Tutorials for driving a Russian tank, for making Molotov cocktails or even scenes of life in a bunker… Young Ukrainians take up arms on social networks and flood TikTok with videos on the conflict with Russiaoften in a tone of humor so specific to the platform, owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance.
Thus, Valeria Shashenok, resident of Chernihiv, in the north of Ukraine, publishes almost every day her daily life as a citizen in a country at war, under her pseudonym @Valerisssh. With her family, she took refuge in a bunker on February 26, two days after the start of the Russian invasion of her country. Since then, it has been nicknamed by some the “Anne Frank from TikTok”, and her influencer posts on travel, photography or fashion have given way to much more serious messages.
She shares tutorial videos in English where she explains, for example, how to make coffee without electricity, montages that tell her typical day in a bunker or images of buildings gutted by bombs and Russian army fire. . But always with this light and ironic tone, trademark of TikTok.
The tiktoker Valeria Shashenok tells her daily life in a bunker in Ukraine
TikTok by @Valerisssh (Screenshot)
The nature of the conflict, “this big difference”
This social network, launched in September 2016is “the fashionable platform at the moment for young people”, hence its popularity in the context of the war in Ukraine, explains to L’Express Stéphanie Lamy, author of Agora toxica (Éditions du Détour) and co-founder of Danaïdes, an association that develops digital tools for collective mobilization for civilians living in conflict zones.
“The first and big difference, novelty, is the nature of the conflict,” she continues. This is indeed not the first war covered on social networks. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were widely used by the population during the Arab Spring or to relay the abuses committed in Syria by the army of Bashar al-Assad supported by Vladimir Putin. “The population was looking for visibility because the balance of power also depends on this visibility”, she explains. But this time, it is not peoples trying to speak up to make their voices heard in the face of an authoritarian leader. It is a war of one state against another state. “The Ukrainian state, in the broad sense, makes sure that the internet is accessible in order to make it possible to coordinate the population online”, explains Stéphanie Lamy. TikTok is the visible part of it.
Even countries that are not directly involved in the conflict, although concerned, are trying to take control of this dissemination tool. Thus, the White House communicated this week to 30 major TikTokeurs “the latest information from an authoritative source”, explained to the washington post its director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty.
“It’s a way to use humor to free yourself”
The TikTok platform is particularly popular with the so-called “Z” generation, born between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2010s. In the United States, part of “Gen Z”, who do not watch traditional television, got to know a country she knew nothing about. “TikTok plays a vital role, because that’s where the majority of the younger generation gets their information,” according to Chris Dier, a history teacher at a New Orleans high school and himself TikTokeur, interviewed by l AFP.
In France, too, young people obtain information mainly on the internet, abandoning the JTs and continuous news channels. The Ukrainian accounts then make it possible to relay this information but above all to tell scenes of life that the media cannot tell in such an intimate way. “It’s the experience of a population that is not necessarily questioned by journalists on the spot”, underlines Stéphanie Lamy. “People describe me as the eyes of Gen Z. I do TikTok with humor because it’s a way of telling people what’s going on,” Valeria Shashenok told CNN.
For Ukrainian accounts, telling the war on social networks, in particular TikTok, “it’s a way of existing, of resisting, of being alive”, observes Stéphanie Lamy. This humorous, ironic tone, marker of the younger generation, is used a lot on this platform of short online videos. “It’s a way of using humor to free yourself,” she says. “Humour has always existed in times of war, it is a survival mechanism to keep a little normality in an abnormal situation”, explains the specialist. She remembers that in Libya she had accompanied young people by participating in the creation of a Facebook page that made fun of Muammar Gaddafi. “For them, it was a huge act of rebellion to have created a satire of the leader,” she recalls. Here, “the novelty is that there is a platform dedicated to that”.
For these users who follow the war on their screens, these videos allow them “to see that their fellow human beings can express themselves in a situation of war, it is an example to follow”, estimates Stéphanie Lamy. The Ukrainians who film themselves “recount the war because it is new for them to be under the bombs”. These youth voices rising online “may also give young Westerners another front for mobilization, besides the climate, but they may feel frustrated that they cannot do more” in this war.
A war without death
However, several questions arise around a war told with lightness. “How is the content perceived outside a conflict zone? TikTok works by mimicry, so is there a risk of mimicry in the manufacture of Molotov cocktails? Doesn’t that trivialize the daily life of a country at war? ?” asks Stephanie Lamy. She continues: “We put on the same level someone in his living room and someone who drives a Russian tank.”
Indeed, this war on TikTok is relatively smooth. The platform removes violent content and many influencers have decided on their own not to post any images of death or fighting. “They give a less serious image of what the reality of war is, but that does not mean that they do not see the horrors in their daily lives”, nuances the specialist.
Especially since if TikTok tries to delete videos that are too violent, “not everything can be deleted and a lot of content ends up online. And even if there is a disconnect between the reality of war and their reality, there is a form of surprise to see people who are similar to them under the bombs”, continues Stéphanie Lamy.
Moreover, if the war were prolonged in time, the violent contents would increase and a radicalization in the contents would be likely to take place. One could then fear that some teenagers, outside Ukraine, could be confronted with harsh images, the algorithm guiding towards these violent contents. There would then be a risk of “increasing desensitization” in the face of war, suggests Stéphanie Lamy.
A risk of misinformation
Another important fear: that of disinformation, or misinformation. The content is difficult to put into context, due to the format of the posts shared, namely very short videos with only a few sentences to explain. “It’s very difficult for [les jeunes] to navigate” on the social network and to apprehend the event, thus points out Chris Dier, “because they are bombarded with propaganda from all sides, in particular from Russia.”
While the platform has blocked content sharing for Russian users, official media and state accounts remain active. “With this concession made to propaganda bodies, there is a possibility of using semantic weapons”, warns Stéphanie Lamy. Asked by AFP, TikTok indicates that it has dedicated “reinforced resources” to “detect emerging threats” on the platform and “remove harmful disinformation”. Today, the flow of pro-Russian messages has clearly reduced, even if videos still accuse the Western media of using archive footage or the United States of lying about the exact nature of the conflict.
In addition to intentional disinformation, “there is a lot of misinformation”, adds Stéphanie Lamy for whom this concept is more about sharing false information inadvertently. But this youth rocked by the internet and its fake culture is nevertheless capable of detect “fake news” quickly.
At the moment, the war is all over the social network. But until when ? “The conflict has only lasted three weeks, will our attention be as much focused on Ukraine if it lasts for months or even years?” Asks the specialist. Besides, will the young Ukrainians still be there to tell the story? In her last video published on Tuesday March 15, Valeria Shashenok recounts the stages of her flight from Ukraine, passing through different cities. With his family, they left the country to join Poland. At the rate of exiles, there will not be many users left to witness the war on TikTok. According to the latest tally from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, like Valeria Shashenok and her family, 2.8 million people fled Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict.