FAKE NEWS

A ROADMAP
 ISBN 978-9934-564-23-9
Fake News: A Roadmap

Editors: Jente Althuis and Leonie Haiden

Text Editor: Anna Reynolds

Authors: Iona Allan, Jente Althuis, Alexander Averin, Giulia Conci, Sarah Dooley, Erin Duffy,
Douglas Gray, Leonie Haiden, Mitchell Ilbury, Natalia Kantovich, Chelsea McManus, Celeste
Michaud, Emma Moore, Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi, and Siri Strand.

Fake News: A Roadmap is published by King’s Centre for Strategic Communications

(KCSC) and the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, in Riga, Latvia. Both
organisations are committed to encouraging young talent and innovative thinking.

The NATO StratCom Centre of Excellence, based in Latvia, is a multinational, cross-sector

organization which provides comprehensive analyses, advice and practical support to the
alliance and allied nations. This report is a product of the NATO Strategic Communications
Centre of Excellence (NATO StratCom COE). It is produced for NATO, NATO member
countries, NATO partners, related private and public institutions and related individuals. It
does not represent the opinions or policies of NATO.

The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC) aims to be the leading global centre
of expertise on strategic communications. Led by internationally renowned experts from
the Department of War Studies and partners from the policy and practitioner communities,
it provides practical solutions to contemporary communication challenges rooted in
cutting-edge academic research. The Centre provides intellectual rigour and clarity of
thinking to enhance understanding of an increasingly dynamic information environment.

© All rights reserved by the NATO StratCom COE and The King’s Centre for Strategic
Communications. This book may not be copied, reproduced, distributed or publicly
displayed without reference to the NATO StratCom COE and The King’s Centre for Strategic
Communications.

The views expressed here are solely those of the authors in their private capacity and do
not in any way represent the views of NATO. NATO Strategic Communications Centre of
Excellence is an organization independent from NATO.

Riga, January 2018

NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence

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The King’s Centre for Strategic Communications (KCSC)

Department of War Studies
King’s College London
Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
www.kingscsc.co.uk

1
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 FOREWORD
In the summer of 2017 a group of students on the Strategic Communications
Masters at King’s College London decided to bring some clarity to the discussion
of Fake News. Their concern was that what separated truth from untruth had for
too long been obscured—made ever less intelligible by certain people intent on
distorting responsible debate, while others simply fail to do their research.

The term Fake News has become the default catchphrase for truth-seekers wish-
ing to label inaccurate reporting, truth-obscurers spreading malevolent asser-
tions, or the unprepared who simply want to close down uncomfortable discus-
sion. The shorthand expression ‘Fake News’ may fit neatly into tweeted messages,
but willing amplifiers have spread it across all media, traditional and social, with-
out necessarily giving it a meaningful definition.

Fake News: A Roadmap is published by King’s Centre for Strategic Communica-

tions (KCSC) and the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, in
Riga, Latvia. Both organisations are committed to encouraging young talent and
innovative thinking. In keeping with NATO’s remit, this book is published and
made available free of charge to any reader around the world.

Fake News: A Roadmap is edited by Jente Althuis and Leonie Haiden. Its authors are
Iona Allan, Jente Althuis, Alexander Averin, Giulia Conci, Sarah Dooley, Erin Duffy,
Douglas Gray, Leonie Haiden, Mitchell Ilbury, Natalia Kantovich, Chelsea McMa-
nus, Celeste Michaud, Emma Moore, Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi, and Siri Strand.

We wish to thank for their advice and support:

KCSC – Dr Neville Bolt, Professor David Betz, Dr Nicholas Michelsen, Professor
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, John Williams, Dr Francesca Granelli, Andrea Berger, Vic-
toria Preston, Sophia Krauel.
NATO StratCom COE - Jānis Sārts, Linda Curika, Benjamin Heap.

Fake News: A Roadmap is intended to be used. We invite you to read on.

3
 INTRODUCTION
Fake News: A Roadmap explores the character, consequences, and challenges of
fake news. The twists and turns that connect fake news to related buzzwords and
themes including ‘post-truth’, ‘populism’, and ‘trust’, are far from straightforward.

This book uses the image of a map to navigate the complexity of localised events,
mounting pressures, and seismic shifts in the political and media landscapes that
appear to have converged in recent years.

Much of the discussion surrounding fake news has made great play of ‘populist’
political victories. In Route 1, we attempt to disentangle these concepts. In Route
2, we consider ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ as part of a historical trajectory in order
to understand what is at stake in the way these concepts are used today. Route
3 explores age-old debates concerning truth, proof, and evidence. Next we ask:
should leaders lie? Sometimes, according to Route 4. Have changes in the media
landscape, the topic of Route 5, made information sharing more democratic? Not
quite. But changes in the media environment have perhaps been a contributing
factor to perceived lower levels of trust. Route 6 discusses the relationship be-
tween this decline in trust and the growing appeal of fake news. In the next three
Routes we widen our gaze beyond democratic Europe and the United States to
pseudo-democracies and authoritarian regimes: while Routes 7 and 8 consid-
er the role of truth in Daesh and North Korean strategic communications, Route
9 offers insights into the Russian perspective on disinformation. In conclusion,
Route 10 considers measures to counter fake news, and questions assumptions
often taken for granted in these discussions. Who gets to judge truth and decide
what we should believe? And who, if anyone, can make us change our minds? We
conclude with some signposts for our readers to consider. Should we respond to
the challenge of fake news, and if so how should we go about it?

4
 A ROADMAP
Route 1 – Tell me Lies, Tell me Sweet Little Lies
Post-truth and populist politics – a match made in 2016? The four goals of fake news.
Local truths in a globalized world. The politicization of how we assess truth.
Leonie Haiden...........................................................................................................7

Route 2 – Never Mind the Buzzwords:

Defining Fake News and Post-Truth
How new is fake news? Printing press, pamphlets, and a proclamation. Searching for
definitions between the Daily Show and disinformation. Ditching the truth for pre-ex-
isting views. What is at stake?
Chelsea McManus and Celeste Michaud................................................................14

Route 3 – The Truth About Truth?

The many paths to truth: correspondence, coherence, consensus. A truth that ‘tells it
as it is’ or that ‘feels like the right thing’? Relativist notions of truth that further political
agendas. Everyday epistemology, or how to approach truth-claims in today’s media
environment.
Erin Duffy and Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi................................................................21

Route 4 – When Dishonesty Is the Best Policy. Really?

It’s not all about truth. ‘Lies for lives.’ The public’s lease on lies and the politician’s
choice: an inconvenient truth, a convenient lie.
Mitchell Ilbury.........................................................................................................28

Route 5 – Change and 21st Century Media

Digitalization of Information. Algorithms deployed by power brokers. Filter bubbles,
echo chambers, and a ‘seething cauldron of opinions’. Did someone say ‘democratisa-
tion of communication’?
Sarah Dooley and Emma Moore with Alexander Averin......................................34

5
Route 6 – Whatever Happened to Trust?
Questions for Edelman. A mood of uncertainty, a discourse of distrust. Bias blind spots
in a changing media landscape.
Leonie Haiden........................................................................................................41

Route 7 – Daesh and its Single Truth

Credibility and emotional appeal. The symbolic importance of Dabiq. From provoca-
tion to patience. A social contract and distributing bread.
Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi........................................................................................48

Route 8 – North Korea and its Different, Single Truth

Nuclear testing as strategic communication. Truth seen through a prism of absolutist
ideology. Policy driving propaganda driving policy.
Douglas Gray..........................................................................................................53

Route 9 – Russia and its Many Truths

The Russian Perspective on disinformation. From ‘active measures’ to ‘reflexive control’.
Trolls in the toolbox. Manageable chaos and the future of Western news practices?
Alexander Averin....................................................................................................59

Route 10 – Countering Fake News

Legislating on dissemination of information vs. freedom of expression. A German law
sparks controversy. Human editors, crowdsourcing mechanisms, and algorithms in a
global newsroom. Insufficient knowledge and its dilemmas.
Signposting the way ahead.
Jente Althuis and Siri Strand................................................................................68

Endnotes.................................................................................................................78

Bibliography.........................................................................................................100

6
 TELL ME LIES,
TELL ME SWEET LITTLE LIES
Leonie Haiden
Many political analysts maintain that the ‘era of post-truth’ began in 2016; the year
we allegedly left the world of rational argument and objective facts and entered
a world of ‘bullshit’ and lies. The election of President Donald Trump and the suc-
cess of the Brexit campaign are often cited as evidence.1 However, such an inter-
pretation of contemporary politics is not without limitations. Not only has lying
always been part of the political repertoire, but the notion of a post-truth era also
creates too harsh a break with the past, failing to address the central questions
of how to distinguish between different (legitimate) truths and fake-news strate-
gies, and how both of these impact the political and media discourses of today.2
Why does the dissemination of false information appear to be such an attractive
strategy in our current information environment?

By interrogating populism and post-truth/fake news against each other, we at-

tempt to disentangle these terms. Is categorising certain politicians as populists
simply a convenient way of rationalising their disregard for the truth? Or, is there
perhaps a deeper, mutually illuminating connection between the act of spread-
ing fake news and populism?

7
There are four main strategic goals of fake news or disinformation campaigns.
First, some false stories are spread primarily for commercial gain; sensational sto-
ries or ‘click-bait’ cost little to produce and disseminate online, and are used to
attract attention and increase readership.3 Second, disinformation may be spread
for political gain, such as when the damaging and false story that Hillary Clinton,
her campaign manager, and her husband had been operating a child sex ring
from a pizza parlour in Washington was spread online.4 The third and fourth strat-
egies are also politically motivated but go beyond simply defaming one’s oppo-
nent. They are exclusionary and inclusionary communication strategies, and will
be the focus of this Route, as they are intimately linked to the success of so-called
populist politicians.

Defining Populism:
A Clear Sense That There Is No Clear Sense to It
What exactly is populism? What characteristics make us describe a politician as
populist? Fifty years ago, in 1967, leading academics devoted a two-day confer-
ence to the contested question of how ‘To Define Populism’ at the London School
of Economics and struggled to come up with an easy definition, or indeed a single
definition. After decades of contested academic debate, we have not progressed
significantly: ‘Attempts to identify a core of populism… have left some writers
with the clear sense that there is no clear sense to it.’ 5 Yet, as the philosopher Isa-
iah Berlin argued, this should not stop us from looking for ‘the common core’ of
populism.6 Berlin himself summarised some of populism’s characteristics, which
had been discussed at the conference:

• the evocation of a Gemeinschaft (coherent, integrat-

ed society);
• a critical stance towards political institutions;
• a ‘belief in some kind of moral regeneration’ that will
lead to the freedom of the ‘ideal, unbroken man’;
• the belief in the evitability of history;
• and the claim to be speaking on behalf of those
people who have been left behind.7

While the scope of this Route does not allow for a complete discussion of popu-
lism, what can be observed is that the aim of both populist rhetoric and fake news
is to provoke a certain reaction in the audience rather than to share a valuable
piece of information or policy strategy. In other words, the act of communicating
populist rhetoric or fake news, and its effects on the audience, are more import-

8
ant than their content. In her discussion of truth and lies in politics, the German
philosopher Hannah Arendt explains that when we tell a lie, this always implies
action (Handeln). Instead of stating the way things are, the liar describes them
as he/she want them to be. The gap created between the words and the reality
they claim to describe, implies that steps should be taken to realise that vision.8
Thus, the very articulation of a lie suggests action and forward momentum. This
implied change allows politicians who follow such a rhetorical strategy to avoid
suggesting specific policies that would lead to their desired future. For example,
the leader of Britain’s UKIP party, Nigel Farage, emphatically campaigned for in-
dependence and ‘liberation’ from the EU, which would allow the UK to ‘take back
control’.9 Both these campaign phrases include strong action verbs but do not
spell out how the process of separation would unfold in detail. Instead of interro-
gating the detailed policies that might lead to change, such seductive visions for
the future lead audiences to interpret the political environment through a rhetor-
ically-constructed conceptual framework. Let us now consider how this plays out
in terms of exclusionary and inclusionary communications.

Exclusionary Communications: Edifices of Shared Meaning

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, scholars of cognitive linguistics, draw a con-
nection between one’s worldview and one’s perception of the truth. They argue
that whether we judge a statement to be true or not depends on whether ‘our
understanding of the statements fits our understanding of the situation closely
enough for our purposes’.10 This ‘understanding of the situation’ will be shaped
by a combination of the beliefs and views we already hold, social conventions,11
and the political discourse surrounding the issue in question.12 While breaking
news-bites and snappy headlines are forgotten by the next day, edifices of ‘shared
meaning’ constructed through language, particularly imagery and metaphor, are
more long-lived. Depending on the flexibility of one’s conceptual frameworks,
finding comfort in shared meaning with some group can lead to the exclusion
of different points of view. Even when ample evidence and justification to assert
the veracity of a claim are given, one’s audience might doubt and reject these
because its conception of the world cannot accommodate that fact. Seduced by
a vision for the future based on political promises and true and false information,
audiences find themselves interpreting the political environment through a rhe-
torically-constructed conceptual framework that erects fences to help define a
common identity through the exclusion of whatever doesn’t fit the framework.
The exclusionary character of this communication strategy can be identified by
an unwillingness to discuss and the shutting down of dialogue. Once this frame-
work becomes entrenched, it is very difficult to engage in meaningful political
dialogue, as the policies it articulates will be based on and intend to concretise

9
these divisions.13 Data collected from Twitter during the U.S. Presidential Race
shows that political divisions ran so deep that even journalists’ Twitter networks
rarely included pro-Trump voices.14 While we do not expect the core supporters
of either candidate to engage with each other, the purpose of media coverage
should be to offer a more balanced account.15

This idea also seems to be implied by the definition of ‘post-truth’ offered by the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), who made it their word-of-the-year in 2016, as
‘[r]elating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influen-
tial in shaping political debate or public opinion than appeals to emotion and
personal belief.’16 Post-truth, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, and
populism emphasise the local, personal truth above the rational, scientific, or ac-
ademic truth. Today, according to sociologist Scott Lash, we live in a world where
space, distance, and the linear experience of time have been compressed by
modern media and communications networks17 (more on this via Route 3). This
is partly due to the speed with which ‘news’ reaches us, making it very difficult to
make sense of these splinters of information. We read the headlines, but we do
not know how to assimilate and analyse them because we lack background infor-
mation and specialised knowledge.

Additionally, today we are left much more to our own devices. It would take a lot
of time and effort to make sense of and fact-check all the information reaching us
through our smartphones, tablets, computers, and traditional media. For some,
these technological advances might not have changed much, since they still place
their trust in one or more selected media outlets. A Pew Research Center survey
conducted in 2016 revealed that older generations (65+) were more likely to be
in the group of Americans (around 50%) loyal to one or a few media sources, and
favoured TV over other media. However, those who do consult a greater variety of
different sources were found to be more distrustful of the information they were
given, especially information disseminated online.18 For a more in-depth analysis
of the relationship between trust, politics, and the media, consult Route 6.

Inclusionary Communications:
Elevating ‘Subjugated Knowledges’

The interconnectedness of modern society also makes it more difficult to have

confidence in national politicians. Power (economic and political) is global, but
so are challenges, while ‘institutions of political action remain… local’.19 Indi-
vidual lives are strongly shaped by a capitalist system of economic liberalism,

10
whose power lies in networks that transcend national boundaries. Yet the effects
of decisions and developments in this network are experienced on a local level,
where not everyone is included in the benefits of globalisation.20 According to
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells, power is located in the networks that oper-
ate in the ‘space of flows’ (of information, money, ideas). Not everyone, however,
plays an active part in these power networks. The unemployed, the homeless,
and ethnic or religious minorities, for example, are often excluded from infor-
mation and communication structures.21 David Goodhart describes this division
as the difference between ‘the people who see the world from Anywhere and
the people who see it from Somewhere’.22 This discrepancy and inequality leads
to a lack of confidence in the abilities of our politicians,23 and feelings of resent-
ment toward the global intellectual elite.24

‘Populist’ politicians capitalize on these sentiments by offering a sense of em-

powerment. They claim that no background or specialised knowledge is neces-
sary or even desirable to solve domestic and international problems. Norbert
Hofer, far-right candidate in the elections for the Austrian Presidency in 2016,
used the slogan: ‘For Austria with heart and soul.’25 The campaign thus implied
that these emotional faculties were more important than intellectual ground-
ing and objective deliberation, qualities for which his contender, the academic
Alexander van der Bellen, was frequently attacked.

In this light we might understand ‘post-truth’ politics as privileging an emotion-

al and local approach to knowledge and to justifying truth claims. While Har-
ry Frankfurt defines a person who ‘bullshits’ as someone who does not care if
he is telling the truth or not,26 post-truth in the context of populism is slightly
different. Truth is still important, but instead of scientific research, for exam-
ple, personal experiences and emotions are favoured as guiding principles for
making the right judgments and seeking truth. Communication studies scholar
Liesbet van Zoonen describes this tendency as ‘I-pistemology’, where questions
of knowledge are answered ‘from the basis of I (as in me, myself, I) and Identi-
ty, with the Internet as the great facilitator’.27 The OED definition of ‘post-truth’
quoted above suggests that making sense of the world via emotions and be-
liefs is diametrically opposed to truth. However, it would seem that it is just the
kind of hierarchical reading of truth that an inclusionary communication strategy
seeks to challenge.

In a lecture given in 1976 the French critical theorist Michel Foucault appeals
to his listeners to be attentive to those areas of knowledge that have been sub-
jugated and brushed over in the general discourse. Such as a ‘particular, local,
regional knowledge’, which he terms ‘le savoir des gens’.28 He does not men-
tion populism. But examples of these ‘subjugated knowledges’ in the context
of post-truth and populism might be the local, personal experiences of those

11
dissatisfied populations that have not felt the advantages of globalisation and
capitalism.29

A survey in Britain by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) revealed
that 56% of people questioned did not feel adequately represented by any po-
litical party. Individuals in this group were more likely to hold ‘ ‘blue collar’ jobs
and live in local authority or Housing Association properties’.30 Some politicians
capitalize on this representation gap, taking an overly personal and emotional
approach to truth. Such a ‘truth’-strategy becomes problematic when it does not
confine itself to politics. It can lead to the politicisation of the spheres of science
and academics and resulting in claims that deny climate change, distort immi-
gration and unemployment statistics, or criminalize drug addicts. The spreading
of fake news on behalf of and by politicians and political movements leads to
the shutting down of discourse because it creates exclusionary conceptual frame-
works. In turn, these accommodate only information that fits into such frame-
works. Likewise, focusing on emotions and personal experience creates solidar-
ity and empathy within a selected ‘core’ group, but this sense of inclusiveness is
dependent on the clear exclusion of a demonized ‘other’—the outsider or for-
eigner.31 Such a polarization can make true dialogue with other political opin-
ions difficult, if not impossible. Audiences might become so invested in a certain
worldview that it becomes impossible for them to accommodate a new fact or
truth, which would require the recognition that they were ‘wrong’ and cause un-
certainty.32 Indeed, we might describe ‘populist’ politics as sharing the seductive
quality that the scholar of political marketing Nicholas O’Shaughnessy attributes
to propaganda, which he describes as the ‘antithesis of the objective search for
and exposition of truth’.33

***

Populist rhetoric and the spreading of fake news are both highly strategic com-
municative approaches that require the actor to know his/her audience well and
anticipate their reactions. Populist politics take this even further; it presents emo-
tional and personal sources of truth as superior to knowledge gained from sci-
ence, academic inquiry, or discussion. This approach has found fertile ground in
the current political climate. Our times are characterised by a growing dissatisfac-
tion with and a lack of trust in government institutions.34 In some cases populist
rhetoric has reinforced, rather than alleviated such sentiments. Simultaneously,
dramatic changes in the media environment in terms of volume, costs, speed, and
multi-directionality have made it easier to spread false information for economic
and political gain, reinforcing ‘populist’ arguments for a personal, local approach
to truth.

12
The importance and power of ‘truth’ has not declined. Rather, the question of
what qualifies as a legitimate source of truth has been politicised.

This is because a ‘populist’ movement will often use the notion of antagonism
between ‘the people’ and a political elite to garner support. According to such a
view, this elite uses science, statistics, and scholarship to maintain their hegemon-
ic position. In opposition to this, populists foster and benefit from a political and
media environment where it has become more acceptable to no longer couch
opinion in factual and ‘rational’ arguments, but to audaciously argue from a more
emotional and idiosyncratic standpoint. All the while making their appeal to so-
called ‘ordinary people’.

