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Slow News Day posted:Now, now... no need get naughty... Epinephrine posted:Given that you literally just said you thought you could lie and get away with it on this topic, would I be very media literate if I took you at your word here? Both of you stop too.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:02
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fool of sound posted:Both of you stop too. Sorry, I was just suggesting that they may want to be careful about using certain... shibboleths, considering we have this in the OP: fool of sound posted:This thread will be strictly moderated.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:09
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fool of sound posted:This isn't the general cognitive biases thread, it's specifically for media literacy and criticism. Cognitive biases play into media analysis, but the overlap doesn't mean that they're the same thing. Discuss media. Sure, but you get what I'm saying though, right? True media literacy demands engaging with the substance of the story, not just making pronouncements about the source and calling it a day. You can see that train of thought illustrated here: posters don't like the content of what I'm saying, so they're attacking me rather than addressing my arguments. If they can discredit me as a source, they can ignore the points I'm raising as if they were never there, even though those points would stand on their own. Not one of the last three posters engaged with any substance, they would rather quibble with language or rules lawyering. Compare and contrast to the general reaction in D&D to any story that paints the democrats in a negative light. Posters here definitely have unexamined biases they bring to any discussion and it clouds their judgment. Worse, they treat those biases as 'normal' and 'rational' and take any challenge as a personal affront.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:37
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Nix Panicus posted:3. The democrats spend years saying the 2016 election was illegitimate and the Russians interfered and produce evidence of such from one of the most notable scandals of the election instead of having to pretend facebook ads and twitter bots are substantive. The Facebook campaign by the Internet Research Agency and Cambridge Analytica took advantage of some tactics I'm familiar with (I ran the FB campaigns for a real-money casino app in the UK). The Internet Research Agency alone reached tens of millions of users in the U.S. on social media, including more than 30 million users who shared IRA-created Facebook and Instagram posts with their circles. Here's how. 1. Post stuff and spend a little on reaching people in identifiable groups. 2. See who reposts. 3. Create "look alike" cohorts to the people who repost. 4. Spend a little to reach them. Basically super cost effective stuff IF your stuff resonates with the target audience.
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Oct 18, 2021 05:17
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VideoGameVet posted:The Facebook campaign by the Internet Research Agency and Cambridge Analytica took advantage of some tactics I'm familiar with (I ran the FB campaigns for a real-money casino app in the UK). So they were largely reaching people who already agreed with them then? How effective do you think that kind of ad work is in *changing* opinion vs just motivating existing biases and desires?
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Oct 18, 2021 06:50
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Nix Panicus posted:So they were largely reaching people who already agreed with them then? How effective do you think that kind of ad work is in *changing* opinion vs just motivating existing biases and desires? You don't even need to change a single person's opinion. Every engaged, obsessively article-sharing voter you create out of a formerly apathetic non-voting population is a +1 on your balance sheet, at minimum.
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Oct 18, 2021 07:16
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Fuschia tude posted:You don't even need to change a single person's opinion. Every engaged, obsessively article-sharing voter you create out of a formerly apathetic non-voting population is a +1 on your balance sheet, at minimum. Sure, but I'm trying to work out how advertising rises to the level of 'interference' in a country that runs USAID and Voice of America. The US produces media designed to undermine disfavored regimes all the time, how could Russian pushback be seen as an unprecedented attack on democracy? Is there anything more to it than 'its bad when it happens to us'? Also, why is it the DNC leaks were considered so pointless to try and fight back against that the DNC did nothing to try and disprove the leaks, and in fact apologized for their content, but facebook ads were considered unstoppable? Why is it simultaneously so easily to shake loose marginally attached voters that nothing can be done, but also so easy to activate formerly apathetic non-voters that a relatively inexpensive facebook campaign could reach voters the billions in candidate spending could not? To ask a specifically media analysis question: is the goal of political media to persuade or to motivate, and how does that affect the content and delivery?
