Fake news meme

Western intelligence yesterday revealed the trail of clues that bungling Russian spies known as Unit 26165 left in their wake as they waged a war of disinformation across the globe. Kremlin agents working for the GRU targeted FIFA, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Organisation for the Prevention of the use of Chemical Weapons as it investigated both the Salisbury novichok attack in the UK as well as the Douma chemical weapons attack in Syria, the international investigation of the downing of MH17 and a US company providing nuclear power to Ukraine.  President Vladimir Putin's elite squad even created the fake 'hacktivist' group Fancy Bears to disseminate misleading statements designed to exonerate Russia of doping allegations and instead level them at the US. But it was yesterday revealed that the spies left a trail of clues including blunder after blunder during their international campaign. These extraordinary errors included: The cyber unit's 'burner' mobile … [Read more...] about Unit 26165’s trail of blunders: How Putin’s elite globe-trotting hacking squad left a trail of clues including a selfie at the Olympics, a pile of beer cans and a TAXI RECEIPT from their spy base to airport

It was boomers, not bots, who won it for the Tories. For the whole election campaign we were on the lookout for what the academics call “computational propaganda”, what the platforms call “co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour” and what the media increasingly calls, rightly or wrongly, Russian bots. But every time we found something odd, closer inspection would reveal that the best explanation was the wonderful diversity of human experience, or, more prosaically, older voters whose desire to engage in political activism outweighed their technical literacy. In the last few days of the general election campaign, for instance, we saw accusations of a misinformation campaign aimed at smearing the family of a sick four-year-old by saying they had staged a photo of him lying on a hospital floor. This gave way to the realisation that there was no real campaign, per se; just a made-up claim posted to Facebook, shared by thousands who wanted it to be true, and … [Read more...] about How the Tories won the online election: pick a line, ignore the facts and repeat

Was it the media wot lost it? This general election has seen an unparalleled level of criticism of British journalism, a prime minister who showed it was possible to skip tough interviews without suffering at the ballot box, and an online campaign that pushed the limits of what was previously considered acceptable in UK politics. The aftermath has seen Jeremy Corbyn partly blame the still-powerful Sun and Daily Mail for his defeat, despite the plummeting print circulations of national newspapers. At the same time the Conservatives have turned their fire on the media and are threatening to decriminalise the licence fee – potentially severely undermining the BBC – and look at other ways of changing the way the UK media operates. Here’s what we learned this election campaign. Age defines what media voters consume While 20-something audiences have largely abandoned television news altogether, BBC bulletins remain important for reaching older viewers who are more likely to … [Read more...] about What we learned about the media this election