Authoritarian leaders seek to further restrict their citizens access to the online platforms and social media by using a method known as ‘Splinternet’.

Splinternet is the fragmentation of the global internet into smaller, divergent and disconnected online spaces. Allowing for discourse in these spaces to become more polarised.

Russia is one of the main culprits of the splinternet. However, with Western nations sanctioning Russian media. Russia has shifted to using ‘micro-influencers’ to promote historical revisionism narratives to influence global audiences online that undermine the sovereignty, culture and history of Ukraine.

Image: Image, Designer: Timothy Nguyen. Photographs (Shutterstock): Gevorg Ghazaryan, Free Win 2014, fotoandy, JarTee, Bargais, and Rospoint

Produced By: Timothy Nguyen

Featured In Story: Dr Olga Boichak, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures and the Director of the Computational Social Science lab in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney

First aired on The Wire, Wednesday 15 January 2025