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Disinformation Propelled By Social Media And Conspiracy Theories Led To Insurrection – Forbes

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3 years ago

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The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2020, was the direct result of a continuous drumbeat of disinformation starting before the Presidential elections in the U.S. in 2020, and continuing past the event itself. That flow of disinformation came largely, but not exclusively, through social media. The constant repetition of false information using a propaganda technique known as “The Big Lie,” has been in common use throughout history.

The advent of mass communication in the 20th Century made this more effective than in the past, and it was perfected by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels before and during World War II. But with social media, it has become even more effective because the claims can be shared and distributed widely. In addition, the nature of social media adds to its effectiveness.

“There’s a consistent pattern of audience cultivation,” says Dave Troy, who researches disinformation on social media. “That’s a hallmark of how psychological operations work. Truth is not a concern and you build out target audiences when you apply a certain type of messaging so you get a response.”

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The Effectiveness of Misinformation

Professor David Rand, of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has studied this in collaboration with Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina. Rand and Pennycook conducted a survey to find out how effective the Misinformation campaign conducted by then-President Donald Trump and others in the Republican Party was.

“What we found was disturbing if not surprising,” Rand said. “A majority really believed the lie,” he said, “77 percent of Trump voters believed in widespread voter fraud.”

Rand said that President Trump and a number of his followers were able to convince a large majority of Trump voters that he won the election, despite the fact that it was untrue.

Rand said that the continuous assertions that Trump actually won the popular vote led to a belief among Trump supporters that this was actually the case. “Repeating it makes people believe it,” Rand said. “You can understand why a large group of people would believe it was their civic duty,” to protest, he said.

“It’s not surprising that people believe it. If all you hear is election fraud, they will believe it,” Rand said. “There’s good scientific evidence that it works.”

Adding to the effectiveness of social media in spreading disinformation is the tendency of social media consumers to prefer communicating with like minded people. “There’s no dialog occurring,” Troy said. “They are different factions, and there’s always some reason why you can’t talk to the other factions.” This factionalism was exploited by Russian intelligence during the 2016 Presidential election as a way to spread disinformation, and other groups have accelerated this, notably Qanon followers who are making use of the tendency of groups to not communicate with others.

A Coordinated Disinformation Campaign

“These are large coordinated disinformation campaigns,” Troy said, “It’s a big networked effect.”

Rand said that he and Pennycook also studied why people shared false content. “Largely it’s inattention,” Rand said. “They forget to think about whether it’s true, but rather how many likes they’ll get. Another feature of social media is that people are more likely to be friends with people who share common ideas.”

He said the study followed random users that were Republicans and Democrats. “People are three times more likely to follow co-partisan accounts,” Rand said. “It’s very basic human psychology. There’s reason to believe that you want to associate with people who share your partisanship.”

While the practice of spreading falsehoods on social media as was done around the 2020 election is new, the practice itself isn’t. And unfortunately, once people buy into the falsehoods, they appear to be self-sustaining, at least for a while.

While you can’t tell people what to think, it is possible to inhibit the spread of falsehoods and the perpetuation of the big Lie. Social media companies did this after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Other organizations can do it by limiting the spread of social media withing their organization, either through active management, or by technology methods that limit access to social media, or the sharing of social media, on their networks. And of course, knowing that this phenomenon exists at least gives you a chance to control it.

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation. – Barron's

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April 19, 2024

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation.  Barron’s

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation. – Barron's

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April 19, 2024

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DJT Stock Rises. Trump Media CEO Alleges Potential Market Manipulation.  Barron’s

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Three drones downed after explosions heard in Iran’s Isfahan: State media – Al Jazeera English

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5 hours ago

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April 19, 2024

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Iran’s air defences have brought down three small drones over the central city of Isfahan, state media reported, hours after United States broadcasters, quoting senior US officials, said Israeli missiles had hit an Iranian site.

Iranian state television reported explosions in Isfahan as air defences were activated and flights across several areas, including the capital, Tehran, and Isfahan, were suspended.

Airspace was reopened about four and a half hours after the incident and there were no reports of casualties.

