We all know that there are PSYOP lessons to be learned buried
in there and I thought the time had come for me to at least start pecking away
at them. When I face complex international events I turn to the Economist as an
impartial source. Since they are not a US publication they can, and do take
liberties in the way they report and analyze the news.
I’ve used two articles from the February 24th,
2018 printed (yes real) magazine. The first was simply titled “The discord
amplifier” (see: http://econ.st/2oAZJqj,
which is also a photo source.)
The article notes “three companies Mr
Prigozhin controlled, including the Internet Research Agency (IRA, see article),
and 12 other named Russians with identity theft, conspiracy to commit wire and
bank fraud and conspiracy to defraud America by “impairing, obstructing and
defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States”.
Identity theft stood out to me.
Identify theft implies that the perpetrators used the identities of real people
as well as fictitious people in their social media ruses.
This is the very essence of Black
Propaganda that either uses false sources or obscures the true source. Fake
social media personas were employed to reduce voter turnout among blacks and Muslims,
while encouraging votes for Bernie Sanders to decrease Hillary Clinton’s vote
count.
The false personas were then able to
mobilize “unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump campaign”
largely because the false persona’s appealed to the already existing beliefs
and bias of those people.
The article goes on to say that “Social
media are designed to hijack their users’ attention. That makes them excellent
conduits for the dissemination of lies and for the encouragement of animosity.”
This employment of social media shows a deep recognition of intended and
unintended consequences of it.
However, let’s not totally count on
digital influence. I noted how groups of real people were duped and brought
into play. Playing on humans is a hallmark of Russian tradecraft, as well
stated in the article: “Russia’s activity consists of techniques from the
pre-digital Soviet manual: marshaling human assets, be they active spies or
sympathetic activists; funding organizations that may be helpful; and
attempting to influence the media agenda.”
One last point from this article was
the use of armies of bots as a way to leverage their influence especially on
Twitter. The article concludes like this ““If it was the GOAL of Russia to
create discord, disruption and chaos,” Mr Trump tweeted on February 17th, “they
have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.” For once, he had it right.”
The second article I referred to was in
the same issue and entitled “Facebook unfriended” and subtitled “Russian
meddling is only one challenge facing the social-media giant” (see: http://econ.st/2FJB62j, which is also a photo
source).
This article stands for two
propositions:
1.
FaceBook was a critical element in the
disinformation campaign as evidenced by the fact that it was mentioned “mentioned
no fewer than 35 times as a place where Russian trolls swayed Americans through
targeted political advertising and curated posts.”
2.
FaceBook will not be as influential for
any subsequent disinformation campaigns targeted at people under the age of 25
because it is losing significant ground to SnapChat and Instagram among others.
For we in the PSYOP Community the
message is clear – stay on top of the latest in social media and technology,
view them with caution and never loose sight of how even the oldest of
influence tactics still work.
As always reader comments are
encouraged.
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