The Russian Propaganda Campaign

Again I'v not watched it enough or research enough to know if they themselves engage in invention or its more a bias of sources. I mean the Russian state openly claims a lack of involvement in Ukraine doesn't it? so Russia Today repeating that over claims of involvement(which honestly are pretty clear) is more a bias of source than total invention.

Apparently RT has reported on Russia's involvement in Ukraine, but always in a way that makes Russia out to be the good guy.

That's why I think viewing a wider range of sources is the best bet for news.

I would agree with that.

It's a shame there's no way to have a news organization with no master: Either they're state-funded or corporate owned and propped up by advertisers. But I guess there's not really any other economically viable way to do it, at least that I can think of.
 
Oh God, no I don't trust them. It's state media, but it is state media that I understand very well. The left wing elements are not common to the main channels, radio 4 is their bastion.

Again though I think "left wing" in this case is actually socially liberal, not economically, the BBC for example are very much pro the city of London centric view on business reporting.

Apparently RT has reported on Russia's involvement in Ukraine, but always in a way that makes Russia out to be the good guy..

Which is pretty much what the Russian state says as well so again I think ponteitally(again I don't know enough to say for sure) more choosing there sources to suit their argument rather than outright invention on their behalf.

Really that's the divide between a lot of mainstream media pushing a bias and some non mainstream, the former just reports someone else's lies or half truths and claims superiority.
 
Which is pretty much what the Russian state says as well so again I think ponteitally(again I don't know enough to say for sure) more choosing there sources to suit their argument rather than outright invention their behalf.

You forget that it's a news organization with boots-on-the-ground reporters. I am saying that correspondents reporting from Ukraine \will just report a narrative that they know is total bullshit. I mentioned earlier the example of the death count that was totally false, but that they failed to retract and then went on to repeat the figure in a later report.

Here's an interesting excerpt from their Wikipedia page:

For much of 2015, graduate students at Columbia School of Journalism took part in the RT Watch project, monitoring RT's (US) output. Casey Michel, who worked on the project, wrote "RT ignores the inherent traits of journalism—checking sources, relaying facts, attempting honest reportage" and "you’ll find 'experts' lacking in expertise, conspiracy theories without backing, and, from time to time, outright fabrication for the sake of pushing a pro-Kremlin line". The results were compiled in a Tumblr blog.

I'm sure going through that Tumblr blog would be interesting.
 
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The reason why that term failed is that his 'narrative propaganda' is just propaganda. Narrative is a useless addition making things more vagueness and complicated at the same time.

Yeah, that's about what the general consensus of the thread he started was. I like narrative propaganda because I actually think it makes a distinction between the narratives ideologues shape and the sort of romanticized idealized vision that was presented before by various regimes that I think a lot of people associate with propaganda.

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The types of propaganda that I think comes to a lot of people's minds is the war time government produced variety like above ^^^. Whereas narrative propagandas distinction is about the propaganda efforts and narratives of various competing factions within a society.
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One thing I will say is that I don't think it's beyond RT's capabilities to improve. I actually enjoy the way the network is put together and the way they deliver the news (in a non-dry way that is more focused toward a younger demographic), and I like the fact that they cover certain stories that you're just not going to see on American media.

So it's my hope that they can get their shit together and reform their reputation.
 
Yeah, that's about what the general consensus of the thread he started was. I like narrative propaganda because I actually think it makes a distinction between the narratives ideologues shape and the sort of romanticized idealized vision that was presented before by various regimes that I think a lot of people associate with propaganda.

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d22c563a-869f-11e4-90af-f088504da254.jpg


fight4.jpg


The types of propaganda that I think comes to a lot of people's minds is the war time government produced variety like above ^^^. Whereas narrative propagandas distinction is about the propaganda efforts and narratives of various competing factions within a society.
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I think you're right, but I think the education is required to illustrate what is propaganda rather than to create a new term to accommodate people's ignorance of the matter.

Whatever works tho right?
 
I think you're right, but I think the education is required to illustrate what is propaganda rather than to create a new term to accommodate people's ignorance of the matter.

Whatever works tho right?

I agree. Like I said most people think of war posters and probably wouldn't describe commercials, political adds, auto-biographies, mission statements etc. as propaganda, so I think would be more effective to help people better learn to identify propaganda in general than it is to distinguish various types of propaganda. So I think you are correct. I just kind of like the fact this term was born in the war room, you know?
 
Propaganda is the only reason a state funded news/media organisation is created for foreign consumption.

I'm sure there are other examples of this out there.

Personally I would be pissed if my country (Australia), budgeted 100 million a year to create a station called "Australia Today", which only broadcasted in Russian or Mandarin, and only focused on negative news in those nations to give 'australian perspective'.
 
Every mainstream media is a propaganda machine.

RT of course is controled by the Kremlin, but the big mainstream medias in France and US for example are either owned by corporations or banks. So what's worse, I don't know.

