Russian Media Manipulation Primer

Let’s get into my first (quick) article in my series on how Russia manipulates the world at large to do their bidding. Let’s start with the HOW in simple bullet points:

• The Russian Government OWNS and EXERTS control over the media content coming from their media. Anyone not toeing that line is removed (and often killed)
• As we’ve seen from the US and other sovereign national elections, they use alternative forms of media (social media, blogs, conspiracy theories, etc)
• They buy up OR invest heavily in media-centric properties (Facebook, Twitter, GAB, etc), then use the platform for their propaganda machines. They get insights into how the API’s work and can tailor their bots to work overtime to pump out fake news.
• They use proxies to enact their plans. Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and a number of other methods, they paint them as heroes while only managing to further their own agenda. Ask the question, who benefited MOST from the Snowden leaks? Who benefited most from the various Wikileaks leaks? Most of all note who has NOT had many if ANY leaks sent about them? Russia and it’s allies. There’s plenty of documentation to support this. I’ll write a supplemental article to cover this below.
• They intimidate and/or blackmail (Kompromat) people in power or people in key positions. These can be low level players as well or regular people as well they see a use for.
• They play all sides against each other. Stoke violence from one side vs the other. Notice how the political rhetoric has ratcheted up in full knowledge of some of these Russian actions against us?

Covering a few of the basics here, this is by no means an exhaustive list, that will come later. Merely an intro to some of the many things I will cover for as long as it’s relevant (possibly a LONG TIME). Buckle up. Russia(and Putin especially)has had MUCH to do with many of the horrible events over the last 2 decades (and beyond).

Putin Visits the South…it brought out his Ukrainian upbringing.

Let’s not forget Putin hates bad memes about himself, but he likes the good ones that make him look like a thug/killer. This one especially as it represents Putin’s actual past that he would prefer to forget ;). Let’s remember he hates memes that paint him in a bad light (as in ones painting him into his well known held prejudices). I’ll be covering some of these in a future segment. But here’s one last one since he “loves” these.

“Tough Guy” Putin hates the LGBT community…or was it projection?

Excelsior!

In case you’re interested in a deeper dive via twitter this tweet (pinned on my profile) covers a huge amount of info much of which will also be elaborated on in future articles on this site.