The law of\nintellectual property is prohibited in any way unlawful use\/appropriation of\nthis article, with heavy civil and criminal penalties for the infringer.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week Oxford University published its annual report on online\nmisinformation through social media presenting very interesting conclusions (\u201cThe Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global\nInventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation\u201d by Phillip Howard &\nSamantha Bradshaw, https:\/\/www.oii.ox.ac.uk).<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is defined as propaganda<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Propaganda means the dissemination of a political (usually) view and is achieved by direct presentation of a message in a specific way so that each time the maximum possible result is achieved, which is none other than the service of specific objectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These propaganda specific objectives aim to influence and drastically\nchange the views of the public opinion and not just to transmit the\ninformation. Propaganda and propagandists are trying to form views with\nindirect and often fraudulent methods, creating strong feelings for people who\nbecome recipients of propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Propagandists usually try to influence public opinion by making their\nmessages heard in as many places as possible and as often as possible. In this way they achieved:<\/p>\n\n\n\n a)<\/strong> to enhance their ideas through repetition<\/p>\n\n\n\n b)<\/strong> to stifle all alternative ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fake News and the reasons for the manipulation of public opinion<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the above recent annual report of the University of Oxford\nthere was a drastic increase of more than 150% (70 countries in 2019, 48\ncountries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017) in the number of countries and\ntheir Governments that make widespread use of social media with the ultimate\naim of manipulating public opinion both within their own country and globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reasons for the manipulation of public opinion through online\npropaganda have specific objectives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The countries that mainly use social media to implement propaganda and for\nall the reasons are China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia,\nVenezuela, Cuba, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Egypt, North Korea, etc. Essentially\nChina is considered a “champion” in international misinformation\nthrough social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A social media platform can be classified as a vehicle of disinformation depending on the number of organised political campaigns held on the social media platform in the country concerned. The aim of these political campaigns is mainly to counteract the opposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Cyber troops<\/strong> and their role<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As cyber troops are named all those employees who work with the status of\nfull or part-time employment on behalf of Governments and political parties (parliamentarians\nor not) with a view to influencing public opinion every time in favour of their\nemployers’ positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This influence and manipulation of public opinion is achieved through\ncoordinated and repetitive content of the same or similar number of posts\nwithin certain time intervals in order to create saturation in the information\naimed at either protecting their “employers” from the evolution of\nreal events or transferring public opinion attention to other issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The contents of their posts in social media does not mean that everything\nis a lie. Usually, they are based on some plausible events by channeling in\nthem the lie and the distortion of the truth. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, because these “propaganda and disinformation\nattacks” through posts in social media are fully controlled, built and\ncoordinated, they could measure “the impact” of each attack on public\nopinion (e.g. based on the likes in each post). <\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to achieve these coordinated “propaganda and disinformation\nattacks” in social media, four ways are used:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Examples of massive “propaganda and disinformation attacks”\nthrough social media emerged during the 2016 elections in the United States and\nthe Brexit referendum in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, mercenary internet troops are not only limited to propaganda\nand disinformation attacks but use social media for harassment and\nintimidation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With their intimidating behaviour (social media bullying) they try to\nsilence or force users who express the opposite view to them and their\nemployers to delete their posts even to erase their accounts in social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The funds spent annually on the technological equipment and payroll of all\nthese cyber troops depend on the size of the country and on which it aims to\nfocus its propaganda efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the more authoritarian is the “democratic regime” that\ngoverns the country under consideration, the greater the cyber troops\npopulation in it, and the more funds spent on their maintenance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The quality of information in social media<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the framework for the free movement of information, it is not\npossible to apply censorship to social media. In the same way it is not easy to control the quality of information in social media. No matter how much\neffort is made to control the information that is being handled on the social\nmedia, it will not work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The “filtering” of the correctness of an opinion is made\nindividually by each user and since the user in social media has developed his\ncritical thinking which means the possession of greater and qualitative\neducation on the part of the user of social media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a world that is increasingly based on the rapid transfer of information across the planet and mainly through social media which give everyone…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1168],"tags":[1120,1121,1119,1062],"class_list":["post-1293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-cyber-troops","tag-fake-news","tag-propaganda","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1295,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293\/revisions\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/320px-Arrest_of_a_Propagandist.jpg\")
Paint by Artist Ilya Repin (1844-1930),
https:\/\/en.wikipedia\/wiki\/Public_domain
<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/320px-The_fin_de_si\u00e8cle_newspaper_proprietor_cropped.jpg\")
Author Frederick Burr Opper
https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Public_domain
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