2023-05-05 12:05:00
Split
You have to be clever: In order to circumvent Putin’s media ban, a Finnish newspaper provided Russian citizens with reports on the Ukraine war via a computer game.
Helsinki/Moscow – President Vladimir Putin can easily spread his propaganda on the Ukraine war in the Russian state media. Because of media censorship, citizens in Russia find it difficult to obtain semi-independent information on the “special military operation” – as Moscow calls the war. But a Finnish newspaper found a way around it.
And in a very resourceful way. The newspaper Helsingin sanomat newspaper announced on Wednesday that it was hiding information and reports on the war in Ukraine in the globally popular online game Counter-Strike. In Russia alone, around four million people play the first-person shooter. And that’s exactly what the editors took advantage of.
Finnish newspaper uses Counter Strike to expose Putin’s war propaganda
“While Helsingin sanomat newspaper and other foreign independent media will be banned in Russia, online gaming will not be banned for the time being,” editor-in-chief Antero Mukka told AFP news agency. The highlight: Players can create their own maps, which anyone can then download and use.
That’s exactly what the newspaper’s technicians did. “We built a Slavic town called Wojna, which means war in Russian,” Mukka said. In a building in the fictional town, the technicians hid a room in the basement where players can find reports in Russian made by the newspaper’s war correspondents in Ukraine.
Finnish newspaper hides explosive Ukraine war information in counter-strike building
They covered the walls of the digital space with articles and photos documenting events such as the Bucha and Irpin massacres. It is “information that is not available in the Russian state’s propaganda apparatus,” Mukka explained.
Since its release on Monday (May 1), the map has been downloaded more than two thousand times. “This shows that any attempt to prevent the flow of information and mislead the public is doomed to failure in our modern world,” said the editor-in-chief. The propaganda machine was also at work during the alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Putin. But experts assume that the Kremlin is staging it. (mt/afp)
#Finnish #newspaper #tricks #Putins #propaganda #video #game