Danger for Productive Power?

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Barnett & Duvall: Satellites Challenging Productive Power


Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall are prominent scholars in International Relations who became especially well known for their conceptual contribution to power analysis. In their widely cited article “Power in International Politics” (2005), they argue that power in world politics should not be reduced to military capabilities or material resources alone. Instead, they propose a broader framework that distinguishes multiple forms of power and, crucially, highlights how power can also operate through institutions, social structures, and meaning-making processes. This approach has made their typology influential in IR debates because it captures not only direct coercion, but also the less visible ways in which actors shape rules, roles, and the interpretive frameworks through which political reality is understood.

Productive power refers to the ability to shape how reality is perceived by influencing socially anchored meanings, discourses, and norms. It becomes visible wherever actors affect what a society considers legitimate, normal, or credible. Crucially, productive power does not work primarily through direct coercion, but through the creation of a symbolic order - for instance via controlled media environments, selective dissemination of information, or the construction of collective identities (cf. Barnett & Duvall, 2005, p. 56).

In the case discussed here, private actors providing satellite-based services do not necessarily act as originators of productive power in their own right. However, they can still disrupt another actor’s productive power by undermining narrative control and interpretive authority. This dynamic becomes particularly clear in the context of the Bucha massacre.

The Bucha Massacre

“Since the full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, warfare on social media and online platforms has introduced a new way of mediatizing war. (…) the war in Ukraine represents the most personalized war in history” (cited in Näslund and Reichert, 2024, p. 7).

This quotation refers to the question of how Russia’s attack on Ukraine has been shaped and transformed by digital media, social networks, and online platforms. It is part of an academic study that advances the thesis that the war in Ukraine is the most strongly digitalized war in history. This claim can also be applied to the use of satellite imagery, as the following example of reporting on the Bucha massacre shows.

In the town of Bucha, with around 36,000 inhabitants and located only about 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Russian forces were accused of serious war crimes during their occupation from March 4 to March 31, 2022. Numerous reports spoke of systematic torture, targeted shootings, and the execution of civilians. A clear indication in this context were the bodies that were later found in the streets of the town (cf. Doyle 2022).

However, the Russian Ministry of Defense explicitly rejected all allegations. In an official statement, it claimed that not a single resident had fallen victim to a violent action, even though Bucha was under the control of Russian troops during the period mentioned. The many pieces of evidence - including video recordings, photographic material, and eyewitness testimony - were dismissed by Moscow as a hoax and a provocation staged by the authorities in Kyiv (cf. Gulka 2022).

Only when satellite images from the U.S. company “Maxar Technologies” suddenly appeared did it become clear that Russia’s statement did not correspond to the truth. The images clearly showed that the bodies, dressed in civilian clothing, had been lying in the streets since mid-March-i.e., during the Russian occupation. One image in particular, of Yablunska Street, made it into the New York Times under the title “(…) Russian Claim, Satellite Images Show.” (cf. Browne et al. 2022).

It showed bodies scattered across the street. Some international media outlets verified the imagery in their own analyses and concluded that the positions of the bodies matched later mobile-phone footage and that the satellite data reliably demonstrate that the bodies had been there for days before the Russian withdrawal. While Russian authorities sought to relativize or reinterpret responsibility for the killing of hundreds of civilians in the public sphere, high-resolution satellite imagery circulated via international media documenting the presence of Russian troops at the relevant time.

Consequential for Authoritarian Regimes

This example is especially consequential for political systems whose domestic legitimacy depends heavily on the targeted construction and steering of narratives. In such contexts, the technological capabilities of private space actors—particularly when they stem from the commercial U.S. space sector and pursue actions aligned with their own political agenda—can become a fundamental challenge to state power.

An exploratory expert interview with one of the authors of the edited volume Strategischer Wettbewerb im Weltraum (ed. by Antje Nötzold, 2024) supports this interpretation. The expert’s core statement was:

“The more authoritarian a state is designed, the more consequential the information availability generated by satellite internet becomes for states’ interpretive sovereignty.” (cf. exploratory expert interview with V. Stosic).

This observation reinforces the assumption that expanding satellite-based information access can meaningfully weaken narrative control - particularly in authoritarian settings - by introducing alternative, difficult-to-suppress forms of evidence into the public sphere.

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