Russia's Online-Comment Propaganda Army

[conservaphobe]

Russian news site the St. Petersburg Times describes the story of one woman, Natalya Lvova, who said she attended a job interview in August at a “posh cottage with glass walls” in a village near St. Petersburg:

“To my question about a technical task—what exactly should be written in the comments—a young guy, a coordinator, told me, briefly and clearly, that they were having busy days at the moment and that yesterday they all wrote in support of [Moscow acting mayor Sergei] Sobyanin, while ‘today we shit on Navalny,’” she wrote on her VKontakte [ed: a Russian social network] page.

According to Lvova, each commenter was to write no less than 100 comments a day, while people in the other room were to write four postings a day, which then went to the other employees whose job was to post them on social networks as widely as possible.

Employees at the company, located at 131 Lakhtinsky Prospekt, were paid 1,180 rubles ($36.50) for a full 8-hour day and received a free lunch, Lvova wrote.

A Russian journalist who visited one such comment-mill, the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency, met with a coordinator who said the job was not unlike writing copy for a hair dryer: "The only difference is that this hair dryer is a political one."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/russias-online-comment-propaganda-army/280432/

[Adrahil]

1. I think we have a few here.... NT

[Duckhunter935]

14. you are right about that

[davidpdx]

15. +2

[Puzzledtraveller]

19. names?

[Adrahil]

25. Apparently I can't do that.

IN another thread, I named a few names and the post was hidden because I was making "personal attacks."

It's not hard to figure out. Just look at LBN and GD. It's same few people always talking up the Kremlin's position and posting links from RT.

[R3druM]

2. Well known fact, noted by Guardian and other sites.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/04/pro-russia-trolls-ukraine-guardian-online

""Guardian moderators, who deal with 40,000 comments a day, believe there is an orchestrated pro-Kremlin campaign. Trolling covers a multitude of sins but a particularly nasty strain has emerged in the midst of the armed conflict in Ukraine, which infests comment threads on the Guardian and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of moderators. Readers and reporters alike are concerned that these are from those paid to troll, and to denigrate in abusive terms anyone criticising Russia or President Vladimir Putin.""

Most of them are easy to catch. Look for "neo-nazi" "Victoria Nuland" "CIA plot" and "Kiev Junta" and you know you are looking at Kremlin troll, easily proven by checking their posting history.

[betterdemsonly]

7. You only have 15 post and have just used all those phrases. n/t

[reorg]

20. lol

I was just wondering if I am under suspicion. The general characteristics such as "stilted language" certainly fit, but I guess I'm safe since I never used any of those tell-tale words.

[Cha]

10. Thanks for that, R3druM.. and Welcome to DU!

pay no attention to the rudeness of the poster counting your posts so far..

[anti partisan]

3. Not the only propaganda army out there (nt)

[mwrguy]

4. Israel's is huge

and omnipresent

[Violet_Crumble]

5. It's very well organised. I posted an article about it in the I/P group yesterday....

A computer lab staffed by students in an Israeli university is playing a key role in the war of information in the Gaza conflict.

Inspired by the role of social media during the Arab Spring and boosted by the support of the Israeli government and Israel Defence Force, student volunteers at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a private university north of Tel Aviv, are waging their own propaganda war countering online anti-Israeli sentiment.

Staffed by approximately 400 student volunteers the project which goes by the name “Israel Under Fire”, claims to have succeeded in closing anti-Israeli pages on Facebook and challenging propaganda from Hamas, the organisation that governs the Gaza Strip and whose military arm is firing rockets at Israel.

According to Igal Raich, a 23-year-old IDC student who volunteers in what is called "The Advocacy Room", the project aims to counter what is perceived as a false representation of Israel in international and social media through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“It is run by students who are all volunteers,” said Raich, who grew up in Canada before moving to Israel to study and also served in the Israeli military. “The school gave us a computer lab to work from and from nine in the morning until eight at night it is constantly full with student volunteers.”

Volunteer groups include a team that translates messages from Hebrew into 30 languages and a graphics team creating charts and images to be distributed via Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/israeli-propaganda-war-hits-social-media-20140717-ztvky.html

[Igel]

23. At least there's the grass-roots v astroturf distinction.

Paid operatives versus student volunteers.

