That's when I realized something unusual was happening. I assumed these respondents were part of a coordinated system of trolls. I didn't know I was experiencing a technically advanced propaganda attack. I managed to resist the feeling that the consensus was against me, but did start to wonder if I was talking to myself.
After the election, all these feverish Twitter and Facebook respondents suddenly disappeared. Did anyone else notice that?
Only now am I beginning to learn the full horror of this new cyber-based propaganda.
When many of us think of propaganda we think of what spies call "active measures" like dropping fliers from airplanes, broadcasting news on Radio Free Europe, writing op-ed pieces under pseudonyms or stealing and releasing classified documents to publicly embarrass adversaries. The Russian connection to the DNC email hacks and subsequent Wikileaks publication appears to be of this sort. It seems a little high tech because the theft was by hacking, but at its root it old-style propaganda. And media attention to it only serves to distract us to the whole new world of electronic propaganda unleashed during the election. New, covertly developed, military-grade propaganda techniques were used by private corporations, and perhaps foreign actors, to tip our election results on a scale never seen before. The internet was weaponized against us.
COGNITIVE WARFARE: Cognitive warfare is a toolbox of cyber-propaganda techniques that both models mass populations and profiles individuals to change their beliefs or attitudes. It has many aspects and methods that utilize super-computers, massive databases and sophisticated computer algorithms to weaponize information gathered from our digital footprints to use against us. Some techniques model and manipulate whole societies to bring about social change while other techniques profile and manipulate individuals or groups to alter a person's attitudes and behavior. These methods go by names such as Bio-psycho-social profiling, Recoding (of mass consciousness), Strategic drowning (of mainstream-media content, for example), micro-targeted propaganda, etc. These propaganda techniques can be highly effective and operate on an emotional level without our specific awareness.
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