Additionally the volume of (often contradictory) information freely available to-

day has created an environment in which open disagreement over factual infor-
mation has become more commonplace, of which a tweeting President Trump
is merely the epitome. It seems to be more than a coincidence that especially
those politicians who have been described as ‘populist’—Donald Trump in the
USA, Narendra Modi in India, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Nigel Farage in
the UK, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France—have been accused of
distorting facts, and commonly question sources of information previously con-
sidered authoritative and trustworthy, i.e. the scientific community, journalists,
and academics. This enables them to raise the legitimacy of their personalised,
‘authentic’ standpoints. Listening to the voice of the expert would mean sub-
jecting oneself to an imposed authority that goes against what the philosopher
Isaiah Berlin back in 1967 identified as the ‘real populist ideology’ of ‘unbroken,
continuous plebiscite’.35

Post-truth and populism are both used as shorthand expressions to explain polit-
ical developments that are in fact related to or even caused by more fundamen-
tal issues of social and economic inequality and uncertainty, as well as a lack of
popular democratic engagement and a dearth of visionary politicians. Questions
such as these indicate the need for discussion, not shutting down dialogue. We
can only hope to address the challenges we face by communicating and taking
into account emotional and scientific, local and global truths.

13
NEVER MIND THE BUZZWORDS:
DEFINING FAKE NEWS
AND POST-TRUTH
Chelsea McManus and Celeste Michaud
The previous Route has shown that the relationship between post-truth, popu-
lism, and fake news is often described in overly simplistic terms. Simply proclaim-
ing that we are now living in an era of fake news and post-truth politics does
not actually help us to understand these phenomena. This Route will trace the
development of these concepts, tease out what is unique about the way they
are currently being used, and identify what is at stake in the different definitions.

Fake News Is Not New

In 1674, King Charles II issued A Proclamation to Restrain the Spreading of False
News, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government.36 Prior to the En-
glish Civil War, there was strict censorship of printed materials.37 Since the late
1630s the press had been increasingly exploited to manipulate public opinion
in England.38 However, between the 1640s and 1650s, the rapid proliferation of
partisan pamphlets led to a growing concern around the politicisation of the
press.39 During the English Civil War print became the ideological battleground-

14
upon which the parliamentarians, Cromwellians, royalists, and Puritan preachers,
fought each other and amongst themselves to manipulate political thought.40 Af-
ter 1660, censorship was reinstated in England.41

While the spreading of false news had been a growing challenge since the in-
vention of the printing press in 1439,42 the term is relatively new to the English
language. ‘Fake news’ only entered the lexicon from the United States in the latter
part of the 19th century, with the word ‘fake’ only gaining currency in the English
vocabulary in the late 18th century.43 Prior to the 19th century, lies printed by the
press were called false news.44

Regardless, the content of fake news stories has not changed significantly. With
no way to quickly verify facts, and the conceptualization of journalistic ethics
only emerging in the 20th century, fake news has always been a part of the print-
ed press. The first journalistic code of ethical practice was drafted in the United
States during the early 1920s, and the first book on the subject was published
in 1924 by Nelson Antrim Crawford.45 In 1936, the United Kingdom and Ireland’s
National Union of Journalists adopted a journalistic code of conduct; most Euro-
pean countries followed suit between the 1920s and 1930s.46 Prior to this, sensa-
tionalist print had long been used to increase readership, and therefore profits.47
‘Yellow Journalism’, a particular type of sensationalist print popularized in the late
1890s, was most frequently associated with the fiercely competitive rivalry be-
tween newspapermen William Randolf Hearst, who owned the New York Journal,
and Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the New York World.48 The defining characteristics of
yellow journalism include the use of ‘impostures and frauds of various kinds, such
as ‘faked’ interviews and stories, misleading heads’, and doctored photos.49 While
yellow journalism had reached its peak by the turn of the century, the popularity
of tabloids rose during the 1940s, and while sales declined during the 1970s, the
circulation of tabloids continues to this day.50

Sensationalist stories, as academic and journalist Chris Frost argues, were used to
increase newspaper sales51, but, moreover, fake news has been used to achieve
financial gains through the manipulation of stock prices.52 European historian
Catherine Davies has suggested that the financial ‘Panic of 1873’, which began
with the failure of the New York banking house Jay Cooke & Co., was caused, in
part, by the spread of rumours over telegraphic cables.53 As a result, the following
year, New York State Senator John C. Jacobs introduced a bill to ‘declare the pub-
lication and dissemination of false news a crime’. Senator Jacob’s bill did not pass,
but as reported by The New York Times, the bill sought to criminalise the circula-
tion of ‘false intelligence, with the intent of depreciating or advancing the market
price of the public funds of the United States’.54 The issues surrounding financial
gains from fake news remain today. Fake news is profitable for those who produce

15
it; from Macedonian teenagers who financially profited from the advertising rev-
enue gained by sharing pro-Trump news articles on pro-Trump Facebook pages,55
to companies who pay for the production of fake news to conflate stock market
prices.56

… and Neither Is Post-Truth

Fake news, then, is not something that emerged during the 2016 American pres-
idential election, but has been a contentious issue since the initial stages of mass
print. Similarly, even though the term ‘post-truth’ seems to have been coined
much more recently, it too is not new. In 1830, Physician John Abercrombie pub-
lished Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and The Investigation of Truth.57
This celebrated book attempts to provide a thorough philosophical and scientific
review of how the mind understands truth. Although Abercrombie did not use
the term post-truth per se, issues that we now associate with post-truth, post-
truth politics, or the post-truth era are found in various editions of this book. For
example in the 8th edition, Abercrombie explains the following:

The investigation and control of emotions … relates

to those measures by which the statesman attempts
to control and regulate the conduct of masses of
mankind united as members of a great civil commu-
nity.58

[….]

The second source of uncertainty in this class of

sciences consists in the fact, that, even after we
have ascertained the true relations of things, we
may be disappointed of the results which we wish
to produce, when we bring their tendencies into
operation.59

Although it is hard to determine who coined the term post-truth, Abercrombie’s

book demonstrates that questioning truth, questioning scientific facts and evi-
dence, and using emotions for political gain do not originate from Brexit or from
the U.S. presidential election.

However, data gathered from both Google Trends60 and the TV News Archive61
seem to affirm the commonly held belief that fake news is a recent phenomenon

16
that catapulted into the mainstream after the November 2016 American Presi-
dential Election. Prior to November, neither ‘fake news’ nor ‘post-truth’ were part
of popular discourses in the media or online.62 But despite their absence, their
effects were playing out on social media and in Western politics. While both fake
news and post-truth are not new challenges facing governments, something
about their recent popular use seems different.

Towards Definitions
In linguistic terms, using the prefix post- suggests that the ‘specified concept has
become unimportant or irrelevant’.63 Post-truth would therefore imply that truth
is no longer relevant, and more importantly suggest that it was preceded at some
point in time by an era of truth. Route 4 illustrates why speaking of eras of ‘truth’
and ‘post-truth’ is overly simplistic by looking at how we have tried to define ‘truth’
throughout centuries of philosophical inquiry.

Post-truth has also been used as part of the phrase ‘post-truth politics’. Jane Suiter,
Director of the Institute for Future Media and Journalism at Dublin City University
defined post-truth politics as a situation ‘where appeals to emotion are dominant
and factual rebuttals or fact checks are ignored on the basis that they are mere
assertions’.64 Will Fish, professor of Philosophy at Massey University, further adds
that post-truth politics involves making misleading assertions and disregarding
facts ‘for the purpose of gaining an electoral advantage’,65 and the journalist Evan
Davis explains that politicians use ‘extreme exaggeration or direct falsehood in
order to draw attention to the issues that favoured their side of the argument’.66
In post-truth politics, ‘what seems to matter most is … the ability of a nativist or
populist leader to appeal to the instincts and nostalgic emotions of this group’,67
as has been discussed in the previous Route. Moreover, as explained by Nobel
Prize-winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, ‘when faced
with a truth which contradicts a bias we hold, we as a species are likely to ditch
the truth’.68 Ultimately, post-truth entails that facts do not matter should they not
support one’s pre-existing opinions or ideas.

Defining ‘fake news’ is even less straightforward. Grammatically, it is simply a

‘self-explanatory compound noun’, where fake is understood as something that is
false, or counterfeit, and news is ‘material reported in a newspaper or news peri-
odical or on a newscast’.69 This definition becomes increasingly muddled, howev-
er, when taking into consideration overlapping concepts, such as satire, ‘bullshit’,
propaganda, and mis/disinformation. Does fake news automatically take the form
of propaganda? Does it include political satire? Does it include satirical website-

17
containing misinformation, such as The Onion? These are questions addressed in
the literature about fake news, but the variety of understandings makes it chal-
lenging to pin down what should be included in its definition.

Satire, in the form of political news programs, is the use of comedy to blur the
line between political news and entertainment.70 Political satire programs have
been shown to influence their audiences’ opinions, beliefs, and perceptions in
that they shape how people process political information,71 and can reframe pub-
lic discourses around political events.72 ‘Bullshit’ is a catch-all term that includes
half-truths, lies, and misrepresentations; but most importantly for bullshit, it in-
volves a disregard for truth altogether, for the purpose of crafting a narrative.73
Propaganda, on the other hand, does not disregard truth, but uses elements
of truth in the ‘deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions’, in order to
achieve a specific response or reaction from an audience, meant to benefit and
‘further the desired intent of the propagandist’.74 Similarly, disinformation is the
manipulation of information that purposefully aims to mislead and deceive, while
misinformation is inaccurate information that is the result of an honest mistake
or of negligence.75 Whether difference in intent leads to difference in effect is,
however, a more difficult distinction to make, which will be addressed in Route
10. Disinformation is not limited to fake news; it can include deceptive advertis-
ing, doctored or forged documents, and manipulated websites, and is used in
warfare,76 environmental politics,77 and public health debates,78 amongst others.79
In understanding fake news, there are competing arguments regarding which of
these concepts, if any, should be included in the definition.

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy define fake news
as ‘misinformation that has the trappings of traditional news media’, however
recognizing the ‘ambiguity concerning the precise distinctions between ‘fake
news’ on the one hand, and ideologically slanted news, disinformation, misin-
formation, propaganda, etc. on the other’.80 Similarly, some insist that propa-
ganda should be included, such as Irina Khaldarova and Mervi Pantti, who argue
that ‘fake news often takes the form of propaganda entertainment … which is a
combination of scandalous material, blame and denunciations, dramatic music
and misleading images taken out of context’.81

Yet, there are important differences between these concepts that allow us to
distinguish them from fake news. Propaganda and fake news do hold similari-
ties, in that they are both intent on deceiving audiences by distorting facts and
truths. However a noteworthy difference is that traditionally, propaganda has
largely been a state controlled initiative, whereas the recent wave of fake news
appears as both private and state enterprises.82 While political satire programs
such as The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Kenya’s The XYZ Show, and the French Les

18
Guignols, are modelled as ‘fake evening news shows’,83 they do not fall under the
umbrella of ‘fake news’, as the intent is not to deceive the audience, but to enter-
tain.84

Given these nuances, in order to better understand—and to counter—fake news,

it is best to define the term narrowly. If the term ‘fake news’ comes to encompass
everything from false advertising to state-sponsored propaganda, to any infor-
mation one disagrees with, then it will lose all meaning. Hunt Allcott and Matthew
Gentzkow define fake news as ‘news articles that are intentionally and verifiably
false, and could mislead readers’.85 This definition is similar to those put forward
by journalists, who argue that fake news consists of ‘deliberately constructed lies,
in the form of news articles, meant to mislead the public’.86 This fits the defini-
tion of disinformation, as it is the manipulation of information with the purpose
to mislead and deceive. Misinformation should however also be included in the
definition of fake news. When unwittingly repeated, disinformation becomes mis-
information.87 Even though not deliberate, misinformation can equally affect the
audience regardless of the intention behind it. Hence, we define fake news as the
dissemination of false information via media channels (print, broadcast, online). This
can be deliberate (disinformation), but can also be the result of an honest mistake or
negligence (misinformation).

However, since the second half of 2016 the term ‘fake news’ has experienced an
evolution in meaning. The way that ‘fake news’ is used in popular discourse has
shifted further away from academic understanding. While the term was initially
used to describe fabricated and false news stories, ‘fake news’ is now also used to
dismiss information that one disagrees with, for the purpose of closing down de-
bate.88 When President Trump criticizes The New York Times, NBC News, and CNN of
being ‘failing’ ‘fake news’ media, one might almost see this as a modern version of
the proclamation of King Charles II.89 However, there is an important difference.
While Charles II was decrying the act of spreading false news, the U.S. President
is using the term to discredit the total journalistic practice of these institutions.
He, moreover, suggested that judgment of media outlets was not a question of
factual accuracy, but of alignment with a set of views.

‘Fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ are associated terms as they both describe a disregard
for truths and facts. As noted above, the challenge of post-truth politics is the
tendency to use only facts that support a specific point of view whilst dismissing
those that challenge it. Interestingly, the most recent use of the term ‘fake news’
resembles the definition of post-truth more closely than the original definition of
‘fake news’, turning a descriptive term into a derogatory expression.

19
What Is at Stake?
After reviewing the history and defining the terms fake news and post-truth, it
is important to ask ourselves: ‘What is at stake?’ If the spreading of fictitious and
deceitful news stories has been a problem prior to the Internet, mass media, the
first printed newspaper, and even before the invention of the printing press, what
makes this moment unique?

As post-truth is associated with the ‘growing skepticism in society toward sci-

ence’,90 academia, journalism, and other voices that were previously considered
authoritative,91 there is a growing danger of the development of policies that
disregard factual evidence. A noteworthy case that had lasting negative conse-
quences was the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when it came to light that the Bush Ad-
ministration had manipulated scientific evidence and intelligence to justify a mil-
itary intervention.92 Most recently, President Donald Trump’s position on climate
change demonstrates ‘blatant political disregard for scientific evidence’,93 a policy
change in the context of post-truth politics with potential long-term consequenc-
es. At stake, then, is not necessarily the definitional challenge of post-truth and
fake news. Rather, what is a stake is the risk that only a limited set of information
and evidence is considered in political discourse and policy development.

20
 THE TRUTH ABOUT TRUTH?
Erin Duffy and Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi
Appeals to relativist notions of truth have revealed that the way we judge truth
has become a political as much as a philosophical debate. Thus, it is even more im-
portant that we carefully consider terms such as ‘truth’, ‘proof’, or ‘evidence’, par-
ticularly in the era of instant news, where the court of public opinion is constantly
challenged to judge the truthfulness of information.

Contemporary discussions of post-truth and fake news are coloured by a sense of

dejection and perplexity. However, the fact that these terms have entered the polit-
ical debate also points to an increased sensitivity to terms such as ‘truth’, ‘lies’, ‘facts’,
and ‘evidence’ among the wider population. Renewed attention to the topic in pop-
ular discourse does not mean, however, that we have to reinvent the wheel with
regard to assessing it. Rather, we can draw on extensive debate and knowledge
dating back to Ancient Greece to understand what is at stake. This Route provides
an introduction to the debates regarding the meaning and definition, and hence
the evaluation, of ‘truth’, ranging from the definitions used in epistemology to those
used in the courtroom. This, we hope, will equip the reader with a better under-
standing of the debates behind the buzzwords and hence provide the tools to eval-
uate the variety of claims to truth being made in the current media environment.

21
The Facts of the Matter
We cannot discuss truth without considering what we mean by ‘fact’. A fact can
be distinguished from a belief, theory, or subjective value because it is objectively
known or can be proved as true—or, at the very least, has not (yet) been proven
false.94 Stating a ‘fact’ is hence an inherent claim to stating truth. The boundaries
of ‘fact’ are, however, blurred by the emergence and increased use of variations
of this concept. Most recently, the notion of ‘alternative facts’ has entered politi-
cal discourse through Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to U.S. President Donald
Trump. Conway defended former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s pro-
nouncement that President Trump had had ‘the largest audience to ever witness
an inauguration, period’. Comparative photos of previous presidential inaugura-
tions featured on various media platforms in the following days, disputing the
fact that President Trump’s ceremony had attracted such an audience. Yet, in an
interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Conway argued:

Kellyanne Conway: You’re saying it’s a falsehood.

And they’re giving—Sean
Spicer, our press secretary—
gave alternative facts.

Chuck Todd [moderator]: Alternative facts aren’t facts,

they are falsehoods. 95

Conway’s use of the term ‘alternative fact’ can be seen as a way to mitigate the neg-
ative effect of a claim being dismissed as a blatant lie. While in this case the pho-
tographic evidence from the inaugural event clearly contradicted Sean Spicer’s
claim, hence closely connecting the meaning of truth and fact, there are cases
in which this connection is not so straightforward. Let us consider the proverbial
phrase: ‘Do you see the glass as half-empty or half-full?’ Even though stating that
half of the glass is filled is arguably a fact, whether it is half-empty or half-full
depends on which representation is more attractive to you at a given moment.

By introducing the term ‘alternative facts’ Kellyanne Conway created the impres-
sion that truth regarding the crowd at the inauguration was open to interpreta-
tion, just like whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. Blurring the boundaries
between cases where ‘truth’ is a matter of perception and where it is not can be
used to create a favourable perception of reality. If the situation or your interests
were to change, a review of the facts of the matter could bring to light a different
interpretation—or, in other words, reveal alternative facts.96

22
Another label that was recently authored by Damian Thompson is ‘counterknowl-
edge’, defined as ‘(m)isinformation packaged to look like fact’. Yet, it can easily be
refuted by offering counter-evidence or by highlighting the lack of evidentiary
support.97 Such uses of ‘fact’ were rife in the run-up to the Kenyan presidential
elections in 2017.98 For example, the fake news website Foreign Policy Journal pub-
lished an article falsely claiming that opposition leader Raila Odinga had orches-
trated the attacks on Kenya’s white-owned ranches.99

Whilst the significance of these ‘pseudo-facts’ becomes most clear in high-stakes

events such as the Kenyan elections, the term has long been used in disciplines
beyond politics. The scientific understanding of a pseudo-fact, for example, is ‘a
statement based on deceptive or weak inductive arguments, involving observa-
tion or experimentation that cannot be reproduced and verified by others, in-
cluding experts in relevant fields’.100 The concept of a pseudo-fact can be applied
to ‘truths’ in international politics. For example, in September 2016 an aid convoy
was bombed in Syria. Arriving at the scene of the incident only 11 weeks after
the bombing, the UN Headquarters Board of Inquiry were able to deduce, on the
evidence available to them, that it most likely deliberately targeted.101 A defini-
tive and verifiable truth, however, remains difficult or even impossible to prove,
a challenge especially present in international politics, operating outside of con-
trolled laboratory conditions.

Whichever label is put on ‘fact-related ideas’,102 positioning information as ‘fact’

inherently communicates to the audience that the truth of a matter is being por-
trayed. Yet, stating a fact does not disregard the need for evidence to verify its
truthfulness. Especially with the boundaries of the concept ‘fact’ being stretched,
it is essential to interrogate the ways in which we assess statements or facts to be
true, which brings us all the way back to Aristotle.

Is the Truth Out There?

Contemporary discussions about fake news and truth are rooted in longstanding
philosophical debates about how we assess truth-claims. In this Route we will
introduce the reader to the Correspondence and Coherence Theories of Truth.
According to Aristotle, truth is ‘telling it as it is’ (as we would say today).103 This
understanding of truth lays the foundation for the Correspondence Theory of
Truth.104 It proposes that ‘a judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the
external reality’.105 In other words, there are universal and unchanging facts about
the world that can be discovered. A statement is true if it accurately describes
these ‘objective features of the world’. 106

23
Skeptics of the Correspondence Theory regard this approach to truth as being
circular. They argue that facts are merely statements constructed on the basis of
what we already believe to be true.107 The Coherence Theory of truth opposes
the idea of Correspondence, stating that truth is based on the coherence of a set
of propositions.108 Proponents of this theory do not believe that facts or states
of affairs can be objectively known.109 Questions remain, however. Who gets to
set these propositions? Are they universal, as is the claim of religious belief, or
is a statement true as long as it is coherent with an individual’s beliefs, whatever
those may be?

It is often the public who determine—rightly or wrongly—what constitutes truth.

This public does not always apply a consistent and rigorous methodology in as-
sessing truth.

