On February 24, the world learned that Russia invaded Ukraine and many people started sharing their feelings and information on their social media platforms. People wanted to help Ukraine in lots of ways and by spreading information, but unfortunately, this caused misinformation to start spreading. 

During the past few years, TikTok has been a platform where misinformation has thrived. In an article written on July 13, 2021, published by NBC News Ciaran O’Connor, an analyst for the Institute of Strategic Dialogue said, “People are using TikTok to post and host harmful Covid misinformation, and it’s highly popular.” This has continued to be true throughout the years. 

On TikTok people will make a video claiming something and a bunch of people will duet it, agreeing with it, and people will believe the claim even though there was no evidence provided. 

The war in Ukraine has also been subjected to this misinformation, where propaganda spreads very fast and causes people to think what was told in the video is true.

Russian President Vladimir Putin started propaganda saying the Ukraine government was filled with Nazis and the president Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself was a Nazi. This fake news went viral on TikTok. People started using arguments saying that Russia is just trying to stop a new “Nazi regime”. People didn’t use evidence or even take the time to lookup an article about that subject to base their opinion. They trusted the video solely and created an opinion that was based on propaganda.

It’s really important, especially in a time of war, to do as much research as possible to completely understand a situation and to fact-check any information you find on any social media platforms. Some credible news sites are AP News (https://apnews.com/), BBC (https://www.bbc.com/), these are just a couple of credible sources that can be used. But it’s also really critical when looking at news sources to look at multiple sources, fact-checking other news sources to make sure all the information can be found in other sources.