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Oct 18, 2021 07:51
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In the wake of the death of Colin Powell, and as a change of pace from discussing how biases play into who someone decides to believe based on little to no evidence, lets talk about Colin Powell's presentation to the UN https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/a-winning-hand-for-powell/aa1e6dd9-dbf9-4b71-bb86-9c42a4a5a427/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/02/06/irrefutable/e598b1be-a78a-4a42-8e1a-c336f7a217f4/ Irrefutable posted:AFTER SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Powell left no room to argue seriously that Iraq has accepted the Security Council's offer of a "final opportunity" to disarm. And he offered a powerful new case that Saddam Hussein's regime is cooperating with a branch of the al Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical weapons and stage attacks in Europe. Mr. Powell's evidence, including satellite photographs, audio recordings and reports from detainees and other informants, was overwhelming. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called it "powerful and irrefutable." Revealing those tapes and photographs had a cost, as Iraq will surely take countermeasures. But the decision to make so much evidence public will prove invaluable if it sways public opinion here and abroad. At a minimum, it will stand as a worthy last effort to engage the United Nations in facing a threat that the United States could, if necessary, address alone or with an ad-hoc coalition. From the comfortable position of 2021 we know that Powell's presentation was a lie, a falsehood concocted to justify a war the Bush administration wanted to launch, but how should a media reader in 2003 interpret the story? Here we have a story published by a credible paper of record citing evidence from trusted state sources. It even has bipartisan support from a Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr, who, as senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, would be uniquely positioned to verify the truth of the report. The story has been faithfully reported, and WaPo even has the full text of the speech available to compare, and of course the speech and excepts from it aired on every network. It is also, of course, a fabrication. Bush, Powell, and the rest of the regime used the credibility of the UN and the press to fuel a lie. They even went so far as to find either a willing co-conspirator, or possibly just the dumbest person on the planet, Senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee Joseph R. Biden Jr, to provide bipartisan cover. How should modern, media savvy pundits correctly parse this story to ascertain its full of lies told by knowing liars to deceive the gullible and stupid and justify the petty viciousness and Islamophobia of America?
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Oct 18, 2021 20:44
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I think a good start to any form of media literacy is probably to learn what the word "opinion" means, and recognize that you shouldn't trust assertions in opinion pieces, even if they are very strongly asserted! (And no, the fact that those are opinion pieces does not absolve the Post for publishing them.) If you want to talk about actual, allegedly fact-based reporting that was erroneous and contributed to the war then you should talk about Judith Miller and the Times. Now that's some fertile ground.
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Oct 18, 2021 20:59
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Mellow Seas posted:I think a good start to any form of media literacy is probably to learn what the word "opinion" means, and recognize that you shouldn't trust assertions in opinion pieces, even if they are very strongly asserted! (And no, the fact that those are opinion pieces does not absolve the Post for publishing them.) I think an actual good start to understanding media literacy is probably to learn that pushing slanted reporting as 'opinion' is a time honored disinformation tactic that has been embraced to an absurd degree by outlets like Fox or OANN, but still exists in all media sources. A paper could very easily just not publish opinion pieces that don't match their ethos.
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Oct 18, 2021 21:02
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Nix Panicus posted:I think an actual good start to understanding media literacy is probably to learn that pushing slanted reporting as 'opinion' is a time honored disinformation tactic that has been embraced to an absurd degree by outlets like Fox or OANN, but still exists in all media sources. Yeah, I agree with that. Like I said, that they were opinion pieces are not an absolution. But still, publishing op-Eds pushing for bad policy is not as bad as printing flat-out lies and presenting them as truth, which is what the NYT did in that era. e: And I would love to see a discussion about those NYT misdeeds but am I feeling a little  about it at the moment. Maybe I'll make a post about it later; I'm sure there are a lot of people who are more familiar with the "story of the story" than I am so if they want to jump into it I would appreciate it.
Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 21:03
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Nix Panicus posted:So they were largely reaching people who already agreed with them then? How effective do you think that kind of ad work is in *changing* opinion vs just motivating existing biases and desires? Because, as has been explained multiple times, agreeable calims and politically valenced messages are used to make uncritical readers accept false claims. You know this, because it's been explained to you multiple times. IF it wasn't a problem, we wouldn't have a rule about it in the OP of USNews, and the thread wouldn't exist. Nix Panicus posted:Sure, but I'm trying to work out how advertising rises to the level of 'interference' in a country that runs USAID and Voice of America. The US produces media designed to undermine disfavored regimes all the time, how could Russian pushback be seen as an unprecedented attack on democracy? Is there anything more to it than 'its bad when it happens to us'? I'm not interested in obviously bad faith whataboutism. Before you even try to equivocate, are you acknowledging that it's bad? Nix Panicus posted:Also, why is it the DNC leaks were considered so pointless to try and fight back against that the DNC did nothing to try and disprove the leaks, and in fact apologized for their content, but facebook ads were considered unstoppable? Why is it simultaneously so easily to shake loose marginally attached voters that nothing can be done, but also so easy to activate formerly apathetic non-voters that a relatively inexpensive facebook campaign could reach voters the billions in candidate spending could not? Why are you trying, again, to justify and legitimize falsehoods spread through social media, including in this, the media analysis and criticism thread, in a social media platform? Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 21:10
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Slow News Day posted:Ars Technica published an article yesterday that is right up this thread's alley. Following up on this, Willis has now identified that the network that was conducting the misinformation campaign was Naturalnews. I'd heard of the organization (their bonkers anti-pasteurization political cartoons have shown up in the politoons thread), but I didn't think they were so well-resourced. They're notable for having historically used talking points that targeted lefties.
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Oct 18, 2021 21:29
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Nix Panicus posted:So they were largely reaching people who already agreed with them then? How effective do you think that kind of ad work is in *changing* opinion vs just motivating existing biases and desires? The “look alike” thing reached people who shared interests with the original groups that shared the stuff. A “look alike” is based on shared Facebook interests to the cohort that first shared the stuff. That could be fishing or pickups for all I know. The key is the number of impressions garnered at a ridiculous low cost. It’s easy to poo-Pooh this, but it impressed me and I had run Facebook campaigns for years and they did everything right.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:08
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Nix Panicus posted:Sure, but I'm trying to work out how advertising rises to the level of 'interference' in a country that runs USAID and Voice of America. The US produces media designed to undermine disfavored regimes all the time, how could Russian pushback be seen as an unprecedented attack on democracy? Is there anything more to it than 'its bad when it happens to us'? The FB algorithm and zero fact checking made it extremely cost effective.
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Oct 19, 2021 01:09
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Discendo Vox posted:I'm not interested in obviously bad faith whataboutism. Before you even try to equivocate, are you acknowledging that it's bad? It's not a bad faith whataboutism, it's the core of the question.
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Oct 19, 2021 05:37
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MonsieurChoc posted:It's not a bad faith whataboutism, it's the core of the question. It is not. The idea that there needs to be some equivocation with domestic sources of information, or with USAID, or with VoA, is an attempt to divert attention from the prior claim about what it was and what it did (foreign interference in US elections spreading misinformation through social media) , to muddy discussion and shift scope away from the actual effect of those efforts, and to once again, equivocate about whether the truthfulness of messages matter, specifically based on whether they find it convenient, ideologically or rhetorically, to agree with them.
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Oct 19, 2021 05:56
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Discendo Vox posted:It is not. The idea that there needs to be some equivocation with domestic sources of information, or with USAID, or with VoA, is an attempt to divert attention from the prior claim about what it was and what it did (foreign interference in US elections spreading misinformation through social media) , to muddy discussion and shift scope away from the actual effect of those efforts, and to once again, equivocate about whether the truthfulness of messages matter, specifically based on whether they find it convenient, ideologically or rhetorically, to agree with them. Could you be more specific about what you believe was the misinformation being spread? Was there something else, or are you still saying the DNC leaks were 'misinformation' because you find it convenient, ideologically or rhetorically, to disagree with them?