It allows everything into evidence and has no mech-

anism to separate facts about the case from the ex-
periences and political leanings of the millions of us
who are all acting as witnesses, judges, and jurors.110

In some cases information is believed merely because it is trending on social

media, because it fits into a pre-existing understanding of the world, or because
it is what we currently believe en masse to be true. We judge truth on ‘dynamic
narrative’ and knowledge-based interpretations of the world around us.111 Fur-
thermore, we tend to gravitate towards those who believe the same as we do,
for strength in numbers gives us the courage of our convictions. This is especially
true in the contemporary context, in which ‘[s]imilarity breeds connection.’112

For example, according to the Ipsos 2016 Perils of Perception survey, many in
France believe that Muslims are ‘taking over’—a ‘truth’ partly based on the per-
ceived fact that the number of Muslims ‘s’accroîtrait dangereusement, chercheraient
à submerger et, in fine, à dissoudre les cultures nationales’.113 However, France has
significantly overestimated the size of its Muslim population: the average guess
of those interviewed is that 31% of the population is Muslim when, in reality, it is
only 7.5%.114 Moreover, the average guess on the size of the Muslim population
by 2020 is 40% whereas the actual prediction is considerably lower, at 8.3%.115 In
terms of the Coherence Theory of Truth, a popular perception about the size of the
Muslim population became the proposition upon which the judgement regard-
ing this (exaggerated) claim to truth was based.

Current debates on truth are not new, but rooted in longstanding and complex
epistemological problems. In assessing what is at stake with truth in the current
media environment, the Correspondence versus Coherence contrast can shed
some light on one of the core dilemmas we are facing. Recent debates about

24
post-truth have emphasised a Coherence rather than a Correspondence ap-
proach. Awareness of the various methodologies to get to a truth can assist us
not only in understanding our own assessment of truth, but also in evaluating the
provided evidence to statements of truth in political statements and the media.

Assessing the Evidence

Given the extent to which we are influenced by our pre-existing beliefs and the
views of the people around us, one can argue that our judgement of truth will
never be perfect. Approaching ‘truth’ can, however, still be aided by the pro-
vision of some form of evidence. The varied grounds for proving legal, moral,
and scientific truths are reflected in the numerous existing understandings of
the nature of ‘evidence’.116 For example, the evidentiary standard for proving
a scientific truth is particularly rigorous, requiring extensive research and the
general acceptance of the scientific community (at minimum, through peer
review). In a legal sense, evidence can be defined as ‘any material which tends
to persuade the court of the truth or probability of some fact asserted before
it’.117 However, the standard of proof for criminal cases is ‘beyond reasonable
doubt’,118 while the standard for civil cases is that something is proven on a
‘balance of probabilities’. 119

Evidence is inextricably linked to the concept of proof. There are various types
of proof, reached through scientific, mathematical, and logical methodolo-
gies. Consequently, although not infallible, such truths are considered more
certain because they are usually based on extensive research and reasoning.
However, proof in the everyday context finds more similarities in the legal
environment, where proof is determined by direct evidence,120 circumstantial
evidence,121 and/or argumentation in front of juries, basing a judgement on
coherence with past rulings.

Two final points need to be addressed regarding the standards of proof and
evidence in society today. First, in the context of the communications revolu-
tion, scholar Ben Mor questions ‘whether the unprecedented intensification
of cross-cultural interaction that [the communications revolution] has fos-
tered will ultimately generate shared global norms on the meaning of proof
and the criteria of evidence (analogous to the status of court proceedings).’122
This in itself presents difficulties—determining universal criteria to which ev-
ery country willingly subscribes has (thus far) proven impossible for any given
international court.

25
Second, under certain circumstances, a truth-claim may lack proof but there
are those who still believe the claim, more recently described as ‘truthiness.’
Satirical newscaster Stephen Colbert popularised the notion of ‘truthiness’
on The Colbert Report in October 2005, defining the term as ‘something that
seems like truth—the truth we want to exist’.123 Consider Colbert’s example of
the 2003 Iraq War:

If you think about it, maybe there are a few miss-

ing pieces to the rationale for war. But doesn’t
taking Saddam out feel like the right thing?124

Despite the inability to find nuclear stockpiles in Iraq, over a decade later 42%
of Americans still believed that U.S. forces discovered weapons of mass de-
struction there.125 A lack of evidence does not hinder belief, for truthiness is a
version of truth unburdened by fact. This leads us back to Conway’s notion of
‘alternative facts’, a verbal gesture that seemed equally unburdened by facts
and relativised truth.

Multiple Versions of Truth?

What are the implications of relativist ideas about truth? How are they differ-
ent from the ideas of post-modernist thinkers? The question of relativist or
absolutist notions of truth is related to the Correspondence versus Coherence
debate. Absolutists argue that something can be universally true across time
and space, whereas a relativist would state that truth always depends on its
context. Relativist notions of truth are often asserted to have been popular-
ised by post-modern thinkers. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche fa-
mously declared that there was no such thing as a ‘real’ world, and that ‘[t]here
are no facts, only interpretations.’126 What is understood to be fact ultimately
depends on intersubjective agreement,127 thus implying that facts are mere-
ly a socially-determined construct. This approach calls into question whether
there is such a thing as ‘fact’, or whether facts merely serve as a construct de-
veloped as a means to demonstrate truth.128 Despite the ubiquity of relative
truths in the contemporary context, there are those who claim that their truth
is absolute, such as Daesh and the Kim regime in North Korea. To find out
more about how to negotiate the tension between claims to absolute truth
and effective strategic communications, follow Routes 7 and 8. It is tempting
to identify post-modern thought as the origin of relativistic thinking. This is,
however, as Kevin Marsh points out, ‘a misguided attribution of blame’.129 This
debate has always been a part of philosophical discussions about truth. So
what has changed?

26
 ***

We can make a better-informed judgment about truth and falsehoods if we un-

derstand the meaning of these terms. In this Route we have presented the reader
with some of the key concepts in the debate on truth.

In the absence of a single, universal definition of truth, identifying what kind of

truth-claim is being presented in a statement, an image, or a piece of news is es-
sential. If truth is relative, what does its context tell us? Based on which system of
thought and on whose propositions does it claim to be true?

Being able to address these questions when encountering information, fact or

fiction, might not reveal a universal truth, but will certainly enable us to put truth
in perspective and discover something about the worldview of those speaking
their truth.

27
 WHEN DISHONESTY IS THE
BEST POLICY. REALLY?
Mitchell Ilbury
‘How can you tell when a politician is lying?’ the joke goes, ‘because his lips are
moving.’ We may roll our eyes when we hear it, partly because it is not that funny,
but also because we are well aware of the fact that leaders lie. Sometimes, how-
ever, leaders should lie, as it can be an important tool of statecraft. Honesty can
compromise military planning, and in the international system, diplomatic relations
between states may require a well-placed lie to gain strategic advantage, or prevent
another actor from doing so. In such circumstances, not only is it justifiable, but
leaders may even have an obligation to lie. While the potential for abuse means
lying should remain a controversial and scrutinised aspect of leadership, it is im-
portant to acknowledge that it sometimes functions as a necessary feature of gov-
ernment.

The End Justifies the Means?

‘To be truthful in all declarations is, therefore, a sacred and unconditionally com-
manding law of reason that admits of no expediency whatsoever.’130 Hardly words

28
we would hear from a politician. In fact, this was Immanuel Kant. He believed that
one should never lie, no matter the circumstances, no matter the consequences.
His absolutist stance stipulated that lying is never justified. Many politicians and
military leaders would probably disagree. To them, it may be justifiable to lie in
the name of ‘national security’ or ‘the public good’, or as one former Israeli Prime
Minister said, ‘for the sake of the land of Israel’.131 In contrast to Kant, they would
generally take a consequentialist approach; in other words, the end justifies the
means. This is why U.S. President John F. Kennedy lied to Soviet Premier Krush-
chev at the time the Bay of Pigs invasion, saying, ‘I have previously stated, and I
repeat now, that the U.S. plans no military intervention in Cuba’, all the while the
U.S. had been planning military intervention in Cuba.132 And similarly, why Lincoln
White of the U.S. State Department said there was ‘absolutely no—N-O, no—de-
liberate attempt to violate Soviet airspace’, after Gary Powers’ U-2 was shot down
over Soviet territory, initially suggesting the U.S. was not spying, but on a ‘weather
mission’.133

In Why Leaders Lie, John Mearsheimer categorises these kinds of lies as strategic
lies, which, he argues, ‘aim to facilitate general welfare and they usually have a
modicum of legitimacy’.134 U.S. Defense Department spokesman Arthur Sylvester
tried to make this distinction at a press conference on the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis when he said that although the government must not put out false infor-
mation, ‘the inherent right of the government to lie to save itself when faced with
nuclear disaster is basic’.135 As far as legitimacy goes, lying to avoid nuclear disas-
ter has more than a modicum—it is perhaps obligatory. Few, if any, would insist
on a ‘right to know’ if it meant they might get annihilated in a nuclear holocaust.

Lies for Lives

Attempting to avoid nuclear disaster is a legitimate reason to lie, but the ethical
scope for lying may be wider. In 1797, Benjamin Constant published an article
alluding to Kant’s strict absolutist prohibition on lying, suggesting that if such a
principle was applied too strictly it could lead to the destruction of society.136 No
one, he suggests, has a right to a truth that harms others. To this extent, claimed
Jody Powell, press secretary for President Jimmy Carter, ‘[Arthur] Sylvester, of
course, was right. In certain circumstances, the government not only has the right
but a positive obligation to lie.’137 Powell told a lie on behalf of Carter when the
U.S. was planning a rescue mission during the Iran hostage crisis. He told reporters
that there was absolutely no chance of a rescue mission when in fact preparations
for a raid were well under way, and U.S. aircraft would be entering Iranian airspace
in the next 48 hours.138 Was such a lie justifiable? Telling the truth, and admitting
to their preparations for a ‘surprise’ mission, would have risked not only the lives

29
of the hostages, but also those entrusted with carrying out the raid. It is unlike-
ly any reasonable citizen would expect such information to be disclosed, risking
the lives of their servicemen and women, purely for the sake of not wanting to
be deceived. In fact, Jack Nelson, the Los Angeles Times reporter whose question
prompted Powell’s lie said afterwards, ‘I didn’t like being lied to…but I didn’t have
a great deal of problem with [Powell’s] doing it. If it was a real matter of life and
death, and he thought it was, I can’t argue with what he did.’ 139 ‘Only lie to save a
life’ is perhaps a justifiable mantra our leaders can live by.

To this end, lies can provide the necessary cover for politically sensitive nego-
tiations. Regarding discussions between the British government and the IRA in
November 1993, Prime Minister John Major said ‘to sit down and talk with Mr.
[Gerry] Adams and the Provisional IRA…would turn my stomach. We will not do
it.’140 Major had been secretly corresponding with former IRA commander Martin
McGuiness but would have faced significant pressure to break contact if the talks
were made public, especially after the Warrington bombings earlier that year,
which killed two children.141 It would have been extremely difficult to persuade
the IRA to announce a ceasefire in 1994 had these talks broken down because of
public pressure. Major lied for the sake of a peaceful end, believed to be in the
best interests of everyone.

If ‘lies for lives’ are justifiable, what is the price of life? For politicians with an eye
for power, the primary value is political capital. In August 2017, at a press con-
ference announcing the safe release of a South African who had been abduct-
ed by al-Qaeda, South Africa’s foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said,
‘The South African government does not subscribe to the payment of ransoms.’142
However, the New York Times subsequently published evidence that suggested
his release did come at a price: 3.5 million Euros.143 Some context to value: the
cash, allegedly facilitated through an intermediary in an operation managed by
French and South African intelligence, added up to more than 182 times the av-
erage annual salary of an employee of the South African Police Service.144 The
debate about the cost aside, governments have to lie if they do decide to trade
cash for lives. Admitting to paying terrorists would not only risk the ire of allies
that refuse to bow to terrorist pressure, but would be equivalent to holding up a
sign saying, ‘Take our people, we pay!’

The Convenient Lie

For leaders, the necessity to lie often arises from the diversity of the audience.
Arthur Sylvester pointed out that ‘...the assertion that Government information
must always be truthful requires qualification, because […] information may be

30
addressed to the American people, to their adversaries, their friends, to the neu-
trals, or to any combination of them or to all of them at once’.145 Only by acknowl-
edging the complex, interconnected, and uncontrollable media environment,
which reaches friend and foe, can we really understand why leaders lie, and often
should. While this is usually presented as a reason for why leaders should tell the
truth,146 it is also crucial to understanding why sometimes lying or withholding
information can be preferable. Leaders who speak in public must be cognisant
of how the cross-pollinating media ecosystem spreads messages as the wind
spreads dandelion seeds; propagated by misplaced honesty, unwanted weeds
can pop up all over the place. The ones who are aware of this know a well-placed
lie can ride the wind and deliver a fertile fib in the minds of an adversary for stra-
tegic effect. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev exploited this when, between 1957
and 1960, he consistently lied about the Soviet Union’s ‘superior’ Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capability compared to that of the United States. In fact,
the Soviet Union had far fewer ICBM’s, but hoping to deter and coerce the United
States by exaggerating the myth of a ‘missile gap’, Krushchev’s lies successfully
planted the belief in his counterpart that America was at a serious disadvantage.147

Of course, sometimes lies are neither strategic nor malicious in their intent to sow
confusion—just easier than admitting the truth. Robert Mugabe, former Zimba-
bwean president, sat on the stage at the World Economic Forum on Africa in ear-
ly 2017 and said, ‘Zimbabwe is the most highly developed nation in Africa after
South Africa…We are not a poor country.’148 With 72% of its people living in pover-
ty, Zimbabwe is undoubtedly a poor country.149 Incredibility only really matters to
the extent his core security team trust they will get paid. The public’s lease on lies
often depends on their leaders, and to what extent they can be held accountable.

Lie Allowance and its Limits

This ‘lie allowance’, however, does not extend indefinitely. As the philosopher and
ethicist Sissela Bok argues, it is problematic when ‘some come to believe that any
lie can be told so long as they can convince themselves that people will be better
off in the long run’.150 This touches on an important facet of lying: why and when a
leader should lie is often left to the discretion of the liar. Leaders interpret this to
mean that the occasional lie is permissible so long as it functions for, or within, a
wider effort to do what they believe is best for the nation. This may be fine, so long as
they have impeccable judgement and are immune to the corruptive effects of pow-
er—high standards to which not all leaders aspire. In 1985, in a passage that could
easily pass as commentary on the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, Antho-
ny Marro wrote this of a man who also campaigned to ‘Make America Great Again,’

31
Ronald Reagan:

There was a time, early in the Reagan adminis-

tration, when the president’s aides argued that it
didn’t matter whether some of his stories were liter-
ally true—his numerous misstatements of fact, his
confusion about detail, and his repeated anecdotes
about supposed welfare cheats that no one was
ever able to confirm, for example—because they
contained a larger truth.151

The effective—but alarming—aspect of this practice is the public’s consonant

propensity to allow lies for the same reason. President Trump’s lies on the cam-
paign trail were often dismissed by voters as speaking to a larger truth. Lies
are purposefully constructed, which is why they often fit nicely within precon-
ceived ideas, or offer simple summaries and solutions to complex problems;
they are designed to do so.152 This is why it is healthy for the public always to
balance their trust with skepticism. More on this in Route 6.

A very real and understandable concern is that lying breeds lying, and while
lying in the name of national security is permissible, this sets a dangerous prec-
edent. At the heart of this concern is the perceived slippery slope that follows a
lie, and the seemingly inevitable slide in the standards of government, as well
as the fear of what a lie may represent—a more pervasive cancerous iniquity
lurking beneath. Sissela Bok points out for those leaders that justify lying,

…it is a short step to the conclusion that, even if

people will not be better off from a particular lie,
they will benefit by all manoeuvres to keep the
right people in office. Once public servants lose
their bearings this way, all the shabby deceits of
Watergate—the fake telegrams, the erased tapes,
the elaborate cover-ups, the bribing of witnesses
to make them lie, the televised pleas for trust—be-
come possible.153

Harry S. Truman may have been exaggerating slightly when he said of Richard
Nixon, a man he never liked, ‘he can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the
same time… if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his
hand in’,154 but the Watergate scandal did bring attention to the fact that a lie
generally requires more lies to protect it, and if it is important enough, may
prompt further pernicious acts for the purpose of preservation.

32
In The Republic, Plato attempts to lay the foundations of a utopian state, and
points out the need for what he calls a noble lie—a grand myth of civic identity.
Designed primarily to ensure social harmony and to motivate individuals to care
for the city and for one another, the fable underpins a differentiated class struc-
ture, which is a matter of divine dispensation, distinguishing rulers—destined to
be so because of their ‘golden’ souls—from the ‘silver’ souls of the auxiliaries, and
the ‘iron’ and ‘bronze’ of the farmers and artisans.155 It is quite clear that not all
of our leaders are ‘golden-souled’; the corrosive effects of power, and the fallible
element of human nature, mean that whatever the metal from which they are
forged, all are susceptible to the corrosion of lying for the wrong reasons. There
was nothing noble when President Richard Nixon, nicknamed ‘Tricky Dicky’, pro-
claimed defiantly ‘I am not a crook’;156 or when President Bill Clinton said, ‘I want
you to listen to me’ before pointing his finger and almost angrily asserting, ‘I did
not have sexual relations with that woman.’157 However, these examples of U.S.
presidential perfidiousness should not prejudice our beliefs against the potential
legitimacy of lying.

The complexities and many demands of government mean that the question of
whether leaders should lie should be assessed with the appropriate wariness that
contextualises how and why a lie may be told. Only once equipped with this infor-
mation can a citizen distinguish a ‘legitimate’ lie from an ‘illegitimate’ one.

***

In the play Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, the communist character Hoederer,
poses a controversial question of political expediency, ‘Do you think you can gov-
ern innocently?’158 Perhaps, as Hoederer suggests, lies are necessary to govern.
History no doubt holds numerous examples of when leaders have told important
lies that may have saved lives. In these instances, the ‘right to know’ is consid-
ered secondary to national security. It would be wrong, however, for us to wholly
sanction lying by our leaders. The incentives for leaders to justify lying when it is
inappropriate are obvious, thus the narrow scope for legitimate lies will always
be subject to abuse. Instead of rolling our eyes in dismay, we should consider the
sage words of the historian Martin Jay, ‘the ability to detect deception is, after all,
just as functional in evolutionary terms as the ability to deceive’.159

33
 CHANGE AND
21ST CENTURY MEDIA
‘What if the real attraction of the Internet is not its cutting-edge bells
and whistles, its jazzy interface or any of the advanced technology that
underlies its pipes and wires? What if, instead, the attraction is an atavis-
tic throwback to the prehistoric human fascination with telling tales?’
The Cluetrain Manifesto160

Sarah Dooley and Emma Moore with Alexander Averin

The Cluetrain Manifesto, written in 1999, around the advent of the Internet, cel-
ebrates the emergence of a flattened and divided media space. Each individual
user is equal amongst the millions of other users but at the same time divided
as the Internet enables coalescing amongst like-minded people. The sixth of
Cluetrain’s 95 Theses states: ‘The Internet is enabling conversations among hu-
man beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.’161 The Inter-
net is, however, not the only result of technological development. As has been
slowly becoming clear over the past two decades, this new technology might not
be merely ‘enabling conversations’. In order to understand the position of fake
news in our current media environment, one needs to take a bird’s eye view, not
only in space, but also in time.

34
The next few pages will not only outline, but also assess these changes: What
are the innovations that have changed the way we produce and consume media,
and what does our current media environment look like? Are these innovations
only technical, or do they coalesce with other developments in our society? Do
we interact differently with media and news because of these changes, or are
they merely a change in interface enabling the same behaviour as before? And
finally, what is the evidence suggesting a relationship between the current media
environment and the presence and spread of fake news? Discussing these ques-
tions, we will situate fake news in the dynamic landscape of our current media
environment.

What Has Changed?

Marshall McLuhan was among the first scholars who conceptualized the me-
dia and communication environment as broad and dynamic—a ‘medium that
shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action’.162
Developed against the background of rapid technological change, the medi-
um, according to McLuhan, represents a global network, which constitutes a
unified field of experience.163 At the time of writing, in the 1960s, the author
saw means like TV and folk singing as forces that increase global social involve-
ment and connect individuals in unprecedented ways, establishing a ‘global vil-
lage’.164 In the modern media environment, however, the nature of connectivity
is increasingly digital and multichannel. The one-to-many communication para-
digm characterized by a one-way channel between the professional media and
their audiences (TV, printed press, radio) has been replaced by a many-to-many
mode of information exchange where audiences and media platforms are si-
multaneously producing and exchanging content. This development has not
only empowered individuals by effectively turning every Internet user into a
potential content-creator, but has also led to the development of a more high-
choice media environment.165

It is hard to deny the reality of the ongoing ‘democratization of information’

characterised by the greater ability of Internet users to get more and more in-
formation from various sources and encounter different viewpoints.166 Yet, as
Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells points out, there is a flipside to the advan-
tages of these new digital networks. The networks in today’s media space are
also being profoundly influenced by powerful players who perform gatekeep-
ing functions, thus undermining media diversity.167 More specifically, when dis-
cussing ‘network power’ exercised by digital networks, Castells underlines the
importance of the decisions and directions of ‘the programmers’ of such net-

35
works, which are capable of ‘blocking or allowing access to media outlets and/
or to messages conveyed to the network’.168 Building on this argument, Scott
Lash suggests that ‘the information age has replaced ownership and property
relations in the means of production by relations of access and intellectual capi-
tal’.169 Ultimately, as a consequence of digitisation and increased media diversity
we are experiencing a shift from markets to networks, and from ownership to
access. The outcomes of the ‘democratization of information’ are thus mixed—
as the new online media exposes individuals to a diverse spectrum of perspec-
tives on any given issue, the broader environment continues to be dominated
by a small number of power holders who are able to perform regulatory and
coordinating functions.

