The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
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Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#2I wonder if 'fake news' will become the next excuse to encroach on our liberties just like how 'terrorism' is used.
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#3It's worth also keeping in mind there may be old Russian propaganda models of 1930's memetic warfare still kicking around.
I'm not sure either of these should be called strictly Russian, in either invention or execution, though.
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#4The strategy the article suggests is basically
1. Don't argue with the disinfo trolls. Instead, counter disinformation trolls with your own disinformation trolls.
2. "both NATO and the United States have a range of capabilities to inform, influence, and persuade selected target audiences. Increase the flow of persuasive information and start to compete, seeking to generate effects that support U.S. and NATO objectives"
3. "then jamming, corrupting, degrading, destroying, usurping, or otherwise interfering with the ability of the propagan- dists to broadcast and disseminate their messages could diminish the impact of their efforts."
So basically create your own fake news, hire a tonne of social media shills and finally, start blocking websites and banning any social media users that disagree with the desired narrative. Scary :_)
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#5Maskirovka.
To me, this deliberate sowing of confusion in the mind of you enemy is a continuation of well established Russian military doctrine that's gone in to overdrive.
Around the time of MH17 there was a short radio documentary on Maskirovka on the bbc: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050674y
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#6I wonder if 'fake news' will become the next excuse to encroach on our liberties just like how 'terrorism' is used.
I'd bet money on it.
Political groups who rail against how the established media provides coverage will continue to push the "fake news" meme. Establishment-friendly political groups will paint fringe/alternative media outlets as "fake news".
Social media companies will play the part of the military-industrial complex in the "terrorism" scenario; in this case they'll rush to prove to users that they have the best "fake news" filtering capabilities. Some will partner with one of the aforementioned political groups to help shape what media is deemed trustworthy, and which is "fake", to push a particular narrative.
It may not be called "fake news" a year from now, but it seems like many of the biggest players are eager to get involved with smiley-face censorship.
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#7I wonder if 'fake news' will become the next excuse to encroach on our liberties just like how 'terrorism' is used.
It's almost elegant the way the Trump camp seized on the term 'fake news' that was first used to classify this new brand of viral make-believe that flourished among Trump-supporters on social media, and somehow turned it into a catch all term to just dismiss any reporting that they deem unfavorable. When you have an audience not accustomed to critical thinking or fact-checking, there is almost no repercussion to making claims that are demonstrably false, or dismissing things that are demonstrably true. Everything is just opinion versus opinion. At this point, the fight isn't even about policy anymore, it's about the very meaning of words, how we as humans determine what reality is. The Last Week Tonight segment, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xecEV4dSAXE about how Trump gets his 'information' is fascinating - he's essentially managed to have his own misinformation fed back to himself in a feedback loop.
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#8The strategy the article suggests is basically 1. Don't argue with the disinfo trolls. Instead, counter disinformation trolls with your own disinformation trolls. 2. "both NATO and the United States have a range of capabilities to inform, influence, and persuade selected target audiences. Increase the flow of persuasive information and start to compete, seeking to generate effects that support U.S. and NATO objective…
> both NATO and the United States have a range of capabilities to inform, influence, and persuade selected target audiences. Increase the flow of persuasive information and start to compete, seeking to generate effects that support U.S. and NATO objectives
Yeah, it's called JTRIG. There's a reason why Eglin Air Force Base was declared 'the most reddit addicted city', and then the blog post was deleted. https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.reddit...
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#9> The persuasive benefits that Russian propagandists gain from presenting the first version of events (which then must be dislodged by true accounts at much greater effort) could be removed if the true accounts were instead presented first.
Or at all. Just about every news outlet threw credibility away in a frenzy of mass hysteria these last 18 months. There's simply few bastions of impartiality left.
> corrections that provide an alternative story to help fill the resulting gap in understanding when false “facts” are removed.
So, like "alternative facts"?
> Our fourth suggestion for responding to Russian propaganda: Compete!
A bigger, better firehose! One on the right side of history™.
The sad reality is that people don't care about the truth nearly as much as they care about information which validates their worldview. The market acknowledges this and behaves accordingly.
Furthermore, not all truths are equally palpable and I'd argue that repeated censorship of uncomfortable/offensive truths has caused a breach of trust so wide that it has cast doubt on sources of information as a whole. See the 'Fake News' phenomenon.
It's from this set of experiences that people are lured to RT and 'alternative' sources of news. The next thing you know they're buying a years supply of Survival Shield X-2 Nascent iodine on infowars.
Re: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
#10Hillary disagrees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6sYB5d1Bu4
As far as I'm concerned RT is as much propaganda as CNN, BBC, Chanel 4, Fox news... All main news outlets lack real impartial ivestigative journalism, that covers both sides of the arguments.
The interest for alternative, and sometimes less capable, media only exists because of how biased and rotten the "real news" are.