Threads of war: reflections on Twitter's maps of Ukraine

Debbie Kent

Part I

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has unfolded in the spaces of social media as well as on the ground, not just through cyberattacks but also through tussles with information and misinformation between armchair generals pontificating in 280 characters. While I was spiralling down the rabbit hole of Twitter after the invasion on the 24th February, trying to make sense of what had been happening, tweets that shared or showed maps were ubiquitous – maps showing the position of cities and borders; maps showing troop movements, casualties and territories controlled by each side; maps quoted from mainstream media such as the BBC, the New York Times and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, from thinktanks and NGOs and official government sources; maps made by participants on the ground in Ukraine and geoconfirmed by contributors. I felt better for looking at all these maps – as if I understood more and therefore had some sort of control of what was going on in the world. This was nonsense of course – I am as helpless in the face of world-shaking events as I ever was. A friend was using maps for real purposes, for navigating roads across Poland to bring supplies to the frontline and take refugees from the border to safety. Another told me that she had been using the time-delayed Street View in Google Maps to visit the places she knew in Mariupol, as they were in 2017 before they were blasted by Russian shelling.

Posting a map on social media, particularly on Twitter, is an act of dialogue: it invites discussion and turns a map into part of a conversation. Some of the sites posting maps have a few hundred followers, others have tens of thousands. Some of them are enthusiasts like MilitaryLand.net, which describes itself as ‘an independent project founded in 2018 by a passioned military fan’ to bring information about Ukraine to English speakers; some are researchers like Mateusz Fafinski a historian who works on ‘historical sources in the digital sphere’ and has written an excellent thread analysing how many maps in the media are misleading and unwittingly service the Russian narrative. Some are expert bodies, such as the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a US-based non-profit which collects, analyses and maps data on reported political violence and protests around the world; or the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a social enterprise that is documenting and verifying information on the war. Maps Ukraine is a Russian propaganda account that had its main and backup Twitter accounts suspended, although the former now seems to have been revived.

Sometimes watching this stream of visual and text information leaves me overloaded. Often it raises questions about these particular maps which can be carried over to any map in any context. A few of those are below.

Part II

What is this map?

Why make a map of a war zone?

Who made it?

Who is it for?

What do the map makers know?

Who are they talking to?

What are they trying to say?

What are they trying to do to their audience?

Are they successful?

Is this map part of a conversation?

Is it part of an argument?

Is it part of a story?

What does it show?

What does it reveal?

When was this map made?

Is it up to date?

Is it a time travel machine?

Is it a portal to another world?

Is it a portal to another world view?

Is this map propaganda?

Is it misleading?

Is it fake?

Is it true?

What does it mean for a map to be true?

Is this map crowdsourced?

Who is in the crowd?

Is it participatory?

Can anyone participate?

Does this map give me a closer view of what's happening?

Does it give me a better overview?

Is it going to help me be a better desktop general?

Does it give me distance?

Does it add to my fears?

Does it comfort me?

Does it give me an illusion of control?

Part III

These are sources of the map tweets used in the collage above, with links to their twitter accounts and websites, as well as a few other sites that are useful for those interested in activist and participatory maps of conflict zones.

Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)

A disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project which collects the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world. The ACLED team conducts analysis to describe, explore, and test conflict scenarios, and makes both data and analysis open for free use by the public.

Twitter @ACLEDINFO

Website acleddata.com

Bellingcat

Independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open source intelligence and social media investigation to probe a range of subjects, particularly in conflict, crime, and human rights abuses.

Twitter @bellingcat

Website bellingcat.com

Website (Ukraine investigations) ukraine.bellingcat.com

Centre for Information Resilience (CIR)

Non-profit social enterprise dedicated to countering disinformation & exposing human rights abuses. It is working with the #OSINT (open source intelligence) community to document, verify and map the wealth of footage being posted online of Russian military movements along the Ukrainian border.  

Twitter @Cen4infoRes

Website info-res.org [https://www.info-res.org/]

Russia Ukraine Monitor Map maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor

Mateusz Fafinski

Historian and digital humanist, currently a postdoc at University of Lausanne, and an assistant lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin. Works on the nature of historical sources in the digital sphere.

Twitter @Calthalas

Website mfafinski.github.io

Forensic Architecture

Research agency based at Goldsmiths University of London that investigates human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations, working in partnership with institutions across civil society. Uses spatial and architectural analysis, open source investigation, digital modelling, and immersive technologies, as well as documentary research, situated interviews, and academic collaboration.

Twitter @ForensicArchi

Website forensic-architecture.org

GeoConfirmed

Osint location mapping focused on Ukrainian warm, managed by a group of more than 10 volunteers. Its goal is to map the geolocation of as many incidents as possible including those that are non-confirmed.

Twitter @geoconfirmed

Militaryland.net

Military blog focusing primarily on Ukrainian military units, equipment and volunteer units, which also provides various maps based on its own research and data collecting. The website provides an in-depth look into Ukrainian military units: their organization structure, equipment, uniforms, history and more.

Twitter @Militarylandnet

Website militaryland.net

Nathan Ruser

Researcher at Australian think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute[https://www.aspi.org.au/]. 

Twitter @Nrg8000

Benjamin Strick

Investigations director at the Centre for Information Resilience and contributor to investigative journalism site Bellingcat. A digital investigator with a background in law, military and technology, specialising in open source intelligence (OSINT), investigations, influence operations, data and maps.

Twitter @BenDoBrown

Website benjaminstrick.com