Algorithms, Bots, and Other Power Brokers of Information

Algorithms deployed by power brokers are now largely in control of selective-
ly predetermining what information we see and where. Broker predictability
means an increase in broker control, which makes them more powerful in terms
of their relationship with individual participants.170 This centralisation of infor-
mation is linear, passive, programmed, and inward looking. Algorithms show
us more of what we think we want to see. Such as what brand of jeans is adver-
tised, what prefilled Google search appears, and suggested AirBnB locations.
Social norms exist online as well as interpersonally and help determine what in-
formation is important through signals, cues, and heuristics.171 Marketing com-
panies interact with these norms to cater to personal preferences by leveraging
friends’ interests, clicks, and purchases. The current media landscape blurs the
distinction between trustworthiness and authority, popularity and engage-
ment.172 This creates ‘filter bubbles’ and ‘echo chambers’ that divide people into
groups according to their online behaviour. A filter bubble173 describes a bub-
ble of information and individual experiences. These are created by technology
companies and search engines that make decisions about what information a
user would or should see via advertised content, suggested articles, and top
search results based on an individual’s personal data.

Filter bubbles—which can conform to socio-economic, regional, ethnic, and

gender lines—are most worryingly manifest in politics. The 2016 U.S. presiden-
tial election demonstrates how social media was used ‘as a backbone to trans-
mit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world’174 within polarized social media
filter bubbles. The study found the pattern was not symmetric in right- and
left-wing networks. The authors call this a ‘network of mutually-reinforcing hy-
per-partisan sites [that combine] decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods,
and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world’.175

36
The 2017 French election, on the other hand, exhibited a different end result
as traditional media and social media were able to address instances of false
information.176 However, the 2016 ‘Brexit’ referendum that voted for the UK to
leave the European Union exhibited many voters who consumed media content
and produced opinions in isolated groups.

Information filtering through self-selection and marketing choices plays an out-

sized role in Internet power dynamics and how credible information is shared.
Intensive use of algorithms has led our personal views—as depicted online and
through social media—to become more and more predictable.

Companies, therefore, exacerbate the tendency of individuals to self-select in-

formation that is palatable and supportive of their existing beliefs, further sep-
arating them from contradictory viewpoints and perpetuating ideological echo
chambers by limiting controversial or opposing opinions. Other attempts to make
sense of isolating trends call the phenomenon splinternet (the Internet splintering
into factions) and cyber-balkanization (‘the potential balkanization of preferences,
including social, intellectual, and economic affiliations, analogous to geographic
regions’).177 Echo chambers are particularly worrisome when they repeat political,
religious, or ideological ideas. People with similar political, religious, and moral
views, as well as similar tastes, tend to coalesce online, often filtering out contra-
dictory information.

The existence and growth of echo chambers is often aided by the use of bots,
which target ideologically segregated individuals and groups. A social bot is a
‘computer algorithm that automatically produces content and interacts with hu-
mans on social media, trying to emulate and possibly alter their behavior’; such
bots have had an ever-increasing presence online in recent years.178 Although not
all bots are harmful, in cases of fake news and media disinformation, such bots are
often programmed to ‘mislead, exploit, and manipulate social media discourse
with rumors, spam, malware, misinformation, slander, or even just noise’, which
can result in significant levels of damage to society.179 In Venezuela, for example, a
recent study showed political bots were responsible for ‘impression management’
and manipulating public opinion.180 The use of bots is particularly problematic
given the ‘number of real social media users incarcerated for using platforms like
Twitter for political speech’.181 Although bots retweeted fewer than 10% of ana-
lysed tweets from Venezuelan politicians, they found that the more active bots
were those used by Venezuela’s radical opposition. Worryingly, another study
confirmed that current bot detection methods are profoundly limited in detect-
ing sophisticated types of bot, including bots that function purely to manipulate
public opinion.182

37
How Do We Behave in the Current Media Environment?
The transformation from analogue to digital has been crucial to how we interact
with traditional media technologies (newspapers, magazines, and television) as
well as relatively new platforms (online news outlets, blogs, Twitter, Facebook).
The switch to digital has been expressed as both a ‘conceptual change’ and a ‘so-
ciological change’, distorting how our world is perceived and challenging con-
sumers’ interaction with the media.183 More importantly, the switch to digital
changed how the public thinks about public affairs as expressed by the media.

Whilst the tone of The Cluetrain Manifesto was celebratory, in recent years there
has been an increased focus on the problems that these changes have produced.
An important consequence is how the media, specifically the Internet, has be-
come a medium of communication that ‘either bridges cultural divides or further
fragments our societies into autonomous cultural islands and trenches of resis-
tance’.184 When all (unverified) information is effectively treated equally, the Inter-
net becomes ‘one great seething cauldron of opinions’.185

Within the changing information environment and media landscape, the concept
of the ‘Gutenberg Parenthesis’186 expresses the idea that the Internet age is return-
ing human communication to its original form of person-to-person knowledge
sharing. The Internet is host to unverified and questionable information, shared
by many but verified by few. The Gutenberg Parenthesis posits that there was a
pause, a parenthesis, in human communication while the prevalence and import
of the written word was unquestioned.187 The printing press changed ‘the way we
look at the world and the way we categorize things in the world’.188 Thomas Pet-
titt suggests that human communication and knowledge acquisition shifted from
people speaking to one another to writing down their thoughts. This process, en-
abled by the printing press, legitimised the written word. In the Internet age com-
munication has returned to communal knowledge sharing. The renewal and ex-
pansion of person-to-person communication occurs alongside and together with
advances in computer networking, software development, enhanced broadband
transmission with better handling capacity, and local and global communications
via wireless networks.189 The confusion of communication and the cries of ‘fake
news’ are complicated by the ability of multitudes with access to the Internet to
send and receive information.

The technological transformation is correlated with, and gave rise to, the com-
bination and blurring of sending and receiving roles. Senders and receivers are
at once the media and the audience: able to read, post, share, and question with
equal ease. We now live in an age not just of mass communication, but rather
mass self-communication.190 Initially ‘mass communication’ operated in one di-

38
rection i.e. from one sender to many receivers, however, with the growth of the
Internet ‘mass self-communication’ has emerged, defined as the ability to send
messages from many people to many other people anywhere in the world. Thus
with mass self-communication came the redefinition of the consumer audience
from one that absorbed and witnessed the media and information to a combina-
tion producer-consumer. No longer is there just an audience: participants now
produce and disseminate information, acting simultaneously as producers and
consumers of information.191 This change in particular has been referred to as a
‘game changer’; individuals now influence the choice and use of content and its
dissemination—they are no longer dependent on media organizations or gov-
ernments to ‘gatekeep’, or to filter information prior to its dissemination. It is this
democratisation of the media that has limited the ability of governments and or-
ganisations to control or dominate the flow of information,192 and, by extension,
has made it possible for fake news to emanate from sources outside government.
The influence of traditional ‘gatekeepers’, such as printing press owners in the 20th
century, has waned. As a result, we live under the illusion that because we engage
in mass self-communication, we have a greater amount of individual agency in
terms of what information is gathered, absorbed, and even disseminated. Fur-
thermore, there is the assumption that the equalisation, or flattening of commu-
nication into one dimension is preferable. In today’s media space individuals have
a voice, but the unrealistic perception of having control over the information we
consume translates, in effect, into the erosion of individual agency.

With the seemingly endless possibilities the Internet provides, it seems as though
users can determine their media consumption by finding, processing, and shar-
ing information as they see fit. However, the user is often pushed and pulled by
technological currents to a predetermined location of information. Ultimately, the
ability to segment information and communication, which is controlled by media
platforms and algorithms, has considerable consequences for social organisation
and cultural change.193

It is this ‘shift’ in power dynamics that has had the most destructive effect on the
relationship between power, the media, and society. Such change in power dy-
namics has accelerated the rate at which individual control is being eroded: it
is not that all individual agency has been lost, but rather the rate at which loss
occurs—often without the realisation of the participant—is alarming.

39
The Modern Media Environment and Fake News:
What Should We Pay Attention To?
The age-old tool of lying now finds itself in an environment that is especially
conducive to its use. This is due to: the technological transition from analogue to
digital; the decline of traditional arbiters of content; shifts in the power dynamics
of controlling information flows; and the creation of self-referential online com-
munities.

The medium, not the phenomenon of fake news, has changed; the democratisa-
tion of information has made it easier to mis-share information and subsequently
to consume misinformation as false news. Two components of fake news are now
harder to verify: ‘truthiness’ (the sensation or approximation of truth) does not
correlate with truth, while ‘legitimacy’ (power and authority invested in actors or
companies) has become less important. Both factors undermine credibility for all
producers of news and information. The change in the nature of power dynam-
ics and relationships between consumers of the media, tech companies, govern-
ments, and corporations has been the most significant change in modern com-
munications. Echo chambers and filter bubbles now dominate our social media
newsfeeds through the use of sophisticated algorithms. The destructive effects
of these filter bubbles can be seen in the political culture of the US and the UK in
2016, while similar events can be seen to have occurred in Ukraine, North Korea,
Russia, Venezuela, and beyond.

40
 WHATEVER HAPPENED
TO TRUST?
Leonie Haiden
Along with changes to the media landscape, low levels of trust in news media and
government are often cited as creating a fertile environment for fake news and
disinformation. According to polls and commentators, institutional trust reached
a historical low in 2017.194 Edelman’s ‘Trust Barometer’195 reports that governments
and media are our least trusted institutions, with the number of respondents in-
dicating their trust at 41% and 43% respectively.196 These and other similar find-
ings by pollsters, such as the Pew Research Center, have been widely reported.197
Referring to his survey, Edelman declared in The Economist that ‘(t)rust—or, too
often, the lack of it—is one of the central issues of our time’.198 Such an approach
to trust makes several assumptions: First, that trust levels have indeed reached a
point of ‘crisis’ that can be measured. Second, that trust and distrust stand in a bi-
nary relationship. And finally, that a pervasive lack of trust in society is one of the
reasons we have ‘a broken media industry’.199 We will interrogate these assump-
tions, showing that while trust is indeed crucial to understanding today’s political
developments, and fake news in particular, the way it is usually discussed is too
simplistic and not conducive to finding adequate responses to fake news.

41
Most definitions of trust, from the fields of economics to psychology, focus on two
key elements: a ‘willingness to be vulnerable’, and having positive expectations
for the future.200 A morality-based interpretation of trust is also closely linked to
‘truth’, defining trust as the belief that another will abide by ‘ordinary ethical rules’,
such as refraining from harming others and telling the truth.201 ‘Political trust’ in
particular, has been defined as a willingness on behalf of citizens to be vulner-
able to the actions of political institutions (e.g. government and parliament) ‘in
the face of uncertainty’.202 It is important to distinguish between a lack of trust
and distrust. A lack of trust is presented in the results of these surveys as a loss of
confidence of the population in their politicians to deal with social, political, and
economic problems, which, as discussed in Route 1, might have to do with the
fact that in today’s globalised and interconnected world, policy makers are strug-
gling to find local solutions to global problems.

Distrust is an even more intense form of this. It is the belief that an institution or
government official is acting against one’s interest.203 When the point of actual
distrust of politicians has been reached, this means that we no longer believe that
the same ‘ethical rules’ are being observed by us and by (some of ) the politicians
in power. According to these definitions of trust, then, a lack of trust or distrust
can be the result of both intensely uncertain times and a lack of confidence in
political actors.

A Discourse of Distrust
With reference to the first point, it is extremely difficult to quantify whether we
are actually living in more uncertain times. However, according to authors like
Zygmunt Baumann and Pankaj Mishra, such feelings are particularly prevalent to-
day. They have highlighted how social and technological changes and the pace of
globalisation have created not only opportunities, but also a sense of instability
and uncertainty.204 Indeed, respondents who reported that the political system as
a whole had ‘failed them’ (53%) were also very likely to express a fear of eroding
social values, globalisation, corruption, immigration, and ‘the pace of change and
innovation’. 205 But trust is based as much on perception as it is on political and so-
cial realities.206 If uncertainty and crisis are common terms used to frame current
issues, then individuals are also more likely to feel that they are indeed living in
uncertain and unstable times.207

Historian Richard Overy investigates this dynamic in The Morbid Age, where he
reveals how the Zeitgeist of the interwar years in Britain was shaped by a profound
sense of looming crisis. However, according to Overy’s analysis, this was only part-
ly rooted in political, economic, and social realities. It was equally a product of

42
and intensified by the dominant rhetoric of social, political, and economic ‘crisis.’
Today we require more than simply an awareness of the central role played by
trust in a political environment where terms like ‘post-truth’, ‘populism’, and ‘fake
news’ are being thrown around. We may also need to take a step back and scruti-
nise whether this rhetoric of ‘crisis’ is perhaps a self-sustaining and intensifying
discourse that ‘develops a reality of its own’.208

In order to counter such rhetoric, then, we need to understand why the sense
of crisis finds such strong resonance in society, so that we can channel this sen-
timent towards a more hopeful and constructive vision of the future. In fact,
Jan-Jonathan Bock and Sami Everett have stressed that while there has been am-
ple talk of a ‘migration crisis’ and a ‘financial crisis’, at the same time ‘each crisis has
energised trust within local communities.’ 209 This shows that trust, like truth, was
not irrevocably lost in 2016, but that we have witnessed a shift in where we place
our trust, from global to local institutions for example.

The Binary of the Barometer

Just as we should not take the idea of a ‘crisis of trust’ at face value, the notion
that democracy is in crisis must also be looked at more closely.210 The historian
Pierre Rosenvallon critiques the widely-held view that we have somehow lost
touch with a fully functioning form of democracy. He is sceptical of rhetoric that
describes democracy as having reached a point of ‘crisis’, ‘malaise’, ‘disaffection’,
or ‘breakdown’. For him, distrust has always been a feature of democracy and the
‘history of real democracies has always involved tension and conflict’.211 While it
has been widely argued that trust is a necessary element of successful democrat-
ic government,212 trust is not always an entirely positive thing. Moreover, when
asked about ‘trust in government’, what institutions or individuals are people ac-
tually thinking of?213 Research has revealed that how people understand ‘govern-
ment’ depends greatly on how an issue is framed in the media, whether there is
an emphasis on international or domestic politics, on tax laws or healthcare.214

As a study into the relationship between levels of trust and citizen behaviour in
the U.S. shows, higher levels of trust do not necessarily correlate with highly en-
gaged democratic citizens and ‘unquestioning trust in government can be every
bit as dangerous to democracy’.215 Citizens with low levels of trust are often car-
rying out the important function of ‘vigilant watchdogs of government’, which is
crucial for a healthy, functioning democracy.216 Moreover, findings from the ‘Asian
Barometer Survey’ reveal that there is no clear correlation between how demo-
cratic a regime is and how much people trust their political institutions: ‘the level
of diffuse regime support in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia and the Phil-

43
ippines have been consistently lower than that of the authoritarian and semi-au-
thoritarian regimes’.217 The supposedly high levels of trust in President Vladimir
Putin are another case in point.218 In short a healthy democratic system and high
trust levels do not necessarily go hand in hand.

Why Don’t You Trust Me?

While describing the state of trust or the state of democracy as being in ‘crisis’
might not be an entirely accurate representation, recent surveys nonetheless
reveal a popular perception that politicians care less about the welfare of their
constituency and more about their own interests.219 In combination with feelings
of uncertainty and instability, this perception encourages questioning traditional
voices of authority. Game-changing developments in the way media is consumed
and disseminated, mean that all actors have suffered losses of their legitimacy
and authority, which they must now justify anew.

Today politicians in Western democracies are more exposed, and image-man-

agement has become increasingly difficult.220 As discussed in our exploration of
the changes in today’s media landscape, there are two processes at work simul-
taneously. On the one hand, due to the low cost of dissemination and the fact
that gatekeeping functions are no longer carried out primarily by political elites,
but also by actors with monetary interests (Facebook, Google), citizens are pre-
sented with a much greater variety of (sometimes contradictory) information.221
This means that politicians have less control over what information is shared with
the wider population. And while campaigns to discredit the legitimacy of actors
might not always be convincing, they sow confusion and exacerbate feelings of
uncertainty.222 At the same time, the need to navigate this mass of information
combined with the potential to make money from predicting people’s online
preferences has led to the formation of ‘echo-chambers’ and ‘filter bubbles’.223

Cognitive processes—the way we think about news stories—can further ampli-

fy the grouping of opinions into segregated blocks. Whether or not a piece of
news fits into our world-view is one of the first things we consider when judging
its truthfulness.224 As a result, news that is damaging to ‘our’ political candidate,
or that runs counter to our political views, will be met with a higher degree of
suspicion, especially in an environment where we are well aware that false or mis-
leading information is being used to discredit political actors and influence our
political behaviour. This is exacerbated by an increased sense of media polariza-
tion throughout Western democracies, and especially in the US, which can partly
be explained by rise of online, highly partisan media brands such as Breitbart or
Occupy Democrats.225 The mistrust people feel is reinforced by the fact that it is

44
often difficult to determine the sources of online news stories,226 and that some-
times fake news is disseminated accidentally by traditional and mainstream me-
dia outlets.227 If we trust the source of a piece of information less, and instead we
judge its truthfulness on the basis of its content, the role of confirmation bias will
be even stronger. This is made even more problematic by the tendency that we all
have to develop a ‘bias blind spot’, and to find it uncomfortable to admit that we
might be partial to certain views and can be manipulated by false information.228

The more we engage with news that lines up with our pre-existing beliefs, the less
likely we are to accept a truth-claim that contradicts our point of view.229 Strong
personal involvement with an issue makes people want to maintain a positive
sense of self, which they might perceive as being threatened by an outside view.
This then further entrenches partisan preferences,230 and increases suspicion to-
wards news outlets that do not align with our views. Research into why people
in the US perceive mainstream media as being biased in their coverage found
that both Republicans and Democrats regarded the same news media as biased
against the party they were associated with.231

Truth or Dare
By establishing the premise that they are offering ‘facts’ previously withheld from
the public, fake news sources build on and amplify suspicions, and in some cases
conspiratorial beliefs, that political actors or systems are following a hidden agen-
da that is contrary to the interests of marginalised groups.232

While trust in the media has always fluctuated, it has traditionally been seen as an in-
stitution that took it upon itself to investigate and bring such cases to light.233 When
The Washington Post played a crucial role in exposing the Watergate scandal of the
Nixon administration in 1972, public trust in the media in the US was not far be-
low the trust invested in the Supreme Court and the military.234 However, the speed
of today’s media environment, demanding real-time coverage and ever-breaking
news, as well as dependence on advertising revenues and competition from cheap
online media platforms, has made it more difficult for news outlets to work to the
same (ethical) standards and to fact-check with the same degree of thoroughness
as they once did.235 A perceived lack of investigative journalism is now partly being
filled by disseminators of fake news and disinformation, claiming to offer facts that
no one else dares to share. For example, the Czech news provider ‘AC24’, one of the
most prolific disseminators of false information, claims to offer truth while the rest
of the ‘Czech media scene is subject to the propaganda of power circles, intellectual
laziness, and a simplified depiction of the world’.236

45
To effectively counterbalance and combat ‘fake news’, ‘populist politics’, and the
exploitation of relativist notions of truth, we must understand why people are
suspicious, and even distrustful, of institutions of authority. First, we should focus
on reinvesting our political institutions with moral integrity, and emphasise ac-
countability rather than absolute transparency. The World Wide Web Foundation
studies public access to government data, and has shown that there is still a lot to
be done in terms of giving people the accurate information they need to be able
to hold their governments accountable in a constructive way.237

Second, media outlets and journalists should focus on establishing a premise for
why they should be trusted, justified by something other than the tradition of
legitimacy and authority they once held. A recent survey has shown increased
sensitivity to the need of journalists to redefine and reconsider their practice in re-
sponse to the challenges of fake news.238 Moreover, the role of investigative jour-
nalism is being taken on by new organisations such as ‘Bellingcat: the home of on-
line investigations,’239 or the ‘Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’
(OCCRP), which recently published a report on an extensive money-laundering
operation in Azerbaijan.240

***
Our times have been described as being characterised by ‘epistemological suspi-
cion,’ 241 ‘post-truth politics,’ and a ‘crisis in trust.’ However, what they all essentially
refer to is distrust in the traditional voices of authority (be they politicians, the
mainstream media, or the scientific community). Colourful infographs illustrating
decreases in trust often gloss over the complex nature of trust and scepticism.
They seem to forget that while distrust can lead to partisan polarisation and con-
spiratorial beliefs, it is simultaneously crucial to a healthy democracy. Recognising
scepticism and distrust as an opportunity to engage citizens in the political pro-
cess will help us to escape a self-perpetuating cycle of crisis-talk.

