War Propaganda Research Articles

Who uses Internet propaganda in civil wars and why?

This article explores who is likely to benefit from Internet propaganda in civil wars. It argues that the global reach of the Internet, its lack of regulation and its filtering tools are more likely to help transnational rebel groups with external support and radical aims than local groups with home-grown support and moderate aims. The paper then introduces a new dataset on rebel propaganda that includes every available piece of public, downloadable Internet communication produced by every major rebel group in the Iraqi civil war between January 2011 and December 2015. A preliminary analysis of group-level Internet communication during the war revealed a number of striking patterns. Internet propaganda was not equally used by all rebel groups in Iraq during this time period. Groups with potentially larger international backing and low levels of local support were much more likely to produce Internet propaganda than those with strong in-country support. Ideologically extreme groups were also more likely to generate a higher volume of Internet propaganda than other types of groups. Finally, rebel groups that were new to a war tended to rely more heavily on Internet propaganda than more well-established groups. The article concludes by discussing the potential implications this new media environment could have for civil wars moving forward.

STATE POLICY ON THE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL INTERESTS OF UKRAINE IN THE INTERNET ENVIRONMENT

The article deals with the problem of protecting Ukraine’s national interests in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The Internet is seen as a space for free expression of opinions, but often turns into a battlefield in the information war. The article analyses the processes of informatisation of society and the increase in the number of Internet users. The impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the leading Internet providers and their political position is analysed. Today, Ukraine enjoys great support from leading campaigns in this area, but the aggressor country is heavily funding war propaganda. Attention is drawn to the results of statistics on cyberattacks on state institutions and the public by the Russian Federation. It is emphasised that today state institutions, business and society in Ukraine have united to counteract the negative information influence of Russia. The structure of Ukraine’s national interests, priorities and directions of their protection are defined. Attention is focused on the fact that the Russian Federation attracts teenagers to extremist and radical activities on the Internet. This additionally threatens the national interests of Ukraine. Prevention of extremism is based on raising the legal, political and general culture of citizens, and shaping a positive image of the state. Therefore, it is justified to take effective measures to develop a powerful ideological corpus, a national idea and to adhere to the state’s strategy for European integration. It is important to establish systematic training of specialists in the field of protecting national interests in the Internet space, enhancing the preventive role of the media and institutional support for analytical, educational, propaganda and information work. The author proposes to develop a powerful system of countering manipulations on the Internet, which will include technological developments, methodology, ideological component, legal and educational measures. The author substantiates the necessity of Ukraine’s integration into the global and regional European information space; integration into international information and telecommunication systems and organisations; modernisation and certain changes in the information policy; improvement of legislation on harmonisation of national legislation with international standards; introduction of modern information and communication technologies into public administration processes, etc.

Women’s affective labor in the Red Army’s war propaganda in the early 1930s

ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that women’s affective labor was widely and deeply appropriated in the Red Army’s war propaganda in the early 1930s. This appropriation allowed women to emerge as free humans, visible social producers, empowered political subjects, significant war participants, and active shapers of history on an unprecedented scale in Chinese history. The selected cases examined in this paper are drawn from the songs, plays, and posters employed in the Red Army’s war propaganda of the early 1930s. By highlighting the recurrent symbols of women’s affective labor in these rudimentary yet innovative examples of wartime propaganda, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the complex and dialogic messages regarding women’s contribution to social production and reproduction conveyed through the Red Army’s propaganda. Additionally, this paper explores the liberating potential of gendered affective labor as a non-capitalist concept.

HUMAN LOSSES IN MODERN WAR – CASE STUDY IN THE CURRENT RUSSIAN -UKRAINIAN WAR

Information provided by the war propaganda, both of Russia and Ukraine, published in the mass media, exaggerates the losses of the enemy and understates their own in order to maintain the morale of the fighters and their population, but also the support of military operations’ financers. This action is also supported by censorship (military and media), but the effects, on those who receive them, can be different, depending on the veracity of the information and the goals pursued by the two actors, as well as the public beliefs. Human losses of the belligerents in the Russo-Ukrainian war, even if they are not equal in quantity, are usually comparable and even necessary to be compared in order to study the tactics and strategy used, as well as the possibility of each of them to continue the fight. The human costs of war significantly influence the achievement of victory. Also, for military planners, it is important to know the real situation, both for designing and conducting operations and for organizing and equipping the health service that supports combat actions. If there is no exhaustive estimate of the losses of the Ukrainian forces, the reason is that they are kept secret by their officials. Through indirect analyses, OSINT and medical intelligence, we present a situation as close as possible to reality.

