Very interesting thread by the founder of Bellingcat.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1583380015550726144 To build on this, my personal belief is most counter-disinformation work fails to address the fundamental issues that lead to the creation of disinformation, and generally misunderstands the source of disinformation in the first place....
"And these people don't become part of these communities to create and spread disinformation, they do it because they believe (often correctly) that they're being deceived, so seek to correct the record."
"The problem is their own biases, fuelled by traumatic moral injury, means any conclusion that supports the perceived position of those responsible for that injury is unacceptable, so alternative, increasing absurd, answers must be correct."
I remember an academic that Obama hired to look at this and I remember her talking about how all the talk of Russia simply providing loads of propaganda backing Trump was nonsense.
That in reality it had all been going on for a long time, they had joined or setup loads and loads of social media groups across the political and ethnic divides and people were voluntary getting involved. The reason, because they already had a cause / a side / a campaign they wanted to get on board with.
The trick being played was to reinforce the biases and keep stretching the narrative. Most of the time the Russian state actors were just engaging in these discussions, amplifying certain things being brought up, and then from time to time slipping in a story (sometimes true, sometimes false, sometimes somewhere inbetween) with deliberate ploy to outrage.
Indeed - but his real point is that Russia is irrelevant if you're trying to actually address the problem. The only way to build trust is not to lie.
No, it is about the tendency of people to like reinforcing their own biases....
Well, that's part of it - but that is always going to be the case, and as he says: "there's nothing wrong with that, the problem comes when individuals define their entire world view on those issues".
His argument centres around what drives people to abandon faith in institutions. ...For example, the Invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the lies told to support the war by the US and UK governments, is one of these moments why traditional sources of authority betrayed the trust of the public, and drove people to seek alternative sources of authority....
On the surface the QAnon, Flat Earth and anti-White Helmets community might all seem very different, but if you look at the root causes that bring them together in the first place the fundamental distrust in traditional sources of authority seems to be a common theme. If you look at how Covid conspiracies emerged from the alternative health communities you'll see a lot of people who have had very bad experiences with medical professionals, another traditional source of authority...
That's what makes people vulnerable to the tactic.
See the recruitment of people into the PIRA (or the Loyalists) in the Troubles - something would happen that would make them receptive. Then they would spiral through the groups of "groupies" in some pubs, the supporters to the core. At each stage, the environment was receptive to being more and more extreme.
🚨LATEST POLLING🚨 Overnight we ran three head-to-heads between the most likely Conservative leadership candidates. The results were:
> Sunak 45% vs 23% for Mordaunt > Sunak 44% vs 31% for Johnson > Mordaunt 36% vs 33% for Johnson
Edit: To clarify, a poll of the general public, not party members
It demonstrates that Mordaunt, hardly well known by the populace, is still seen as a better option than the disgraced former PM. So much for his ability to turn things around. I hope MPs have seen this
However how many of those who prefer Sunak to Johnson or Mordaunt would vote for Starmer over all of them.
Yes I would have thought most of those currently saying they would not vote Conservative would rate Johnson lower than the other 2. So scoring low 30s doesn't sound so bad.
Simon Clarke has become the second Cabinet minister to back Boris Johnson to replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party, The Telegraph can disclose.
Mr Clarke, the Levelling Up secretary, urged MPs to back Mr Johnson in a joint statement to The Telegraph with Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor.
Comments
See the recruitment of people into the PIRA (or the Loyalists) in the Troubles - something would happen that would make them receptive. Then they would spiral through the groups of "groupies" in some pubs, the supporters to the core. At each stage, the environment was receptive to being more and more extreme.
There's a mass hype going on with Johnson which I think will pop fairly soon.
Boris needs 37 of the remaining 174