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Oct 19, 2021 08:40
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Nix Panicus posted:Could you be more specific about what you believe was the misinformation being spread? Was there something else, or are you still saying the DNC leaks were 'misinformation' because you find it convenient, ideologically or rhetorically, to disagree with them? Are you fishing for specific examples of misinfo distributed by Russian state actors in social media? How about the Seth Rich conspiracy theory? Your post wants to refocus the conversation on the DNC leaks which was only one part of the social media mis/disinfo campaign in 2016. edit: and the DNC leaks have already been discussed at length here. It wasn't the only thing pushed on social media to try and influence the election. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 08:58
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Can we please talk about the Iraq War justification, it's at least an interesting conundrum. How should have theoretically objective reporting have dealt with the accusations of Iraqi WMD programs? They had the intelligence agencies of several nations and ranking members of opposition party telling them that they believed the accusations were true, and had no way of independently verifying. Similarly, how should a savvy viewer have interpreted the coverage that turned out to be based on false pretenses?
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Oct 19, 2021 15:37
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fool of sound posted:Can we please talk about the Iraq War justification, it's at least an interesting conundrum. How should have theoretically objective reporting have dealt with the accusations of Iraqi WMD programs? They had the intelligence agencies of several nations and ranking members of opposition party telling them that they believed the accusations were true, and had no way of independently verifying. Similarly, how should a savvy viewer have interpreted the coverage that turned out to be based on false pretenses? I think its important to highlight that the UN Inspectors were outspoken in saying there was nothing to it, if I recall correctly, including the UN Nuclear Inspectors basically scratching their heads when Powell claimed they were enriching Uranium. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/iraqchron This is not the first time, too: When the Israeli's bombed Iraq's Research Reactor, claiming it was going to be used to enrich weapons grade Plutonium, the French designers and co-operators called them out, pointing out the reactors design was specifically made to now allow for plutonium production, yet the Israeli's bombed it anyways. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/09/world/france-condemns-attack-and-rejects-israeli-account.html CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 15:45
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CommieGIR posted:I think its important to highlight that the UN Inspectors were outspoken in saying there was nothing to it, if I recall correctly, including the UN Nuclear Inspectors basically scratching their heads when Powell claimed they were enriching Uranium. You'll have to forgive me because I was in middle school at the time, but I thought the yellowcake stories came after the invasions, to justify not finding any chemical weapons except leftovers from the 80s?
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Oct 19, 2021 15:48
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fool of sound posted:You'll have to forgive me because I was in middle school at the time, but I thought the yellowcake stories came after the invasions, to justify not finding any chemical weapons except leftovers from the 80s? No, Powell made his presentation on Feb 5th 2003, shortly before the Invasion. In the presentation he held up what he claimed was a vial of Anthrax, but he did mention their Uranium enrichment program (which did not exist) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/18/stain-on-powells-record-lies-to-the-un-about-iraqs-weapons https://spyscape.com/article/saddam-husseins-fake-uranium https://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/uranium-in-iraq/ Either way, as well as inspecting Iraq for Chem/Bio weapons, the IAEA had been on the ground prior to the Invasion verifying Iraq's compliance with Nuclear weapons, and found nothing, including calling out US reports about intelligence related to the Iraqis trying to purchase Uranium for a weapons program. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Oct 19, 2021 |
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Oct 19, 2021 15:49
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I was in 4th year of High School at the time, and I remember everyone knowing Bush and Powell were lying. This is because I'm Canadian, and non-US media was way better at showing how full of poo poo the Bush administration was. In fact, I'm pretty sure the only media that gave any credence to the Bush administration's claims were those in countries that were part of the "Coalition of the Willing". Maybe some right-wing media in other countries, Harper did want us to join the war.