Exhibiting the Great Patriotic War in Soviet capitals: Moscow, Kyiv, Minsk

During World War II, Soviet museums constituted an important part of the war propaganda machine and were used by the Soviet state to mobilize its population and to create a public historical narrative about the war. Staff at Soviet museums began organizing war-related patriotic exhibitions from the very first days of the German invasion in June 1941. This article focuses on two types of war-themed exhibitions and museums that were prominent in the Soviet urban spaces during the war and immediately after: trophy exhibitions and exhibitions and museums that focused on constructing historical narratives about the war. Among the main topics of the latter exhibitions were partisan resistance, German atrocities, and the central role of the Communist Party and Stalin personally. While the creators of these war museums adhered to the ideological frameworks and museum content plans developed by Moscow’s professional ideologists, I demonstrate that local museum workers were able, to some extent, to deviate from centrally prescribed narratives and to engage their own agency and creativity, and that the extent of this deviation was largely defined by regional specifics and by individual efforts and local circumstances. The impact of regional differences in the narration of the war is especially evident in the comparison of the representation of the Holocaust in museums in Kyiv and Minsk. Finally, I demonstrate that local circumstances were a major factor in the fate of each museum after the end of the war.

Preživetje v strelskih jarkih in v zaledju: med pomanjkanjem in kaznovanjem

World War I was not only traumatic for the soldiers in the trenches but also for civilians who experienced labour mobilisation, war attrition, deprivation, and hunger in the hinterland. After encountering the topography of the trenches and the survival strategies that determined everyday life during the war, a completely new, previously unknown world of perceptions involving new hierarchies, rules, and vocabulary was created. Concepts like the “total” mobilisation and militarisation of society illustrate the impact of the war on human relations and reasoning. War Propaganda Offices shaped the image of the enemies and encouraged the search for internal opponents. In the hinterland, many people’s rights were abolished or diminished through a series of measures. The Military Court was given jurisdiction over the civilians. After the armistice, masses of soldiers returned home, and together with the civilian population, they started cleaning up the ruins that were not only material.

The propaganda war in Iran among the former allies, 1945–1949: The Soviet perspective as seen through Soviet documents

AbstractThis article gives an interesting picture of how the Soviets viewed the propaganda war in Iran during the second half of the 1940s. It is mainly based on documents from the USSR's Ministry of Interior, the use of which is considered an innovation in the existing literature on the subject. Most of the attention of the Soviet sources discussed concerns the propaganda war, which began in 1943 between the three Allied powers that had invaded Iran during WWII, taking on the character of a combined struggle when the competition for Iranian oil was woven into the mix. To a large extent, this continued well into the years after WWII when, toward its end, it became even more intense. The main promoter of pro‐Soviet propaganda was the Tudeh party, and it was very successful in promoting the Soviet agenda in Iran, at least until the middle of 1946, mainly at the expense of British interests. In the remaining years until the end of the 1940s, the USA began to prevail in the struggle, and this was quite clear to all, including the Soviets, who admit to this openly in their situational assessment from the beginning of 1950.

Revolution, War, and Cholera in 1848–49: The Case of Hungary

Abstract This paper investigates the events and lessons from the 1848–49 cholera epidemic in Hungary. For contemporaries, the ongoing revolution and civil war pushed the devastation of the cholera epidemic into the background, even though the death rate was similar to that of the earlier 1831 infection. The epidemic hit the country in a period when the revolutionary Hungarian state was waging a war of self-defense. This article strives to refute the historiographic view that the movements of the different armies had a considerable influence on the development of the epidemic. Instead, this article argues that the cholera epidemic was a demographic crisis unfolding in the background of war, but for the most part independently of it. It mattered that most people of that time had already directly experienced cholera and that the Hungarian government did not want to cause panic with restrictive measures. In 1848, cholera was not a “mobilizing factor,” but in 1849 it contributed to the demoralization of the hinterland and frequently appeared in the political propaganda of the civil war.

