This file is empty, and exists as a placeholder so you can see the backlinks
the other side sometimes doesn’t exist in the way you think it does. It’s often a fiction created by propaganda (sometimes gray propaganda), a mishmash of people with different views who are strawmanned and represented by vocal minorities.
Strategic information Operations (e.g. disinformation, political propaganda and other forms of online manipulation) can actually be thought of as a form of distributed cognition; a collaborative work within online crowds. This distributed work goes far beyond the simplistic ideas of bots and trolls and represent “a persistent challenge for researchers, platform designers, and policy makers - distinguishing between orchestrated, explicitly coordinated information operations and the emergent, organic behaviors of an online crowd”. These information operations appear like legitimate and organic operations of the crowd, and claim that they are just “setting the record straight” or “combating the status quo”, and by doing so, shield themselves from criticism. Alternatively, these disinformation operations attempt to distract and confuse, thus killing legitimate debate and discourse around a topic. These operations pull in well meaning individuals, who then amplify the work of automated or mass produced systems. These operations leave behind digital traces that can be analyzed. This paper analyzed information operations through three case studies: The dissemination of anti-black lives matter sentiment, disinformation targeting the white helmets in the Syrian Civil War, and conspiracy theories surrounding crisis events. These disinformation styles are not new, and have been used by a variety of fascist regimes in the past, but modern distributed cognition allows disinformation to spread at an unprecedented rate.
