Disinfo Blotter: The Guardian podcast "Why are conspiracy theories so attractive?"

[Jon G. Tidd]

I've learned that pre-disposition determines perception.

For example, you are observing a motorcade. Shots ring out. A person in the motorcade appears to be hit.

Not long afterward, you hear "officials" saying three shots were fired.

So, your pre-disposition is affected. You didn't know how many shots rang out. Or you thought four shots rang out. But now you're told three shots rang out. You believe in authority. You believe three shots rang out.

You have just ceded authority to the official story. You have abandoned your perception.

[Guest Joe Bundy]

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Edited January 4, 2016 by Joe Bundy

[Thomas Graves]

On 11/15/2015 at 12:37 PM, Chris Newton said:

There is also the theory, which is ironically also a conspiracy theory, that nefarious forces are supporting some whacko conspiracy theorists to embarrass and diminish the message of "real" researchers. Black propaganda at it's finest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

Chris,

Hmm.  Black, grey, and white propaganda.

Sounds like what the Ruskies have been doing to us via 90-plus years of "active measures" ops, and for 58 years with (SCD, Department 14) "strategic deception" ops.

Very effective on their own; devastating effective when synchronized.

--  Tommy 

Edit: Seemingly contradictory Anti-Trump "fake news," ads, and tweets and Anti-Hillary "fake news," ads, and tweets come to mind.

Desired result?  People give up on fact-checking altogether, just go with the "click bait" that kinda appeals to them.

Enter stage right (several years ago with an inspirational nudge from Vladislav Surkov) Roger Ailes and his metadata algorithms ... and wa-la "The Future is History," as Masha Gessen says...

Edited January 24, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Paul Brancato]

Tommy - what’s your point? Trump news and Clinton news equally fake?

[Thomas Graves]

16 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Tommy - what’s your point? Trump news and Clinton news equally fake?

Paul,

The point is that during the campaign Putin, through his "bots" and his legions of professional trolls in Saint Petersburg, spread fake news of all kinds, with the intent to hurt Hillary and help Trump, and to rile everybody up in general.

 

"According to Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School, even a subset of the Russian-backed ads—reportedly propagated by an outfit called the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg—could have echoed around the Internet millions or even billions of times, reaching a vast audience through 'likes,' shares, and reposting. In a report issued by Albright and covered by The Washington Post, just six of the bogus, Russian-sponsored Facebook pages—under such diverse handles as Blacktivists, United Muslims of America, Being Patriotic, Heart of Texas, Secured Borders, and LGBT United—were shared 340 million times. That’s from just six sites, and there were 464 others that Facebook has admitted to finding. Plus, there could be hundreds or thousands of other undiscovered sites, perhaps fostered through cutouts or that weren’t paid for in Russian currency. Indeed, according to one study, as many as one-fifth of all election-related tweets may have stemmed from automated bots. Not all were Russian-related, of course, but the study did find that pro-Trump bot output exceeded pro-Clinton bots by a factor of three to one.

Many of the Facebook ads were posted by wholly fabricated Russian users, often posing as nonexistent Americans, seeking to highlight racial and religious conflicts, anti-immigrant tensions, and radical-right points of view, either designed to excite Trump-leaning Internet users or depress and alienate Clinton-leaning ones. Others simply picked up and recast or exaggerated existing American opinion through posts and memes."

https://www.thenation.com/article/russian-trolling-of-us-social-media-may-have-been-much-greater-than-we-thought/

--  Tommy   

Edited January 25, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

On 11/15/2015 at 12:37 PM, Chris Newton said:

There is also the theory, which is ironically also a conspiracy theory, that nefarious forces are supporting some whacko conspiracy theorists to embarrass and diminish the message of "real" researchers. Black propaganda at it's finest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

[deleted]

Edited January 25, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

1 hour ago, Thomas Graves said:

[deleted]

Edited January 25, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

On 11/15/2015 at 12:37 PM, Chris Newton said:

There is also the theory, which is ironically also a conspiracy theory, that nefarious forces are supporting some whacko conspiracy theorists to embarrass and diminish the message of "real" researchers. Black propaganda at it's finest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

Bumping, and adding this:

https://mashable.com/2018/01/22/drawing-lines-of-contention-study-twitter-university-of-washington/?utm_cid=hp-n-1

 

[Paul Brancato]

I am totally on board with Chris Newton's 'black propaganda' post. I have friends who have been hoodwinked by fake conspiracy theories, and I try to judge the tree by its fruits. No doubt whatsoever about trolls and bots during the 2016 election, but questions remain as to who was pulling the strings. Clinton was the target, which causes me to look to the right. It's too pat to lay it on Putin and KGB. Maybe it's true, but there are other possibilities such as supra-national power groups which are not defined by physical borders or ideological differences. 

It's fake news writ large these days, but it's not a new phenomenon.