46
So far we have considered fake news, (post) truth, changes in the media land-
scape, and trust in the context of Western models of government. Now we ex-
plore the issues covered so far in relation to three autocratic societies and their
respective communication strategies. Much has been written from a Western per-
spective on the control of the Russian domestic media space and the disinforma-
tion funded and directed by the Kremlin. Route 9 will consider the Kremlin’s point
of view on disinformation in the modern media environment. First, however, we
will interrogate the role of truth in two absolutist ideologies—the Kim regime’s
Orwellian propaganda strategy, operating within a completely controlled media
space, and Daesh’s use of emotional appeals and flexible truth-claims.

47
 DAESH AND ITS
SINGLE TRUTH
‘[Allah] grants the truth victory, even if after some time.’242
Rumiyah, October 4, 2016

Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi
As a militant, fundamentalist group, we expect Daesh’s243 approach to truth to be
unequivocally absolutist. However, many believe that the group has been able
to communicate effectively because it is not constrained by truth.244 So what role
does truth play in Daesh strategic communications?

Given that strategic communications can be considered a ‘contest between truth

claims’,245 Daesh is bound by truth as much as any other strategic communicator.
Being recognised as a truth-teller—a credible player in the public sphere—cre-
ates the basic condition for communicative success.246 Yet, to effectively persuade
audiences to accept a particular claim, it must be a truth that is also recognised as
a truth by the target audience.247

Daesh seems to have recognised the overwhelming influence of emotional reso-

nance when target audiences accept a truth-claim as truth. It is where truth-claims

48
become entangled with emotional appeal that Daesh can be said to excel as stra-
tegic communicators. The group is a master manipulator of ‘truth’, constructing a
set of claims that are both credible and emotionally satisfying for its key audienc-
es. Truth-claims are made potent by their emotional appeal, rather than whether
they are actually true—a fact that Daesh seems to have fully embraced.

The Illusionist: Creating the Perception of Truth

To maintain its credibility as a truth-teller, Daesh changes its approach to a
given truth-claim as the situation on the ground unfolds, recognising that its
truth-claims must constantly be seen as true in order to continue to be deemed
credible. Perhaps the most obvious example of how Daesh has relativised its ab-
solute, theological truth-claims related to the coming of the Day of Judgment.
Daesh explained the ḥadīth that foretells the advent of the Malāḥim (the battle
of Armageddon) in its English-language magazine, Dabiq—the namesake of
the militarily inconsequential, yet symbolically crucial, town of Dābiq:

1. ‘The hour will not be established until the Romans

land at al-A‘māq or Dābiq’;248
2. The epic battle of good versus evil between the Mus-
lims and the crusaders will then ‘[lead] up to the con-
quests of Constantinople, then Rome’249; and,
3. Culminate in the apocalyptic final battle in which Is-
lam will triumph.250

In a bid to actualise its truth-claims by showing that it is heralding the great

battle, Daesh released the video Although the Disbelievers Dislike It. The video
shows the severed head of captured American, Peter Kassig, suggesting that he
had been executed in Dābiq in order to show that Daesh was ‘burying the first
American crusader in Dābiq, eagerly awaiting for the remainder of your armies
to arrive’.251 The group attempted to provoke the contemporary Roman—the US
and its allies—to take action in Dābiq, thus, sparking the beginning of the end,
as per the prophecy.

Contrary to the strength of conviction displayed in Daesh strategic commu-

nications, victory at Dābiq did not occur. Rather, the loss of Dābiq to Syrian
rebel forces in October 2016 signified a physical, symbolic, and strategic loss
for Daesh. Consequently, the fallaciousness of the prophecy was becoming in-
creasingly apparent. Whilst Daesh supposedly remains committed to its abso-
lutist approach to truth, it has clearly understood that ‘the key to changing per-

49
ceptions is to change the underlying truths’.252 Having realised the importance
of avoiding a say-do gap, the group seems to be willing to change what it says
to reflect what it does, or, more accurately, what it is forced to do (in this case,
retreat from Dābiq). To suit the reality on the ground, it distorts previous truth-
claims so as to maintain coherence in its truth-claims.

This is difficult to reconcile with its absolutist approach to truth. It begs the ques-
tion of whether there has been a shift from the ‘old’ absolute truth, or whether
a new truth has emerged (thus suggesting the old one was a lie). Daesh seems
to be standing by its absolutist truth-claim, preferring instead to contort the
situation to support its current truth-claims and overall objective. Upon losing
the town, it simply shifted its interpretation of the situation. Daesh spurned the
view that its soldiers ‘couldn’t distinguish between the minor battle of Dābiq
and the Major Malḥamah of Dābiq’, before recounting yet again the apocalyptic
ḥadīth.253 It reiterates its truth as absolute, arguing that the ‘Major Malḥamah of
Dābiq’ would be ‘preceded by great events from the minor signs of the Hour’,
but that such events had not yet occurred.254

Although the victorious outcome in Dābiq was heavily emphasised, Daesh

seems to have made contingencies in case of failure, even though (at the time)
Daesh believed it would succeed. Even before the loss of Dābiq, Daesh had
highlighted that ‘tests and tribulations’ must be faced by all true believers.255

Following the fall of Dābiq, there has been a clear shift in focus in its strate-
gic communications from provocation to patience. Daesh instrumentalised the
truth of the matter, arguing that ‘there will be no consolidation without trial,
no victory without hardship, and no ease without difficulty.’256 Such ‘trials and
tribulations’ were subsequently increasingly emphasised, given that it has fewer
victories to celebrate. Yet, Daesh maintains belief in its victory, arguing that it
‘requires but an hour of patience’.257 Daesh seeks to persuade audiences to be
devoted acolytes who weather the tests, thus enabling them, ‘in the darkness
of night’, to ‘[straddle] the light of truth’.258 This demonstrates the continued em-
phasis of its truth as the only truth, despite its malleability in practice.

The shift in perception of the ongoing situation results from an effort to reinter-
pret the underlying truths. Daesh carefully constructs its strategic communica-
tions to ensure that the aura of truth surrounding its truth-claims remains intact,
even in the event of failure. Consequently, this suggests that Daesh continues to
be faithful to the truth of the religious prophecy, albeit under the guise of new
interpretations of the facts on the ground.

Aligning truth with what is expedient to the end goal allows Daesh to inspire
belief in its target audiences by retaining the status of truth-teller.259 The per-

50
ception of truth allows Daesh to gain credibility in the eyes of these audiences.
However, emotional appeal is just as important in inspiring allegiance to and
confidence in Daesh. Strategic communications remains a battle for hearts and
minds. Thus, strategic communicators cannot rely on truth (or the appearance
thereof ) alone in their efforts to gain credibility. Emotional appeal—the heart—
is often more powerful in the contest for credibility.

The Truthiness-Teller: The Heart of Strategic Communications

An illusion of truth forms the basis for Daesh strategic communications because
it serves as an instrument with which to appeal to target audiences on an emo-
tional level. Let us explore one key emotion—desire.260 Daesh has recognised
the need to construct its strategic communications campaign in a way that ap-
peals emotionally to the immediate desires of many local residents in territories
under its control in order to win the hearts and minds of the people so as to be
able to effectively persuade them of its aim of ‘remaining and expanding’ the
caliphate.261

To this end, whilst Daesh seeks to proselytise its apocalyptic truth, it seems to un-
derstand that it may have to settle for tacit acceptance of its caliphate amongst
local residents who desire stability and security in their conflict-ridden towns.
Consequently, many locals may accept Daesh governance principally because
the group has created a semblance of being a compassionate, capable govern-
ing group. Mara Revkin explains that Daesh has created a ‘social contract’ of
sorts, as encompassed within the Wathīqat al-Madīnah (Document of the City)
applicable to territories within the caliphate.262 Under this social contract, Daesh
promises to provide safety, security, rights (albeit limited), and justice in return
for ‘[joining] the society [the Islamic State] and [renouncing] factions and strife’,
and providing material support for the group through paying taxes or military
service.263

Although Daesh demonstrates its fulfilment of this social contract in various

ways, its provision of bread is of particular significance in local communities.264
Bread has increasingly constituted a vital part of the Syrian diet, especially
where little other food is available.265 Daesh strongly publicised its efforts to ful-
fil the responsibility of providing bread in Syrian territories under its control, a
task traditionally attributed to the government.266 However, the outbreak of war
hindered the ability of the regime to adequately provide bread, as demonstrat-
ed by the considerable rise in the price of bread.267 In the early days of Daesh
control of Syrian territories, accounts given by some local residents showed that
‘daily life in the city is good’,268 with bread, crucially, being made available by
the new ruling power.269 Demonstrating its compassion for the needs of local

51
residents and its ability to govern effectively allowed Daesh, even if only briefly,
to gain credibility amongst some of those who chose not to flee.

As Daesh began to failing in its ability to provide the services desired by local
residents it lost support. This serves to highlight the importance of the emotional
appeal of the group’s earlier strategic communications. Discontent among the
population rose when Daesh started demanding ‘heavy taxes and fees for wa-
ter and electricity’.270 The group was failing to uphold the perception that it had
constructed of itself as an able governing body, and thus lost credibility amongst
target audiences.271

***

Daesh succeeds in gaining credibility irrespective of the truthfulness of its truth-

claims as it constructs its strategic communications so as to ‘reflect the experienc-
es of the audience’.272 Appealing emotionally to its target audiences allows it to
gain support without necessarily being burdened by truth. Daesh instrumentalis-
es the truth to suit its strategic objectives, allowing it to create the perception of
being a sincere, yet formidable, group that acts to fulfil the desires of its target au-
diences. Daesh appeals at ‘an emotional level first’.273 It primarily constructs truths
that its target audiences want to exist, rather than stating truth in and of itself.

52
 NORTH KOREA AND ITS
DIFFERENT, SINGLE TRUTH
Douglas Gray
Not unlike the example of Daesh, and perhaps counter to popular perception,
truth also holds a crucial place in the communication strategy of Kim Jong-un’s
regime in North Korea. Deash distributed bread to appear as a capable gov-
erning body in Syria. Similarly, the Kim regime craves domestic legitimacy and
credibility through its nuclear missile programme.

On September 3rd, 2017, instability on the Korean Peninsula, already tumul-

tuous, reached new heights. In its sixth nuclear test since 2006, long-isolated
North Korea claims to have successfully tested a miniaturised hydrogen bomb.
The test comes coupled with the development of multiple intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs), capable of reaching not only its neighbours but also
its far-away adversary, the United States. And like those before it, the test rep-
resents an uncomfortable truth for the international community. The reality of
a nuclear North Korea, long touted as the most threatening rogue state within
the international system, is a difficult fact for policy makers worldwide to swal-
low. On the other hand, for the Kim regime this is a deliberate, and convenient,
reality. From releasing photos of Kim Jong-un standing beside the purported
weapon to signalling its military potency with missile flights over Japan, North

53
Korea has ensured that the international community is painfully aware of its
nuclear successes.

This ‘truth-telling’ exercise of broadcasting nuclear success speaks to the state’s

communications strategy as a whole. In the eyes of the international community,
the regime has, at best, a tentative relationship with the truth. Falsehoods pre-
vail in state propaganda. During the period of intense famine in the 1990s, also
known as the Arduous March, the government went to great lengths to cover
up any truth that implied state failure.274 Nevertheless, North Korea’s communi-
cations are not devoid of truth. To the contrary, truth is fundamental for govern-
ment. The Kim regime, like any other authoritarian organisation, craves legitima-
cy. It seeks to preserve it by fostering credibility; trumpeting its own unique and
absolutist truth.

This Route evaluates the place and value of truth within North Korean propagan-
da. By setting out the ideological formation of North Korean propaganda, we will
show that truth provides the seed from which North Korea’s propaganda flour-
ishes. It is manipulated and exaggerated in order to feed a unique worldview,
a worldview built upon an absolutist notion of truth that the entire state appa-
ratus espouses. In this sense, the truth, or at least a manipulated conception of
it, is harnessed as a powerful tool to uphold regime credibility—to garner and
maintain the legitimacy that underpins authority. Moreover, North Korea’s ideol-
ogy projects an absolutist truth that itself feeds the state’s perceptions. The state’s
confrontational wariness of the external is a result of objective truths being seen
through the prism of its unique worldview. For policy makers and foreign policy
pundits alike, understanding this employment of truth is vital to deciphering how
the Kim regime perceives the world and how to respond.

Pyongyang’s Propaganda Prism

Propaganda, built upon an extensive ideology, is the central pillar of the North Ko-
rean regime. Max Weber famously noted that power needs to justify itself; authori-
tarian regimes must use the power of (selected) information to legitimise rule, em-
ploying ideologies to justify a grip on power.275 By implanting an ideology, leaders
can justify priorities, rationalise mistakes, and bolster their legitimacy through ‘righ-
teousness’. North Korea’s ideology is founded on an obsessive remembrance of its
past, a historical account that informs the state’s propaganda. History provides the
truthful seed from which the Kim regime’s mythology flourishes. This mythology is
built on the anti-Japanese insurgency in Manchuria in 1931.276 Kim Il-sung, his son,
and his grandson after him, have infused the anti-imperialist struggle into a narra-
tive of heroism, disseminating it through storytelling and education.277

54
For example:

‘During the Fatherland Liberation War the brave

uncles of the Korean People’s Army in one battle
killed 374 American imperial bastards, who are brutal
robbers. The number of prisoners taken was 133 more
than the number of American imperial bastards killed.
How many bastards were taken prisoner?’278

Likewise, the arts are controlled and employed in a constant effort to uphold
the historical narrative. Symbolism is used to such an extent that, as Jane Por-
tal points out, Pyongyang has become a stage for the narrative of the state.279
Collective recollection of the humiliation of Korea by Imperial Japan (1910–1945)
and of the Korean War (1950–1953) are used to empower and validate nearly all
actions of the North Korean regime. The juche ideology, at the heart of North
Korean propaganda, is built upon this mythology. Typically translated as ‘self-re-
liance’, it prescribes independence of the people and of the state. Economically,
the ideology advocates autarky; politically, it promotes rigid independence from
external powers, self-defence from external capitalist enemies, and dependence
on the state ‘family’.280

This mythology is North Korea’s Genesis—it justifies the Kims’ positions as su-
preme leaders (suryong), legitimising the military’s powerful role in society and
exalting the status of the guerrilla elite. The suryong ideology holds that the Ko-
rean people are childlike innocents, protected by their patriarchs, Kim Il-sung and
his descendants. Writers and artists are tasked with highlighting their leader’s
thoughts, leadership skills, personality, and revolutionary achievements, a ubiq-
uitous narrative that sustains an ever-present cult of personality.281 Portraits of
the deceased leaders Kim Il-sung, the ‘Eternal President of the Republic’, and Kim
Jong-il, gaze upon public spaces and are hung in every home.282 The leaders are
revered as great military leaders. Even though Kim Jong-un was only in his late
twenties, he was promoted to the rank of four-star general in the People’s Army. In
January 2012 the North Korean documentary, Succeeding the Great Work of the
Military-First Revolution, exalted the ‘great successor’ as an experienced military
leader, presenting him riding tanks and horses.283 To the Kim regime, this cult of
personality is vital. Such personality cults afford leaders a standing that, as Max
Weber notes, allows them exercise blatant authoritarian power, to break the rules
and norms that other leaders grapple with.284

It is this propaganda, built upon historical remembrance, that helps generate the
anxiety and fear of outside threats that persists to this day.285 At the core of North
Korean communications lies a pronounced xenophobia. The narrative demon-
ises Japan and the United States for their historical engagements in aggression

55
and atrocities across the Korean peninsula, and for preventing unification. Racist
overtones permeate state propaganda and the nationalism that it espouses, den-
igrating the Japanese and Americans as bastards and swine, and depicting South
Koreans as subservient to them.286 This xenophobic nationalism is a vital pillar of
legitimacy for the Kim regime. It simultaneously justifies military spending and
stokes fear of hostile encirclement. According to the worldview that the narrative
supports, only North Korea, and therefore the Kim regime, can claim the right to
Korean nationalism. By unremittingly denouncing foreign enemies, foreign ‘bas-
tards’ can be blamed for domestic issues, domestic rivals can be labelled traitor-
ous puppets, and the military-first doctrine can be justified.287

A Kernel of Truth
Truth, albeit a manipulated version of it, lies at the heart of this mythology. As phi-
losopher Jacques Ellul posited, propaganda is the intentional distortion of reality
within the world of facts. Truths, half-truths, and limited truths are employed to
accomplish this distortion.288 Whilst North Korean propaganda embellishes reality,
truth is still present. Within the five principles of suryong as dictated by the state,
writers and artists are tasked with crafting images of their leader on the basis of
historical facts, not mere imagination.289 Propaganda is built upon a kernel of truth
in order to develop a foundation of believability. And their hatred of the external
world is not wholly contrived. The scars left by Japanese Imperialism remain vivid in
the minds of the North Korean elites.290 Often overlooked by the West, the extent of
the destruction that took place during the Korean War was overwhelming, equiva-
lent to Hitler’s destruction of Poland. American General Curtis LeMay unabashedly
explained that UN forces (primarily American) burned down ‘every town in North
Korea and every town in South Korea’, killing 20% of the population.291 Bolstering
internal credibility, the North Korean regime employs historical narratives to give
credibility to its propaganda. Veracity is not absent, but is manipulated within a
feedback loop that informs the state’s unique worldview. In this sense, propaganda
provides a prism through which truth is seen by both the Kim regime and the North
Korean people.

So how is truth perceived through this prism? North Korea’s ideology is absolutist;
reality is seen through the state’s ideology. When the world is seen through an ab-
solutist prism, objective truths are perceived in accordance with the state-generat-
ed worldview. The United States, and indeed the world, have long negotiated with
North Korea convinced that its leaders do not believe their own propaganda. How-
ever, as Brian Myers contends, this viewpoint is inherently flawed. North Korean na-
tionalism is built upon the mythology espoused by successive Kim regimes, which
are entrenched in a steadfast belief in a North Korean purity that must be defended.

56
Their hostility towards the external—the ‘others’ who wish to destroy the perceived
specialness of North Korea—is paramount to the North Korean worldview. 292

Where the Nazis considered the Aryans physically

and intellectually superior to all other races, and the
Japanese regarded their moral superiority as having
protected them throughout history, the Koreans
believe that their childlike purity renders them so
vulnerable to the outside world that they need a
Parent Leader to survive.293

Popular support for the regime is built upon this perception, which generates
a higher degree of uncoerced mass support than the outside world is willing to
recognise. And no matter how ruthless or violent, the political elites do not think
of themselves as monsters, but as patriots and heroes. A recent RAND report plac-
es the number of truly senior elites who exercise power in Pyongyang at only
5,000 to 10,000.294 The regime relies on these elites, many of whom are the state’s
intellectuals, to craft state communications. And it is these very elites who are
imbued with Kim Il-sung’s teachings.295 Propaganda is not merely a tool used to
manipulate and control the population, but a reflection of the views of its po-
litical elites, including the cadres surrounding Kim Jong-un, like his father and
grandfather before him. It is the prism through which the state sees reality and
truth. In this sense, North Korea is more akin to pre-World War II Japan than the
other states with which it is usually compared, Maoist China or the Soviet Union.
In accordance, for example, food aid provided by the United States to help North
Korea through the famine of the 1990s was treated not as generosity, but as sup-
plication.296

Nukespeak
This worldview must be taken into account in assessing North Korea’s newfound
nuclear power capabilities. North Korea, like other nuclear states, has pursued nu-
clear weapons to counter perceived threats from its adversaries, and to heighten
both international and domestic perceptions of power.297 Pyongyang’s nuclear
ambitions, however, go beyond allaying insecurity. Policy not only drives propa-
ganda, but propaganda also drives policy. North Korea is in many ways archetypal
of Nicholas O’Shaughnessy’s symbolic state—a state where symbolic actions and
celebratory rhetoric have become the principal concerns of the government, with
the management of these communications and symbols surpassing even the im-
portance of the management of the state itself.298 Externally, nuclear weapons are
for North Korea as much a means of communication as instruments of power. As

57
Thomas Schelling notes, such tacit communication—the exploitation of poten-
tial force—is vital to coercive diplomacy; it is the diplomacy of violence.299 This
is a form of communication that the Kim regime knows all too well. Each nuclear
test, missile flyover, or grandiose warning is an exercise in signal-sending. The Kim
regime seeks to enhance its credibility on the world stage, and to heighten its co-
ercive influence. Delivering this uneasy truth has become central to North Korean
propaganda as it seeks to force others to accept its unparalleled self-image. And
internally, power-signalling gives prestige to a nation that has been challenged
by famine and hunger for centuries.300 Conveying this prestige and emphasising
the young leader’s achievements is vital to cementing Kim Jong-un’s domestic
legitimacy.

