Understanding the War in Ukraine: Comparing Knowledge and Bias in Russia and the U.S.

What mass publics know about foreign affairs is of great importance in international politics. Knowledge and ignorance probabilistically delimit the range of opinions likely to form on a foreign affairs issue. Military strategists understand the importance of “information warfare”, since publics apply foreign affairs knowledge to form opinions which may help or hinder a government’s foreign policy goals. However, little research has investigated what the Russian and U.S. publics know about the invasion of Ukraine. By using a signal detection technique to assess the accuracy of, and bias in, knowledge related to the war, this study provides insight into the knowledge both publics use to form opinions about the conflict. The results indicate that early after the Russian invasion in 2022, both groups had more accurate knowledge pertaining to the dominant narrative in the opposing country, compared to the dominant narrative in their own country. Both groups evinced greater bias toward their own-country narrative, with Russians more biased than U.S. Americans. These results are connected to differences and similarities in the two countries’ media systems and political contexts. Normative implications differ; from a classical realist international relations perspective, public ignorance is expected and irrelevant so long as the majority supports leadership, but some conceptions of democracy require unbiased and accurate knowledge found absent here.