.
Thus, the near future will surely prove to be crucial both for the efforts to regulate social media, and for the realization of the individual responsibility that comes with sharing things in social media, when human lives are – literally – at stake.