Now, if the kiddos got work study ...

[freshwest]

6. ...

Look for "neo-nazi" "Victoria Nuland" "CIA plot" and "Kiev Junta" and you know you are looking at Kremlin troll, easily proven by checking their posting history.

Consistent themes.

[Cali_Democrat]

8. Victoria Nuland!

The most powerful woman the Earth has ever known...apparently.....

LOL

[freshwest]

9. And inspires the most anti-American, anti-Semetic vitriol ever...

Last edited Tue Jul 22, 2014, 04:38 AM - Edit history (1)

FEAR THE NULAND!

[Cha]

12. I remember seeing her name when all this first started.. like she was the

wicked witch of the West or something. It got to be anytime I saw her name used derogatorily I would discount that post as propaganda.

[Adrahil]

28. Yup. She single handedly got tens of thousands of protesters in in the streets!

And personally drove Yanukovych out of Kyiv!

[Cha]

11. So freaking obvious, fresh.. they had the run of the place for

awhile.. out in droves as it were.. but, I don't see as many now.

Mahalo~ for the pointers.

[Hekate]

13. Good info. Kick.

[woo me with science]

16. This whole thread =

Last edited Tue Jul 22, 2014, 08:24 AM - Edit history (1)

?w=244&h=227

[Crunchy Frog]

17. Russian hasbara. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

18. They are great fun because they are so bad at what they try to do. Stilted, dated lingo,

an inability to respond to direct questions. They are a form of self satire that makes delicious performance art.

[IDemo]

21. What exactly is hoped to be gained by such a thing?

Would a government actually expect its internet supporters or detractors to have any real influence on the conduct of foreign policy? Do they think that teams in the White House or the Pentagon sift through Facebook and social media sites before crafting a response to a military or terrorist attack? The power of trollism to effect outcomes or sway opinion is highly overrated. It's digital nose-twisting, that's all.

[Igel]

24. It helps those who want to believe believe.

One insightful op-ed pointed out that if it's proven to 99% certainty that Russia had supplied the weapons to the rebels in E Ukraine it would still allow Russia to argue that it hadn't.

99% certainty Russia did = "definite possibility that Russia did not," "it cannot be shown that Russia did, whereas there is evidence showing ...".

There's something called the "halo effect." If you go to a doctor's office and the hall is clean and well kept, if the plants in the office are healthy and there's good, relaxed lighting you will assume that the doctor is highly qualified. If the plants are dying and the ambience is tacky, you will assume that the doctor is not highly qualified. You judge quickly based on what image you have based on the limited info you have. An engineer who gives money to charity must be a better engineer. A handsome, tall politician must be a more capable, competent person.

One psychologist faculty member wrote that he was grading essay answers to his finals his first couple of years and was amazed. The students who got the first question right tended to have good marks on all the following questions. The students who got the first question wrong tended to screw up all the rest. He decided to grade them differently the next year. He graded the first question for all the students and wrote the score for just that question on the back cover. Then he went back and graded the second for each student and wrote that grade on the back cover. He found that student achievement was highly uneven. A student could get the first question right and the second horribly wrong under his revised grading procedure. He concluded that he had taught them about the halo effect but still fell for it. The student who got the first question right was smart and got the benefit of the doubt for the second, third, fourth questions if he graded the essays one way. The student who got the first question wrong was stupid and was subjected to harsher evaluation. But by grading them differently, he cut the connection between the grade for the first essay and his evaluation of the second essay.

[IDemo]

26. But you're discussing the actual evidence or lack thereof

The online analysis of news reports, photos and blog posts of central figures doesn't equate to forensics by proxy, whether presented as such by media and governments or not.

The Internet as doctor's waiting room analogy would have five year old Readers Digests and People magazines laying on the floor.

[reorg]

27. What it mainly does

is preventing rational discussions that could become enlightening and interesting.

Not so much because their "arguments", it's the nasty, repetitive abuse and slanders that (IMO) always accompany such diversion-and-destroy tactics. I've seen it in some forums and stopped reading them due to the overwhelming number of nauseous postings one had to wade through before getting to anything with substance.

[malaise]

22. A seriously hilarious post

Propagandists exist on all sides.