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Oct 19, 2021 16:59
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fool of sound posted:Can we please talk about the Iraq War justification, it's at least an interesting conundrum. How should have theoretically objective reporting have dealt with the accusations of Iraqi WMD programs? They had the intelligence agencies of several nations and ranking members of opposition party telling them that they believed the accusations were true, and had no way of independently verifying. Similarly, how should a savvy viewer have interpreted the coverage that turned out to be based on false pretenses? Of course the French opposition was likely based on the intelligence that was already available from the weapons inspectors, so it's not like the media didn't have another side it could report on if he wanted to. The fact that it failed to give the other perspective anything approaching fair coverage is probably the thing one should've taken notice of back then, and an important thing to consider when consuming contemporary news. No matter where you put the line in terms what should be considered a "serious" side to an issue, I feel like vocally disagreeing allies* should rank pretty high on most people's list, as should respected international organizations. *Allies just following the US lead on the other hand should basically not even be considered, given how ride or die most of them are.
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Oct 19, 2021 17:03
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Probably Magic posted:So to summarize, you're saying Wikileaks is overly sensational. I absolutely agree. I remember Assange or wikileaks promised some big info dump that was going to change the course of the 2020 election late last year and I don't think I ever came, and it did not leave me overly impressed. Wikileaks making itself as opposed to its leaks the story is definitely one of my chief complaints with them. I would say, though, I do hold wikileaks to different standards to typical gatekeepers like major publications and networks because I generally view them as aggressive disseminators of the media than actual packagers of it. Discendo Vox earlier made sure to categorize wikileaks as not whistleblowers but platforms of whistleblowers, and I guess my question is, does wikileaks have a responsibility to vet its information or just platform it? This question may arise from my, honestly, unfamiliarity with the format of wikileaks. I was under the impression there were was some framing article to contextualize the leaks (which I never gave a poo poo about) but then there would be a link to the raw data released. The content part to me is the raw data, not editorializing contextualization, and that data should be disseminated. If Wikileaks doesn't have links to that raw data, that would convert them from disseminator to gatekeeper and then very much their editorializing would need to come under scrutiny. Again, I always thought of wikileaks as, well, just the leaks. I could be wrong. they’re Ethiopian Jews, (a slur for them in Amharic is f*lasha). Somalis are ethnoreligious and are 99.9 percent Sunni Muslim. ( that .9 percent is for people in planes flying over Somalia)
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Oct 19, 2021 17:21
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MonsieurChoc posted:I was in 4th year of High School at the time, and I remember everyone knowing Bush and Powell were lying. This is because I'm Canadian, and non-US media was way better at showing how full of poo poo the Bush administration was. Yeah wow, this is wild. I've been skimming archives and while outright debunking got coverage, basically every paper of note was platforming outright smears of Wilson's investigation or the apocalyptic 'insider' reporting of Judith Miller that were largely just the uncritically repeated lies of an Iraqi opposition group lobbying for a coup. It got much fairer play in foreign press, even in the BBC. It's remarkable how well the narrative was shifted to "well we were just doing our job but were lied to" once the truth started coming out, even the NYT's famous mea culpa just reads as rear end-covering and a barely-apology.
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Oct 19, 2021 17:31
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It was just not profitable to be against the war. Phil Donahue learned that lesson. Remember when Michael Moore got booed at the Oscars? The evidence didn’t matter, because the decision was made, and it turned out a lot of people prefer that to having to figure it out for themselves. I think the evidence debate was then and is now a sideshow. The “with us or against us” is the real meat of what was going on in this country.
