Schneier on Security

Ross Snider • February 27, 2017 1:19 PM

This is hardly a good survey about modern propaganda techniques.

Here’s a better list:

1a. Control the narrative. That means reporting on events as they happen, but spin the facts and select them in a way that contributes to a continuation of a moral point. For enemies: Everything that happens in Syria, say, should be because the government is atrocious. Terrorism there is because of the state. Run stories not condemning terrorism, but the Syrian government. War fighting over territory in which the government wins. Call it an ‘invasion’ rather than a ‘capture’ or ‘freeing’. Loss of territory? The regime wasn’t legitimate and could not provide credible security. People well fed? Government is trying to placate its people. People starving? Government is trying to break people by attrition.

1b. Control the narrative. That means reporting on events as they happen, but spin the facts and select them in a way that contributes to a continuation of a moral point. For America: Terrorism is there because they hate our freedom. When America captures territory, even by a population that hates the occupation and blow themselves up in protest? We’re ‘freeing’ them. Loss of territory? Despicable act of terror, we must not have intervened to limit civilian casualties. People well fed? Good old American virtue. People starving? Local warlords stealing food – this justifies our continued presence.

2a. Appeal to your audience. This means relying on their collective psychological weaknesses, such as appeal to self worth or fear. For enemies: this means spreading rumors that their leadership is dead (e.g. al Baghdadi), using video games in which your enemy is the enemy in the game (e.g. the Israeli and US game spread in Syria with Assad as the enemy), using soccer players and celebrity ‘heroes’ and attributing them with ideas you want the audience to have (much of the US propaganda in the Middle East)

2b. Appeal to your audience. This means relying on their collective psychological weaknesses, such as appeal to self worth or fear. For America: Equivocate political enemies with Putin or another foreign scary enemy. Run stories about horrific things about war in the Middle East to scare Americans into believing they are in danger and they must support the military to destroy the threat. Run stories about child pornographers to destroy the reputation of opponents and challenge the right to use encryption. Use good looking people with white teeth who flash smiles and giggle to spread the information you want them to repeat.

3a. Exhaust your opponents psychological defenses. This means both raising the cost to disagreement and raising the frequency and the reward for agreeing. For enemies: This means stringing together propaganda material so that it appears there is a consensus on an issue when there is not. This can be done with partnerships with Google, Facebook or merely with intelligence operations. Once the operating environment allowed for single newspapers or radio stations to dominate the information environment. Now messages need to be coordinated between outlets, pamphlets, on-the-ground engagement and signals operations.

3b. Exhaust your opponents psychological defenses. This means both raising the cost to disagreement and raising the frequency and the reward for agreeing. For America: This means stringing together propaganda material so that it appears there is a consensus on an issue when there is not. This can be partnering with multiple media outlets and PR firms so that the same headlines/stories run on every page (e.g. “bulk collection” rather than “mass surveillance” during Snowden revelations). It means paying distributors to run blanket coverage on the one story and creating and echo chamber. It means trying to cultivate a system in which private actors on their own accord independently adopt your talking points as their own and a chain reaction is build toward a consensus. It means punishing people who question by ostracizing them, by arguing with them, and by removing their platforms.

Ross Snider • February 27, 2017 5:10 PM

@ Skeptical

Thanks for the comment.

My own contribution to the thread is limited in space of course. Those reading it will note it includes both tactical examples (usually in parentheses) as well as strategic approaches (labeled 1, 2 and 3).

A number of additional comments:

What’s striking about the article, frankly, is the extent to which the techniques ascribed to Russian information operations are so visibly in use by President Trump and his inner circle.

This isn’t particularly striking to me. These propaganda techniques are used by all parties involved in propaganda in different mixtures. Both the Trump Administration and the Putin Administration are fighting incumbent propaganda narratives and thus their strategic incentives (e.g. call into question both the credibility and factual basis of incumbent propaganda) mean that they must have a similar strategic approach.

Although – given the President’s abysmal approval ratings – the lowest recorded for any President at this point in the term – and remarkably low scorings of his competence in general – it’s difficult to assess how effective the President’s public relations strategy is. Perhaps things would be worse but for that strategy; I doubt it though.

We can be really thankful that in the new party’s slow crawl to get its cabinet enacted and get its administration going have delayed for some time the effects of it swinging the PR capabilities of the office in full. Once the administration establishes itself, if it makes the right ‘deals’ with the press, the press will act greedily as an extension of the federal propaganda machine – as it has in the past.

My guess here is that the administration is consolidating at this point support of its base, which is has done very successfully. In very centrist (mainstream) states this is pretty alienating at this point. We’ll see the administration tilt to focus on legitimacy building with these parties after the base is fully consolidated. If the administration can last long enough to actually rebuild American infrastructure, for instance, it could win support from many of the people current alienated.

Having come from a historically low voter turnout year and historically low approval ratings for both candidates in the federal election it was inevitable that whoever won would have difficulty winning approval of a broad base across the homeland. I don’t think this means that neither incoming team has a bad PR team – I think it says more about the difficulty of the political landscape of today’s America, in which most citizens are deeply alienated from any sense of real civic process or understanding and in which confusion and ideology reign over deliberate and intelligible discourse even in the “upper classes”.

In a society with a free press, and a large contingent of journalists who still believe in the idea of attempting to be objective in reporting a story (contrary to the empty postmodernism of Greenwald, or certain persons on the right), the truth retains formidable force.

