This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think one can draw a legible distinction between a foreign government running an espionage operation coupled with an untruthful propaganda campaign and the normal process of domestic consensus-making, but I take your point. Particularly in This Day And Age (anything after the telegraph) you've got to presume the possibility of hostile psyops in all directions.
I wish I had your optimism, but I don't think you can make a legible distinction when there are foreign governments running espionage operations in opposite directions at the same time.
When things are hard to measure- and few things are as hard to measure as the actual effects any amount of propaganda has- it's an easy rationalization to attribute unwanted decisions to the malign influence of outsiders while your favored directions are obviously enlightened objectivity of reasonable people.
I think you can make a legible distinction between foreign psy-ops (organized campaigns conducted at the behest of foreign powers) and organic domestic consensus in principle – in other words, there is a difference between the two – which is all that I meant. You can condemn the one and think that the other is all right. I agree that you can't necessarily turn back time and rerun history without the impact of a psy-op to see what effect it might have, and I further agree that psyops run in different directions, making the measurement of impact difficult. But that does not mean that a psy-op has zero effect, or an inestimable effect. (If this was true, it would arguably follow that there was no measurable or real harm in believing psyops or allowing your policy to be shaped by them, and I don't think that's correct.)
I'm not sure that it's necessarily true that you cannot measure the impact of propaganda. In fact I'm fairly confident that it isn't true today – maybe it was in 1921. But today you can actually quantify things like the impact the Internet Research Agency had on the 2020 election, not perfectly, but enough to get a measurement on it and talk about the impact it has.
But even if you grant that it is, it doesn't follow that it is good to run propaganda campaigns (and I would say especially ones that involve untruths, especially on your own people) or that it is bad for domestic governments to resist the influence of foreign government propaganda.
For instance, to talk about something I think it even more clear-cut than the psyops surrounding the world wars, I think the Nayirah testimony was
And I think this was an effort to propagandize Americans into involvement that was illegitimate (from the American point of view – obviously a Kuwaiti may have a different perspective) precisely because it was based on lies. There are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is that the effectiveness of things like the Nayirah testimony generates callousness and suspicion towards actual atrocities.
The ability to distinguish which is which is what I am contesting. The ability to say normal is good and artificial is bad is the easy part of differentiation- the issue is actually being able to say what is 'normal' versus 'artificial.'
It's Russel conjugation all the way down. You psyop, I persuade, the people I agree with listen to reason, the people I disagree with are wrongfully misled.
Quiz question- do you know how researchers into Russian propaganda outfits like the IRA judge the effectiveness of Russian propaganda efforts like the IRA?
Answer - by reading the internal documentation of propaganda agencies citing western media coverage of them as proof that they are effective when justifying their budgets to paymasters.
Again, russel conjugation. You have to resist foreign government propaganda. Reasonable foreigners happen to agree with my authentic political positions.
I grant that it's fuzzy in some places. I think it is bad when it is lying, and artificial when it is foreign. I don't think there's no difference between things that are true and things that are lies.
Uh...that's not the only way to do it. Example of a different approach (I've just read the abstract, fwiw).
...did you mean to cite a study whose own abstract emphasizes how ineffective Russia internet propaganda was in 2016?
Like, literally the conclusion is-
Yes, that's exactly the one I meant to cite. My point was not that IRA stuff was successful – my understanding was that it was very limited in reach, and so unlikely to be effective or to do anything like "swing an election." (IIRC, there was other research done on Facebook that backs up that same point.) My point is that there are actually good ways to quantify that, we don't have to throw up our hands and say "well we can't know if propaganda works" – we can actually measure it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link