Everyday citizens in Ukraine have taken to social media to record what is happening in their country in real-time, fromtheir bomb shelter experiences to attacks on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv to drone footage of bombs being dropped.
News correspondents such as VICE Media’s Matthew Cassel have been on the ground recording the war in Ukraine through short TikToks. Viral videos of bombs being dropped on buildings and people evacuating have been published on thousands of media outlets.
Webb Lewis, the assistant director of marketing, brand strategy, and social media for the University of Mississippi, said that following the war in real-time on social media is fascinating and horrifying at the same time.
“To pick up your phone in the comfort of Mississippi and see a live TikTok of fighter jets and bombings going off in Ukraine is epic,” Lewis said. “It’s hard for it not to have an impact on the way you view things, and it’s kind of wild to think that we have that capability to see and to begin to try and understand what is actually happening there.”
Lewis said the current wave of live video platforms is changing how viewers see world events.
“Five years ago, if you would have said we’re gonna have live feed from a warzone? People probably wouldn’t have bought that. But here we are, and we’re seeing this now. Social media platforms) continue to present ways for us for users to put out authentic content, to tell their story, to use their microphone, to sound the trumpets about the successes that they’re personally experiencing and the nightmares that they’re living through,” he said. “While it’s tough to watch, there may be a sense of comfort that comes from them being able to share that with people, because they’re getting to share a story that in years past never would have been broadcast.”
More firsthand videos, interviews, and photos are available now than ever before. This widely available content – both real and unverified – presents a challenge for how traditional media treats breaking news events.
“You can’t take everything that you see at face value,” said WTVA Interim News Director Craig Ford. “I guess that part of our responsibility as traditional media is to kind of sort through what’s out there and tell people hey, this is legit, and this is not.”
False information about the war in Ukraine has already spread quickly, such as a viral photo of a formation of jets that were supposedly Russian fighter planes flying over Ukraine. The video was actually years-old.
In a Feb. 25 interview with NPR, Sam Gregory, the program director of Witness, a nonprofit focused on the ethical use of video in humanitarian crises, said the spread of misinformation taking place on TikTok in particular is having lasting effects on viewers.
“This is the first time TikTok has really been central in a conflict situation of this scale,” Gregory said. “The volume of misleading videos does seem new to me. Some people are doing it because they want attention, some people want to monetize it, others are doing it potentially as misinformation and disinformation.”
UM student Kaci Wilcox, who is currently studying abroad in Rome, Italy, says she finds the ability to follow what is happening in Ukraine on social media both necessary and nerve-wracking.
“It has been a little confusing and has made me a little anxious,” said Wilcox, who was adopted from Russia as an infant. “Obviously, I’m an American citizen, but it still says that I was born in Russia on my passport. Adding on top of that, I’m in Europe in one of the biggest cities in Italy – it can feel a little overwhelming.”
Wilcox has turned to platforms like TikTok and Twitter to keep up with what is going on in Ukraine.
“I’ve been trying to learn about it as much as I can because I am Russian, and I want to know what’s going on over there,” she said. “I’m glad that there is a lot of information online about the crisis though because I am in another country, so it’s hard to keep up when newspapers and news programs are in a language I don’t understand well.”
