The Ukraine crisis has also seen cyber warfare become a key component of the conflict, with hacker attacks on both sides trying to destabilise critical infrastructure and spread digital chaos.
These factors make the conflict in Ukraine a prime example of how, in the 21st century, war is fought not only on the ground but also online. Indeed, social networks may, in part, positively influence some clashes, but since these means are hard to control, they can also be used for less noble purposes. The aggregation function is often exploited by terrorist groups to identify new recruits and spread their message. Turning to the dissemination function, the fact that any user can publish any kind of information at will, and that such information is therefore difficult to verify, leads to the problem of fake news, which is now widespread and difficult to combat. Fake news is often deliberately spread to try to create confusion and manipulate public opinion in one direction or another; sometimes governments themselves use this kind of propaganda, and the goal might even be to try to create conflict. Taking the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an example, the Kremlin has launched an extensive disinformation campaign in regions such as South America and Africa in order to increase the already existing discontent in such regions with Western powers.
Even outside of conflict, controlling social media has become a hot topic in basically every country on the planet in order to have more control over information. Brazil repeatedly blocked access to social media, until the most recent shutdown of X in August 2024, later lifted in October. A Brazilian judge had suspended X, the platform previously known as Twitter, on August 30, accusing it of failing to comply with an order to remove accounts suspected of spreading disinformation, many of them linked to Brazil's far-right.
The most powerful example of control and censorship of social media and the internet in general is China's Great Firewall. The term Great Firewall, ironically inspired by the Great Wall of China, was coined in a 1997 article in Wired magazine and later adopted by the international media, including the Chinese media. This term refers to the Golden Shield Project, a network censorship and surveillance system operated by the People's Republic of China's Ministry of Public Security. The project aims to block access to any data from abroad considered potentially unfavourable. It is the world's most complex internet censorship and control system, blocking access to major western websites and social networks such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and replacing them with Chinese equivalents. Control of the Internet is crucial for the Chinese government, both to prevent disinformation and to counter any content that could undermine the country's political stability.
A well-known remark by President Deng Xiaoping, made in the early 1980s, captures this idea: “If you open the windows, fresh air comes in, but so do flies.” Here, "flies" means all those sensitive issues that might come from the West, from violent images to ideas about democracy that have the potential to contaminate minds and turn people away from the path of the Chinese Communist Party. China's censorship model is also providing inspiration for Russia's efforts to control information during the current conflict.
Today, Western countries are increasingly required to counter disinformation campaigns propagated in cyberspace by organisations that are difficult to link to state actors. The aim of these campaigns is to destabilise society from within and to undermine democratic principles, which have already been severely challenged by a major crisis of values in recent decades. In contrast to censorship and information control, democratic countries seek to counter disinformation campaigns by spreading the truth, in line with their values. This is an asymmetric conflict, pitting real news against the sensationalism of false information. However, the battle turns out to be an unequal one—trying to refute fake news with fact-checking alone. People who have become radicalised rarely turn back; in many cases, efforts to disprove information only end up reinforcing their beliefs.
Confirmation bias1 results in the emergence of echo chambers, i.e. groups of people who form communities of interest with shared beliefs and goals. In echo chambers, individual opinions are not discussed, but rather reinforced and polarised. Discordant information is often simply ignored. Thus, fact-checking has major limitations. People try to fight fake news by saying "I have the truth: here it is", but it is unlikely it will work. It is important to realise that fake news is only the tip of the iceberg. The real damage comes from segregation into groups, into narratives that do not 'talk' to each other. Consequently, one of the challenges for the West in countering these cognitive threats in the future will be to focus on education as a priority.
Education is a vital tool in the fight against disinformation, as it develops the critical thinking and analytical skills needed to assess the reliability of sources. Teaching people how to recognise bias and verify information helps create knowledgeable citizens who are less easy to manipulate. A well-informed society is more robust, able to defend itself against fake news and contribute more responsibly to public debate. However, education is a defence strategy that delivers results in the long term, and only in the future will we know which of the programmes implemented by various countries ultimately proved to be the most effective.