DUBAI: A new study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has found that 27.5 percent of the Facebook posts it analyzed “cast doubt on the legitimacy of images from Bucha used by Western mainstream media,” and even more importantly, gained “significantly more traction online than those that did not question the mainstream narrative.”
Russian troops withdrew from the Ukrainian city of Bucha on March 30. As international media outlets reported their departure, footage of destruction, deaths and testimonies emerged.
News media including the BBC, The Guardian and the New York Times reported witness testimony from survivors in Bucha, and Human Rights Watch documented several cases of Russian forces committing “laws-of-war violations against civilians in occupied areas” of Ukraine.
“The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW.
“Rape, murder, and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes.”
Russian state media and officials quickly and profusely offered their version of events, claiming that the dead civilian bodies were fake and accusing Ukraine of staging the situation in Bucha in a bid to tarnish Russia’s reputation.
They took to social media, with Russian embassies in various countries reiterating the same message.
As contradictory posts began to circulate on social media, the ISD conducted a study to understand which narratives were gaining the most traction online in different countries.
The survey analyzed the top 10 most shared posts about Bucha on Facebook — a total of 200 posts — in 20 countries between March 30 and April 6.
Fifty-five of the posts analyzed, or 27.5 percent, were found to dispute the events in Bucha, but these gained far more popularity on the social media platform, racking up a total of 208,416 shares. The remaining posts were shared much less, recording a total of 172,063 shares.
Forty-four of the 200 posts were pro-Kremlin, and originated from pages either tied to Russian state media or officials, or from pro-Kremlin sources.
Although Russian state media have been banned from social media in Europe, a pro-Kremlin interpretation of the events in Bucha was found in 34 posts across 10 European countries.
In Venezuela, the two most shared posts, and three of the top 10, came from Russian state media RT. In Austria, the four most shared posts were all pro-Kremlin.
The study also brought to light Facebook’s policies and practices on fact-checking and misinformation. None of the posts contained a fact-checking label.
There were only two posts with any label at all, referring to the source, stating: “This link is from a publisher Facebook believes may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government.”
The post pictured below reads: “Why the messages about alleged Russian war crimes in Bucha are a lie. Ukraine claims that the Russian army has shot many civilians, but why were these found only after four days?”
ISD analyst Francesca Visser told The Guardian: “It’s concerning that in the aftermath of the massacre, the most shared posts on Facebook are those casting doubt on the veracity of the images. It’s also concerning that posts coming from platforms and bloggers known for spreading false and misleading narratives are outperforming verified information.”
Facebook responded by accusing the report of misrepresenting its efforts to combat misinformation related to the war.
A spokesperson told the British news outlet: “This report relies on a small sample size and misrepresents the scale and scope of our effort to combat misinformation related to the war in Ukraine.
“We have the most robust system for fact-checking false claims of any platform and our fact-checking partners have debunked multiple claims about the atrocities in Bucha in several languages including Ukrainian, Russian, and English.”