“Tears have never won anyone freedom:” a multimodal discourse analysis of Ukraine’s use of memes in a propaganda war of global scale

Abstract Purpose This paper analyzes memes posted by @Ukraine to X, formerly known as Twitter, from the account’s inception in 2016 through September 2023 to examine the function and utility of memes as tools of propaganda in global conflict. Methods A multimodal discourse analysis of more than 100 memes was conducted by a small research group to separate the memes into thematic categories in an exploratory fashion. Then, a small subset of the research group conducted a recursive analysis on the images and text in a handful of memes selected purposively to determine what types of ideological appeals were present. Results Our findings align with observations made in previous studies that internet memes might be used to bolster national unity and might be employed to bolster pleas for sympathy from wealthy, more powerful allies, in this case in the West. The essential propaganda ideals were those of democracy, friendship, and independence on the side of Ukraine while Russia is framed as a dictatorship. Practical Implications A small number of the memes referenced in our paper garnered global media attention. Though we do not make any claims about broad media effects relating to the memes studied here, garnering the attention of major U.S. publication seems clearly to have been a goal of some of these memes. For those who wish to find a key to the playbook for a nation’s propaganda strategy, its social media memes are a great place to begin. Social Implications It is apparent in this study that governments might use memes to cover all their propaganda bases, so to speak. Ukraine’s memes appear to serve mainly to reinforce messages of national unity and messages of connection with the West. Originality Though others have studied @Ukraine’s tweets, this is believed to be the first to focus exclusively on memes posted to the feed. This study makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how wildly varied memes can communicate core concepts of a propaganda strategy, perhaps with the hope that a few will “hit” with desired media outlets, if only to bolster propaganda efforts.

Propaganda channels and their comparative effectiveness: The case of Russia’s war in Ukraine

Since Lasswell, propaganda has been considered one of three chief implements of warfare, along with military and economic pressure. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revives public and scholarly interest in war propaganda. The Russian political leader frames the war as an imperial war. The Ukrainian political leader frames it as a war of national liberation. The discursive battle thus complements the military combat. The outcome of the discursive combat depends on the effectiveness of propaganda deployed by the parties involved. Propaganda effectiveness is the propagation of war-related messages stated by political leaders through various media with no or few distortions. The effectiveness of propaganda is compared (1) across countries, with a particular focus on two belligerents, Russia and Ukraine, (2) in the function of the medium (mass media, digital media), and (iii) using two different methods (content analysis and survey research). Data were collected during the first year of the large-scale invasion (February 2022 to February 2023). Survey data allowed measuring the degree of the target audience’s agreement with key propagated messages.

Spreading the “smog of war”: the impact of propaganda, social media, and OSINT on U.S. civil-intelligence relations

ABSTRACT Propaganda, more politely called ‘information operations’ these days, has been a prominent feature of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Both the Russians and Ukrainians have used propaganda to court global public opinion, shape military operations, and secure or destabilize alliances. However, although they have each tried to control the war’s narrative through propaganda, they cannot control social media – the enormous, entangled web of technology, actors, and interests that allows billions of users to interact, argue, and influence. This article will explain how the combination of propaganda and social media in the Russo-Ukrainian War has destabilized American civil-intelligence relations and raised political, social, and ethical questions concerning the role of citizens, both individually and collectively, in foreign wars.

Visualizing Palestine in Arab postage stamps: 1948-1967

ABSTRACT From 1948 to 1967, most Arab stamp depictions of Palestine showed its borders as it existed during the British Mandate (1922-1948), from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. These borders convey Arab support for the Palestine cause, the right for Palestinians to return to what became Israel in 1948 and strengthen the Arab propaganda war against Israel by rejecting its right to exist. Occasionally Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia deviate from these portrayals by delineating the Gaza Strip and excluding the West Bank from Palestine. This study will argue that Arab stamp fluctuations of Palestine’s borders from 1948 to 1967 occurred because the territories became social constructs by the Arab regimes; Nasser’s Egypt depicted Gaza as part of the imagined ‘Arab nation’, Jordan recognized the West Bank as integral to the Hashemite Kingdom and a temporary deposit until the liberation of Palestine, and all Arab states recognized that Gaza and the West Bank had once comprised part of British Mandatory Palestine.

