The Propaganda War

[mendeleyev]

The head of Russia's Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, has floated the idea of further policing and restricting the Internet. I used the term "floated" because this is a test, a trial balloon, to gauge public reaction. Moscow believes that social media is an invisible foreign army that seeks to manipulate and control societies not in step with the West, and thus the crackdown on Russian blogs and opposition websites can be understood in this context.

In an article in the Moscow Times:

However, the most devastating aspect of this war has been the information war waged by the U.S., the head of the Investigative Committee said. This, according to Bastrykin, has resulted in the growth of extremism in Russia.  Bastrykin said it would be useful for Russia to follow the example of China when it comes to Internet censorship, where there is a ban on the work of electronic media that are fully or partially owned by foreign residents.

We should point out that Russia already has placed restrictions on foreign ownership of Russian media.

[AkMike]

Today the Moscow Times reports that The Russian Duma has accepted the first reading of a bill that would reclassify large news aggregators as media outlets. Yet more Russian Media censorship..

[Anotherkiwi]

Today the Moscow Times reports that The Russian Duma has accepted the first reading of a bill that would reclassify large news aggregators as media outlets. Yet more Russian Media censorship..

R.I.P Yandex, amongst others?  Oh, no, of course not...Yandex doesn't report actual "news." 

[JayH]

The Kremlin propaganda against Ukraine is reprehensible and non-stop. But it is often so outlandish that it’s easy to ignore and hard for many outside of Russia, and some within Russia, to believe.

But there’s no excuse for Western pundits to be so ignorant about Russia’s war against Ukraine. Some follow the Kremlin line so closely that it makes one suspect they are on dictator Vladimir Putin’s payroll.

Westerners in service of Kremlin propaganda

http://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/westerners-in-service-of-kremlin-propaganda-415327.html

[JayH]

U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election, two U.S. intelligence sources told BuzzFeed News.
While the election relationship has focussed attention on this issue it has far wider implications.


U.S. Intel: Russia’s spreading fake news "beyond propaganda"

This is beyond propaganda, that’s my understanding," the second U.S. intelligence official said. The official said they believed those efforts likely included the dissemination of completely fake news stories.
The role of fake news — stories that are completely made up — and propaganda, like state-sponsored media outlets such as Russia Today or Sputnik, has proven more difficult to pin down. The Washington Post said in a story published last week that independent researchers had found that a "sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign" was behind the flood of fake news published in the lead-up to the election. But the researchers’ methods have been widely disputed.



Read more on UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/world/1659717-us-intel-russias-spreading-fake-news-beyond-propaganda.html

[jone]

U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia helped disseminate fake and propagandized news as part of a broader effort to influence and undermine the presidential election, two U.S. intelligence sources told BuzzFeed News.
While the election relationship has focussed attention on this issue it has far wider implications.


U.S. Intel: Russia’s spreading fake news "beyond propaganda"

This is beyond propaganda, that’s my understanding," the second U.S. intelligence official said. The official said they believed those efforts likely included the dissemination of completely fake news stories.
The role of fake news — stories that are completely made up — and propaganda, like state-sponsored media outlets such as Russia Today or Sputnik, has proven more difficult to pin down. The Washington Post said in a story published last week that independent researchers had found that a "sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign" was behind the flood of fake news published in the lead-up to the election. But the researchers’ methods have been widely disputed.



Read more on UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/world/1659717-us-intel-russias-spreading-fake-news-beyond-propaganda.html

You mean that story about the four year old little girl who was purposely killed in Slovyansk wasn't true?  OMG!  Who am I to believe any more?

Nice to think that US Intelligence is finally getting with the program.  But, then again, I don't believe much of what comes from the Ukrainian rags, either.

[JayH]

The Czech government says Russian disinformation is a significant problem in the country. In September the Czech counterintelligence agency said that Russia was waging an "information war" in the country, using disinformation to try and turn Czechs away from the EU and NATO and into Russia's orbit.

Meet the Czechs fighting back against Russia's (dis)information war

"The problem with these disinformation websites is that their content is being laundered or multiplied," he says, noting Czech politicians and staffers regularly share stories from disinformation outlets on social media.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/meet-the-czechs-fighting-back-against-russias-disinformation-war-20161215-gtcbh5.html

[JayH]

Never to be forgotten is how extensively Russia promotes it's lies.
It is worth reading to see the extent  -- and perhaps the purpose intended in the promotion of the lies.Not to be forgotten is the huge number of paid trolls being used to promote whatever the kremlins agenda is at that time.
it is of special importance when major decisions are imminent,

Top 10 fakes of Russian propaganda in 2016

In this review we collected the top 10 bogus stories of the Russian propaganda which appeared in 2016. The full list is, of course, not limited to ten. We could have easily done top 100 and more, but it is beyond the scope of this digest.
1) Ukies burying a militiaman alive

2) Rammstein “supporting Putin”

3) The propagandists of Russia-1 TV channel presented a girl in the courtroom, where the interrogation of Viktor Yanukovych took place, as the Deputy Interior Minister Anastasia Deeva.


