Social Media Use and Propaganda Techniques: An Evaluation of the Ukraine-Russia War

Introduction

Before the mass media became effective, interstate relations were often conducted in secret. With the spread of mass media, states have made an effort to announce their ideas, thoughts, and beliefs to other countries by using newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the internet. The most important of the persuasion techniques using mass media is propaganda.

The word propaganda is based on the concept of “propagare”. It is called when the gardener plants the sprouts of a fresh plant into the ground to produce new plants. In other words, propaganda can be defined as cultivating the desired ideas on some people. Propaganda is closely related to mass media and persuasion, as the aim is to make the target audience accept some ideas. The developments in the field of mass communication technologies have opened a different field to the propaganda dimension. Just as the developments in mechanics brought the distance barrier to its knees, the telegraph, television, and computer overcame the time that prevented the spread of ideas and thoughts (Atabek, 2004).

With the introduction of satellite communication in the 1960s and computers in the 1970s, a new page was opened on the balance of power and authority within and between societies. While the participation of computers in social life is described as the third revolution, it has taken important functional roles in social structure and manufacturing relations. Mankind has come to regulate power and authority relations in virtual environments with the emergence of the internet. In addition, the world is changing in terms of form and content with new communication technologies (Tokgöz, 2020, s. 46).

It is thought that social media is different from mass media. These differences can be listed as follows; interactionism, instant feature, audience feature, the user instead of audience feature, the intricacy of production and consumption, decentralization, interlaced virtual reality, chained communication, the intricacy of private and public field, being economic, individual and mass (Güngör, 2020, s. 401; Aktan & Kayış, 2018, s. 52).

Social media, where today's internet users spend a significant part of their lives, is a very strategic space in terms of the propaganda application area of countries. In this study, focusing on the visual propaganda technique in social media, the interaction of Russia's news agency Sputnik Turkey in social media in the Ukraine-Russia war is examined. In addition, the concepts of digital media and new media are used from time to time instead of the concept of social media in the study.