In a surprising turn of events, Russia-1, the state-owned television channel, aired nude photographs of Melania Trump on November 8th, just a day after President Vladimir Putin officially congratulated Donald Trump on his election victory.

nafoforum.org/education/awar… This juxtaposition raises a critical question: why would Russia extend diplomatic goodwill while simultaneously broadcasting content that could strain relations?

Applying Occam's Razor: the principle that the simplest explanation is usually correct, the most straightforward reasoning is that the

#CorrosivePropaganda and #disinformation are a weapon of war.

“I studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. We had a military department."

nafoforum.org/magazine/i-stu… "In an atmosphere of secrecy, we were taught special combat propaganda - the art of sowing discord in the ranks of the enemy with the help of disinformation and manipulation of consciousness.

Let me tell you, it’s a scary business. I'm not kidding.

<< Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses labeling tactics (stereotyping)

Labeling (stereotyping) is one of the most common propaganda tactics. Propagandists provide the phenomenon/process they are working against with negative content using a deliberate name or characteristic that evokes negative associations.

Less often, this tactic is used in a positive connotation such as calling a certain group of people heroes.

<< Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses “love bombing” tactics

"Love bombing" is a tactic used by propagandists to attract people to their cult or ideology. It works like this: they try to cut a person off from existing social support and replace him or her with communication with members of a particular group, that is, supporters of a particular ideology, who deliberately bombard the person with affection, trying to isolate them from the previous

<<Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses “join the masses” tactics

“Join the masses” is a propaganda tactic by which propaganda backs up its messages with claims supported by large masses of people. This is how propagandists try to convince the audience that everything they say is true.

This tactic is based on conformism - the tendency of people to adapt, bow before authorities, accept opinions and positions shared by the majority of representatives of their social group.

<< Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses scarecrow tactics

“Scarecrow” is a propaganda tactic in which the arguments of opponents are replaced by weaker ones.

After that, it is they who are refuted, and not the primary, stronger positions. This tactic exploits a logical flaw called “thesis substitution”. A classic example of this tactic being used is this dialogue:

A: “Sunny days are good.”

B: “If all days were sunny, there would never be rain, and without rain there would be drought and starvation”.

<< Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses “inescapable victory” tactics

This propaganda tactic is based on the constant and systematic belief of the target audience that the side represented by the propagandists will certainly win and achieve their goals.
1/13 This may happen soon or sometime in the future, but it seems to happen for sure. In this way, people affected by this manipulation are persuaded not to “be late” and join the ranks of the winners while there is still such an opportunity.
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<< Tactics and tools - How Russian propaganda uses “scapegoat” tactics

A “scapegoat” is a tactic that mitigates the responsibility for those guilty of something by shifting the responsibility to someone else - the so-called “scapegoat”.


1/14 disinfo.detector.media/en/post/how-ru… This is one of the main tactics of Russian propaganda, which propagandists use to justify the war crimes of the Russian occupiers.
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<< “40 to 60” or “60 to 40” is a propaganda method in which 60% of the information is true, and 40% is manipulative.

Propagandists create media that work on this principle and position themselves as an objective, independent or alternative source of information.


1/20disinfo.detector.media/en/post/how-ru… By spreading true news, propaganda media ingratiates themselves with the reader, which encourages him or her to turn off critical thinking and swallow the other 40% of misinformation.

It is often presented as something that the authorities are hiding from society and conspiracy theories.
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"Alona Victorovna Shevchenko was born in 1993 in a small village in eastern Ukraine. Grew Up with Russian as her native language to a family who owned a trucking business.

She graduated from Dnepropetrovsk university in English and Russian studies.


1/10 mrpickle.substack.com/p/ukraine-dao-… Around 2015 she moved to the UK where she worked as a translator for legal documents written in Russian.
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The fallacy detection system has the potential to reshape how individuals approach critical thinking, especially in the context of social media.