However, nuclear capabilities are not merely a propaganda tool, but a result of the
worldview that the propaganda has propagated. The regime’s leadership credibil-
ity is built upon the state’s confrontational wariness of the external. To break this
enmity would be to break the foundational narrative of the regime’s authority,
and therefore this enmity is something for the regime to manage, not to solve.
George Kennan spelled out a similar logic in his famous Long Telegram of 1946
on the conduct of the Soviet Union. According to Kennan, Soviet decision mak-
ing was driven by an instinctive insecurity and an inherent authoritarian need
for an enemy.301 For North Korea, nuclear weapons serve not only as instruments
of propaganda to heighten the perception of the exalted leader, but are used
to manage a necessary animosity and to establish an animosity-based absolutist
truth that informs the state’s entire policy.

Understanding the logic behind Pyongyang’s communications is vital to deci-

phering how the Kim regime perceives the world. The United States, along with
the international community as a whole, has been criticised in the past for ste-
reotyping, rather than understanding, authoritarian regimes.302 In addressing
contemporary North Korea, such a lack of comprehension could be disastrous.
Abandoning nuclear weapons, or the state’s confrontational anti-Americanism,
would contradict the state’s entire mythology: the absolute truth that acts as the
state’s Genesis. To do so would fundamentally undermine the credibility of the
regime, uprooting the foundations for the version of the truth that it espouses,
thus causing the regime to forfeit its legitimacy.

58
 RUSSIA AND ITS
MANY TRUTHS
Alexander Averin
In March 2015, the European Council set up the East Strategic Communica-
tions Task Force aimed at addressing Russia’s ongoing disinformation cam-
paigns. Seeking to expose the breadth of the pro-Kremlin disinformation
efforts in Europe and beyond, the EU’s initiative unites over 400 experts, jour-
nalists, officials, NGOs, and think tanks in more than 30 countries. Contribu-
tors monitor fabricated stories and regularly submit their analysis to the EU’s
special ‘Disinformation Review’.303 The demand for such projects has been ris-
ing steadily following Russia’s interference in Ukraine in 2014, which placed
the notion of ‘information warfare’304 at the heart of the public debate. Three
years later, the international academic, media, and military communities con-
tinue to grapple with challenges posed by Russian attempts to influence pub-
lic opinion abroad. From a European point of view, the Kremlin’s tactic has
been to confuse rather than convince, to divide opinions rather than provide
an alternative viewpoint. Russia’s goal, as seen from the West, is to deprive au-
diences of the ability to distinguish between truth and lie by creating as many
competing narratives as possible in the global media space.

59
The Russian Perspective
On the other hand, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Federation Maria Zakharova also regularly raises concerns about the dan-
gers of disinformation. She talks of ‘systemic disinformation [regarding Russia’s
actions] in the EU’, criticizes falsehoods disseminated about Russia by media out-
lets such as CNN and Fox News, and even invites the United Nations to develop
a global strategy aimed at combating misinformation and fabricated news.305 In
her eyes, as well as in the eyes of many state officials, Russia remains a victim of
disinformation, not one of its chief instigators. It is not Russia’s fault that European
publics’ faith in democratic institutions is seen to fade when outlets like Russia To-
day (RT) tell uncomfortable truths Western governments prefer not to hear. Rath-
er, so the argument goes, European democracies should work harder to fix their
domestic problems and stop blaming Russia for their failures.

These two interpretations are strategically conflicting, and yet strikingly similar.
They both victimize domestic populations and institutions and both see the oth-
er as the driver of so-called ‘information confrontation’. Moreover, both insist on
their own version of the truth, favouring familiar sources and domestic journal-
istic traditions. In such an environment, characterized by a cacophony of views
and perspectives, it is becoming increasingly difficult to search for a single truth.
Rather, the global information space now presents a variety of opinions that are
increasingly seen as expressions of special interests, thus providing their own ver-
sions of the truth—be it the BBC view, the CNN view, or the RT view. Hence, in ac-
cordance with a Western notion that every viewpoint has a right to exist, attempts
to discredit one view in order to boost the credibility of another inevitably implies
an unwarranted imposition of authority.306 But who is to say who is right? While
most writing on Russian information politics is dominated by Western scholar-
ship, this article presents a dialogue that incorporates Russian thinking into the
analysis of the country’s disinformation campaign.

***

It has been open season on all things Russian for a while now. Their hackers med-
dle with election processes overseas, their military jets are flying in the UK’s air-
space, their state-sponsored media outlets are spreading false stories, seeking
to destabilise the principles of good journalism.307 While some observers have
rightly noted the signs of a ‘Putin panic’ surrounding international events in re-
cent years, it is hard to deny the evidence of Kremlin strategists being engaged
in information confrontation with the West aimed at ‘creating an internal divide
in [foreign] societies’.308 Recent attempts to disrupt national self-confidence
in European states have included providing funds for the French right-wing

60
presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, fabricating stories about ruthless acts by
the Ukrainian army,309 and offering Nigel Farage, the former leader of Britain’s
right-wing party UKIP, a regular time slot on state-backed international broad-
caster RT.

A Tradition of Disinformation
None of this is particularly new. Soviet intelligence units regularly used ‘active mea-
sures’—an umbrella term for a variety of tactics including disinformation, subver-
sion, and forgery, aimed at dividing foreign populations.310 Back in the 1970s, a wide
span of activities associated with dezinformatsia was supervised by ‘Directorate A’ of
the KGB.311 Set up to weaken Western democratic values, the department meddled
in American politics by fabricating stories about AIDS being a biological weapon
invented in the US, and by blaming the CIA for President John F. Kennedy’s assassi-
nation.312 Renamed but never dismantled, the unit continues to rely on Soviet-era
practices. Yet today it operates with the aid of modern technologies and ever-ex-
panding global communication networks.313 Ultimately, Russian military theorists
insist that ‘information confrontation will be at the heart of all future wars, in which
both the media and the global computer networks are going to play an increasing
role’.314 Russia’s ‘information confrontation’ campaign is deeply connected with mili-
tary structures and supported by a stable, authoritarian political system. Therefore,
it is impossible to analyse Russia’s quest to create an impression that there are no
reliable facts, without examining military traditions related to information warfare.

Russia’s Take on Information Warfare

In the Russian construct, activities associated with information confrontation
are not limited to wartime. Rather, they tend to represent an ongoing campaign
that takes place regardless of the nature of relations with the adversary.315 As one
Russian analyst points out: ‘unlike other forms and methods of confrontation, in-
formation confrontation is conducted constantly in peacetime’;316 it is ‘a regular
feature of a country’s news and current affairs coverage’.317 Unlike the West, Russia
does not regard information warfare as a tactical, short-term operation used ex-
clusively in wartime. Instead, the Kremlin considers confrontation in the informa-
tion space a constant feature of modern political reality.

Methods and tactics used to sustain this kind of offensive encompass various
practices associated with but not limited to: distortion, destruction, manipula-

61
tion, fabrication of information, maskirovka,318 debilitation of communications,
and psychological operations. Additionally, and crucial to the discussion of ‘fake
news’ and ‘post-truth’, the creation of an ‘alternative reality’—an atmosphere that
fosters interpretations of facts and events favourable to the Russian state—is also
part of this ‘information confrontation’.319 Thus, information can be seen as an in-
strument, a target, and an operational space in which confrontation unfolds. Go-
ing beyond plain lies and denial, the Russian state approaches information war-
fare in diverse, unconventional, and creative ways.320 The most common of these
include the use of ‘reflexive control’, the creation of a permissive environment,
and the spreading of disinformation.

Reflexive Control
In President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the Soviet notion of ‘active measures’ was re-
placed by the concept of ‘reflexive control’, which may represent the most influen-
tial method associated with the Russian approach to information warfare. Devel-
oped by the mathematical psychologist Vladimir Lefebvre in the 1960s, reflexive
control refers to systematic measures aimed at shaping an opponent’s percep-
tions, latently compelling him to act willingly in ways that are favourable to one’s
own strategic objectives.321 Grigory Smolyan, one of the first Russian scholars to
develop this concept, underlines that ‘successful reflexive control requires a deep
understanding of the “inner nature” of the enemy, his ideas and his way of think-
ing’. 322 This understanding has proven to be useful in Ukraine. As suggested by
Western observers, Russia’s framing of pro-European demonstrations as a fascist
coup d’état was instrumental in activating Soviet identity in regions of Ukraine
loyal to Russia. This, in turn, helped to fuel divisions within Ukraine as well as re-
assure the citizens of Crimea that they were better off under Russia’s protection.

This way of looking at the Russian use of reflexive control is very common in West-
ern scholarship, especially in the context of recent developments in Ukraine. Yet,
Russian observers often highlight that the country’s entry into the global infor-
mation space is being manipulated and shaped by foreign governments.323 Re-
flecting on this development, a group of Russian academics concludes: ‘On the
one hand, Russian citizens get free access to a variety of alternative sources of
information, which, undoubtedly, can be viewed as a positive outcome. On the
other hand, “colour revolutions” in the former Soviet republics and the recent
bloody events in the Arab countries have demonstrated new opportunities for
the use of information wars and Internet technologies in a targeted impact on
public opinion.’324 Coupled with the prominence of normative arguments high-
lighting long-established historical and cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine,
such thinking has led many in Russia to believe that the events of the ‘Ukrainian

62
Spring’ were, to a large extent, provoked by Western meddling with domestic pro-
cesses in Ukraine, facilitated by modern information technologies.

Ultimately, it is very hard to measure the success of attempts to divide audienc-

es abroad, as they often tap into existing sentiments—from disillusionment with
political elites to the fear of terrorism.325 Ultimately, the effectiveness of reflexive
control depends on broader measures aimed at shaping a favourable information
environment in a foreign state.

A Permissive Environment
The ability to effectively divide public opinion among target audiences does not
just come from campaigns planned around specific events. Rather, using various
instruments of influence, Russia seeks to create a permissive communicative en-
vironment—a virtual alternative reality in which Russian narratives are seen as
factual and trustworthy.326 The Kremlin’s ultimate objective is thus to win hearts
and minds in foreign states, reducing both the potential for resistance against
Russian actions abroad and the possibility of provoking negative reactions from
the international community.327 Russian strategists attempt to frame ongoing de-
bates rather than promote specific stories. Using the Internet to effectively place
disinformation in reputable sources, they tap into existing grievances—from an-
ti-immigration discourses to sentiments associated with disillusionment with the
acting governments in various states across Europe.328

Troll factories

One way in which the Russian state attempts to penetrate Western public con-
sciousness is through the activities of ‘trolls’ (fraudulent online accounts operated
by humans) and ‘bots’ (accounts operated by automated processes). These direct-
ly engage with readerships of various media outlets globally.329 In an interview
with Radio Free Europe (RFE), a former Russian troll revealed how ‘thousands of
fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and vKontakte’ were created to
sustain and promote Moscow’s position on several issues as well as to create the
impression of a plurality of opinions in the information space.330 According to one
source, the troll factory in St. Petersburg runs on a 24-hour cycle with each of
its employees producing at least 135 comments per 12-hour shift.331 The work
of these facilities goes beyond merely conducting disinformation activities. They
also use trolling as an ‘injection method’ that aims to sidetrack or suppress dis-
cussions that contradict Moscow’s interpretation of events, eventually creating
a feeling of consensus and understanding rather than forcing specific narratives
onto online audiences.332

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Wider activities of troll factories include the use of blogs, false stories, and opinion
pieces posted on pseudo-news websites. By increasing the flow of information
and artificially creating an impression of diversity of opinions in the information
space, trolling inevitably erodes readers’ ability to differentiate between opinion
and news, which further misleads global audiences in their search for objective
truth. The very nature of the global online space makes the effective insertion of
disinformation in respectable media outlets much easier and cheaper than ever
before, which benefits Russian efforts to create a permissive environment.

Sputnik and RT

While Russia undoubtedly exploits the pluralistic nature of Western media culture
to achieve its strategic goals, the view that is commonly expressed in the Rus-
sian public discourse is quite critical of Western media practices. When speaking
in front of President Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on July 5, 2017 RT Edi-
tor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan stated:

The world where everyone sings the same song and

doesn’t hear any other voices, any other songs, is
a dangerous world. It’s a world where, to the loud
jeering of the mainstream media, they bomb Iraq,
Libya, Syria, create Al-Qaeda or ISIS, then get terrified
by it. […] Today we offer you, our Chinese colleagues,
to fight information terrorism together.333

Sputnik and RT are perceived by many in the West as agents of the Russian state
who seek to undermine trust in media, democracy, and authority figures. In con-
trast, they portray themselves as independent, alternative voices and claim to be
‘telling the untold truth’ and providing ‘a perspective otherwise missing from the
mainstream media echo chamber’.334 Of course, more often than not, these out-
lets support the official Kremlin position, helping to boost support of the Russian
government abroad. Yet it is evident that both Sputnik and RT seek to tap into the
existing norms and practices of the Western media culture, in which diversity of
opinion and freedom of speech are celebrated and encouraged.

Attempts by the UK’s NatWest bank to close the accounts of RT in October 2016
were met with outrage in Russia. The attempted closure was seen as an act of
discrimination against the Russian media outlet and a violation of the freedom
of speech. The issue boiled down to an ethical dilemma. Should Western gov-
ernments shield themselves from Russian propaganda using undemocratic mea-
sures, or hold on to the fundamental principles cultivated by Western media cul-
ture? At the end of the day, what is it that makes BBC’s reporting trustworthy and
RT’s not? And is there such a thing as truly objective reporting?

64
The journalistic community struggles to agree on the issues associated with neu-
trality and objectivity as well as on ways in which Russian stories and approach-
es should be countered by Western governments and media. Some believe the
goal of any good journalist is to help the reader make up his or her mind. Others
perceive neutrality as a weakness, arguing strongly for promotion and defence
of one’s position, especially in the context of information confrontation.335 The
greatest challenge here is faced by Western reporters, whose task is to remain
resolute in the face of Russia’s attempts to divide societies abroad. The Kremlin, on
the other hand, does not have to prove anything. Its successes so far have relied
only on its ability to cast doubt on adverse accounts.

Western news practices have traditionally been associated with the practice of
seeking hard evidence and weighing both sides of the story before drawing any
conclusion. Aiming to undermine this approach, leading Russian media special-
ists insist that objectivity and neutrality are of questionable relevance to the
modern media environment. One of Russia’s leading television presenters, Dmitry
Kiselev, claims that ‘objectivity is a myth that is being imposed on us’.336 Coupled
with a considerable increase in the budgets of Sputnik and RT, it is hardly sur-
prising that such developments raise concerns among Western governments and
media specialists.

Spreading Disinformation
During a hearing on the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts, Chairman of the US House
of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce warned that Russia’s ma-
nipulation of information ‘may be more dangerous than any military, because no
artillery can stop their lies from spreading and undermining US security interests
in Europe’.337 Royce’s statement reflects the view of many Western experts and
politicians, who continuously stress Moscow’s determination to create ‘manage-
able chaos’ in the global media space. Creating ambiguity serves the strategic ad-
vantage of furthering Russia’s interests abroad.338 Determined to maintain territo-
rial disputes in its surrounding nations and weaken public confidence within the
EU, most recently the Kremlin has favoured broader agendas, such as immigration
and extremism, as targets for its disinformation campaigns.339 Ultimately, Russia’s
disinformation is aimed at forcing Western states to concentrate on mitigating
the effects of the political damage done by Russian disinformation efforts, as well
as at reinforcing popular anti-Western discourses inside Russia.340

Probably the most visible ‘fake story’ that sought to address these goals emerged
from Russia’s Channel 1—the main source of news for the majority of Russians,
both domestically and internationally. The story reported on a Russian-speak-

65
ing girl called Liza who was allegedly beaten and raped by a gang of refugees in
Germany.341 Days after the story broke, it developed into a significant campaign
involving the Russian media, Russian-speaking compatriots living in Germany,
and Russian officials. All were very vocal in their attempts to expose a German
government ‘cover up’ of the crimes perpetrated by refugees. Yet, in reality the
rape never took place.342 The story was promoted by a Facebook group, ‘Anon-
ymous. Kollektiv’, and featured on an anti-refugee website ‘Asylterror’. Both pre-
sented conflicting accounts of the event. Searches for Liza’s social media profiles
produced no results. Later the Berlin police refuted the story, having found no
evidence to substantiate the report of the attack.343 Still, regardless of the fact that
the story was proven to be false, the tale had its effect. Not only did it oblige the
German Chancellor Angela Merkel to divert her attention to yet another domestic
challenge, it also contributed to Merkel’s ratings plummeting to a five-year low.
Support for her immigration policy suffered a similar fate.344

Russian tactics aimed at spreading disinformation do not stop at the fabrication

of false stories. Other approaches have proven to be effective at ‘muddying the
waters’ in the international arena. These include avoiding responsibility (that is,
denying the presence of ‘little green men’ in Ukraine in 2014 or rejecting claims of
Russia’s interference in the US elections in 2016), and flooding the global media
space with multiple interpretations of the same event (the downing of the MH17
airline and the military seizure of Crimea).345 However, even though much evi-
dence points to the Kremlin’s regularly employing such practices, Russian scholar-
ship and wider discourses on information warfare see such measures not as Rus-
sia’s own, but rather as tactics adopted by foreign states seeking to harm Russia.346

Despite the fact that the Russian state continues to deny its involvement in dis-
information activities abroad, it is clear that both the arsenal of strategic tools
available to the Kremlin, as well as the influence that they produce in the global
information space, are substantial. Relying on methods and practices developed
in the Soviet era, the Russian government translates foreign policy successes into
greater legitimacy and stability at home by creating ‘manageable chaos’ in the
information spaces of foreign states. Eventually, successful use of the tactics of in-
formation warfare helps the Kremlin to accentuate Russia’s own domestic stability
and solidify its role as the sole provider of order in the eyes of its people, while
others—from neighbouring Ukraine to the distant United States—are seen to be
facing profound political crises.

At the same time, Russian scholars and policy makers insist that, just like any other
actor in the international arena, Russia has every right to freely express its posi-
tion on international issues—both through official channels and state-sponsored
media outlets. As pointed out by political scientist James Rosenau, ‘evidence
is rarely so airtight as to exclude all but one interpretation. Events are inevita-

66
bly viewed through cultural and political lenses’.347 Working from this logic, the
Russian government has been raising topical questions pointing to the existing
double standards when it comes to news-making and agenda-setting. Most com-
monly, those include: Why stories promoted by certain outlets are seen as credi-
ble and trustworthy, while reports from RT are, more often than not, seen as fab-
rications serving Russia’s strategic interests? Is there just one single truth? Is there
such thing as objective reporting? Why are alternative viewpoints that do not fit
Western normative paradigms often dismissed as falsehoods?

Questions such as these will have to be considered when discussing how govern-
ments and societies should counter fake news and disinformation. Disregard for
truth in news practices knows no borders.

A degree of self-criticism and interrogation of Western news practices will there-

fore be necessary in order to pin down what it is exactly that we are accusing
disseminators of fake news and disinformation of, and why it is problematic for
society. At the same time, while considering different points of view is important,
we should not let ourselves be drawn in by the notion that truth equals interpre-
tation.

67
 COUNTERING FAKE NEWS
Jente Althuis and Siri Strand
The increased presence of fake news is seen to pose a challenge to our dem-
ocratic society. Consequently, we are seeking to identify, understand, and
overhaul the vulnerabilities of the media environment in order to limit the
phenomenon and consequences of fake news. This Route evaluates the tools,
existing knowledge, and ongoing research useful for countering fake news. It
provides an overview of existing initiatives by governmental organisations,
media outlets, and civil society, and discusses the challenges and dilemmas
each actor faces. Furthermore, it assesses the knowns and unknowns of the
impact of fake news and those of countering initiatives. Based on this assess-
ment, it identifies the primary gaps in our knowledge regarding how to re-
spond to fake news, as well as the potential of technological innovation and
future research directions to close these gaps. In conclusion, it finds that our
largest challenge might not merely be the establishment of efficient count-
er-mechanisms to fake news, but rather how to implement these without un-
dermining institutions and processes that are vital to our democratic system.

