Understanding the war in Ukraine: Comparing knowledge and bias in Russia and the US

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 foreign affairs issues. Military strategists understand the importance of "information warfare," since publics apply foreign affairs knowledge to form opinions that 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 in its first few months, this study provides insight into the knowledge both publics used to form opinions about the conflict in mid-2022. The results indicate that both groups have 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 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, but some versions of democratic theory require unbiased and accurate knowledge found absent here.