The role of psychological warfare in the battle for Ukraine

In the 21st century, war is not just physical—it’s also psychological, and much of it takes place online.

Political entities in at least 70 countries have engaged in coordinated online disinformation campaigns in recent years, with Russia alone launching more than 30 attacks on elections around the world since 2016 (2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation (PDF, 6.05MB)opens in new window, University of Oxford; Hacking Democraciesopens in new window, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2019).

“We’ve seen the very real effects of information operations on everything from the rise of extremist groups like ISIS to far-right groups in America that culminated in January 6,” said Peter W. Singer, PhD, a professor of practice at the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. “It’s behind the so-called ‘infodemic’ that has made the COVID-19 pandemic far more deadly than it should have been,” he said.

Online disinformation has also been linked to mass killings around the world, from Myanmar to India.

But propagandists aren’t just pushing against an open door. Psychologists—along with experts in political science, computer science, and national security—are fighting back. This starts with an understanding of how misinformation (and disinformation, a subset of misinformation intended to mislead) functions, as well as what works to correct it. That science is now informing strategic resistance in Russia, Ukraine, and beyond.

[Related: Psychologists fight Russian disinformation]

“The Ukrainians are fighting a 21st-century war, which is half on the internet,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol who studies misinformation at the societal level. “That new approach has worked extremely well because it has preempted Russian attempts to rewrite history.”

Disinformation in war is nothing new—in fact, it’s a key part of the playbook. Leaders commonly inflate or fabricate information about everything from military might to supposed atrocities to confuse opponents or boost morale at home. Even Ukraine has appeared to pushopens in new window some wartime narratives that may be false.

But with the rise of social media, propaganda can now be deployed on a much larger scale—and it has been used to garner support for genocide and other human rights violations, including those against the Uyghur population in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar, and Muslim populations in India. To describe the growing role of online media in political conflicts, Singer helped coin the term “LikeWar.”

“If you think of cyber war as the hacking of networks, LikeWar is its evil twin: the hacking of people on those networks, through our likes, shares, and sometimes lies,” said Singer, who is also a strategist and senior fellow at the nonpartisan public policy institute New America.

For years, Russia has been waging—and winning—a LikeWar against much of the world. The Kremlin has deployed tried-and-true psychological manipulation strategies via social and online media, including disparaging outgroups and rapid-fire lying, according to research by Jon Roozenbeek, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Cambridge, who studies mis- and disinformation and media discourse in Ukraine.

Roozenbeek documented how the Kremlin stoked outgroup animosity toward Ukrainians and the Ukrainian government during the takeover of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, a tactic linked with high social media engagement (“Media and Identity in Wartime Donbas, 2014–2017opens in new window,” University of Cambridge, 2019; Rathje, S., et al., PNASopens in new window, Vol. 118, No. 26, 2021).

Another ploy Russian President Vladimir Putin has used to great success is conspiracy “gish gallop,” or rapid-fire lying, said Roozenbeek, for instance around the Malaysian Airlines disaster of 2014. The Kremlin’s constant stream of liesopens in new window—that it was a Ukrainian attack, that all the passengers were dead before takeoff, that the pilot intentionally crashed the plane—is used to sow confusion and disillusionment (Paul, C., & Matthews, M., RAND Corporationopens in new window (PDF, 177KB), 2016).

“It’s a firehose of falsehoods that don’t even hang together,” Lewandowsky said. “They’re just saying anything, literally anything, to reinforce people’s belief that you can never get to the truth.”

The Russian leader also uses specific leadership and aggressive tactics to help justify violence, said Tin Nguyen, a research associate at the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education Center who is completing his doctoral degree in industrial-organizational psychology at Penn State University (Lovelace, J. B., et al., The Leadership Quarterlyopens in new window, Vol. 30, No. 1, 2019; James, L. R., et al., Organizational Research Methodsopens in new window, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2005). For example, Putin’s strategies include painting Ukraine and Western nations as evil and immoral and framing messages in terms of power dynamics. If Russia is merely a victim that other world powers are exploiting, the country has a justification for revenge.

Such claims may be easily dismissed by Westerners, but many Russian citizens have lacked access to reliable counterinformation due to the restrictions on independent and social media in the country, Nguyen said. They’ve also faced repeated exposure to these falsehoods for years, which psychologists have shown can increase the persuasiveness of disinformation (Pennycook, G., et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Generalopens in new window, Vol. 147, No. 12, 2018).

“It’s not just what’s being communicated now that matters—it’s what’s been communicated for the last decade or so that’s really influencing the way that [the Russian] people are thinking about this war,” Nguyen said.

By design, mis- and disinformation are more infectious and incendiary than factual information, which makes them particularly useful in wartime.

Research has shown that after undergoing fact-checking, information deemed false spreads faster on social media than information deemed true—a trend fueled by people, not bots (Vosoughi, S., et al., Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 359, No. 6380, 2018). Misinformation tends to draw on moral-emotional language, making it more likely to be shared, especially within ideological groups (Ecker, U. K. H., et al., Natural Reviews Psychologyopens in new window, Vol. 1, 2022; Brady, W. J., et al., PNASopens in new window, Vol. 114, No. 28, 2017).

Once it takes hold, misinformation is tough to correct. Psychologists have shown that prebunking, or preemptively warning people about incorrect or misleading information, is more effective than debunking falsehoods after the fact (Lewandowsky, S., et al., The Debunking Handbook 2020opens in new window). Personal and emotional appeals, rather than merely providing a fact-check, can also be helpful.

Though Russia has long outmaneuvered its opponents in the information space, foreign leaders are starting to push back. Ukrainian officials systematically prebunkedopens in new window Russian attempts to spread disinformation in the lead-up to February’s invasion by documenting Russia’s buildup of military forces with satellite photos. They also helped reveal that Putin’s so-called “emergency meetings” were actually prerecorded when one official’s wristwatch did not match the Kremlin’s story. The United States also released intelligence about Russian movements ahead of time to preclude Putin from controlling the narrative about the war.

Preempting Russian propaganda affords a strategic advantage, as well as a psychological one, Singer said—it puts the Kremlin on its back foot, forcing it to react instead of making the first move and controlling the storyline.

Social media platforms are also limiting the flow of Russian disinformation more aggressively than they have in the past, Nguyen said. Twitter is adding labelsopens in new window to Russian state-sponsored media, while Meta is demoting such postsopens in new window. Reddit is making it harderopens in new window to find the subreddit r/Russia, and TikTok is limiting livestreams and uploadsopens in new window from Russia.

At the individual level, the same strategies that work for avoiding misinformation on other topics can help protect against psychological warfare, too. Singer and his colleagues call this “cyber citizenshipopens in new window”—a combination of digital literacy, responsible behavior, and awareness of the threat of online manipulation.

“Whether it’s Russian disinformation, an antivaxxer conspiracy theory, or just someone trying to tell your kids that aliens built the pyramids, having all three of those skills is an incredibly effective way to resist manipulation,” he said.