One Step Ahead: Pre-bunking Russia’s Disinformation during Its War on Ukraine

• In Event: The War in Ukraine

Abstract

In the last decade, Ukraine has been one of the main targets of Russia’s disinformation attacks. Although Russian propaganda has never been internally consistent or particularly creative, the mere volume made it very hard to counter. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought the question of building the population’s resilience to a new level. Despite the resources and experience that Russia reportedly has, many pundits argue that Ukraine is winning the information war. This paper analyzes a strategy that has a robust theoretical foundation and that has been applied by Ukraine – prebunking. Based on the inoculation theory, the prebunking strategies allow for building the ‘immunity’ of the target audiences through warnings about the impending attacks and refutational messages, providing counterarguments to the disinformation. Applied either before the disinformation is disseminated or at the early stages of such dissemination, prebunking helps prepare the target audience and equip it with tools to resist. This paper analyzes which prebunking strategies have been applied by the Ukrainian government since February 2022 and to what extent they modified the narratives coming from Russia and targeting the Ukrainian population.

Author

• Khrystyna Holynska, Pardee RAND Graduate School