“Rouse English Virtue in Each English Heart”: The Role of the Gentleman’s Magazine in the Propaganda War Against the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–46

ABSTRACT The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745–46 precipitated a full-scale propaganda campaign in the English press to arouse patriotism and rally Great Britain in support of Protestantism, the existing Constitution in Church and State, and the Hanoverian dynasty. The resultant battle for hearts and minds would rely in part on patriotic principle and in part on vicious invective, utilizing all of the traditional propagandistic tools of exaggeration, ridicule, insult, and manipulation of fear and prejudice, in this case by inflaming bigotry against Roman Catholicism, ingrained Francophobia, contempt for “backward” Scottish Highlanders, and abhorrence of royal absolutism. In the ensuing press campaign the Gentleman’s Magazine under the leadership of its editor, Edward Cave, would play a major role of hitherto unrecognized importance, maximizing to full advantage its digest format (tailor-made for offering readers a wide sampling of polemical sources), its large print runs, its tremendous extended readership, and its easy availability to a national audience, as it repurposed itself into a leading organ of anti-Jacobite propaganda.

British Photographic Propaganda in World War II

The study of an Arabic newspaper published by the British during World War II shows how photographs played an important role in the propaganda campaign to gain Arab support in the Middle East. While the newspaper purported to cover the war, in actuality, the content contained mostly cultural photographs that contributed to the Allies’ implementation of psychological warfare, particularly emphasizing Arab identity, lifestyle in England, development in the Arab World, and the solid Arab–Allies relationship. The results of this study demonstrate how photographs played an important role in the propaganda machine, which, in this case, was intended to positively impress Arabs and Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula and turn them against the Axis.

Український канал іномовлення (UATV English) як інструмент просування державних наративів

The functional characteristics of international broadcasting are determined by the goals and tasks for which it was created. The specificity of international broadcasting activity forms the following tasks: creation and promotion of a positive image of the state in the international arena; protection of a country’s own political and cultural interests; promotion of tourism (in peacetime); fight against negative information influence that affects the perception of events in the country, both by the domestic and international audience; communication of the diaspora with the homeland, learning the language and traditions; promotion of national values norms and guidelines, etc. Based on these tasks, it is appropriate to distinguish five main functions of international broadcasting: protection of national interests, propaganda, counter-propaganda, education and pedagogy, and communication functions. Basis on data on the activity of the State Enterprise “International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform of Ukraine”, the main functions of international broadcasting are highlighted. The results obtained during the research expand and supplement the already known facts about the specifics of the functioning of international broadcasting corporations. This study analysed the content of the UATV English State International Broadcasting channel in terms of delivering information about the events in Ukraine, protecting its national interests, countering hostile propaganda, and spreading pro-Ukrainian messages among international audiences. The purpose of this study is to explore, systematise and generalise the basic functions of UATV English Channel in order to improve and evaluate the effectiveness of the “International Broadcasting Multimedia Platform of Ukraine” during the challenging times of information aggression combined with the conventional warfare. Emphasis was placed on researching the peculiarities and effectiveness of the UATV English Channel with the aim of protecting national interests, countering hostile propaganda and spreading pro-Ukrainian messages in the international media space. The article presents statistics on audience reach and viewship of UATV English content on YouTube and Facebook platforms. As well as monitoring the effectiveness of different approaches to content and SEO-optimization of the materials. In addition, a content analysis of UATV English content on these platforms was conducted. All the video materials have been processed, and their classification according to four functional areas of content was presented. The analysed content was published over a period of six months, starting from February 24 (the date of the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine) to August 24, 2022 (The Independence Day of Ukraine). On average, the UATV English-speaking channel receives 8-12 million views per month on YouTube from all materials produced by the media (except YouTube Shorts and Publications). The audience growth compared to the pre-war period amounted to 3,670% in February and added 367% in March 2022, when the total audience reached almost 60 million. The growth of the audience reach indicator on the UATV English-language Facebook page from February 24, 2022, reached 9,200% and amounted to 14.3 million users. Analysis of the content for the first 6 months of the war showed that the content of the Ukrainian broadcasting was rearranged/redesigned in accordance with the realities of wartime, with several strategic changes in the approach to the content. According to the classification of four functional directions of the content defined earlier, the dominant content is the one related to the protection and promotion of national interests (36.3%), followed by information about the course of the war and events in the country (32.5%), opinion and worldview-based content (22.4%), and counter-information to Russian propaganda (8.8%). The UATV English-speaking channel performs its functions as an international broadcasting service: spreading pro-Ukrainian narratives in the world and delivering truthful information about the war in Ukraine. UATV English content effectively counters Russian war propaganda.

