The role of social media and propaganda in the terror attacks in New Zealand
Social media played a huge role in the terror attacks in New Zealand.
Due to #Facebook’s behavior, Congress poised to begin heavily regulating tech sector
Due to Facebook’s lack of interest in user privacy (and related problems with hate speech and propaganda), Congress is poised to regulate the tech sector, starting with social media companies.
#Facebook’s head of PR propaganda has quit #Fakebook
Facebook’s head of PR admits to developing a program to slime others with negative propaganda messaging. He had already submitted his resignation.
Revisiting an old topic – almost every item on this propaganda poster was false
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!
Ignorance contributes to the effectiveness of propaganda
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 may regulate social media companies
Next Congress is likely to regulate social media companies.
Rent A Crowd “Crowds on Demand” – is back in the news
We wrote about rental protest crowds back in 2017. They are now back in the news.
Sourcing serious allegations from social media posts is never a good idea
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 inside look at how political propaganda operations function
An interesting inside look at how political propaganda operations function.
Apparently Star Wars was a propaganda film
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.
Social media political propaganda has little influence on others
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).
Part 8: Is Denmark a socialist country?
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.
Left wing launches secret propaganda operation against secret right wing #propaganda operations
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 legislators use propaganda methods to pass new laws
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…