The transformation of the media as a result of information and communication technology (ICT) has brought back Lasswell’s ‘magic bullet’ to the scene as a calculated effect of media messages. Alongside the positive side of the digital revolution, with easier and faster access to information and the empowerment of marginalized groups in political communication, social media has become a ‘tragic bullet’ in the context of hybrid warfare.
The trend of increasing their use as a source of information, their ability to generate, analyze analyses, and detect false content has favored the ‘devil of truth.’ In the new age of being ‘bombarded’ by information, journalism, whose primary obligation is the truth (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2007, p.35), has failed to withstand the ‘explosion’ that the digital technological environment has caused. The challenge of adaptation imposed commercialization speed on the media, causing them to “forget” the duties of balance and verification. In the new terrain, to fulfill their aspirations of rule dictation, various actors, states, or their groups have sophisticated manipulation through fake news in content, such as false texts, images, or videos, and those determined by purpose, such as clickbait, propaganda, framing, etc.
The Effects of Hybridization
Fake news is not a new phenomenon linked to social media, but the latter has given it a more threatening dimension. Even traditional media have spread fake news, such as the story of the invasion of Washington DC by aliens or earlier as part of Nazi propaganda during World War II, but with much lower intensity and more easily identifiable objectives. Nevertheless, technology has continued its course without asking whether societies might become more vulnerable to transformation in the media sphere. The media’s right to resist control and legal regulation, on the one hand, and the challenges of digital technology, from privacy to national security, on the other, have caused socio-cultural confusion and resulted in collateral damage to professional reporting standards.
Within this complex confrontation, due to freedom of expression as a fundamental value of democratic societies, today’s tyrants find spaces to act. While mass media communicated unidirectionally and addressed a passive audience, new media are interactive and based on the concept of an active audience. According to Andrew Chadwick (2017, p.208), “the hybridization of the media system represents a balance between the old logic of broadcasting and receiving, and the new logic of circulation, recirculation, and negotiation.” This interaction of the media has changed not only their practices but also the audience and the number of actors in political communication.
For this reason, today we are dealing with a new model that shapes society as a result of the ability of ‘audience activists’ to play an instrumental role in producing media content. The internet has brought a revolutionary change in communication, with the ‘hegemony’ of social platforms and ‘citizen journalism’ (Statista, 2024), while the agenda-setting of traditional media now functions as intermedia agenda-setting due to mutual influence with social media.
Moreover, new opportunities for global real-time broadcasting and the possibilities of anonymous use or false profiles have turned social media into ‘weapons’ in the function of hybrid warfare. According to a study by NATO’s Center for Strategic Communication, social media can be used for manipulation and audience influence through increasing the visibility of messages, social engineering, and targeting and distracting opponents. Even before the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia spread disinformation both inside and outside Ukraine, aiming to increase polarization, destroy trust, or incite confusion, as seen in the manipulated photo of refugee Sherife Luta nearly two decades after the war in Kosovo. These activities continued during the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, the 2016 Brexit referendum, and in the Western Balkans as a strategically important region against the West.
Referring to their goals and intensity, after the February 24, 2022, aggression, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation declared it the “First World Cyberwar.” Cyberattacks and informational disruption due to disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation are a significant part of the hybrid warfare strategy, which refers to “the use of unconventional methods as part of a multi-domain approach to hinder and disable adversary actions without engaging in open hostilities.” One of the methods is the dissemination of disinformation accepted as credible, and despite counter-efforts or the hybrid approach recommended as a solution, it has flooded and continues to move faster than the ability to detect it.
Camouflage
Hybrid warfare takes place in the intermediate zone between war and peace. Influence operations target established media and journalists, or by exploiting new opportunities, they create “media” and “journalists” to disseminate specific messages and narratives. Alongside manipulative content created and spread by social bots and bot farms like the Internet Research Agency (IRA) based in Russia, or more recently using Artificial Intelligence for deep fakes, hybrid warfare also seeks media and journalists to camouflage deceptive content as public information.
Thus, large financial sums are invested to either buy or newly create these and use them according to interest, either subtly or aggressively. In the first case, through messages that resonate with the audience’s expectations and views, and in the second, through narratives aimed at changing opinion via the broadest possible transmission frequency.
As part of the “blame and victimize” strategy, Russia has created specific messages for different audiences. For example, in Eastern Europe, that Ukrainian refugees would allegedly take their jobs; in Western Europe, that the war would raise food and oil prices; in Latin America, that the invasion of Ukraine is a war against Western imperialism, etc. In the Western Balkans, Russian messages found even more suitable ground due to historical and cultural ties with Serbia and its expansionist goals in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Serbian media are tools of propaganda entirely under Vučić’s control, while after sanctions from the European Union, Russia Today opened its branch in Belgrade as RT Balkan. Based on these premises, Russia has managed to promote its anti-Western narratives in the region, says Nina Miholjcic-Ivkovic from the Belgrade Center for Human Rights. In this function, but for its own political purposes, Serbia has continuously created false narratives against Kosovo.
The latest is the attempt to present the situation of Serbs in the north as apartheid and Kosovo as repressive toward them. “Forgetting” the fact that it was Vučić himself who ordered Serbs to leave Kosovo’s institutions and later attempted an incursion through Radojčić, the media in Serbia serve as the “magic bullet” that empowers this deception in internal opinion, combined with certain Serbian media in Kosovo camouflaged as sources to increase the chances of credibility.
For example, the arrest of three drunken young Serbs who attacked the police is used as a news story about the alleged brutality of the police against Serbs as a daily reality in the north. In this case, the media refers to the reaction of the Serbian List but does not include the statement from the Kosovo Police as the other party. The same event is widely used by Serbian institutions as “evidence” for its narrative of repression against Serbs.
An example of how the media deliberately avoids professional standards of verification, balance, or background context in news reporting is the portal Kosovo Online from Zvečan, which publishes in three languages: Serbian, Albanian, and English. “Prime Minister Kurti’s terror against Serbs continues, the international community must react,” “The arrest of the youth reflects anti-Serb policy in the eyes of the international community,” are just a few of the “news” pieces this media outlet produces regarding the arrest of the young Serbs.