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Oct 19, 2021 17:40
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Part of the issue was painting it as followup to Bin laden and punishing the 9/11 attackers, and Bush basically holding the reins of the public who were actively insane because of the attacks. For many of us (me included mind you) we were barely in our teens, and don't really remember how crazy it was after 9/11 in this country. At that point Bush had an approval rating in what the high 80s? and no one was really listening to facts and instead just following what he was saying because he was the protector of the nation ( ) The higherups were using that to justify iraq war 2 because bush was angry daddy didnt get saddams head. And then we have the forever war in iraq to thank for him. And Powell gently caress him
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Oct 19, 2021 18:19
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fool of sound posted:Yeah wow, this is wild. I've been skimming archives and while outright debunking got coverage, basically every paper of note was platforming outright smears of Wilson's investigation or the apocalyptic 'insider' reporting of Judith Miller that were largely just the uncritically repeated lies of an Iraqi opposition group lobbying for a coup. It got much fairer play in foreign press, even in the BBC. One thing that might be interesting (and has almost certainly been done already) is to compare media narratives for/against the Iraq invasion with the same for Afghanistan. If you're approaching this from a broad media analysis perspective, comparing the two seems pretty useful. The media environment should be pretty similar as opposed to comparing 2003 to 2021 when social media and the rest of the landscape is quite different. I don't have time today to try and dig into it, just seems like a useful comparison.
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Oct 19, 2021 18:34
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In Canada, Afghanistan was 100% portrayed as the "good war" vs the "bad war" in Iraq.
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Oct 19, 2021 19:08
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PawParole posted:they’re Ethiopian Jews, (a slur for them in Amharic is f*lasha). Somalis are ethnoreligious and are 99.9 percent Sunni Muslim. ( that .9 percent is for people in planes flying over Somalia) Yeah, that's my fault, brain hosed it up. The Ethiopian community is one of the oldest Jewish communities too, right, like a very long history, including Ruth famously being Ethiopian.
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Oct 19, 2021 19:43
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Here's a report that was created upon request of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to analyze and understand the influence operations of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election season. The Tactics & Tropes of the Internet Research Agency quote:Pro-Trump Operations Commence During Primaries The bolded parts are particularly interesting because they serve as confirmation that their disinformation campaigns didn't just target Right-wing audiences, but also Black audiences and Left-wing audiences, using messaging that each would be susceptible to. An example of this is given on the topic of Syria, on pages 58-61. While the underlying message was the same (i.e. the USA should get out of Syria, which is something Russia desperately wanted so that they could expand their own sphere of influence), Right-wing audiences were exposed to messaging about how foreign wars result in floods of refugees, Black audiences were exposed to messaging about how foreign wars result in waste of resources that could otherwise be used to solve domestic problems, while Left-wing audiences were exposed to messaging about general opposition to wars and meddling in other countries' affairs. Another interesting bit from the report is where they highlight IRA's efforts to undermine trust in journalism, and they paid particular attention to signal-boosting Wikileaks: quote:A sub-thread of note was the dozens of posts extolling the virtues of Wikileaks and Julian Assange that the IRA placed across Black, Left, and Right-leaning audiences on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Instagram accounts and Facebook pages produced memes teasing new Wikileaks drops (such as via IRA account @therepublicandaily, which positioned itself as a Republican news source) and reinforcing Assange’s reputation as a whistleblower with a commitment to journalistic freedom. The Twitter accounts joined in as well. There were a small number of Facebook and Instagram posts about Assange, reinforcing his reputation as a freedom fighter, on October 4th, 2016 – a few days before the major Podesta email dump occurred. Given the GRU involvement in the DNC hack with Wikileaks, it is possible that the IRA was tasked with socializing Wikileaks to both Right and Left audiences. Prior to October 4th, the last post about Assange had been in early September 2016. Once the emails were released, there were many more tweets and Facebook posts about them.  There's also the "Dismiss and Redirect" tactic they used: quote:Soon after the November 2016 election, investigative journalism began to uncover evidence of both the IRA’s social influence and the GRU’s hacking operations. As articles began to emerge about election interference – pointing the finger at Russia – the IRA didn’t shy away or ignore it. It used derision and disparagement in content targeting the Right-leaning pages, to create and amplify the narrative that the whole investigation was nonsense, that Comey and Mueller were corrupt, and that the emerging Russia stories were a “weird conspiracy” pushed by “liberal crybabies”. As facets of the investigation trickled out over 2017, the Right-targeted accounts justified, dismissed, normalized, and redirected. Consider the below message and see if you recognize the sentiment from posts on these very forums: quote:I think Donald Trump Jr had every right to meet with a Russian lawyer. First of all, she might have got really important information about Hillary Clinton. If the information is true I don’t care where it comes from Russia or China or wherever. If the Russians are able to expose Clinton’s lies then let them do it. I want to know the truth. Secondly, Donald Trump Jr published all the emails in order to be transparent and there is nothing outrageous in them. Not like he has deleted 33,000 of classified emails of smth. Third, this lawyer is a really suspicious figure who according to some news sources was spotted at an anti-Trump rally and has connections with the Democratic Party. Moreover, she has no proven connections with the Russian government. So the whole story looks like another provocation dedicated to resurrecting the dead Russian collusion story. They tried to defame the president and they lost now they are trying to use this weak ace in the sleeve against his son. Good luck with that!”
