Soloist wrote: ↑Sun Mar 13, 2022 9:12 pm
information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
Can you name a single source that has no propaganda? outside of the Bible that is?
Everything has a slant. Some sources are pretty much pure propaganda. I think it's helpful to rely on sources experienced in this kind of information that know how to sort through disinformation campaigns and war propaganda.
This is worth reading:
Dazed and Confused : Russian “Information Warfare” and the Middle East – The Syria Lessons
On 7th April 2018, a chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma, on the periphery of Damascus, reportedly killed at least 70 people. The attack sparked indignation from the international community and caused American, French and British air strikes a week later, as it was attributed to the Syrian Army by these countries and non-governmental workers in Syria.
But these attacks also led to a full-scale Russian informational strategy aimed at confusing Western public opinion and dividing their leaders so as to sow doubt on what actually happened on the ground. The stories broadcast on TV and disseminated through social media ranged from outright denial (claims that there were no chemical attacks, no patients in hospitals, and that photos and testimonies were fake) to conspiracy theories (that this was a scheme by the White Helmets or Westerners to divert attention from the Skripal affair), to defending the regime (by arguing that “everyone knows” that Syria does not have chemical weapons) and finally comparisons with Nazi propaganda methods.
This example – among many others – has confirmed Russia’s uninhibited approach when it comes to asserting its own narrative on key strategic matters. “Information warfare” has been conceived of by the Russian leadership as a particularly potent instrument to achieve its foreign policy objectives.
The whole paper is worth reading. I think we are seeing the same tactics today in the Ukraine war, and Telegram channels are at the heart of this.
Some people here seem to be quoting from the "War on Fakes" stream, a channel that popped up just in time for the invasion, promoting the same claims Putin is making to justify the invasion. I think this is worth reading:
Russian Telegram channel embraces fact-checking tropes to spread disinformation The War on Fakes Telegram channel pushes false and misleading content in defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
On February 23, 2022, the Telegram channel Война с фейками (“War on Fakes”) first appeared online, ending its first day with a modest 161 subscribers. It quickly skyrocketed; within two weeks, War on Fakes grew to over 625,000 subscribers and is now one of the top Telegram channels in Russia, with a reach of more than 30 million daily views. The channel, which presents itself as debunking the “information war against Russia,” spreads disinformation and propaganda under the façade of a fact-checking service. Its staggering growth since its inception indicates it may be gaining traction more broadly, including through the publishing of an English-language website.
A scan of the channel’s posts makes it clear that War on Fakes is not objective, instead pushing content to support narratives echoed by Russian state media and the Kremlin. Its commentary refers to the war in Ukraine exclusively as the “special operation in Ukraine” (“спецоперация в Украине”), following Kremlin policy to not refer to the situation as a “war” or “invasion.” Although not all of its posts are completely falsified, they use alternative explanations to spin context, question facts, and promote wild suggestions of hired actors and staged atrocities — all common tactics in Russian influence operations and propaganda.
