Thread by @KesterRatcliff

sadly I believe that relatively few Syrians breaking across the Turkish border and increasingly arriving on Greek shores is more likely to get European mainstream attention than many Syrians being killed daily by the regime, bc of collective objectification of foreigners/ racism.

that means we *and the Assadist international* have an opportunity now to reach the mainstream audience who usually aren't paying attention so are unreachable most of the time. also means that their bridging-nodes are more likely to be activated, and more exposed to discrediting

the uncommitted mainstream audience of info consumers are the most important target audience because they're the majority, so "democratic" politics mostly follows their opinions, even tho they don't pay attention most of the time +don't make an effort to understand before opining

if you can frame your story in a way which makes it a more attractive consumer product for mainstream consumers to socially perform their identities with, it'll get more attention. they value how they feel about how they can use the representation more than the subjects' feelings

as you can see, I'm cynical about most European and Western 'citizens' who don't act responsibly as citizens, who are basically freeriders on democratic common goods without being willing to contribute to maintaining them, but anyway we have to deal with reality now. 🤷‍♂️

if I may offer some cynical strategy advice-

1) don't react to the enemy's high closeness centrality nodes, e.g. VB, bc the main effect will be to give them new material they can twist + use to mobilise their troll army of useful idiots, bot-nets and a few paid trolls and then

1b) they'll use that to increase the share of mainstream attention on their distraction tactics and to provoke you into saying something they can use to discredit you to the target audience. remember the target audience value civility to White people over brown people's lives.

2) don't react to their overt and extreme Assadist propaganda claims. those claims are not the most likely to recruit or convince the uncommitted mainstream audience. rather, discredit them when they make milder claims which are more likely to seem credible to the target audience

3) don't react acc. to their framing tactics. negatively reacting to an emotive metaphorical frame effectively reinforces it (Lakoff), plus amplifies it on social media because of the recommendation algorithms + bc irresponsible broadcast media editors react to popular trends

4) plan strategically positive narrative frames which promote the Syrian civil opposition's voices. at this point, women civilians probably have a better chance of getting listened to. men tend to be smeared and dismissed as "jihadis", just for having beards and speaking Arabic.

5) diversify the Syrian civil opposition voices which you aim to promote, amplify and give network connections to the Western mainstream audience to. It's much harder for the enemy to keep inventing bullshit stories about a dozen Syrian civil opposition advocates than one, the WH

6) we should mostly positively promote Syrian civil opposition voices, esp. which are preparing for a positive future the day after the regime falls. minimise the attention + amplification we give to the enemy + how much we make ourselves effectively into bridging-nodes for them

7) times it's probably worth the strategic costs of reacting to the enemy's propaganda are when:
a) they have a NEW bridging-node type of public figure/ social media influencer who just joined them, then react *just enough* to discredit him/her, to the target mainstream audience

cont.) remember we are not ourselves our target audience, nor are the enemy our target audience. showing ourselves yet again how outrage or despair inducing the enemy's useful idiots' tweets are, beyond just enough to maybe function as an immunisation, is counterproductive.

b) when they have a new grey propaganda framing tactic which uses a bit of truth to make a totalising lie seem more credible to the mainstream audience. more strategically important enemy propaganda lines are those on the *fringes* of the Assadist propaganda narrative totality.

b cont.) figures and narrative claims on the fringes of the Assadist international propaganda system are those which are more likely to make new connections to the uncommitted mainstream audience. Those are the most important connections to break, not the obviously extreme stuff.

c) when a mainstream high-closeness-centrality node has idiotically made a connection with an Assadist figure or talking point. then they need discrediting hard and fast, before the useful idiocy for the enemy spreads further.

d) when they swarm a Western mainstream broadcast media's post on social media and bloc-comment to exploit the bandwagon cognitive bias to persuade the idiotic mainstream audience that 'there's no smoke without fire' or 'the truth is probably a mix of both perspectives'.

in general, humans rarely use our more costly individually 'rational' metacognitive processes, we mostly use social cognitive approximate and efficient cognitive mechanisms (heuristics) based on social metadata - data about who's telling us what and how much we trust them. so...

don't spend more resources than it's worth on debunking detailed content when most of the target mainstream audience will never pay attention to that. you only need to do just enough to discredit the source for the target audience. points which show their dishonesty or ignorance.

apologies for getting more abstract: I believe they're also aiming *through* Assadist propaganda to more generally change social cognitive norms for all political issues. so the way they induce people to make decisions based more on individual subjective sentiments is important

to counter that strategy to change social epistemic norms, we should try to emphasise responsibility, objectivity, and regard for the other, the subject, not so much play to people's emotive reactions or produce information in frames which are more useful for identity performance

yes I just contradicted my earlier tweet because I changed my mind in the course of writing this down clearly. I believe changing our minds is not something to be embarrassed about, because we're aiming for objective common goods not subjective identity performance goods.

I've thought about whether to publish this advice or keep it secret for weeks. On balance I think it's better for civil society advocates to be as open as possible, and frankly I'm not in a position to get listened to widely enough to be effective if I only communicate in private

this does not mean suggesting to cooperate with the Assadist international / fascists/ genocide deniers, who I also called "the enemy". I just meant acknowledging the fact which must inform both their + our strategies that the relevant audience is only reachable some of the time.