## Economics of Persuasion in Peace and War

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**Canonical URL:** [Economics of Persuasion in Peace and War](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2022/june/guriev.pdf)

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### Role of mobile broadband and social media
- The Russian aggression against Ukraine is described as the first major interstate war of the smartphone era, where new information and communication technologies reshape how the war is fought.
- Global mobile broadband growth:
  - 0.04 active mobile broadband subscriptions per capita in 2007.
  - 0.83 active mobile broadband subscriptions per capita in 2021.
  - "20 times more" between 2007 and 2021.
- Developing-economy mobile broadband rates:
  - 0.006 in 2007.
  - 0.73 in 2021.
- Russia: the figure today is "more than 1", meaning just about everyone is connected.
- Fixed broadband subscriptions per capita:
  - 0.05 in 2007.
  - 0.17 in 2021.
- 3G and 4G capabilities enabled users to take photos, record videos, and immediately distribute them globally; the spread of 3G and 4G was a key driver in the growth of social networks.
- Social media scale:
  - "almost 3 billion people on Facebook".
  - "2.5 billion on YouTube".
  - "1.5 billion on Instagram".
- The vast majority of social media use takes place on mobile devices.

### Information abundance, fog of war, and misinformation
- The historical concept of the "fog of war" (Clausewitz) remains relevant: modern conflict changes information dynamics not by scarcity but by excess.
- Smartphones and social media produce large volumes of user-generated content that may be exciting or outrageous but not necessarily fact-checked or true.
- Example: The Arab Spring coverage relied heavily on cell phone videos disseminated on social media rather than professional camera operators.

### Political effects of mobile internet and social media
- Finding from Guriev, Melnikov, and Zhuravskaya in the paper "3G Internet and Confidence in Government":
  - "the spread of mobile broadband explains about half of the recent rise of populism in Europe."
- Rise of "spin dictators":
  - Contemporary nondemocracies increasingly manipulate information rather than relying primarily on fear and mass repression.
  - Tactics include troll factories, social media bots, anonymous Telegram channels, and Facebook advertising campaigns.

### Information warfare in the Russia–Ukraine conflict
- Russia fights on three informational fronts: within Ukraine (kinetic and evidentiary use of phones), within Russia (suppressing dissent and organizing), and the global information battleground (videos to influence third countries).
- Russian domestic measures after the invasion:
  - Closed down all remaining independent media.
  - Blocked most Western social media.
  - Introduced military censorship.
  - Public statements contradicting the official version of events are punishable by "up to 15 years in prison."
- Polling and measurement challenges:
  - Official polls registered Putin approval ratings rising "from 60 percent to 80 percent."
  - Polls are less reliable due to dramatic increase in repression and large drops in response rates.
  - List experiments by Philipp Chapkovski and Max Schaub indicate "53 percent of Russians support the war" in their study "Do Russians Tell the Truth when They Say They Support the War in Ukraine? Evidence from a List Experiment."
- Despite losses in the information war in the West, Russian government propaganda "works" domestically to a significant extent.

### Policy recommendations and implications
- Beyond military support and sanctions, the West should commit more resources to the information battle for Russians’ minds.
- Rationale and constraints:
  - Russia is "not China": some social media—most important, YouTube and Telegram—are not blocked; VPNs are not outlawed.
  - Compared with Cold War-era Russian-language radio programming (Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, the BBC, Deutsche Welle), today there are "many more opportunities to reach the Russian audience."
- Recommended actions:
  - Provide facts about the war and fact-check Russian propaganda to reach Russian audiences.
  - Winning the information war within Russia is framed as helping to win other fronts and as a measure to "prevent future invasions by Putin’s regime."

*Sergei Guriev, Finance & Development, June 2022.*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2022/june/guriev.pdf_