4) Russian aircraft carrier group presented with the photographs of the US Navy.

5) FSB in Crimea presented airsoft weapons as combat assault rifles for the sake of trumped-up charges.


6) Three refugees in Germany raped 13-year-old Russian-speaking girl throughout the day.

7) Kiselev showing a fake ID of SS-Volunteer Division “Galicia”.

.
The story about “poor European Union” and the need for cooperation with Russia on the basis of manipulated interviews of French people.

Franch Canal+ spared neither time nor effort to scrutinize the whole story of Russia 24 channel about the Eurosceptics in France and found everyone who was interviewed by the Russian propagandists. It turned out that they had not just mistranslated the words of the French, but consciously attributed to these people things they did not say at all.

9) Roman Sushchenko, the journalist of Ukrinform a “spy and saboteur.”   

10) Russian observers not to be allowed at the US elections

http://informnapalm.org/en/top-10-fakes-russian-propaganda-2016/

[msmob]

JayH,

you forgot to include your contenders

.eg the 'Storm' that damaged the Kerch Straits Road Bridge..

[JayH]

When Russia wants to, it can create high-quality fakes and sophisticated deceptions with brilliant intricacy. But when something goes wrong in Russia’s wars abroad, there’s no time. Quick and dirty conspiracy theories and disinformation slow down analysis and distract people in the early stages of a news story. Russia used this technique in the bombing of a UN aid convoy in Syria in September 2016, and when it shot down MH17 above Ukraine in 2014.

A  G U I D E

T O  R U S S I A N

P R O P A G A N D A




http://euromaidanpress.com/guide-russian-propaganda/

[JayH]

Coda asked westerners why they trust news from a network whose head has a direct phone line to the Kremlin.
Could it possible be that DJT is a regular?



Why Has a Kremlin-Controlled News Network Become a Hit in the West?

TREND 1: RT is honest about lying

TREND 2: Iraq and Occupy Wall Street drove me to RT

TREND 3: Putin isn’t as bad as they want us to believe

TREND 4: We’re on the cusp of WWIII
One of the most startling themes that emerged from conversations with numerous RT fans, from reading over a hundred public social media accounts of RT followers and from posts from RT viewers in various Facebook groups was fear over the imminent breakout of WWIII. Nickoli from Phoenix believes that “we’re on the cusp of a World War III.” Paul from El Paso shared a link to a YouTube video called “A Vote For Hillary is a Vote For World War 3.” Another RT follower, Aaron Klein from Marietta, Georgia, expressed the same pre-election urgency to Coda in a message. “Everyone around the world is stancing up for ww3 and were sitting here with non stop coverage of a political race that is absolutely ridiculous,” Klein wrote close to the November election.

These concerns seem to have subsided with the election of Donald Trump as president. As one RT fan wrote about RT’s editorial, With Trump’s win we might’ve dodged nuclear bullet: “This election wasn’t only about the U.S., it was about preventing WW3.”


http://codastory.com/disinformation-crisis/information-war/honest-about-lying

[JayH]

It is as important as ever to understand the extent of Russian lies,fake stories and propaganda  -- and it's sources.




‘Ukrainian regional news site’ linked with Putin Chef’s Internet troll factory

The ‘troll factory’ is very widely believed to be financed by Yevgeny Prigozhin who almost certainly owes his millions, at least in part, to the favour which Putin has shown him and his restaurant change.  Prigozhin was recently sanctioned over another of his activities – the financing of a ‘private army’, sending mercenaries to fight in Donbas and in Syria.  Putin was recently spotted honouring Dmitry Utkin (‘Wagner’), the head of these mercenaries at a Kremlin reception to mark ‘Heroes of the Fatherland Day’.

The St. Petersburg ‘Ukrainian website’ was used at the end of January by a number of Russian websites to circulate a totally mendacious story about plans by a Kharkiv publisher to publish some of the memoires of Joseph Goebbels.  The publisher’s words were deliberately cut, so that the audience heard only that Goebbels “was much needed in Ukrainian society”, and not why.  In fact, the publisher Oleksandr Krasovytsky had stated very clearly that the decision was taken because of the similarities between Goebbel’s ideas about propaganda and manipulation and what is happening in Putin’s Russia.

Examples of deliberate lies and misinformation can be multiplied, and it would require an unrealistic feat of credulity to believe that Russia Today, Sputnik and other Russian sources are not well-aware of the geographical address and the worth of the information the Kharkov News Agency offers. 

http://khpg.org/en/index.php?id=1486259821

[JayH]

.Many who read the forum are well aware of the Kremlin trolls-- here is an update.