Criminal Policy in the Field of Digital Counterpropaganda During the War

Criminal policy in the field of digital countermeasures against propaganda during war involves propaganda definition and its forms at international and national levels. Detection of various propaganda forms, classified as criminal offenses that encroach on foundations of national security, public order and security, as well as peace and security of humanity and the international legal order, is extremely relevant today. The most dangerous form of propaganda is war propaganda. War propaganda is a separate criminal offense that affects peace and security of mankind and the international legal order. War propaganda is a criminal offence, similar to the crime of aggression and war crimes, which requires their distinction. Rapid technological development and expansion of the digital space dictate new trends that should be taken into account when forming a criminal policy in the field of digital counterpropaganda during wartime. The protection of national security and democratic values requires a balanced approach: the use of digital means should not violate the basic rights and freedoms of citizens. The study of criminal policy in the field of digital countermeasures against propaganda during the war was facilitated by the use of a complex of scientific methods: 1) logic one (for propaganda characterization of and its types, determination of digital means of countermeasures against this phenomenon); 2) philosophical (in order to find a philosophical basis for countering propaganda); 3) historical and legal one (during the analysis of the historical and legal experience of countering propaganda in wartime); 4) formal and logical one (for construction of criminal policy in the field of digital countermeasures to propaganda during wartime); 5) comparative legal one (when comparing the implementation of criminal policy in Ukraine and other States).

WARTOK: NETWORKED SOUNDSCAPES OF MEMETIC WARFARE

This panel investigates the networked soundscapes of memetic warfare on TikTok, a platform crucial in mediating the ongoing war in Ukraine since February 2022. Introduced to the public as a unique form of war programming during the first week of Russia's full-scale military invasion (Mobilio 2022), WarTok—a portmanteau of ‘TikTok’ and ‘war’—signifies "the war of super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones" (Friedmann 2022). Producing headlines such as "TikTok's Amazing Russian-Ukraine War Videos," (Figure 1) the term necessitates critical and ethical scrutiny, not only for its sensationalist stance but also for the collapse of contexts it entails. Integrated into a platform that thrives on remixing, WarTok seamlessly intertwines on-the-ground war reporting with war propaganda—an aspect explored across all panel contributions through the lens of music. Networked Soundscapes The choice for sound as the primary step in our exploration not only derives from the platform’s logic of content creation, it also acknowledges music’s affective impact and its historical role in propaganda (Thompson & Biddle 2013). Music on TikTok serves as both an affective mediator and a highly templatable networker. Recent studies highlight the templatability of TikTok sounds, offering insights into content creators' attention-grabbing techniques (Abidin & Kaye 2021), logics of trend dilution (Bainotti et al., 2022), issue-specific remix cultures (Primig et al. 2023), and infrastructural meme collection (Rogers & Giorgi 2023). Aural linkages between templates can intersect with other platform-native modalities of expression, producing networked soundscapes. A soundscape, as we approach it by leaning into TikTok’s logic of indexing “listed” and “original” sounds, foregrounds audio as the main memetic stratifier, opening up different paths for navigating content (Geboers et al., forthcoming). Hashtags and sounds, for example, can turn into a source of mutual amplification or may remain disengaged even when united through technical means (Pilipets 2023). Feeding into contested attentional dynamics of digital media (Boler & Davis 2021), propaganda by means of TikTok sharing takes on a new dimension in a highly contested space, which is said to “raise memes to the level of infrastructure” (Zulli & Zulli 2021). Memetic Warfare Often driven by a cynical hunt for eyeballs, memetic warfare on social media taps into humor and mockery, inviting playful participation (Divon 2022), channeling disinformation (Bösch 2023), and using agitainment to captivate publics beyond the explicitly political (Tuters and Noordenbos forthcoming). In the context of war propaganda, memes become central agents of partisan bonding through recognizable templates and inscribed in-group cues (Arkenbout & Scherz 2022). TikTok music expands the toolbox of crafting memes, opening up new venues of boundary work and populist instrumentalization (Boichak & Hoskins 2022). TikTok is renowned for its ability to implant short video earworms, perceived as stickier than complete songs (Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin 2022). Some attribute this phenomenon to the cognitive principle that human memory retains unfinished tasks more effectively than completed ones, generating affective tension (Carson 2022). Walter J. Ong’s “secondary orality”, a concept revived by Venturini (2022), is one way to address this tension in online spaces where written words often become spoken words and where evanescence is ingrained into the logic of engagement. Foregrounding the memetic function of TikTok, the panel sets out to explore how the ultra-nationalist landscape of Russian WarTok and the tactics of pro-Ukrainian hijacking intertwine in a complex ecology of imitation and attention hijacking. THE SOUND OF DISINFORMATION: TIKTOK, COMPUTATIONAL PROPAGANDA AND THE INVASION OF UKRAINE Tom Divon and Marcus Bösch “ДОБРОГО ВЕЧОРА WHERE ARE YOU FROM”: MEMETIC REVERSAL, CULTURAL APPROPRIATION, AND SOUND HIJACKING Daria Delavar-Kasmai AMBIENT PROPAGANDA: THE DARK REFRAIN OF WARTOK Marc Tuters and Boris Noordenbos WHAT IF THEY ATTACK? КАТЮША AND THE COUNTERMOBILIZATION OF SOUND ON WARTOK Elena Pilipets and Marloes Geboers AMBIGUOUS STANCE-TAKING AND OPPOSITIONAL SOUND PUBLICS ON DOUYIN DURING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR Richard Rogers and Xiaoke Zhang

