Freshman Cece Guyader gets most of her information about Russia’s war on Ukraine from her TikTok “For You Page.” She said the 15 to 60 second videos are the first place she gets her headlines for the day. But as she scrolls through her feed, she’s inspired to check out other sources for information if she wants to know more.
“I like to then read a news article from whatever account it’s from if it’s a news platform, I’ll go read whatever they’re saying and then another article from a different source to make sure it’s not biased,” Guyader said.
Like many others around the world, Guyader has watched the war unfold through their phone screen since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. Countries with open access to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are able to receive instant news updates about nations overseas. Now, TikTok is changing the content and context of social media — especially on how people view Russia’s war on Ukraine.
According to a 2021 Pew Research study, about half of Americans regularly get their news on social media. Half of the 18 to 29 age group from the survey get their news from TikTok, and it’s popular among Elon students as well.
Freshman Ellie Boyd said she gets the majority of her daily news from TikTok, even though she’s aware it may not be all that trustworthy.
“I’ll ask my family about what I see because they’re closely following the war too,” Boyd said. “I don’t trust a lot of what I get on TikTok, but that is where I see most of what I know about it.”
Political science professor Safia Swimelar said the war is the first time this generation of college students have had a large amount of access to viewing a conflict through the lens of social media.
“It’s allowing young people to get involved and to learn about what’s happening through social media in a way that, back in the 1990s or so, we wouldn’t know what’s happening,” Swimelar said.
Hashtag variations of #standwithukraine and #ukrainewar have over 1 billion views on TikTok, while the #ukrainewarfootage has over 8 million views. The tags are used as a way to collect videos in one place, and posts including them are used to show support or first-hand accounts from those in Europe.
Swimelar said seeing people injured or fleeing from Ukraine in real time puts college students closer to the conflict and creates a competition of narratives.
“People will pay attention more and maybe care more because they’re hearing about it more,” Swimelar said. “But it also shows that all sides are using digital technology and media to communicate and actually to fight the war in the digital realm.”
TikTok was even used as a political tool by the White House on March 11, with approximately 30 TikTok influencers like Kahlil Greene attending a modified news briefing via Zoom to discuss the latest in Ukraine. The creators in attendance were chosen because they already make political content. The event was also designed to teach the content creators how to combat misinformation so they can relay the information from the briefing to their larger audiences.
Journalism professor Amanda Sturgill said the issue with getting news from social media is that platforms deconstruct it. She said social media posts often choose to select facts from the news and present it in a format where everything looks the same, and it’s harder to determine a post’s credibility with something like a Twitter feed or Instagram post.
“When you don’t know the sources, you don’t always know why people are giving you a particular piece of information,” Sturgill said.
A multistep test is what Sturgill encourages those consuming news via social media to use when they come across information in their feeds.
“The first thing is, ‘Does it make me feel really strongly?’” Sturgill said. “If it makes me feel really happy, or really angry, or something like that, there is a chance that it’s been deliberately created in a way to get a reaction out of me to get me to share it. That’s sometimes a clue that information can be false.”
Other steps include asking where the source of the information is from, who else is sharing it and why the user might be seeing it to begin with.
On March 6, TikTok announced its plans to suspend new video uploads from Russia in an effort to curb the pro-war content being posted. The plans include partnering with independent fact-checking organizations like Politifact and adding digital literacy tips to videos. This comes after a Russian false information law passed on March 4. The plans were made in an effort to protect its users and employees. The law would impose a jail term of up to 15 years for those who spread intentionally “fake” news about the Russian military.
TikTok’s content is censored in Russia because of a new Russian false information law. This wouldn’t be the first social media application to face restrictions from the government.
According to NPR, the Russian court previously banned Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram in March. An exception was made for the messaging service WhatsApp. Twitter is not currently banned, but Russian users were facing increased difficulty with the app that officials said they were working to fix.
According to TikTok and since the March announcement, the app’s safety team focused on the war in Ukraine removed over 40,000 videos that violated the app’s policies against “harmful misinformation.” This includes content that incites fear, hate or prejudice to the viewer, causes harm to the viewer’s health, promotes hoaxes or phishing attempts or misleads the viewer about elections or other civil processes. Hundreds of thousands of fake accounts were removed in both Russia and Ukraine and fact-checking prompts have also been added to videos.
When it comes to apps like TikTok, Sturgill said people often look at having video as proof that something is real and true. She said taking information out of context from a video and posting it is more common than advanced techniques like framing and audio manipulation.
The scrolling element of TikTok also makes users more vulnerable to misinformation because of the amount of content they’re consuming. Sturgill said this numbs any kind of filters your brain might put up, but she cautions students to think about the content itself as well as the source.
“Just because information comes from someone who’s in a position of power doesn’t mean that it’s information that’s not being used to manipulate you,” Sturgill said. “People who give speeches, politicians, important business people, spokespeople, those kinds of things — they’ve learned manipulation techniques to make the messages kind of carry the way that they want.”
Even with its shortcomings, TikTok is proving to be a crucial platform with more than just trendy dances and funny animal videos.