The operational structure for strategic drowning includes a coordinated network of alternative-information websites, referred to as micro-propaganda machines, or MPMs. Each MPM controls a vast warehouse of "bots" that are bogus Facebook and Twitter accounts, etc. These fake accounts exist by the hundreds of thousands. Some are always active to drive public dialogue while some are "sleeper bots." These are held in reserve and triggered en mass by propagandists to overwhelm news cycles or cover up information unfavorable to their goals. It is also used to create trends and alter public discourse, or change public attitudes.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Jonathan Albright is an assistant professor of communications at Elon University in North Carolina. He analyzed the activity of these MPMs during the 2016 election and was able to create a "spatial map" of that activity. The picture created shows the relative dominance of traditional information sources in the media ecosystem, as he calls it, and the impact on that system by MPMs during the election. The red nodes are alternative-information (propaganda) websites and the red lines radiating from them are links or activity of these sites.
In effect, what you see here is the cognitive warfare battlefield during the last election. This new propaganda arms race is between pro-democracy advocates and their adversaries. It is a war still being waged here and in other Western democracies. It is being waged by both foreign attackers and billionaire Western oligarchs who share converging interests. It is being waged by Russia, who just announced the creation of a new branch of their military, calling them "information-warfare troops".
"... Russians have moved into an offensive posture that threatens the very international order," said Ben Rhodes of the Obama administration last year.
The propaganda war is also being waged by billionaire-controlled corporations specializing in this field, companies like Cambridge Analytica. This is essentially a propaganda company featuring Steve Bannon on its board of directors.
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