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Second Brigadier General Siavash Mihandoust, the top military official in Isfahan, told state media that air defence batteries hit “a suspicious object” and there was no damage.

ABC News and CBS News had reported earlier that Israel had carried out a military operation in Iran.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the US told the Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers that it had been “informed at the last minute” by Israel about an attack on Iran.

“But there was no sharing of the attack by the US. It was a mere information,” Tajani told reporters in Capri, Italy, where the G7 ministers met.

However, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to confirm reports about the Israeli attack, during a news conference in Capri.

“I’m not going to speak to that, except to say that the United States has not been involved in any offensive operation,” Blinken said.

The top US diplomat said the G7’s focus is on de-escalation. Asked to describe the current US-Israel relationship, Blinken noted that Israel makes its own decisions, but the US is committed to its security.

Iranian media said no strikes were launched on Iran from outside the country, and the attack was believed to have been carried out using small quadcopters that would have to have been launched from inside Iran.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said Iranian media were downplaying the incident.

“The location in Isfahan province is an Iranian military airbase that belongs to the country’s army, and not the Revolutionary Guards [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC]. I think it’s important to highlight that,” she said. “This base houses multiple squadrons of F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft.”

“We also understand that the air defence systems over the city of Tabriz in the northwestern part of Iran were also activated,” Jabbari reported.

A military factory belonging to the Iranian army in Isfahan was attacked by multiple quadcopters in January 2023, failing to damage the facility that was protected by air defence batteries and mesh wiring on its roof to counter small unmanned aerial vehicles.

Iran blamed Israel for that attack and arrested four people, executing one of them in January 2024, for operating on behalf of Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.

Israel had promised to respond after Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles on the country on April 13, after a suspected Israeli attack on Iran’s consulate compound in Damascus killed 16 people, including two IRGC senior generals.

Governments around the world urged restraint and a push to de-escalate tensions across the region.

Isfahan is considered a strategically important city and one that is host to several important sites, including military research and development facilities, as well as bases. The nearby city of Natanz is the location of one of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites.

In a speech in Damghan, in central Iran, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi made no mention of Isfahan but praised the Iranian attacks on Israel, saying they gave the country strength and unity.

Kioumars Heydari, the commander-in-chief of the ground forces of the Iranian army, said Iran remains vigilant to confront any other potential aerial threats.

“If suspicious flying objects appear in the sky of the country, they will be targeted by our powerful air defence,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run IRNA  news agency ahead of Friday prayers in Tehran.

‘No damage’ to nuclear facilities

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that “there is no damage” to Iranian nuclear sites as the United Nations nuclear watchdog’s chief Rafael Grossi called for restraint and said nuclear facilities should never be targeted in military conflicts.

The reported attack “was far more limited than many expected”, Iranian arms control expert Ali Ahmadi told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel “has much more limitations in its operational range” than many think.

“Certainly, after Iran’s retaliatory capacity was criticised, it benefits from advertising how ineffective what Israel did was as well. Iran also needs to prepare the public for a much softer reaction than it has talked about in the last couple of days,” he pointed out.

Ahmadi said that prior to today’s incident, Iran was preparing several options for a massive retaliation, including getting allies involved.

But considering the limited scope and impact of the alleged attack, which he described as a “security sabotage” rather than a “military assault”, it would be a mistake to carry out a significant response, he stressed.

There were also reports of explosions in Iraq and Syria, with Iranian state media saying there were explosions at multiple military-linked sites in Syria.

Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that missile strikes in the early hours of the morning caused material damage to air defence sites in the country’s southern region. The report did not specify the exact location and the extent of the damage but blamed Israel.

The US and a number of European countries had been calling on Israel not to respond to Iran’s attack.

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres painted a dark picture of the situation in the Middle East, warning that spiralling tensions over Israel’s war on Gaza and Iran’s attack on Israel could descend into a “full-scale regional conflict”.

“The Middle East is on a precipice. Recent days have seen a perilous escalation – in words and deeds,” Guterres told the UN Security Council.

“One miscalculation, one miscommunication, one mistake, could lead to the unthinkable – a full-scale regional conflict that would be devastating for all involved,” he said, calling on all parties to exercise “maximum restraint”.

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