RT is useful because it plays a role of counter power.
 
Did you know that the BBC is owned by the British government? Though they have a charter.. as though any of these news outlets are unbiased, beacons of truth.
 
RT is just as biased as CNN and FOX. Difference is RT acknowledges direct funding from Russian politicians/oligarchs while CNN and FOX choose not to.

It's all trash
 
Information should never be consumed without consideration of the source.

Especially in the age of "BREAKING:" and "____ leaks...". It's literally NEVER been easier to misinform people. Laziness has deformed the consumption of information into nothing beyond an act of convenience. We're now at the point of dismissing reality when it no longer conforms to what we feel we know, simply because it's easier.

Reputations of credibility long-abused have been a casualty, thankfully. But what's stepped up in it's place is nothing more than a hole devoid of legitimacy called the internet. And that is scary as fuck.
They erroneously call it the "information age". Disinformation, 10 second snippets and instant entertainment, sure. Real valuable information is a lot harder to arrive at.
 
Every mainstream media is a propaganda machine.

RT of course is controled by the Kremlin, but the big mainstream medias in France and US for example are either owned by corporations or banks. So what's worse, I don't know.

RT is useful because it plays a role of counter power.
Did you know that the BBC is owned by the British government? Though they have a charter.. as though any of these news outlets are unbiased, beacons of truth.
RT is just as biased as CNN and FOX. Difference is RT acknowledges direct funding from Russian politicians/oligarchs while CNN and FOX choose not to.

It's all trash

Congratulations, you've bought what RT are selling. False equivalency and an inability to judge the quality of information.
 
Part of the purpose that propaganda news organisations fulfil is to make people believe there is no news they can trust.

They influence some people, others they can take out of the game by making them throw up their hands in frustration.

The only way to win is to be discerning enough to validate the veracity of any organisations claims rather than to pick sources and believe or disbelieve them wholesale.

Good luck with that. You should check out Edward Bernays.
 
Congratulations, you've bought what RT are selling. False equivalency and an inability to judge the quality of information.

Or maybe you bought too much what CNN & co are selling.

They're all the same. Just different agendas.
 
Or maybe you bought too much what CNN & co are selling.

They're all the same. Just different agendas.

No, they really aren't. Not that I use CNN as a source, but the sources RT uses, the talking heads it features, the severity of it's selection bias and it's lack of commitment to any standard of reporting, really distinguishes it from other outlets.
Promoting this false equivalence, and the inability to assess information quality, is the aim of the current Russian propaganda model.
 
I was quite surprised to that Larry King had two shows on RT. Apparently he produces the show himself and they just air it, so they don't have any editorial control, but I'm surprised that he was even willing to be affiliated with the network. I mean, he's Larry fucking King.

Here's an interesting article:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/how-the-truth-is-made-at-russia-today

It seems that their usual tactic is to lure in young journalists who are eager for a job doing something that's not their local news, and then after these inexperienced journalists get into the job they realize it's not what they thought it would be.

That's the crazy thing. People like Hartmann and King are not young; they've seen a lot. I wonder how they fell for the Russian trap. I used to like watching Hartmann's show, but when I saw the Ukraine invasion, and crickets, I was like ooooooooh......oooooh shit.
 
Congratulations, you've bought what RT are selling. False equivalency and an inability to judge the quality of information.
Meh

Like I said it's all trash designed to misinform/disguise intention. We can argue about to what extent and how full of shit each one is, but at the end of the day if you get your news solely from any one or these news corps you're severely misinformed.

And I'll say congrats to you, you've bought into FOX and CNN somehow being better places of information despite each running the narrative of small groups of billionaires who fund American politicians, not by the politicians themselves like RT.
 
@HomerThompson @Anung Un Rama @Trotsky @Cuzcatlan @luckyshot

How A Twitter Fight Over Bernie Sanders Revealed A Network Of Fake Accounts

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KACPER PEMPEL / REUTERS
Someone automated dozens of accounts to amplify anti-Trump, anti-Sanders and pro-Democratic Party content.
When Russians at the Internet Research Agency interfered in U.S. politics, they created false online personas and fake political groups to amplify divisive messages that already had a homegrown American audience. It’s not too far from what some U.S. political consultants are doing themselves.

Take Sally Albright, a Democratic Party communications consultant who backed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unsurprisingly, Albright is vocally opposed to President Donald Trump and a big supporter of the resistance to his administration. She is also one of the loudest, most divisive voices attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s onetime Democratic primary opponent, and his left-wing supporters.

Well after the primary, Albright continues to claim that Sanders is a fraud, a liar, racist and corrupt, among many other things. In one instance she declared that the policy idea of free college, as promoted by Sanders, was racist. This provoked Sanders supporters to argue back.