Food Propaganda in the World Wars: A Review on Food Posters

Propaganda is an activity that is conducted to influence the attitudes or behaviors of individuals by using communication tools. Throughout history, states have used different propaganda methods to influence their public and other states. Posters are one of the mass media tools used for propaganda purposes. States made propaganda during the World Wars, and often they used posters in this activity. Although there are studies focused on propaganda activities in World Wars, posters, and the importance of food policies, no study examining food-themed propaganda posters within the scope of the food policies. The purpose of the study is to examine the food-themed propaganda posters published during the two World Wars within the scope of the food policies. 43 food-themed posters were detected published during the World Wars for propaganda. The posters were analyzed through thematic analysis. As a result, it was determined that fourteen food policy themes were used in the posters of the world wars.

CYBER CONFLICTS AND NEW PATTERNS OF POLITICAL PROPAGANDA ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE

The traditional concept of state sovereignty is shifting towards virtual reality as a result of the development of digitalization and the expansion of cyber warfare techniques and skills, particularly towards the contents of the so-called soft power that are used to attract public support. The case study of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia confirmed to us that, in the current geopolitical landscape, cyberattacks are used as a legal, low-cost strategy to debilitate the opposing side’s material and spiritual well-being. Also, this is how a new form of an asymmetric conflict emerges, which enables actors to inflict significant damage on political opponents and technologically and militarily superior enemies, with the potential for widespread impacts on the members of civil society. Fake news, misinformation, rumors, spins and various forms of unverified content are prevalent in the propaganda war between Ukraine and Russia. This paper also demonstrates how the digital revolution, with its sophisticated seduction techniques, is drawing us further into the world of algorithms, encrypted messages and social media with personalized accesses, along with the trends highlighting the growing power of smart filters controlled by artificial intelligence which determine the accuracy of information even before it is visible. Key words: national sovereignty, cyber conflict, political propaganda, Russia-Ukraine war, algorithms, artificial intelligence, new reality.

PROMOTING PHILOSOPHY, UNDERMINING PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALS: THE CASE OF THE RADIO SHOW “GOZBA” AND ITS TREATMENT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE WAR IN UKRAINE

According to philosopher Anthony Cashio, radio possesses a power to create a deep and intimate connection between speakers and listeners, and therefore to forge strong communities. It is this power that makes radio a potent instrument both of populist propaganda, disinformation, conspirology and fear-mongering, on the one hand, and of public philosophy fostering critical and reflective capacities of its listeners, on the other. Following Cashio’s insight and drawing on Jason Stanley’s work propaganda, I will analyze one of the longest running philosophy themed radio shows in Serbia, “Gozba”, which airs every week on Radio Belgrade Channel 2 (RB2). By focusing on the way “Gozba” has covered two significant recent events – the COVID pandemic and the Ukrainian war, I will demonstrate that in dealing with these topics, the show undermines the philosophical ideals it claims to promote, and instead serves primarily as an instrument of spreading conspiracy theories, dangerous anti-science views, vaccine hesitancy, fake news and Russian war propaganda. Also, I will analyze the dangers of promoting such deeply anti-philosophical stances under the guise of philosophy and critical thinking. Keywords: philosophy, radio, propaganda, conspiracy theories