Collect and analyze their propaganda to understand their message, target audience and objectives.
- LEARN: Their audience, desired effects, and achieved effects
- LEARN: Their perceptions, capabilities, weaknesses, and intentions
- EXPLOIT: Their inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and deceits whether they were intended or not
- To WHOM and how can we deploy counter-arguments
Who is their intended audience? [1]
Propaganda is shaped for specific audiences. Responses to shaped propaganda must also be shaped for that same audience for them to understand and respond to it. (See RESONATE — principle #4)
What effects do the propagandists desire? [1]
Are they trying to arouse fear, terror, anger, confusion, distrust in their leaders and sources of information? The emotions and behaviors they targeted must be understood.
What effects have they achieved? [1]
Were they successful? Did their message “go viral”? What can we learn from their success or lack of it?
Which other audiences have heard or seen their message? [1]
Did they react, believe and behave the same or differently? Will our counterpropaganda work for all audiences or must it be shaped for each audience?
What do their messages indicate about an adversary’s perceptions, capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intent? [1]
How well do they understand our foibles, weaknesses, emotional “hot buttons,” weak links in infrastructure, communications, software? Where are their similar problem areas. Can use their penetration into us against them?
What are the intentional or unintentional inaccuracies, inconsistencies, or deceits in their messages that we can exploit? [1]
What are the best, most efficient, most effective, most reliable, least costly, least likely to backfire methods to counter their lies and propaganda?
What counter arguments can we deploy, to whom, and how? [1]
Determine the final shaping, targeting and delivery of the counterpropaganda.
This is the sixth installment in our series on counterpropaganda.
Our Daily Kos blog reports:
The Nine Principles of Propaganda begins HERE.
Trump - Our Psychopathic President begins HERE.
Double-sided PDF copies:
The Nine Principles of Propaganda and Counterpropaganda — HERE.
The Twelve Criteria of Psychopathy — HERE.
The Forty Most Common Logical Fallacies — HERE.
Concise Recommendations for Dealing with Misinformation — HERE.
THE NINE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF COUNTERPROPAGANDA
Propaganda is the backdoor hack into your mind
#1 Truth — Honest opposition is practical, moral, and unbiased.
#2 Focus — Address only one or at most two points.
#3 Clarity — Easily understood without further explanation.
#4 Resonate — Identify audience’s existing sentiments, opinions, and stereotypes that influence their perspectives, beliefs, and actions.
#5 Respond — Lies not immediately refuted become the audience’s truth.
#6 Investigate — Collect and analyze their propaganda to understand their message, target audience & objectives.
#7 Source — Expose covert sources of false propaganda.
#8 Reason – Expose their logical fallacies. Human cognitive biases for rapid thought response make us vulnerable to faulty reasoning.
#9 Disseminate — Share exposed propaganda with audiences not targeted; they can then recognize the lies and reciprocate.
Citations
1. The seven questions are from: Garfield, Andrew (2009). "Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda: An interim assessment of the war of ideas in Iraq", in Strategic influence : public diplomacy, counterpropaganda, and political warfare (PDF). Washington, DC: Institute of World Politics Press. pp. 181–196. Retrieved 1/14/19 from: https://jmw.typepad.com/files/strategicinfluenceclass_copy.pdf
This document was also cited by Wikipedia – Counterpropaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpropaganda#Research_and_analysis