War, Disinformation, Myth-making and Cultural Diplomacy

Earlier this month in The Guardian newspaper, researcher and journalist Jane Lytvynenko wrote: 

I report on internet disinformation. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it became very personal. There is more than one struggle. There is the war of bombs, the war that’s taking lives. And then there’s the battle over what can be done.

Jane, who is presently a Senior Research Fellow on the Tech and Social Change Project at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center, grew up in Kyiv. She moved to Canada at age eleven, but traveled back to visit her family and friends nearly every year, sometimes spending entire summers in Ukraine. Now– like nearly every Ukrainian, no matter how far from the land that is under assault in a brutal, illegal Russian invasion– she is part of the "battle over what can be done," a battle of ideas, emotion and the way they are combined into political will.  

I caught up with Jane to get her take on what’s happening in the information component of this war, including the role of the social media platforms and the news media in confronting disinformation, the role of myth making and the transmission of cultural information in this moment, and the role of citizen diplomacy.