Revisiting the old Occupy Democrats propaganda poster from 2016, where nearly every item on the poster was an outright lie. I recently updated the “free childcare” section and added Parts 7 and 8 to this popular series. Seriously, it is the most searched for item on this blog!
Democrats won the popular vote in the U.S. Senate, therefore the 2018 election is unfair, says the meme. Sounds convincing – until you see this claim taken apart by the Washington Post. In fact, Democrats won 22 of the 35 seats or 65% of the seats while receiving just 55% of the total votes. Read the whole thing. This is an example of propaganda messaging that uses the “What you see is all there is” method. Also see thelogical fallacy of implying a vote of 1/3d of the Senate seats is a vote of 100% of Senate seats, fooling the target of the propaganda messaging.
Next Congress is likely to regulate social media companies.
We wrote about rental protest crowds back in 2017. They are now back in the news.
An egregious example of badly sourcing one’s allegations from social media posts? This time, a political candidate published a list of victims of sexual assault, some of whom say they are not victims, and some who say they never gave permission for their name to be published on a public list. U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (ND) has apologized and appears to blame “victim advocates” for the error.
An interesting inside look at how political propaganda operations function.
Much of the online criticism about the Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, was driven by Russian troll farms and bots as a form of information warfare intended – successfully – to tear our society apart. It’s pretty ugly.
A Pew Research study finds that social media political posts change the views of relatively few people, but are more likely to change the views of Democrats than of Republicans (by about 2 to 1).
This blog analyzed a popular social media propaganda post that was widely distributed in 2016. The poster encouraged viewers to share if you wanted the U.S. to be just like Denmark. Nearly all the claims about Denmark, however, were false. Yet the poster was widely shared. Another popular meme is that Denmark is a socialist country and we should be just like Denmark. Except Denmark is not a socialist country – and that is according to the Prime Minister of Denmark.
A left wing group launches a secret propaganda operation to combat secret right wing propaganda operations. Funded with 81 staff, the program will uses tools of propaganda theory and the new tools of social media to direct messaging at individuals by identifying their personal emotional hot buttons. Right wing groups are likely conducting similar propaganda operations but their battle plans have not been published for all to see.
What can we do about this? Walk away from social media and avoid voluntarily signing up for mind control and manipulation operations. We are entering a dangerous era well beyond WW II and Soviet-era propaganda.
How propaganda techniques are used to promote legislation. In this case, a specific individual is highlighted to emotionally hook others into supporting the bill. Arguments for the first law were shaped by referring to it as “Max’s Law” to connect it to a specific individual. Arguments for the second law were shaped by referring to it as “Jenna’s Law”. The key technique is to personalize the topic to emotionally engage the target that needs persuading: legislators, and potentially lobbyists and…
Not surprisingly, the leaky data sieve that is Facebook, had its trove of personal data accessed from Russia and other countries (which likely includes the U.S.?): The now infamous Facebook data set on tens of millions of Americans gathered by a Cambridge University scientist for a firm that went on to worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was accessed from Russia, a British member of parliament tells CNN. Source: Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data was accessed from Russia, MP says As…
Once enabled, Samba TV can track nearly everything that appears on the TV on a second-by-second basis, essentially reading pixels to identify network shows and ads, as well as programs on Netflix and HBO and even video games played on the TV. Samba TV has even offered advertisers the ability to base their targeting on whether people watch conservative or liberal media outlets and which party’s presidential debate they watched. …. Samba TV can also identify other devices in the…
Occupy Democrats is an online, social media-based, for profit publisher of emotion laden political propaganda posters targeting those who view themselves as left wing. In 2016, Occupy Democrats used social media to distribute this propaganda through shares and likes. Every claim on this widely distributed and shared poster is essentially false – or two that are highly misleading at best (see links below for excruciating details.) Note their last item: SHARE if America should follow their lead! Occupy Democrats wants…