68
Existing Initiatives in Countering Fake News
As we have seen throughout this roadmap, the concept of fake news is no
novelty. However, there has been a significant surge in initiatives aimed at
countering misinformation since the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 and
the 2016 US presidential election.348 Many of these initiatives have been sus-
tained and expanded during the 2017 elections in European countries. The
following section will assess some of the main initiatives aimed at counter-
ing the factors that drive the dissemination of fake news, and those aimed at
strengthening the resilience of the audience. Whilst a successful approach to
countering fake news necessarily must involve all parts of society, there are
significant variations in the tools available to and used by the actors engaged
in countering fake news; there are also differences in their interest, position,
and capacity. Hence the existing responders are divided and assessed in three
categories: governmental organisations, media outlets, and civil society.

Tools available to governmental organisations in countering fake news

The response of governmental organisations to fake news is primarily con-

cerned with two types of activities. First, it focuses on the implementation
of regulations or legal provisions aimed at limiting the dissemination of fake
news. Second, it aims to establish support for institutions or entities responsi-
ble for coordinating national efforts aimed at raising awareness and increas-
ing public knowledge regarding the impact of fake news.

The implementation of regulations and legal provisions to limit fake news

takes place both at the national level and through international organizations.
In the United States, former President Obama signed the Countering Foreign
Propaganda and Disinformation Act shortly before leaving office. The bill es-
tablished the ‘Global Engagement Center’, dedicated to ‘lead and coordinate
efforts to track foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts intended to
undermine U.S. national security interests, and to develop strategies for coun-
tering such campaigns’.349 One of the main tasks of the centre is to strength-
en cooperation with civil society, journalists, nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), private companies and academic institutions to improve US efforts in
‘analysing, reporting and refuting foreign disinformation efforts’.350 Similar ini-
tiatives have been established by other governments, including for example
the Czech Republic, which set up an agency aimed at countering fake news
and the threat from ‘foreign disinformation campaigns’.351 Following these
initiatives, the Danish government recently announced that the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs are strengthening their efforts in countering Russian propa-
ganda.352

69
On the international level, several institutions have been set up over the years
to aid NATO Member States’ efforts to counter foreign disinformation, includ-
ing the recently established European Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats
in Helsinki, the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga,
and the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn. Fur-
thermore, the United Nations have launched initiatives aimed at countering
fake news, including the Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and Fake
News, Disinformation and Propaganda, issued by the UN Special Rapporteur
on Freedom of Expression and Opinion in March 2017.353

In some cases, government initiatives go beyond facilitating information shar-

ing and increased cooperation. The German government recently endorsed a
bill through which social media companies can be charged with fines of up to
fifty million euros if they fail to delete ‘openly offensive content’.354 The bill is
part of the German government’s effort to combat hate speech, but has been
criticised by both civil society and social media outlets for limiting freedom
of speech.355 Facebook, for example, has expressed a strong aversion towards
any responsibility for filtering content on German Facebook pages based on
the argument that it makes private companies, rather than the courts, judge
what is illegal in Germany.356 In April 2014, Latvian authorities used their na-
tional Law on Electronic Mass Media as grounds for suspending transmission
of the Russian state-owned media channel ‘RTR Planeta’ for three months,
after accusations that it was disseminating ‘war propaganda’.357 Another ex-
ample of a legislative response is the Indian police warning administrators
of social media chat groups that they can be held legally responsible for the
dissemination of fake news.358 Enforcing this, the Indian police have arrested
several people accused of fabricating false stories ‘with the potential of ignit-
ing communal tension’.359

The use of legislation to combat fake news is not uncontroversial. Govern-

ment responses have been criticised for enabling and justifying tighter con-
trol on information and restrictions to freedom of expression. Responses have
been compared to Chinese authorities seizing on the increase of fake news
to promote their system of ‘Internet management’. This implementation of
increased restrictions in China has been justified by referring to Western de-
mocracies as ‘incapable to address the problems unleashed by Internet com-
munication’.360 As part of China’s response to fake news, news outlets are no
longer allowed to use information posted on social media as a source without
prior approval, thus blocking the flow of information between social networks
and other platforms.

Fear of excessive regulation of public debate by governments has fuelled a

discussion in which some critics argue that identifying and countering fake

70
news should not be the responsibility of the government at all.362 There is fur-
ther reason to question whether the unprecedented level of cooperation be-
tween government and media outlets has a potential ‘cooling effect’ on public
debate. The complexity of the subject is well formulated by one commentator,
arguing that ‘while state-sanctioned control and filtering of news was always
associated with authoritarian regimes, these recent developments are, con-
versely, efforts to help save liberal democratic processes and secure fair elec-
tions’.363

Keeping this delicate balance between combating fake news to sustain dem-
ocratic process and refraining from autocratic involvement by restricting the
freedom of expression might well be the most serious challenge facing gov-
ernments in the coming years.

Tools available to media in countering fake news

Social media platforms are often referred to as the primary facilitator of fake
news or even the very source of the problem. Nevertheless, the increase of
fake news stories also has a negative impact on traditional media outlets. Its
proliferation on partisan platforms makes it more difficult for the reader to
distinguish fact from fake. This fuels distrust in legitimate media outlets and
can reduce demand for high-quality non-partisan reporting.364 Both out of
self-interest and as a result of public and political pressure, traditional media
outlets and social media platforms have launched various initiatives aimed
at limiting the dissemination of fake or misleading news stories presented as
real news.

Traditional media

The traditional media industry has extensive experience with source criticism
and ethical journalism; hence the expertise essential to countering fake news
is to a great extent maintained in the journalism sector. In Europe, the BBC is
among those who have invested in tools to counter fake news. One of their
primary initiatives is the platform ‘RealityCheck’, on which a group of trained
journalists exposes news stories assessed to be deliberately fake. The initia-
tive is related to the BBC’s recent commitment to generate ‘slow news’. More
resources will be invested in publishing longer, in-depth text pieces, seeking
to explain complex issues in a readable way for the broader public.365 This ap-
proach, if maintained, could offer a useful precedent for the BBC World Ser-
vice’s planned expansion into new languages and regions.366 Another example
of the BBC’s global commitment to countering fake news is their effort during
the 2017 French presidential election. The BBC employed their fact-checking
capacities to analyse dubious news stories flourishing in the media.367 Data

71
on the efficiency of these initiatives is, however, limited, as discussed in The
Economics of Fake News below.

Social media

Even though engagement by traditional media outlets in investigating and

debunking fake news stories is important, a sustainable solution must nec-
essarily involve social media platforms. Various approaches by social media
companies to limit the spread on their platforms have been suggested. The
tools available can be separated into three categories: (i) an increase in the
use of human editors; (ii) crowdsourcing initiatives; and (iii) technological or
algorithmic solutions.368

First, it has been suggested that social media companies should hire trained
professionals to assess news articles before these enter the news stream.
There are, however, various challenges to this approach, the primary obsta-
cle being the expense of hiring additional staff to oversee the immense news
flow on social media. Furthermore, the size of social networks makes it almost
impossible for human editors to react fast enough to prevent the spread of
fake news.369 Moreover, this approach might transfer too much power to social
media platforms. Readers’ inclination towards subjectivity, reinforced by an
overarching ‘reader’s editor’ appointed by Facebook, could make the latter a
disproportionately powerful position, potentially open to abuse.370 In August
2016, Facebook announced that they were eliminating human editors as a
response to ‘the feedback we got from the Facebook community earlier this
year’.371

Second, the concept of ‘crowdsourcing’372 is often framed as the solution to

many of the challenges in today’s interconnected society. The idea of engag-
ing a crowd of dispersed people, connected via the Internet, to detect and
expose fake news has gained substantial support. Crowdsourced assessment
of news operates in a manner similar to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
Volunteers apply to become ‘verified news checkers’ and contribute to the
process of validating or ranking news based on a story’s trustworthiness.373
Such initiatives have gained widespread support, as they are considered more
democratic than the employment of paid editors.374 Facebook was the first
company to implement a solution based on crowdsourcing by introducing
an application on which users can flag news feed items as false news stories.
If a certain number of users flag a particular story as fake, the item will be
marked with an alert that warns readers about the story’s falsehood.375 One
of the challenging aspects of a system built on trust and user participation
is that it can easily be manipulated. There are concerns that the mechanisms
for flagging or ranking news can be misused by, for example, botnets. These

72
consist of a network of hijacked computers controlled by a third party and
can be used to generate ‘clicks’ to draw attention to an article. It is for instance
suspected that such manipulation was conducted by pro-government forces
in Syria attempting to shut down Facebook pages by reporting them as abu-
sive.376 The system has also been criticised for creating a false sense of secu-
rity, as it could decrease a reader’s incentive to verify, assuming that this has
been done by Facebook.

Many have argued that the highest likelihood of success in countering fake
news is found in the application of technological solutions, involving the use
of machine learning and algorithms to identify and examine sources of dis-
information.377 Such methods are already used successfully by intelligence
agencies to identify sources of extremism on social media platforms. Algo-
rithms or ‘machine learning vetting’ is cheaper than human editors, and the
idea has been welcomed by social media platforms, including Facebook. The
European Union has invested in algorithms aimed at examining and verifying
user-generated content through the research project PHEME,378 which is ex-
pected to detect rumours, lies, and misinformation.379 Whilst there is optimism
regarding an algorithmic solution, obstacles remain. Existing systems are
criticised for their limited capacity to identify and downgrade hoax news, or
distinguish satire from real stories.380 Furthermore, it has been argued that ‘al-
though technology companies often claim that algorithms are free of person-
al bias, they inevitably reflect the subjective decisions of those who designed
them’.381 Hence, the question of how and by whom these algorithms should
be made has to be prioritised in assessing the potential of this response. In
other words, we must ask ourselves if we feel comfortable having algorithms
deciding what kind of news is provided to us.

Tools available to civil society in countering fake news

The challenge that fake news throws down to society encourages technology
enthusiasts, journalists, and academics to join forces. Hence, in addition to the
initiatives of government and media, civil society has become an active player in
the fight. Such public engagement is exemplified by the creation of an open Goo-
gle document where experts from various fields of research and practice share
thoughts on how fake news can be countered.382

Furthermore, several initiatives have been established by non-profit civil society

groups. One of the leading non-profit organisations dedicated to the task is First
Draft News. The organisation has initiated a collaborative effort between techno-
logical and traditional media. Together they comprise thirty-seven major actors,
including Facebook, Twitter, Google, The New York Times, and CNN.383 In March,
the CrossCheck project384 reported that they had investigated twenty-three

73
suspect stories about the French election, of which seventeen were subsequently
found to be fake. This coalition is a platform for operational work, information
sharing, and education. Verification tools include a channel where information
and emerging fake stories are shared, as well as tools that can track audience en-
gagement on a topic. Participants can add information to the platform as new
articles are discovered. If a number of organisations are confident enough that
a news story is fake, they can publicly announce it.385 The ambition of First Draft
News is to create a ‘global newsroom’ of collaborating journalists, working to
counter misinformation.386

Furthermore, civil society actors are running several fact-checking initiatives. Full
Fact is an independent fact checking charity based in the UK.387 Similarly, Bell-
ingcat, an ‘investigative search network’, specialises in using open source data for
verification and investigative journalism.388 They also produce learning materials,
including guides and case studies for their methods to be employed by others in
the field.389 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA)
all pursue fact-checking activities with a global scope, announcing their assess-
ment of disinformation and misinformation on the platform Polygraph.info.390

Countering the Economics of Fake News

Economics is a central preoccupation in this discussion. As we have seen in Route
2, the dissemination of fake news has always been closely connected to its lu-
crative potential. In November 2016, investigative journalists from the American
news outlet National Public Radio (NPR) tracked down the owner of some of the
major faux news sites, including NationalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, and Wash-
ingtonPost.com.co. The owner, Jestin Coler—a registered Democrat and CEO of a
company called Disinfomedia—allegedly derives an anticipated monthly income
from advertisements on fake news sites of between $10,000 and $30,000.391 Col-
er’s company specialised in writing fake news for Donald Trump’s supporters. Ac-
cording to the CEO, his writers had tried to write fake news for liberals too, ‘but
they just never take the bite’.392 Similar stories have been reported from Macedo-
nia, where high-school students have revealed how they could earn ‘thousands
of euros a day’ from inventing sensational news stories about the US presidential
election. One 19-year-old university student interviewed by the BBC put it simply:
‘the Americans loved our stories and we make money from them’. 393 This leads
to the conclusion that as long as a financial incentive to spread misinformation
exists, this problem will persist.394

The responsibility for counter-campaigns lies not only with the producer and
platform, but also with the user or consumer. As outlined above, several fact

74
checking platforms and applications can be used to verify the truthfulness
of news stories. Nevertheless, it begs the question—to what extent should
we expect readers to spend time verifying news stories before they consume
and share them? One common proposal is that countering fake news should
instead be achieved by increasing resilience through education.395 While the
existing solutions all seem to be vulnerable to manipulation or misuse, edu-
cation aimed at teaching the public how to spot misinformation suggests a
common good for society. School systems should continue to educate chil-
dren in critical reading and verifying sources. Civil society actors should be
encouraged to participate in efforts to educate society.

In conclusion, looking at the range of initiatives introduced in this Route, one

could argue that society is more educated and media literate than ever be-
fore: with the immense increase of (media) focus on fake news, it is reason-
able to assume that mere attention to the matter has contributed to societal
awareness and thus resilience in the face of propaganda and disinformation.

Why, What, and How Do we Respond—or Not at All?

Having evaluated current developments and initiatives available to govern-
ments, media organisations, and civil society, some general difficulties in
counter-strategies may be discerned. Namely, what to counter, if anything;
how to counter; and how much to invest in counter-strategies. These ques-
tions highlight a range of dilemmas.

What necessarily precedes how. Before deciding on how to counter, actors

must first decide what is to be achieved strategically by responding. Does one
address all fake news encountered because of the conviction that it is inher-
ently bad? Or should one cherry pick, tailoring the response only to fake news
that negatively affects policy goals? Whilst it is relatively easy to distinguish
which fake news content is and isn’t relevant to one’s interests, it is difficult to
assess whether and to what extent fake news affects an audience’s perception
of an issue. It is even more difficult to prove whether or not this perception
also leads to a change in behaviour.396 News as mis- or disinformation during
elections could spread doubt among voters. It might further lead to polarised
opinions in the political arena. But that does not necessarily impact voting
patterns to such a degree that the political balance of a nation is adversely
skewed.397

Decisions regarding which news stories to target, and indeed how, are espe-
cially sensitive for government organisations. Not only constrained by limited

75
financial resources, they are also obliged to justify their spending to the tax-
payer. It is open to question whether government should ever become the
arbiter of whether or not a shift in political opinion is part of the ‘normal’ po-
litical process or the result of fake news. In particular, if governments engage
in fact-checking or in-depth target audience analysis of their own citizens,
they more are likely to be attacked for supporting such initiatives. Govern-
ment interference in the private political opinions of citizens represents a red
line for many. A recent project from IBM Watson Research concludes that ‘peo-
ple don’t want to be told what to think’. This is especially true for democratic
governments, whose legitimacy is rooted in enabling democratic instruments
such as freedom of speech.398 Hence, regardless of whether fact-checking and
correcting are effective responses, governments might choose to play it safe,
focusing on the resilience of the reader. Better perhaps to teach citizens ‘how
to think critically’ using media literacy programmes.399

Governments are not the only organisations faced with this dilemma. Media
outlets and journalists receive their legitimacy from unbiased and neutral re-
porting on what is happening in the world. Extensive debunking and criticis-
ing the output of rival outlets could negatively influence their public image
and credibility.400 Even companies such as Google encounter this challenge,
which faces criticism of its search engine algorithm and the advertisements
it displays. To improve this, Google has launched the little publicised ‘Google
Ad Grants’ project, enabling non-profits to successfully place their ads in the
search engine.401

Research on the impact of fake news and the effectiveness of countering it

is limited if not contradictory, which complicates making decisions. There is
little agreement on methods of assessing the causal link between misinforma-
tion and misperception and even less in determining the extent to which fake
news causes misperception and behavioural change in the reader.402 Those
tasked with countering fake news are already challenged by deciding where
and how best to counter it, particularly given that freedom of expression is in-
tegral to democratic systems. Our lack of reliable knowledge regarding which
audiences are affected by fake news and to what extent adds an additional
layer of complexity.

Data on the effectiveness of existing counter initiatives is limited. Initiatives

such as fact-checking websites attract their own communities—readers who
already engage with the problem of fake news are more likely to use them
than readers who are less aware of it. Hence there is a risk of not reaching
the right audience.403 Furthermore, recent research has shown that debunk-
ing fake news or presenting information that challenges an audience’s current
perception can entrench readers more deeply in their beliefs, which results

76
in strengthening so-called echo chambers and further polarising the politi-
cal landscape.404 Finally, repeating misinformation, even if the intention is to
correct it, can exacerbate rather than mitigate its impact.405 This implies that
in some cases no response might prove a better strategy than direct interven-
tion.406

Government organisations, media institutions, and civil society actors all face
dilemmas caused by limited resources, insufficient empirical knowledge of
possible counterproductive effects, and the need to uphold the legitimacy
and credibility of their own institutions. Nevertheless, rapid improvements in
technologies promise to fill gaps in measurement, and a possible move to
more audience- and individual-focused research may improve our under-
standing of the actual effectiveness of fake news. If fact-checking and counter
initiatives can successfully put this knowledge and technology to use, then
some dilemmas regarding how to reach and influence target audiences might
be addressed in the future with a modicum of success. The question remains,
however, how and how far these improved technologies and campaigns af-
fect or even undermine the very institutions vital to democratic process. Does
shutting down ‘fake news outlets’ obstruct freedom of speech? Does govern-
ment use of big data interfere with citizen privacy? With the rapid progress
in technologies and tools for countering fake news, the pressure on us to ad-
dress these questions will only increase.

77
 ENDNOTES
Route 1 – Tell me Lies, Tell me Sweet Little Lies
Leonie Haiden
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Somewhere (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2017), 1; Maguerite La Caze, ‘It’s Easier to Lie if You Believe it
Yourself: Derrida, Arendt, and the Modern Lie’, Law, Culture and the Humanities 13, №. 2 (2017): 193.
2. Hannah Arendt, Wahrheit und Lüge in der Politik (München: Piper, 2016), 76–8.
3. Matthew D’Ancona, Post Truth (London: Ebury Press, Random House, 2017), 41–6; Ball, Post-Truth,
10–1.
4. Jim Kline, ‘C. G. Jung and Norman Cohn Explain Pizzagate: The Archetypal Dimension of a Conspira-
cy Theory’, Psychological Perspectives 60, №. 2 (2017): 186.
5. Paul Taggart, Populism (Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open UP, 2000), 10.
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Report’, shelfmark HN 17 C74, 139.
7. Ibid., 140–3.
8. Arendt, Wahrheit und Lüge, 73–4.
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10. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago; London: University of
Chicago Press, 2007), 179.

78
11. Ibid., 180.
12. Steven Poole, Unspeak (London: Abacus, 2007), 3.
13. Ball, Post-Truth, 71–87.
14. Alex Thompson, ‘Parallel Narratives’, Vice News, 8 December 2016, accessed on 29 July 2017,
https://news.vice.com/story/journalists-and-trump-voters-live-in-separate-online-bubbles-
mit-analysis-shows.
15. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should
Know and the Public Should Expect, Completely Updated and Revised (New York: Three
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19. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010), 82.
20. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: OUP, 2013), 55.
21. Lash, Critque, 28–30.
22. Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere, 3.
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European Journal of Communication 27, №.1 (2012): 59.
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26. Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2005).
27. van Zoonen, ‘I-Pistemology,’ 60.
28. Michel Foucault, ‘5 TWO LECTURES Lecture One: 7 January 1976’, in Knowledge/Power, ed.
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31. Taggart, Populism, 94.
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35. Berlin, ‘Conference on Populism’, 147.