Kremlin trolls exposed: Russia’s information war against Ukraine
Mykola Hayduk is just one cog in a larger Russian information war machine. Russia seems prepared to spend whatever it takes to destabilize Ukraine, Europe and the rest of the Western world. They do this by hiring thousands of trolls.

Social activist Liudmyla Savchuk knows a lot about how this Russian troll factory works. She was able to infiltrate the Kremlin troll army:

http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/02/10/kremlin-trolls-exposed-russias-information-war-against-ukraine/

[JayH]

As if the penetration of Kremlin propaganda was not already extensive enough-- now it is being stepped up.


The Secrets of Russia’s Propaganda War, Revealed

An unauthorized reprint of a military intelligence handbook on psychological warfare gives insight into new propaganda troops.

On Feb. 22, the eve of Russia’s annual Defenders of the Fatherland holiday, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the creation of a new “information operations force.” The announcement came just hours after the Foreign Ministry unveiled a new project to expose “fake news” published about Russia in the Western press.

“Propaganda needs to be smart, competent and effective,” Shoigu said, justifying the creation of a force capable of waging information war.

Shoigu’s comments regarding new information operations were vague, leaving it unclear exactly what the propaganda troops would do or who they would report to. Experts say they are likely to be part of the cyber forces — a military branch announced in 2013, but that Russian officials have since denied exists.

“They seem to be cyber troops [hackers], not information war troops [propagandists],” says Michael Kofman, a Russia security analyst at the Virginia-based CNA think tank. “The Russian military already has psychological operations units, but they are all useless. It’s the GRU that does all the real information war.”

Others suggest that the force will do both hacking and propaganda. Russia’s understanding of what constitutes information war is much broader than the West’s, says Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security and defense services at the Institute of International Relations Prague. For Moscow, “information operations” include everything from propaganda and disinformation to psychological and cyber warfare.

http://themoscowtimes.com/articles/welcome-to-russian-psychological-warfare-operations-101-57301

[JayH]

This is probably worthy of a new thread given how topical and relevant all this is at this time .
I have highlighted a few words that are particularly relevant to this forum !

“The single most prevalent Russian response is to attack the critic,” he says. “They use a ‘vilify and amplify’ technique.” Critics are besmirched, sometimes in an official announcement, sometimes through proxies, sometimes through anonymous sources quoted in state media; then paid trolls and highly automated networks of bots add scale. In response, an ad hoc blend of civilians, private companies, and NGOs has evolved to cast a bright, shining light on MH17 and Russian aggression in Ukraine, Syria, and the Atlantic partnership. Exemplifying the values Italo Calvino outlined in Six Memos for the Next Millennium—lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency—their methods are in sharp contrast to the West’s generally sclerotic response to a revanchist Russia.

Russian Disinformation Technology

The penumbra of uncertainty

None of this cuts much ice in Russia. The Kremlin’s fog machine went into overdrive. The full panoply of Russian state media, troll farms, semi-automated botnets, and what Russian novelist Nikolai Leskov called “useful fools and silly enthusiasts” began their murky work. The Russian government’s response to the shooting down of MH17 was a charade, wrapped in a travesty, inside a miasma: a relentless campaign of abuse and deceit, trying to entangle every fact of the matter in a net of disinformation. Numerous attempts were made to hack the Dutch Safety Board. Several Bellingcats experienced spear-phishing attacks. Other targets included French and U.K. TV channels, NATO, OSCE, and the Polish, Dutch, Finnish, and Norwegian governments, as well as German political parties.



http://www.technologyreview.com/s/604084/russian-disinformation-technology/

[JayH]

Interesting update that is current. Note  -this is just one arm of the Kremlin propaganda vehicle.


My Life at a Russian Propaganda Network
I thought they’d let me be a real journalist at Sputnik news. I was wrong.

What would you do if we asked you to write something that wasn’t true?”

I was sitting in a 10th-floor conference room in the K Street offices of “RIA Global,” otherwise known as the Washington, D.C., bureau of the Russian-owned Sputnik News Service, where I’d come for a job interview. It was in mid-December, just over a month after Donald Trump’s upset election victory, and I’d applied to the company looking to escape from what I like to call “freelance hell,” a period in my life during which I never knew where my next paycheck would come from or whether it would be enough to keep me going.

The question took me by surprise. Sure, I knew Sputnik was state-owned and had a reputation for sometimes playing fast and loose with facts, but was my interviewer probing my willingness to lie or did he want to know whether I possessed the honest-to-goodness ethics that are prized at most news agencies?

“I’d quit,” I replied.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/21/russian-propaganda-sputnik-reporter-215511

[JayH]

Update on the propaganda watch. There is not much doubt that the Russian disinformation has been very successful as it strikes at the heart of the western media credibility and the west in general.


