This has been an interesting phenomenon during the Russian-Ukrainian war.
…heavy fighting in the Kherson region, Russian invaders report… pic.twitter.com/TLCTznDqaW
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 15, 2022
At the beginning of the war, I assumed, in this day of universal smartphones and internet access, that we would be inundated with smartphone photos and videos as well as near instantaneous frontline reporting. It doesn't seem to have turned out that way. I am assuming that both the Ukrainian and the Russian military are trying to constrain any informal field reporting. It also appears that the major networks no longer have much of a country presence or stringers in place with good sources.
Even so, the parcity of real time reporting has surprised me.
There has been one exception and that is reflected in the above tweet. There is apparently a lot of information to be gleaned from Telegram and similar communications platforms. As best I can tell, there are two separate aspects.
One is that Russian military aficionados and bloggers apparently share a lot of gossip there. In addition, apparently Russian troops themselves do a lot of talking on Telegram. All that chatter is real time and quickly is distilled into tweets.
On a number of occasions, I have seen of developments 12-36 hours ahead of news reports or even just expert bloggers. I can't think of an example where a development was reported that simply wasn't true though there have been developments that were overdramatized.
These are interesting epistemic times. Technology is creating opportunities for greater transparency while governments, NGOs and other non-state players seek to hide or subvert accurate reporting.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment