We say "information war", I'd argue, because it's about information theory at its core, and it's not about raw data nor the manufacture of facts.
It's unbelievably contentious to provide a complete account of how people read, but at least for disinfo, you could think of it like this:
A fact is an objectively existent thing/event.
A reading is what we make out of that.
The narrative is the story we tell around it.
People just, like, making stuff up is pretty easy to handle, we know what to call that.
So, like, George Santos.
As in, literally anything George Santos says about himself.
That's pretty clearly intentionally making stuff up, or disinformation.
When we deal with a true fact, though, and assign a misleading reading, or use it to advance or make more real ("reify") a false or hateful narrative, then it stops being so cut-and-dry.
This sounds hand-wavey without examples (a lot of disinfo theory does, actually).
This is a really good example I just came across today courtesy of fellow... uh... #nafo#fella (#nafellow?)
That video isn't forged or a deepfake. No one is saying that.
And if you want to enact a demand-side solution, you aren't doing it with an app, or for that matter anything else that's all "stagey" and cringe and artificial like that.
It requires something that looks a lot like NAFO actually.
Zelensky is actually the highest-profile world leader who has ever stood up to Trump.
Drop the frame of evaluating the damage to our country, or analyzing how bad Trump's actions are, for just a moment, and sort of step back and see it from Zelensky's position.
Zelensky is the leader of a country at war which is highly dependent upon foreign aid for its survival.
His popularity indexes with how much aid Ukraine gets, which controls Ukraine's military viability.
That is the biggest risk to Ukraine that he can control personally.
The amount of U.S. military aid he gets, I think we've all seen, he doesn't control, not with this President in office willing to impound Congressionally authorized funds.
"Trump-Russia", by which people mean a variety of different ideas and explanatory theories ranging from "omg Agent Krasnov!" to "senior citizen being steamrolled by Putin", has never been about any kind of secret or non-public information.
It's because of what he's done. (🧵)
In 2016, the only substantive change that the Trump campaign wanted made to the Republican Party platform was support for lethal aid to Ukraine.
In 2017, once elected, Trump met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak alone in the Oval Office a day after firing James Comey because he wouldn't offer Trump public assurances that he wasn't involved with Russia. npr.org/sections/thetw…
Trump's otherwise-inexplicable comments regarding Zelensky's popularity make sense in this context. It is a lie so easily disproved as to be laughable.
Zelensky is actually substantially more popular than Trump, who has never had an approval rating higher than 50%.
According to my theory, the reason why Trump is talking about Zelensky's approval rating doesn't have a whole lot to do with the actual situation as far as elections, either.
It is especially jarring considering the Napoleonic rhetoric Trump uses himself.
The NIH funding freeze is an interesting anti-disinfo problem
The question is "how do you explain the impact of (here we go) reduced NIH indirect-cost reimbursement for research" and make it more approachable than disinfo
I think the way to explain it is about patriotism
(🧵)
So, this is about reduced funding at the end of the day so examples of NIH research that saved lives might be apropos
This is a fairly obvious answer though I don't think anyone is gonna win a Macarthur Genius Award for realizing that
At a more academic level it strikes me that this goes to the heart of American competitiveness and the way that we subsidize science & medical research in this country
Howard Zinn discusses this a bit; that goes back to a relative of President Bush(es) named Vannevar Bush