The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model [pdf]
rand.org
rand.org
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.
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 :_)
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...
The mention of Eglin Air Force Base is preserved too, but I don't see any connection between an Air Force base in the Florida panhandle and a unit that belongs to the GCHQ in the United Kingdom.
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
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.
I'm not sure either of these should be called strictly Russian, in either invention or execution, though.
The interest for alternative, and sometimes less capable, media only exists because of how biased and rotten the "real news" are.
Congratulations -- you are an example of the modern form of "useful idiot".