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Oct 19, 2021 22:02
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Slow News Day posted:While the underlying message was the same (i.e. the USA should get out of Syria, which is something Russia desperately wanted so that they could expand their own sphere of influence), Perhaps you could explain how maintaining Assad's presence, who was closely allied with Russia, would have "expanded" rather than "maintained" Russia's influence. If you're going to seed doubt that anyone with an anti-imperialist point of view has a compromised perspective that's being manipulated, you'd better make sure your own rhetoric is free of bias that asserts an American imperialist point of view. Who do you think got more exposure out, Wikileaks or the United States' media and their language with Assad? This is important, by the way, because making Russia out as some invading, outsider force as opposed to the more invited power in the region compared to the US who absolutely was trying to "expand" their influence, is very important.
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Oct 19, 2021 23:31
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Slow News Day posted:Here's a report that was created upon request of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to analyze and understand the influence operations of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2016 election season. What is the relevance of any of this if the leaks are true?
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Oct 20, 2021 01:04
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The Kingfish posted:What is the relevance of any of this if the leaks are true? Even when the facts are genuine, the motivations of the speaker still affect how they represent those facts.
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Oct 20, 2021 01:09
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Not when the “facts” at issue are primary documents.
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Oct 20, 2021 01:11
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The Kingfish posted:What is the relevance of any of this if the leaks are true? Also, the report documents how the leaks were part of a larger disinformation campaign that spread false rumors about the content and context of the leaks, notably about pizzagate and the murder of Seth Rich. Effective propaganda mixes together true things with lies in order to make credible the lies.
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Oct 20, 2021 01:17
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The Kingfish posted:What is the relevance of any of this if the leaks are true? The Kingfish posted:Not when the “facts” at issue are primary documents. Is there a reason you're singularly focused on the Wikileaks documents? If you glance through the report the IRA did much, much more than signal-boost the leaks. There's some interesting bits starting around page 66. One of the things the IRA did in signal-boosting Assange and Wikileaks was deliberately attempt to undermine trust in "mainstream media" outlets and push people toward fringe/niche media, along with boosting conspiracy theories. They targeted left, right, and black groups with specific messages. The Russian disinfo campaign was much broader than the DNC leaks.
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Oct 20, 2021 01:19
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The Kingfish posted:Not when the “facts” at issue are primary documents. This is literally "If the information is true I don’t care where it comes from Russia or China or wherever. If the Russians are able to expose Clinton’s lies then let them do it. I want to know the truth. " Which is a notable part you cut out of the lengthy post you quoted. Agreeing with Russian propaganda may not make you wrong, but one should consider why they chose the 'I don't care about the agenda of the source' as an avenue. Fritz gets at what that accomplishes pretty well, and it's not highlighting the truth.
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Oct 20, 2021 01:50
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