NEW RESOURCES

Motherboard: Hackers Provide Livestream of Dozens of Cameras Inside Russia. “Hackers claiming affiliation with the hacking collective Anonymous have taken dozens of CCTV cameras seemingly located inside Russia and displayed the message ‘Putin is killing children’ and other messages over them. The hackers have also created a website containing live feeds of these security cameras called ‘Behind Enemy Lines.'”

GeekWire: Seattle tech workers with Ukrainian roots help build website to ease donation process for aid groups . “A new website called Pledge Ukraine, built with the help of tech workers in Seattle and beyond, and launched Friday morning, aims to take some of the guesswork out of contributing to the worldwide relief effort directed at the war-torn nation. Sophy Lee, an Austin, Texas-based tech executive, has assembled a volunteer team of 11 researchers, programmers and designers, alongside eight advisors, to quickly build the site and help money flow to more than 100 organizations inside and outside Ukraine.”

Larry Ferlazzo: Reminder: New Resources For Teaching About The Russia/Ukraine War – Everyday!. “Just another reminder that I usually add two-to-four new teaching resources everyday to The Best Teaching & Learning Resources About The Russia/Ukraine War. Right now it includes many lesson plans and teaching ideas.” Larry makes excellent lists.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Ukraine News Agency: British Foreign Secretary creates govt unit for dissemination of Western information about Ukraine in Russia – media. “The Government Information Cell (GIC) was set up at the behest of British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that blocks Russian information about the situation in Ukraine, using paid advertising to reach Russian citizens in effort to nullify Kremlin propaganda, The Sunday Telegraph has reported.”

The Guardian: West hits Vladimir Putin’s fake news factories with wave of sanctions. “Twelve key disinformation outlets used to bolster Vladimir Putin have been hit with sanctions in an online crackdown on ‘false and misleading’ reports claimed to be orchestrated by Russian intelligence.”

Library of Congress: Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden’s Statement on Ukraine. “Librarians across Ukraine are still working, when possible, to carry out their daily tasks of providing information, supporting community events, and providing children with books and programs. But they are also using their valued public spaces for life-saving bomb shelters. For first-aid training classes. For refugee meeting points. For protection of cultural treasures. By their courage and commitment, Ukrainian librarians are proving their role as part of the national backbone. No nation exists without its culture, and no culture can long survive without keepers of that heritage. Those cultural attendants are often in libraries, they are the librarians.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

New York Times: Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War. “Disinformation in wartime is as old as war itself, but today war unfolds in the age of social media and digital diplomacy. That has given Russia — and its allies in China and elsewhere — powerful means to prop up the claim that the invasion is justified, exploiting disinformation to rally its citizens at home and to discredit its enemies abroad. Truth has simply become another front in Russia’s war. Using a barrage of increasingly outlandish falsehoods, President Vladimir V. Putin has created an alternative reality, one in which Russia is at war not with Ukraine but with a larger, more pernicious enemy in the West.”

CNN: A Chinese vlogger shared videos of war-torn Ukraine. He’s been labeled a national traitor. “Wang Jixian didn’t set out to become the Chinese voice of resistance in Ukraine. The 36-year-old resident of Odesa, a key target in Russia’s invasion of the country, simply wanted to show his parents he was fine.”

The Fix: How Ukrainians use Russian social platforms to break through Russia’s propaganda. “Independent media and Western social platforms, the most obvious sources of factual information, are getting blocked in Russia. The government urges Russians to quit American-controlled social media for Russian ones – VK and Odnoklassniki. So, how do you break through the wall of propaganda? For some Ukrainian activists, the answer is: by using VK and Odnoklassniki to find ordinary Russians and speak to them.”

New Statesman: Russia co-opts grassroots intelligence to spread propaganda. “A number of Twitter accounts have co-opted the methods and presentational style of OSINT professionals such as Bellingcat, and taken advantage of the flattened hierarchy of social media to spread disinformation or highly skewed pro-Russian analysis of the invasion of Ukraine. In this alternate reality, contradictory to the UK Ministry of Defence’s analysis that the invasion has stalled, these accounts trumpet courageous soldiers romping across Ukraine, liberating ethnic Russians from their ‘neo-Nazi’ overlords — the Ukrainian people.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

European Parliamentarian Research Service: Russia’s war on Ukraine: The digital dimension. “While Russia deploys cyber warfare and disinformation strategies in its war on Ukraine, social platforms, and telecommunication, media and internet operators are playing an important role in relaying information on the war and shaping public opinion. The EU has taken a number of immediate, practical, measures to support Ukraine, and is contemplating further action to build the resilience of its communications infrastructures, strengthen cybersecurity and counter disinformation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Ukraine doomscrolling can harm your cognition as well as your mood – here’s what to do about it. “Many people have experienced chronic stress since the pandemic lockdowns. Added to this are the climate crisis, the increasing cost of living and most recently threats to European and global security due to the conflict in Ukraine. To some, it may seem that there is never any good news anymore. This is of course not true, but when we’re doomscrolling – spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to reading negative news – we can become locked into thinking it is.”

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