Thread by @EmmaLBriant

I’d really love to know who made the executive decision in 2016 that all propaganda studies would focus narrowly in on would be #disinformation to the exclusion of a more sophisticated understanding of strategic and manipulative communication.

It’s become so monopolising that one must use it to engage with wider debates going on. Making one subcategory of propaganda a global obsession to the detriment of obscuring how it actually operates in relation to other mechanisms of propaganda is harmful to our understanding.

I’ve come to really hate the word, it’s restricting and skewing the progression of scholarship which needs to be helping us understand power and how it’s abused.

I think part of it is the impact of Trump headlines. But also I think the number of people entering the field from cognate disciplines like journalism or information studies and social movements who didn’t have background in prop & shifted only out of concern with falsehood.

It’s also an attempt to make a simple reassuring binary out of a complex problem. If one can show if something is untrue, that feels a less daunting challenge, if one can correct, rationally convince, all will be fine. It all seems simpler & one has new sense of control.

That is particularly appealing to policymakers - I really am not sure how we reorient but I hope we can orient back to the study of propaganda and influence, with disinfo repositioned back conceptually so it is understood as one kind of activity within a campaign.

The last thing that’s needed is for anyone to try and make it into its own discipline abstracted and influenced by this moment we are in and failing to connect with history.

It’s also worth noting that disinformation is DELIBERATE falsehood, but rarely to I see anyone engaging with the intent piece. It’s assumed because it’s created, distributed but often propagandists believe falsehoods they’re spreading and don’t think theirs is the deception.

One might not think one should care or that it matters but it really does, it helps to understand the phenomena and how one responds to it.

Particularly important to think about that as separate from a whole industry exists which manufactures disinformation deliberate falsehoods to suit any needs for profit.

Prior to 2016 the field was over-cautious about applying labels like disinformation or lies because of how hard this intent piece is to prove on the basis of only ads. Now we have swung entirely the other way and abandoned caring, all is disinfo. We need to understand actors.

Oh and a note at the end... I’m not knocking interdisciplinarity here, it’s really valuable to bring together different perspectives and propaganda studies is a smoosh of disciplines, it’s more a comment that much scholarship has gone before and it’s necessary to build on that.

(Plus I’m a sociologist and political scientist with bit of international relations thrown in for good measure 🧪!)