I guess I like lists. (Or maybe the ideas in their articles are not that good, so I’d rather have 30 ideas sketched than 1 idea written long.)
propaganda (including advertising) does not have extraordinary abilities to manipulate people into believing or doing things they would not otherwise do.
propaganda is important (and potentially dangerous) primarily for [...] creating common knowledge and coordination points [...] crowding out non-propaganda communication [...] demonstrating the propagandist’s power
Sounds almost like a glass half full / half empty distinction. It is almost impossible for propaganda to create something from scratch, but given that conflicts of interest exist almost everywhere, and you have all kinds of people almost everywhere (likely including someone who already supports your agenda), amplification of existing things seems sufficient. The lesson is for propagandists to look at what is already there and work with that, rather than start your own thing from scratch. It may be not exactly what you wanted, but if your goal is to create chaos, it is probably good enough.
If you take a group of crazy people, give them money to buy a place for their community to meet, create for them a website to share their ideas (webhosting, technical support, proofreading, editing, photos—simply, if you make it appear professional without needing a shred of talent on work on their side), and then you buy for them web advertising and billboards, arrange the logistics of their meetings, provide catering… the thing will explode. And almost everyone around them will be paralyzed.
As the article says, “Russian operatives behave as if they want to watch the world burn”. Exactly this, they have a zero-sum approach. (It even seems to me, at least in my part of the world, that zero-sum perspective is a good predictor of how pro-Russian a person will be.) Russians only feel safe when the places around them are in ruins; they have no friends, only servants and enemies. But for that purpose, propaganda is sufficient.
Great!
I liked:
Fake Experts
No Regrets
Ways To Fix Your Day
Change Your Life In 30 Days
I guess I like lists. (Or maybe the ideas in their articles are not that good, so I’d rather have 30 ideas sketched than 1 idea written long.)
Sounds almost like a glass half full / half empty distinction. It is almost impossible for propaganda to create something from scratch, but given that conflicts of interest exist almost everywhere, and you have all kinds of people almost everywhere (likely including someone who already supports your agenda), amplification of existing things seems sufficient. The lesson is for propagandists to look at what is already there and work with that, rather than start your own thing from scratch. It may be not exactly what you wanted, but if your goal is to create chaos, it is probably good enough.
If you take a group of crazy people, give them money to buy a place for their community to meet, create for them a website to share their ideas (webhosting, technical support, proofreading, editing, photos—simply, if you make it appear professional without needing a shred of talent on work on their side), and then you buy for them web advertising and billboards, arrange the logistics of their meetings, provide catering… the thing will explode. And almost everyone around them will be paralyzed.
As the article says, “Russian operatives behave as if they want to watch the world burn”. Exactly this, they have a zero-sum approach. (It even seems to me, at least in my part of the world, that zero-sum perspective is a good predictor of how pro-Russian a person will be.) Russians only feel safe when the places around them are in ruins; they have no friends, only servants and enemies. But for that purpose, propaganda is sufficient.
possibly-intrusive question: are you Russian?
haha no, Slovak
(an interesting hypothesis though)