A Revolution in Information Warfare

Freedom of speech and the press on the World Wide Web has been a central feature of the Information Age. In this paper, we analyze the unprecedented actions to restrict the flow of information and shape messaging surrounding the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war. We study the media narratives promoted by the Russian government and its affiliates online in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and consider the impact of interventions by Russian and Western state and non-state actors to censor opposing narratives: the European Union’s decision to revoke the broadcasting licenses of the Russia state-affiliated media (RSM) outlets RT and Sputnik, Russia’s efforts to restrict the use of the term `war’ through introducing criminal penalties, the Kremlin’s decision to throttle the websites of, and then ban, Western social media platforms, and, finally, the labeling, deamplification, and deplatforming of RSM-managed accounts on popular OSNs. Using a cross-platform dataset covering two search engines and three OSNs, we conduct a novel analysis of the effects of these interventions on the information ecosystem. We find that Moscow’s fear-based restriction on the use of censored terms was successful, whereas IP throttling and platform bans in Russia were largely ineffective. In the West, platform interventions achieved limited success within the EU, but did not have a discernible impact on a global scale.