Donetsk don’t tell – ‘hybrid war’ in Ukraine and the limits of social media influence operations

The limits of social media influence operations are investigated in this Journal of Information Technology & Politics Article written by CSS’ Lennart Maschmeyer. In collaboration with Alexei Abrahams, Peter Pomerantsev, and Volodymyr Yermolenko, he challenges the widely shared belief of social media enabling more potent influence operations than traditional mass media. By focusing on influence operations targeted at Ukraine, a theoretical framework is developed, showing how and why decentralized and centralized media both offer respective opportunities and challenges for conducting influence operations. Tested against the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the paper does not dismiss the potential effectiveness of social media in spreading disinformation, but rather reminds to not overestimate the threat. In fact, it is an ample reminder of the overall limitations of influence operations.