This was a successful attack on Russian vehicles, according to the Ukrainian Air Force 1:15
(CNN) --
Ukrainian Instagram influencers are now war zone witnesses and urban warfare experts.
They are tweeting advice to Ukraine's fighters, CNN Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter told "Reliable Sources" on Sunday.
But the flood of words and images is fueling a confusing media environment in which misinformation abounds.
Many are calling the Russian invasion of Ukraine the "TikTok war": users on the platform were actively posting about the military escalation even as Russian authorities denied it.
Many are also using social media to become "anti-war activists," Stelter said.
The news ecosystem is increasingly complex, especially when you consider Russia's state media.
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David French, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, said social media is showing Americans how "unbelievably brutal" this war is, but those platforms don't provide strategic overviews, such as the positions of Russian forces or the actual number of victims.
"Each one of these TikTok videos is a little snapshot of a little moment, often without any other overlaying context," French said.
"And so it would take a tremendous amount of time with some real background to start putting the TikTok puzzle together."
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French added that the immediacy of these social networks may have prompted Western nations to "quickly fall in line" on tougher sanctions.
"The inspiring nature of the Ukrainian resistance that is shaming many Western governments, frankly, into action," French said.
Browse the information on social networks at the time of the war in Ukraine
Stelter cited an example of disinformation spreading on social media: a video of Russian paratroopers shared on TikTok and Twitter that turns out to have been filmed in 2015.
Jane Lytvynenko, an investigative reporter and researcher specializing in disinformation, said few people understand information warfare as well as most Ukrainians.
"Propaganda is part of all wars," Lytvynenko noted.
"And the goal of the propaganda coming out of Russia right now is to undermine the Ukrainian narratives and scare the Ukrainians," he said.
Lytvynenko warned about reports of "Russian forces, movements of Russian forces and disinformation" on social media, which the Ukrainian media is debunking in real time.
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The "fog of war" has descended over Ukraine, Stelter said, making it more difficult to know what is happening in communities even 30 kilometers from Kyiv.
French said we may not know the actual course of the battle for days or weeks.
"I have a rule of thumb, the more specific and dramatic the information, the more hesitant you have to be," said French, an Iraq War veteran.
"Right now, the most reliable reports are going to be the highest level, the most vague."
War in UkraineTikTok