Nine Lessons of Russian Propaganda

5. Headlines are more important than reality, especially while first impressions are forming.

During recent protests by Russian truck drivers, Russia's transport minister staged a meeting with counterfeit truckers before the media. They also seem to have invented Syrian opposition leaders with whom they held negotiations.

It did not matter that the "humanitarian aide" convoys to Eastern Ukraine were eventually revealed to the whole world as ammunition resupplies. For two weeks coverage of the war focused on Russia's "humanitarian aide."

First impressions are known to be extremely sticky. They persist even after subsequent evidence is conclusive. Consequently, Russian propaganda seems to fight hard for the first impression and then relent.

When opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was assassinated, they quickly spun several elaborate theories which played on Russian news.

Their propaganda about neo-Nazis dominated coverage of Ukraine's revolution, even after multiple statements and an open letter from the leaders of Ukraine's Jewish community. In support of the Nazi narrative, Russian state television even reported fake results of Ukraine's 2014 election, stating that now-President Poroshenko lost the race to Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh. (In reality Yarosh received about 1.5% of the vote.) Obviously, anybody paying attention would find out this was nonsense within days, if not hours, but being proved wrong does not seem to matter to them.

Perhaps the consider distant half-interested parties as their target audience -- people who cannot devote enough attention to the issue. Such people will see an initial chaos of contradictory information and conclude the situation is too complicated to understand, and that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

They're remarkably successful. No matter audacious, Russian lies delivered from semi-official sources succeed in muddying the waters, and preventing the formation of clear impressions that recognize the reality of what is happening.


http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/nine-lessons-of-russian-propaganda