Trevor, a Sanders supporter who declined to provide his last name for fear of being doxxed, but goes by @likingonline on Twitter, noticed a strange pattern of behavior when Albright responded to him. Her tweets addressing him were rapidly retweeted by the same series of accounts. This created a barrage of notifications making it look as though there was an avalanche of opposition to everything he said.


But as Trevor discovered, after an extensive amount of research that he posted online, these were not normal accounts. They appeared to be bots ― automated accounts masked as real people being used to amplify a particular political message. Who is really pulling the strings, however, remains a mystery.

Albright told HuffPost that the accounts were voluntarily handed over by their original users to an unnamed client of hers to be automated in “an analytics program.” She said she was bound by a non-disclosure agreement and could not disclose who was collecting and automating these accounts or for what purpose.

But like her, these accounts were all pro-Clinton, anti-Trump and anti-Sanders.


Twitter allows users to automate their accounts, includingsetting up automatic retweeting and liking of other accounts. This increases activity on the platform, something Twitter obviously wants to do, and allows busy users to promote messages or businesses that they support. Presumably Twitter did not anticipate that users would simply hand their accounts over to another person or campaign to artificially spread the latter’s tweets.

The ability to swamp a debate with automated messages is a problem for political discourse around the world. Twitter is a vital platform for political debate. Automating Twitter accounts to retweet or otherwise promote specific messages thus becomes a tactic to silence political debate and squelch free speech.

In Mexico, allies of President Enrique Peña Nieto have deployed swarms of Twitter bots to overwhelm and effectively shut down online debates. Journalists in the U.S. experienced a similar flood during the 2016 election from pro-Trump, neo-Nazi sock-puppet accounts posting anti-Semitic death threats. Often instead of suppressing speech it doesn’t like, the Chinese government these days drowns it on local social media platforms with a flood of pro-government content. University of North Carolina scholar Zeynep Tufecki has labeled this tactic a new form of censorship.

What the automated accounts deployed by Albright’s unnamed client did was similar.


Over the course of the last year or so, Albright was their favorite account to retweet ― almost always as a group. The fake accounts also retweeted people who responded to Albright’s tweets ― again, usually as a group, and often while in a debate with other users.

The writers at Shareblue, a pro-Democratic Party news site that supported Clinton in the primary and general elections, were also frequently retweeted by the network of fake accounts, particularly when the Shareblue folks had something negative to say about Sanders. A spokeswoman for Shareblue told HuffPost that the company does not create sock-puppet accounts and has never worked with Albright.

These accounts also liked #resistance celebrities like liberal conspiracy theorist Eric Garland (“Time for some game theory”) and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe. And they were often deployed in intra-Democratic Party battles.

When Albright led a Twitter campaign to attack a 2017 women’s conference for inviting Sanders to speak ― after Clinton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) had turned them down ― the automated account network deployed to retweet her and any positive responses to her tweets.


Albright probably didn’t need those retweets, as there were actual people opposing the conference’s decision. Still, someone questioned her campaign to block Sanders from speaking, describing it as similar to “Russian division strategy.” She wrote back, “Nyet. I am not Russian.”

Then over a dozen fake accounts retweeted her.

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INSTAGRAM/TWITTER
The original image from skater Sara Hurtado's Instagram account (left) and the image used on the fake Twitter account named Iris Winter.
Within this pro-Albright Twitter force, many of the accounts have taken on false personas with stolen photographs ― just like the Russian trolls that tried to interfere in the 2016 election.


The account named for Iris Winter, which is temporarily suspended, uses a picture of Spanish ice dancer Sara Hurtado. Minnie Casera’s supposed picture comes from the Facebook account of Martina Painter, an Alaskan who died on Jan. 11, 2017. The picture used by Georgia Miles is actually Deja Farrior-Quinones, a New Jersey woman who was killed in September 2016 by a car involved in a high-speed police chase. Maggie Campell’s picture is one of Deb Solsrud, a Florida woman who died in a plane crash in December 2016. Madeleine Ware’s photo is really Mary Knowlton, a retired librarian who was killed in August 2016 by a police officer in a practice drill.

Allison Rowe’s account uses the picture of Dr. Roberta Guilizzoni, an Italian physicist who works at the National Physical Laboratory in London. Baylee Allmon’s picture is actually the Bosnian model Nejla Hadzic. The account of Callie Calloway uses a picture of Kelsey Lundy, a lobbyist in Arizona for Compass Strategies. Cameron Gibson offers an image of the freelance travel writer Sarah Gordon that appeared in the Daily Mail. Francie McCormack has taken her picture from the Twitter account of Callie Maries. The photo of Lena Robinson is actually Ashlynn Sparks, an Alabama teenager who was shot to death in 2016.

The account of Gwen Barstow is temporarily restricted, probably because it used an image of Meaghan Delcourt, an Ottawa woman who was in the local news in 2015 after her apartment balcony collapsed underneath her

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5aa2f548e4b07047bec68023/amp
 

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