Tactical retweets: Musk and Zelenskyy's Twitter tussle shows gulf in mastery of social media

Ciaran O’Connor on contrasting social media practices of a billionaire and a wartime leader

With his tweet, Elon Musk helped to amplify Kremlin propaganda, dispute the sovereignty of Ukraine and suggest it should not defend itself against invaders.

This week, I realised I have at least one thing in common with the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO and investor, Elon Musk. We both spend inordinate amounts of time online; though in my defence, this is a requirement of my job.

Then again, I am not Elon Musk, and unlike Musk, this week I did not use my Twitter account to share a plan on how to end the war in Ukraine that proposed redoing the recent sham referenda “under UN supervision” for the partially-annexed regions of Ukraine, recognising Crimea as part of Russia and ensuring Ukraine “remains neutral” throughout.