Sourabh Gupta speaks at the Webinar on the Cognition War in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Event Background

New technologies are increasingly being used in the cognition domain. Since the Russian-Ukrainian crisis broke out by 2014, a ‘cognition war’, using various kinds of information as weapons, has already been waged between the two countries in warlike emergencies and armed conflicts. This cognition war has moved well past the initial stage and continues apace.

‘Cognition war’ has long been waged through traditional media and parties involved, and is usually between two hostile/belligerent states. Its persuasive and social engineering roles as persuasion and social engineering applied to altering military tactics were not very prominent. However, with the new emergence and development of social media, which creates a virtual space via the Internet which allows anyone to be included in it, more actors – states, parastatal entities, and even individuals – try to achieve control over the social groups concerned, in order to ‘shape’ their legitimacy (moral, legal, political and so forth) for controversial acts.

As far as this Russia-Ukraine conflict is concerned, amidst the deluge of authentic reports, there has been a spate of misleading news and false information related to the conflict that has flooded traditional and social media. For Russia, it has spread information on channels, apps, and media to justify its invasion, claiming that Ukraine was preparing an attack on Donbas and was planning to attack separatist-held territories there using chemical weapons. On the other side, the use of social media allows interaction and closeness between Ukrainians and people across the globe. These exchanges have helped the Ukrainians feel less isolated, united, and even empowered. By revealing personal stories and videos showing the resulting destruction and misery caused by the war, Ukraine and other countries challenged the authenticity of Russia’s claims, and backed up the practices of selective news reporting and new content censorship policies of social media. Meanwhile, governments stress the role of propaganda and political posturing, individuals post and re-post the content they support, and social media gives us clues as to where things may be heading. In this war, information is the weapon, and those who create, process, and distract the information influence the trend of the conflict. However, what role these entities are substantially playing, what weight will be given to the impact of the ‘cognition war’, and how the existing international orders and norms will respond to it…… all of these questions remain to be solved. 

Under these circumstances, this webinar will address these related issues concerning the ‘cognition war’, and manage to find the answers.