Russia’s Infamous ‘Troll Factory’ Is Now Posing as a Media Empire
A Russian ‘troll factory’ rebranded itself as a network of legitimate news sites. But hasn’t quite abandoned its old ways.

The secretive troll factory, which garnered massive scrutiny from news organizations both at home and abroad in the past two years, now consists of several websites that produce original reporting and analysis with a strong “patriotic” slant, RBC reported.

The hub of these media operations is a website called FAN (Federal News Agency) whose offices in St. Petersburg are just a stone’s throw from the troll factory’s original location on Savushkina street.

FAN was initially showcased in a New York Times Magazine article in 2015. A Magazine reporter traveled to Petersburg to investigate the troll factory and meet one of its employees. Inexplicably, a muscular man who was introduced as the interviewee’s brother also attended the reporter’s meeting.

http://themoscowtimes.com/articles/russias-infamous-troll-factory-is-now-posing-as-a-media-empire-57534

[JayH]

Since this thread was started a lot more has become known -- and the extent and purpose of the Russian propaganda machine become widely known,culminating with  the interference in the US election process.Of course-- what should not be forgotten is that Ukraine was at the forefront of Russian interference for years prior to that.
  This story adds a little more of the actual background.

"In early 2015, something happened, Max says, and the IRA apparently started burning documents. He didn’t see it himself, but he says he could smell the fire in the office building. Staff were ordered to delete their records, people started being reassigned, “and everything got much worse,” Max claims. After the leak and the interview, IRA administrators apparently started meeting specifically with employees, telling them that they should be proud, not ashamed, of their work. “Because every country has their own kind of organization that defends their national interests and distributes civil unrest,” managers told staff. “This is information war, and it’s official.”

Read more on UNIAN: http://www.unian.info/world/2190574-ex-russian-troll-speaks-out-on-us-elex-meddling.html

Ex Russian "troll" speaks out on U.S. election meddling

On October 15, the Russian independent news network Dozhd published the latest development in this ongoing story: an interview with a man who allegedly worked in 2014-2015 for the IRA, Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” responsible for buying ads on social media and polluting American online news discussion in an apparent effort to destabilize U.S. democracy, according to Meduza.



 http://www.unian.info/world/2190574-ex-russian-troll-speaks-out-on-us-elex-meddling.html

[JayH]

Investigation finds Russians posing as Americans made payments to activists
Revelations likely to put further spotlight on Russian meddling in US election



Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during election

Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the US to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues, according to a new investigation by a respected Russian media outlet.

On Tuesday, the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during the period of the US election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election.

The existence of the troll factory, which has a history of spamming Russian and English blogs and comment forums, has been reported on by many outlets including the Guardian, but the RBC investigation is the first in-detail look at the organisation’s activity during the election period.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/17/russian-troll-factory-activists-protests-us-election

[JayH]

The specifics of the Russian war are becoming clearer all the time.The confusion the disinformation created ( & does create) is substantial. Even here there were plenty  regurgitating Russian bs .
Interesting is the link to what has happened in the US.
 
Russia blocked Ukrainian activists from Facebook during the annexation of Crimea.

During the annexation of the Crimea in 2014, Russia implemented a mass blockade of Ukrainian activists on Facebook using ‘troll factories’ and security agencies in order to gain advantage for its propaganda, silence the Crimeans posting reports about the invasion, and drown the world community in the flood of disinformation.

http://informnapalm.org/en/russia-blocked-ukrainian-activists-from-facebook-during-the-annexation-of-crimea/

[Doll]

Only the owner of FB can block somebody, the owner is an American.

[JayH]

The extent and intent of the Russian campaign to discredit and harm Ukraine in any way possible is ongoing.
This is a very interesting example.



Congressman Duped Into Holding Sham Hearing for Ukrainian TV

A Kansas Republican's office booked a room in the basement of the Capitol that was used for a fake congressional hearing put on by a shadowy Ukrainian lobbying group.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/congressman-duped-into-holding-sham-hearing-for-ukrainian-tv

[ML]

Only the owner of FB can block somebody, the owner is an American.

Informational Isolation. How Crimea was Blocked

The American TV channel MSNBC, referencing a report by The Daily Beast , described how the Russian Federation used vulnerabilities in Facebook moderation rules to remove unwanted posts and messages during the annexation of the Crimea by generating a large number of false complaints against “prohibited content”. This led to the suppression of reports about Russian aggression and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

[Boethius]

ML is correct.  If there are a certain number of complaints, either about posts or a poster, the posts are removed, or the poster's account is disabled.  It has nothing to do with the owner.


Certain words or images will also trigger an immediate ban.

[calmissile]

Sounds like a challenging task for sites to be able to differentiate between state actors organizing troll factories making complaints vs the public at large complaining.