1/19 nafoforum.org/education/awar… One of the biggest challenges in the current digital age is that vast amounts of information are consumed daily without a structured means of evaluating its quality.
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Have you ever found yourself feeling an immediate surge of emotion while scrolling through social media or browsing online?
Maybe anger, fear, or frustration?

Have you ever caught yourself agreeing with a post just because it felt right, even before giving it a second thought?
1/12 It's not just you. It’s all of us. Our brains are wired to respond more strongly to emotional stimuli than to facts and logic.

This makes us human, but it also makes us vulnerable.
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We, who grew up in the Soviet Union/Russia are the grandchildren of victims or executioners. All of us, without exception… There were no victims in your family? So, there must have been executioners. There were no executioners in your family? So, there must have been victims.
1/7 There were no victims or executioners? So, there are secrets…

I believe we underestimate the strong influence of Russia’s tragic past on the psyche of today’s generations. Assessing the scale of Russia’s past, we usually think of the victims.
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My life as a troll –
Lyudmila Savchuk’s story

For two months, Lyudmila Savchuk was employed by the ‘Internet Research Agency‘ in Saint Petersburg, which in reality was a troll factory.


1/21 diis.dk/en/my-life-as-… Here she talks about her experiences as a troll.

– My name is Lyudmila; I am a journalist and I live in Saint Petersburg. A while ago I started to get interested in so-called troll factories, and I decided to investigate the phenomenon from the inside.
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“I studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University. We had a military department.

In an atmosphere of secrecy, we were taught special combat propaganda - the art of sowing discord in the ranks of the enemy with the help of disinformation and manipulation of consciousness.
1/29 Let me tell you, it’s a scary business. I'm not kidding. Combat, or “black,” propaganda allows any distortion of real facts to solve propaganda problems.

This is an effective weapon used for the sole purpose of knocking out the enemy’s brains. The "rotten herring" method.

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Artificial intelligence refers to a collection of ideas, technologies and techniques that relate to a computer system's capacity to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.


1/13 akademie.dw.com/en/generative-… When we talk about AI in the context of journalism, we usually mean machine learning (ML) as a sub field of AI. In basic terms, machine learning is the process of training a piece of software, called a model, to make useful predictions or generate content from data.
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In the case of disinformation, the question of which definition applies has far-reaching political and social implications. That is because a particular definition determines what is categorized as "bad" information, what should be "combated," how it should be combated.

1/10akademie.dw.com/en/disinformat… Designating information as harmful raises further questions, such as who decides which information is harmful and who is harmed by the information.
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North Africa: 15 Campaigns Targeting 5 Countries.

Russia has carved out significant space in the information environment in North Africa.


1/7 africacenter.org/spotlight/mapp… Egypt has emerged as a hub for spreading Russian narratives in the region with Egyptian state-run media outlets regularly republishing Russian state media content. RT Arabic is the second largest RT outlet behind the English language edition.
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West Africa: 72 Campaigns Targeting 13 Countries

West Africa is the region most targeted by disinformation—accounting for nearly 40 percent of documented disinformation campaigns in Africa. Roughly half of these attacks are connected to Russia.


1/6 africacenter.org/spotlight/mapp… Russia has inundated the Sahel with disinformation since 2018 with 19 campaigns directed at Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. All three countries have experienced military coups that Russian networks have helped prime and promote despite their abysmal track records.
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Despite being widely used, the term “fake news” is increasingly considered inadequate: it’s too nebulous and imprecise – not to mention politically charged –


1/4 openyoureyes.info/en/database and it encompasses a much too wide range of phenomena (such as news satire, news parody, fabrication, manipulation, advertising and propaganda; Tandoc et al, 2017).
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The European Union’s Disinformation Lab (EU DisinfoLab) has recently exposed a sophisticated Russian influence campaign known as “DoppelGänger.”

Operating since at least May 2022, the campaign is operated by the Russian Social Design Agency and Structura National Technologies.
1/15 DoppelGänger promotes pro-Russian narratives and infiltrates Europe’s media landscape by disseminating disinformation through a network of cloned websites, fake articles, and social media manipulation.
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