The TikTok War

 

As almost any American teenager where they get their news, and the answer is almost always “social media.” To older folks, that suggests Google (YouTube) and Facebook/Instagram/Meta, but for most these in Z and young generations, that is “old world” media. Even Twitter is left behind. While these may be secondary and fact-check back-ups, their main source understanding the Ukrainian invasion comes from TikTok, “a video-focused social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. It hosts a variety of short-form user videos, from genres like pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, dance, and entertainment with durations from 15 seconds to three minutes.” Wikipedia. And today: hard news. Notwithstanding efforts from other, US-owned major social media platforms, TikTok is far and away the most dominant news source today for those younger generations. 

Just as radio and newsreel footage brought us images of World War II, and television defined our perception of the wars in Vietnam and until recently when social media (Google and Facebook) began to rise, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, TikTok has captured the eyes and years of our rising generations. TikTok, a user-content-based system, has been able to form a dissemination platform for on-the-ground smartphone video clips from Ukraine itself. But there are issues.

A Harvard generated study, Tiktok, the War on Ukraine, and 10 Features That Make The App Vulnerable to Misinformation, posted March 10th on mediamanipulation.org: At the time of writing on March 9, 2022, videos on TikTok featuring the hashtag ‘#ukraine’ had collectively amassed more than 26.8 billion views. In comparison, the hashtag ‘#ukraine’ on Instagram had 33 million posts (hovering over the below image and others in the text will display image source)…

“Along with [the success of social media success] has followed the rapid scaling of media manipulation and disinformation campaigns, which capitalize on the design of social platforms to reach massive audiences extremely quickly... It’s not all bad, though. We have observed TikTok users inside Ukraine using the app to raise awareness about the crisis and document their experiences under siege. These videos range from sardonic to deeply emotional. Videos detailing the violence and destruction occurring in several of the country’s major cities are also common on the app. Ukrainians in and outside the country are using the platform to speak directly to western audiences who may not know the history of Ukraine…

“We have observed TikTok users inside Ukraine using the app to raise awareness about the crisis and document their experiences under siege. These videos range from sardonic to deeply emotional. Videos detailing the violence and destruction occurring in several of the country’s major cities are also common on the app. Ukrainians in and outside the country are using the platform to speak directly to western audiences who may not know the history of Ukraine.” TikTok coverage is the new normal… and very different from what existed in the past.

“‘Unprecedented’ is a word that's been used frequently in connection with the ongoing attack on Ukraine, regarding everything from Russia's seizing of a nuclear plant to the number of traumatized people fleeing the country in such a short time… Also seemingly unprecedented? The role of TikTok in a conflict of this magnitude — and, as a result, the number of kids and teens getting intimate, first-person war reports from the nonstop spigot that the social media platform is known for…

“Still, the Ukraine situation ‘is by no means the first time we've seen this,’ [notes Robert Thompson, Syracuse University professor of television, radio and film and director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture], pointing out moments such as the 2009 viral video of protestor Neda Agha-Soltan bleeding to death on the streets of Iran — ahead of the ‘Arab Spring’ of the 2010s, a series of uprisings that would be fueled by social media to such an extent that some referred to them as ‘Twitter revolutions.’ But now the amount of reporting coming from ‘anybody with a fairly modest phone in their pocket’ is only increasing.

“And that has Thompson and other experts both concerned and intrigued — especially when it comes to the role of TikTok, with the seemingly endless flow of war reporting finding its way into Gen Z's For You pages… ‘TikTok seems like the perfect medium to not cover a war,’ Thompson says. ‘War has a set of complexities that TikTok is not known for being able to communicate,’ and the way stories are presented come without any ‘editorial standards,’ he points out.” Beth Greenfield writing for Yahoo!Life, March 11th.

But as the above picture illustrates, TikTok’s “snippet news” also has a massive credibility problem, separating truth from fabrication. It also provides a means for fraudulent fundraising. The Harvard study notes: “[The success of social media has also generated] rapid scaling of media manipulation and disinformation campaigns, which capitalize on the design of social platforms to reach massive audiences extremely quickly.”

Writing for the March 12 FastCompany.com, Mike Sullivan picks up on that Harvard study: “It’s often hard for users, even seasoned journalists, to discern the difference between truth and rumor on TikTok, say the researchers. ‘We’re all familiar with tools used to manipulate media, such as deepfakes, but this app is unique in that it has a built-in video editing suite of tools that one could argue encourages users to manipulate the content they’re about to upload,’ research fellow Kaylee Fagan, one of the authors of the report, tells Fast Company. ‘And the app really does encourage the use of repurposed audio, so people can fabricate an entire scene so that it looks like it may have been captured in Ukraine.’… Plus, it’s very hard to track the original source and date of the original video or soundtrack. Compounding the problem is the fact that users are practically anonymous on TikTok. ‘Anyone can publish and republish any video, and stolen or reposted clips are displayed alongside original content,’ the researchers wrote.

“The Harvard researchers also note that while TikTok has shut off its service for Russian users, you can still find propaganda from the accounts of state-controlled media, such as RT, on the app. You can also find pro-Russia videos posted by people living outside of Russia, the report stated.

“The reason this is all so worrisome is not that misleading TikToks often get wide exposure. But because both misinformation (in which users unwittingly publish falsehoods) and disinformation (in which operatives post falsehoods to manipulate public opinion) make it hard for the public to differentiate between true and legitimate and false and misleading narratives about an event, such as an invasion. As the weeks go by, people grow tired of trying to dismiss the lies and find the truth. Exhausted and confused, they become politically neutralized.” Can young minds filter out truth from fiction? Can they create a strategic understanding of the conflict from snippets? At least they are engaged, but this new platform for news needs a whole lot of work to improved truth and genuine “big picture” comprehension of what’s happening.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our society and legal system is woefully behind in grappling with how rising generations learn about the world…  with unknown longer-term consequences.