This is the most alien thing I’ve heard you say. The modern press does not attempt to be objective. Journalist schools teach their journalists that this is not their job. The “founding fathers” of journalism in America specifically eschew the idea of objectivity in journalism. It’s just not what the press does or tries to do.

It’s interesting to me that you think this is a commitment and a practice of the press. This misunderstanding I think runs deep in many communities, especially those people who feel the emotional need to believe that this is how the press functions – over actually reading any of the relevant history or literature regarding modern journalism.

Full stop modern journalism does not try to be objective.

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

http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1970/1970.shtml#trends

http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1980/1980.shtml#trends

http://history.journalism.ku.edu/1990/1990.shtml#trends

Having done some paid journalism myself, and knowing quite a number of journalists in both my family and friends, I can say with confidence that the role of journalism today is to bring the stories that attract the money. Successful journalism is paid for by those who seek to control narrative by spinning incoming events the way that benefit them (why customers and partners of news media find value in the business relationship). This is because at the core of journalism practice the art of story-telling reigns supreme and because at the core of the industry rests a business mindset rather than a public good mindset.

Reading the history of news journalism in America will familiarize anyone who is curious or skeptical that this is true beyond a doubt.

Ross Snider • February 28, 2017 12:33 PM

@Skeptical

“Incumbent propaganda narratives” meaning stubborn things like facts? Even the latter Bush Administration, which treated the media with fair hostility, never went to the lengths that this President has.

No. “Incumbent propaganda narratives” meaning centrally planned propaganda intended to have specific and hopefully measurable political effects on its audience.

Regarding the prior Bush Administration: it’s Propaganda Director in charge of the the BBG (Kenneth Tomlinson – look him up) was ousted in a huge scandal in which the Bush Administration ran a huge domestic propaganda campaign to rally war support for Iraq.

I can see how some people are coming to silly and naive conclusions about spooky-spooky Russia, etc. Broadly there is a reluctance to admit that the Bureau of International Information Programming engages in overseas propaganda, or that signals intelligence from the NSA is used to measure the effects and plan for the strategic use of communication to propagandize populations. There’s a lack of ability to read about things like Zunzuneo – or about domestic propaganda programmes like the one from the Bush Administration – and infer the correct “stubborn facts” that the United States engages in both domestic and international propaganda (by the numbers, the MOST propaganda of any nation).

Such as when the press fixated on the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Or during the occupation of Iraq? Or in the extensive reporting of classified information disclosed by Snowden? Or in the decisions to report on the locations of bases from which US UAVs operated? Or in the not infrequently misleading reporting of the number of civilian casualties caused by UAV strikes?

Yes these are good examples. In these cases the press was pulled screaming and kicking to cover these controveries and they failed to cover most others.

In the case of the occupation of Iraq, the press played ball. Every kind of ball. Today Americans STILL believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. The propaganda is incredible.

The media barely reported on the Snowden documents. They focused primarily instead on whether he is a Russian spy or a traitor or whether his girlfriend was a stripper. The media touted the government line at every step including denials that there were documents, denials that they were real, denials that there was a domestic program, support for the presumed legal basis for that program when it was undeniable. I remember that all of the major media outlets used the terminology “bulk collection” rather than “mass surveillance” to talk about the events. And when doing so they talked about them in the most dismissive terms.

The outlets reporting on UAV locations and strikes are the very edge of journalism and for the most part considered “alternative media”. As far as “mainstream reporting on UAVS” don’t you remember the scandals involving Ken Dilanian, etc? Most domestic American information about the UAVs being published on major media outlets were being screened and edited in secret by the CIA: https://theintercept.com/2014/09/04/former-l-times-reporter-cleared-stories-cia-publication/

If by your link below you’re implying that Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson are the founding fathers of American journalism…

Nope.

As to whether journalists attempt to approach objectivity, regardless of whether actually achievable, or some approximation thereto (impartiality, perhaps), and whether they attempt to report facts, … I could go on, but that should be sufficient

It isn’t sufficient to cherry-pick quotes from editors actively trying to defend their PR role in leui of charges of bias. It’s gullible maybe, but not sufficient? The history and practice of journalism in America doesn’t suddenly change because you like some flowery poems written about it.

I derive my understanding from both participating in journalism and studying both its modern and pre-modern historical trends. In addition, I think it’s important to understand context, such as what was left out of essentially your entire response regarding Snowden, the Drone Assassination Programme (I don’t recall you using the word ‘assassination’… huh curious), and – laughably – Monika Lewinsky.

But that’s the ultimate objective of propaganda, isn’t it? To control the narrative, and to make defenders and supporters of your victims – an opinion-sort-of Stockholm Syndrome.

It’s important to understand propaganda for what it is, from every source. Giving an excuse to some and demonizing others is a recipe for blind nationalist fervor – and the kind associated with the worst periods of history.

To understand propaganda today it must be understood as the war that it is.

The State Department calls this the “War of Ideas 2.0”. The DoD calls it something similar. The last 12 years of Quadrenial reports in Strategic Communication (DoD term for propaganda) recommend various administrative, operational and technical tools to use to update the American capability to fight in this war.

Pretending that “the bad guys” are using influencial relationships with the press and with “fake press” (cough) is comfortable sure. But it’s embarrassing. Remember that everything we say and do now is recorded for all of history. Every keystroke written will persist in a historical archive.

I don’t want to bury my head in the sand – for the sake of my own reality – and for the sake of the historians that trawl over these fragments in the future.