In June, RMLN hosts Ramón Reichert from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, who will give a lecture “Staging War: Information warfare on Telegram and TikTok during the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Lecture will be held in hybrid format June, 8 from 13.00 to 14.30 (Helsinki time). If you want to participate online, please leave your contact information here until June, 7 noon: registration form. If you want to participate offline, join us in Helsinki at the Aleksanteri Institute (Unioninkatu 40C).
About the lecture: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 we have been seeing the struggle of two opposing forms of strategic communication. On the one hand, the centrally controlled propaganda regime in Moscow. On the other hand, a grassroots movement in political communication: a variety of content (visual storytelling through photography, video, graphics, diagrams, and maps) from actors of different size that work together through a common goal and a common narrative. This research examines the different media strategies that are used in the context of visual, narrative, and technical-infrastructural (hashtags, trending topics, memes, and bots) ‘control’ of public opinion and collective memory. The lecture focuses on information warfare in Telegram and TikTok that take place during the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war. Today a constant war feed on social media and online-platforms has emerged. Civilians, combatants, and soldiers use cell phones to record war victims, torture and cruelty, troop movements, destroyed military equipment and bomb attacks and disseminate them on Telegram and TikTok channels.