Abstract

Compared with traditional media, the virtual of social media has shifted the participants from traditional official organizations to more diverse and diversified ones, which can produce effects that cannot be achieved by military means and even surpass some traditional means of combating, thus being adopted by many countries into the strategic deployment of cyber warfare tools. In this regard, this report points out the main role of social media in contemporary information warfare and takes the Russia-Ukraine incident as an example to focus on the analysis of new features displayed by social media, including the multiform participation of civilians in warfare, online opinion construction and deliberate guidance, emotional guidance and cognitive construction and technological giants taking sides driven by technological empowerment as new means of sanctions.