79
Route 2 – Never Mind the Buzzwords:
Defining Fake News and Post-Truth
Chelsea McManus and Celeste Michaud

36. Sovereign Charles II, King of England, By the King. A Proclamation to Restrain the Spreading
of False News, and Licentious Talking of Matters of State and Government, Early English
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the Kings Most Excellent Majesty, 1674).
37. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolu-
tion (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 13.
38. Jason Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda During the English Civil Wars and
Interregnum (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 303.
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ture,’ History Compass 2, №.1 (2004): 5; ‘Seventeenth Century Print Culture’, BBC Radio 4, 26
January 2006, accessed 15 July 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003hycj
41. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, 13.
42. Kacob Soll, ‘The Long and Brutal History of Fake News’, Politico, 18 December 2016, http://
www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/fake-news-history-long-violent-214535
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merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-real-story-of-fake-news
44. Ibid.
45. Chris Frost, Media Ethics and Self-Regulation (London: Pearson, 2000), 173.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States
Through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 539; W. Joseph Campbell,
Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (London: Praeger Publish-
ers, 2001), 8, 25.
49. Mott, American Journalism, 539.
50. Mott, American Journalism, 539; Frost, Media Ethics, 175.
51. Frost, Media Ethics, 173.
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27 July 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/a37e4874-2c2a-11e7-bc4b-5528796fe35c
53. Hannah Catherine Davies, ‘Spreading Fear, Communicating Trust: Writing Letters and Tele-
grams during the Panic of 1873’, History and Technology 32, №.2 (2016): 161, 163.
54. ‘False News’, The New York Times, 7 March 1874.
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cessed 25 July 2017, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281; Samantha Subrama-
nian, ‘Inside the Macedonian Fake-News Complex’, Wired, 15 February 2017, accessed 25 July

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56. Flood, ‘Fake News Infiltrates Financial Markets’.
57. John Abercrombie, Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and The Investigation of
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66. Evan Davis, Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It
(London: Hachette, 2016).
67. Suiter, ‘Post-Truth Politics’, 27.
68. Ibid.
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merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-real-story-of-fake-news
70. Geoffrey Baym, ‘Representation and the Politics of Play: Stephen Colbert’s Better Know a
District’, Political Communication 24, № 4 (2007): 359; Ian Reilly, ‘Satirical Fake News and/as
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4 (2005): 404; Paul R. Brewer, Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, and Michelle Morreale, ‘The Im-
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72. Reilly, ‘Satirical Fake News’, 273.
73. James Ball, Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World (London: Biteback Publishing Ltd.,
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2015), 7, 15.
75. Don Fallis, ‘What is Disinformation?’, Library Trends 63, № 3 (2015): 401–2.
76. Ulises A. Mejias and Nikolai E. Vokuev, ‘Disinformation and the Media: The Case of Russia and
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77. Steven A. Kolmes, ‘Climate Change: A Disinformation Campaign’, Environment: Science and
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78. Amy G. Bryant, Subasri Narasimham, Katelyn Bryant-Comstock, and Erika E. Lebi, ‘Crisis

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83. Brewer et al., ‘The Impact of Real News’, 324.
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ed-term-fake-news/2017/01/06/a5a7516c-d375-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html?utm_
term=.d1ff7b6836c3
87. Fallis, ‘What is Disinformation?’, 401-2.
88. Carson, ‘What is Fake News?’; Callum Borchers, ‘ “Fake News” Has Now Lost All Meaning’,
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wp/2017/02/09/fake-news-has-now-lost-all-meaning/?utm_term=.70fa3df16f17
89. Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), 17 February 2017, 13:48, https://twitter.com/realdon-
aldtrump/status/832708293516632065?lang=de
90. European Forum Alpback 2017, ‘Science-Based Policy-Making in Times of Post-Truth’, https://
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91. Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘I-Pistemology: Changing Truth Claims in Popular and Political Culture’,
European Journal of Communication 27, № 1 (2012): 56.
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tics of Truth: A Performance Text’, Symbolic Interaction 30, № 4 (2007): 447–461.
93. Louise Ball, ‘Developing and Emerging Countries Buck the “Post-Truth” Trend’, Overseas
Development Institute, 28 April 2017, https://www.odi.org/comment/10512-developing-
and-emerging-countries-buck-post-truth-trend

Route 3 – The Truth About Truth?

Erin Duffy and Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi
94. Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (United Kingdom: Hutchinson & Co, 1959).
95. Kellyanne Conway, ‘Meet the Press: Conway: Press Secretary Gave “Alternative Facts” ’, Interview
by Chuck Todd, NBC News, 22 January 2017, http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/
conway-press-secretary-gave-alternative-facts-860142147643

82
96. Neal Curtis, ‘An alternative take on alternative facts’, Open Democracy, 4 April 2017, https://
www.opendemocracy.net/neal-curtis/alternative-take-on-alternative-facts-trump-bannon-
fake-news
97. Damian Thompson, ‘Lies, damn lies and “counterknowledge” ’, The Telegraph, 12 January 2008,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1575346/Lies-damn-lies-and-counterknowledge.
html
98. Abdi Latif Dahir, ‘Fake news is already disrupting Kenya’s high-stakes election campaign’,
Quartz, 25 June 2017, https://qz.com/1011989/fake-news-and-misinformation-are-upstag-
ing-kenyas-upcoming-high-stakes-election/
99. Thomas Greenfield, ‘British Authorities and Ranchers; Raila Odinga Behind Laikipia Land Inva-
sion’, FP News, 14 June 2017, http://fp-news.com/british-authorities-and-ranchers-raila-odin-
ga-behind-laikipia-land-invasion/
100. Marilyn A.Reba and Douglas R. Shier, Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Problem Solving: An Introduction
to Mathematical Thinking (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2015), 158.
101. UN Secretary-General, ‘Summary by the Secretary-General of the Report of the United Nations
Headquarters Board of Inquiry into the Incident Involving a Relief Operation to Urum al-Kubra,
Syrian Arab Republic, on 16 September 2016’, Letter to UN Security Council, 21 December
2016, S/2016/1093.
102. Robert K. Merton, ‘Three Fragments From a Sociologist’s Notebooks: Establishing the Phenom-
enon, Specified Ignorance, and Strategic Research Materials’, Annual Review of Sociology 13
(1987): 4. 1–29.
103. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1011b25: ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is
false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.’
104. See Aristotle, Categories, Chapter 5, 4a35.
105. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Q.16.
106. James O. Young, ‘The Coherence Theory of Truth’, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 27
March 2013, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence/
107. D. W. Hamlyn, ‘The Correspondence Theory of Truth’, The Philosophical Quarterly 12, № 48
(1962): 199.
108. Young, ‘The Coherence Theory of Truth’.
109. Ibid.
110. Dahlia Lithwick, ‘Woody Allen v. Dylan Farrow’, Slate, 5 February 2014, http://www.slate.com/
articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/02/woody_allen_v_dylan_farrow_the_court_
of_public_opinion_is_now_in_session.html
111. Emanuel Adler, ‘Seizing the Middle Ground’, European Journal of International Relations. 3, №
3 (1997): 322.
112. Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook, ‘Birds of a Feather: Homophily in So-
cial Networks’, Annual Review of Sociology, 27 (2001): 415; See also Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1371b.
113. Muslims, whose number is dangerously increasing, are seeking to bury, and ultimately, elim-
inate national cultures. Liogier, Raphaël. ‘Le Mythe de l’Islamisation: Essai sur une Obsession
Collective’. Seuil, 11 October 2012, http://www.seuil.com/ouvrage/le-mythe-de-l-islamisa-
tion-raphael-liogier/9782021078848, 7; See Mary Fitzgerald, ‘Europeans Are Falling for Far
Right’s False Claims of Muslims “Taking Over” ’, The Independent, 14 January 2017, http://www.

83
 independent.ie/world-news/europe/europeans-are-falling-for-far-rights-false-claims-of-mus-
lims-taking-over-35367508.html
114. IPSOS, ‘Perils of Perception 2016: A 40-Country Study’, IPSOS Game Changers, 2016, https://
www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/2016-12/Perils-of-perception-2016.pdf
115. Ibid.
116. See Christopher Hart, ‘Legitimizing assertions and the logico-rhetorical module: Evidence and
epistemic vigilance in media discourse on immigration’, Discourse Studies 13, № 6 (2011): 758.
117. Richard Glover and P. Murphy, Murphy on Evidence (London: Blackstone, 1995) 1, cf. the differ-
ent approach in later editions.
118. Viscount L.C. Sankey, In Woolmington v DPP [1935] A.C. 462.
119. See Kevin M. Clermont, and Emily Sherwin, ‘A Comparative View of Standards of Proof’, The
American Journal of Comparative Law 50, № 2 (2002): 243–275.
120. Barbara Bergman, Nancy Hollander, Charles E. Torcia, and Francis Wharton, Wharton’s Criminal
Evidence, (Minnesota: West Group, 1995), §1:8. Quoting Montana Code Annotated, 1995, §26-
1-102(4): direct evidence—‘proves a fact without an inference or presumption and which in
itself, if true, establishes that fact’.
121. Ibid.: circumstantial (or indirect) evidence—evidence of the circumstances ‘from which the
fact-finder can infer whether the facts in dispute existed or did not exist’.
122. Ben D. Mor, ‘Credibility Talk in Public Diplomacy’, Review of International Studies 38, № 2
(2012): 394.
123. Stephen Colbert, ‘The Colbert Report: The Word—Truthiness’, Episode 1, 17 October 2005,
http://www.comedycentral.com.au/throwbacks/videos/the-colbert-report-the-very-first-epi-
sode-clips#the-word-truthiness
124. Ibid.
125. Farleigh Dickson University, ‘Public Mind Poll’, Farleigh Dickson University, 2015, http://public-
mind.fdu.edu/2015/false/final.pdf
126. Friedrich W. Nietzsche, in J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. J. Shapiro (Lon-
don: Heinemann Educational Books, 1972).
127. Marlia Banning, ‘Truth floats: Reflexivity in the shifting public and epistemological terrain’,
Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, № 3 (2005): 76.
128. ‘Strongly held theoretical explanations or ideologically induced expectations can lead to
perceptions of historical and social “facts” even when these are readily refutable by strong
evidence close at hand.’ Robert K. Merton, ‘Three Fragments From a Sociologist’s Notebooks:
Establishing the Phenomenon, Specified Ignorance, and Strategic Research Materials’, Annual
Review of Sociology 13 (1987): 4.
129. Kevin Marsh, ‘Living Post-Truth Lives… But What Comes After?’, Defence Strategic Communica-
tions 3 (Autumn 2017): 194.

84
Route 4 – When Dishonesty Is the Best Policy. Really?
Mitchell Ilbury

130. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans-
lated by Lewis White Beck, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 347.
131. Quoted in Avishai Margalit, ‘The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir’, New York Review of Books, 14
May 1992, 23.
132. Office of the Historian, US Department of State, ‘Letter from President Kennedy to Chairman
Krushchev’, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Document 10, Volume VI,
accessed 30 June 2017, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/d10
133. Anthony Marro, ‘When the Government Tells Lies’, Columbia Journalism Review 23, № 6
(March/April 1985): 30.
134. John Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie (New York: Oxford UP, 2011), 24.
135. As quoted in Marro, ‘When the Government Tells Lies’, 34.
136. Benjamin Constant, ‘On Political Reactions’, in France, part VI, № I (1797).
137. Jody Powell, The Other Side of the Story (New York: Morrow, 1984), 223.
138. Marro, When the Government Tells Lies, 35.
139. As quoted in Marro, When the Government Tells Lies, 34.
140. Jonathan Powell, Talking to Terrorists (London: Vintage, 2014), 115.
141. Ibid.
142. Rukmini Callimachi and Sewell Chan, ‘Hostage Held by Al Qaeda in Mali for 5 Years Is
Freed’, New York Times, 3 August 2017, accessed 26 August 2017, https://www.nytimes.
com/2017/08/03/world/africa/mali-stephen-mcgown-south-africa-al-qaeda.html
143. Ibid.
144. At the time of writing, 1 EURO equalled 15,55 South African Rands. The average salary of
an employee in the South African Police Service in 2017 was R 298 002. See Statistics South
Africa, ‘Which National Departments Pay the Highest Average Salaries?’, 22 June 2017,
accessed 26 August 2017, http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=10116
145. Arthur Sylvester, ‘The Government Has the Right to Lie’, Saturday Evening Post, 18 November
1967, 10.
146. Mervyn Frost and Nicholas Michelsen, ‘Strategic Communications in International Relations:
Practical Traps and Ethical Puzzles’, Defence Strategic Communications 2 (2017): 21-–2.
147. Mearsheimer, Why Leaders Lie, 32.
148. eNews Channel Africa, ‘We Are Not a Poor Country – Mugabe’, 4 May 2017, accessed 26
August 2017, http://www.enca.com/africa/we-are-not-a-poor-country-mugabe
149. The Economist, ‘How Robert Mugabe Ruined Zimbabwe’, 26 February 2017, accessed 27
August 2017, https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/02/econo-
mist-explains-20
150. Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1979),
183.
151. Marro, When the Government Tells Lies, 31.
152. See ‘Trumped: How the Donald Won America’, in James Ball, Post-Truth: How Bullshit Con-

85
 quered the World (London: Biteback Publishing, 2017).
153. Bok, Lying, 183.
154. As quoted in John Wilson, Talking with the President: The Pragmatics of Presidential Lan-
guage (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 55.
155. Malcolm Schofield, ‘The Noble Lie’, in The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic, ed. G.
R. F. Ferrari (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 154.
156. Richard Nixon, ‘Nixon: “I Am Not a Crook” ’, History, 17 November 1973, accessed: 13 July
2017, http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/richard-m-nixon/videos/nixon-i-am-not-
a-crook
157. Bill Clinton, ‘Bill Clinton in 1998: “I Did Not Have Sexual Relations with That Woman” ’, ABC
News, 26 January 1998, accessed 13 July 2017, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/
bill-clinton-responds-monica-lewsinsky-affair-allegations-28406403
158. Jean-Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands in No Exit and Three Other Plays, translated by Lionel Abel
(New York: Vintage Books, 1948), 224.
159. Martin Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics (Charlottesville: University of Virgin-
ia Press, 2010), 24.

Route 5 – Change and 21st Century Media

Sarah Dooley and Emma Moore with Alexander Averin
160. Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger, The Cluetrain Manifesto:
the End of Business as Usual (New York: Perseus Publishing, 1999), 1.
161. Ibid., 95 Theses.
162. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1964), 9.
163. Ibid., p. 380.
164. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Message (New York: Random
House, 1967), 157.
165. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Alessio Cornia and Antonis Kalogeropoulos, ‘Challenges and Oppor-
tunities for News Media and Journalism in an Increasingly Digital, Mobile, and Social Media
Environment’, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Council of Europe Report,
October 2016, 6.
166. Ibid.
167. Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013), 337.
168. Ibid.
169. Scott Lash, Critique of Information (London: Sage, 2002).
170. According to a Pew Research Centre Study, Facebook is the most significant social media
platform, with a majority of US adults obtaining their news from the site. Shannon Green-
wood, Andrew Perrin, and Maeve Duggan, ‘Social Media Update 2016’, Pew Research Center,
11 November 2016, http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/11/11/social-media-update-2016/
171. Often the projection of authority is interpreted as authority on the subject at hand.

86
172. Martin Moore, ‘Written Evidence Submitted by the Centre for the Study of Media, Com-
munication and Power, King’s College London (FNW0089),’ Parliament.uk, http://data.
parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-me-
dia-and-sport-committee/fake-news/written/48248.pdf
173. A term coined by Eli Pariser, see: Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding
From You (London: Penguin, 2011).
174. Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, and Ethan Zuckerman, ‘Study: Breitbart-Led Right-
Wing Media Ecosystem Altered Broader Media Agenda’, Columbia Journalism Review, 3
March 2017, https://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php
175. Ibid.
176. See Andrew Griffin, ‘Russia “Had an Army of Facebook Spies Watching Emmanuel Ma-
cron During the French Election” ’, The Independent, 27 July 2017, http://www.indepen-
dent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-russia-spies-emmanuel-ma-
cron-french-election-surveillance-marine-le-pen-a7863531.html
177. Marshall van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson, Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyber-
balkans?, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School, 1997).
178. Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clazton Davis, Filippo Mencerz, and Alessandro Flammini, ‘The
Rise of Social Bots’, Communications of the ACM 59, № 7 (2016): 96-104.
179. Ibid.
180. Michelle Forelle, Phil Howard, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, and Saiph Savage, ‘Political Bots
and the Manipulation of Public Opinion in Venezuela’, Cornell University Library, 25 July
2015, https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.07109
181. Ibid., p. 6.
182. Juan Echeverria and Shi Zhou, The ‘Star Wars’ Botnet with >350K Twitter Bots (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Library, 2017).
183. Katharine Viner, ‘How Technology Disrupted the Truth’, The Guardian, 12 July 2016, https://
www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth
184. Castells, Communication Power.
185. Roger Scruton, ‘Post-Truth? It’s Pure Nonsense’, The Spectator, 6 October 2017, https://www.
spectator.co.uk/2017/06/post-truth-its-pure-nonsense/
186. Coined by Thomas Pettitt: ‘In this forum, Thomas Pettitt makes the deliberately provocative
case for a Gutenberg “Parenthesis”—a period marked by the reign of the printing press and
isolated from the largely oral culture that came before, and the digitally shaped culture
emerging today.’ See: ‘Tom Pettitt on the Gutenberg Parenthesis’, MIT News, 11 May 2010,
http://news.mit.edu/2009/mitworld-pettitt
187. This is called secondary orality, proposed by Walter Ong, described as more conscious
communication and information sharing due to the permanence of the written word. Walter
Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologising of the World (Abdington: Psychology Press,
1982).
188. Thomas Pettitt quoted in Megan Garber, ‘The Gutenberg Parenthesis: Thomas Pettitt on Par-
allels between the Pre-Print Era and Our Own Internet Age’, NiemanLab, 7 April 2010, http://
www.niemanlab.org/2010/04/the-gutenberg-parenthesis-thomas-pettitt-on-parallels-be-
tween-the-pre-print-era-and-our-own-internet-age/

87
189. Castells, Communication Power.
190. Ibid.
191. This shift in audience identity has also been labelled ‘the former audience’. See Dan Gillmore,
We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly,
2004). See also Jay Rosen, ‘The People Formerly Known as the Audience’, PressThink, 27 June
2006, http://archive.pressthink.org/2006/06/27/ppl_frmr_p.html
192. Alastair Reed, Counter-Terrorism Strategic Communications: Back to the Future—Lessons
from Past and Present (The Hague, ICCT, 2007).
193. Castells, Communication Power.

Route 6 – Whatever Happened to Trust?

Leonie Haiden
194. ‘2017 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Results’, last updated 17 January 2017, accessed 30
August 2017, https://www.edelman.com/global-results/
195. The Edelman Trust Barometer is an online survey conducted in 28 countries across the globe
with more than 33,000 respondents. Fieldwork that data is based on was conducted October–
November 2016.
196. The Edelman survey categorized 4 different types of institutions: NGOs, Business, Media, and
Government. Ibid., slide 10.
197. Jamie Grierson, ‘Britons’ Trust in Government, Media and Business Falls Sharply’, The Guardian, 16
January 2017, accessed 5 September 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/16/
britons-trust-in-government-media-business-falls-sharply; Nina Jankowicz, ‘The Only Way to
Defend Against Russia’s Information War’, New York Times, 25 September 2017, https://www.ny-
times.com/2017/09/25/opinion/the-only-way-to-defend-against-russias-information-war.html;
Andrew Harrison, ‘Can You Trust the Mainstream Media?’, Guardian, 6 August 2017, accessed 3
October 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/06/can-you-trust-mainstream-
media; Marion Solletty, ‘Trust in Media and Government Fell in 2016: Report’, Politico, 16 January
2017, accessed 2 October 2017, http://www.politico.eu/article/trust-in-media-and-government-
fell-in-2016-report/
198. Richard Edelman, ‘A Crisis of Trust’, The Economist, accessed 25 September 2017, http://www.
theworldin.com/article/10508/crisis-trust
199. Melissa Bell, ‘Viewpoint: We Broke the News Media, How Can We Fix Them?’, Digital News Report,
2017, http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2017/viewpoint-we-broke-the-news-2017
200. Denise M. Rousseau et al., ‘Introduction to Special Topic Forum: Not so Different after All: A
Cross-Discipline View of Trust’, The Academy of Management Review 23, № 3 (1998): 394.
201. Messick and Kramer (2001) quoted in ‘Moral Bases of Public Distrust’, Ronnie Janoff-Bulman in
Restoring Trust in Organizations and Leaders: Enduring Challenges and Emerging Answers, ed.
Roderick M. Kramer and Todd L. Pittinski (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 8.
202. Tom W. G. van der Meer, ‘Political Trust and the “Crisis of Democracy” ’, Oxford Research Encyclo-
pedia of Politics, January 2017, doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.77, 1.

88
203. Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, ‘Moral Bases of Public Distrust’, in Restoring Trust in Organizations and
Leaders: Enduring Challenges and Emerging Answers, eds. Roderick M. Kramer and Todd L.
Pittinski (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012), 10.
204. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Pankaj
Mishra, The Age of Anger (London: Allan Lane, 2017).
205. One third are not certain and only 15% believe that the current system is working. Tonia Ries,
‘The Fall of Trust, the Rise of Populist Action’, Edelman Research Insights, 15 January 2017, ac-
cessed 3 October 2017, https://www.edelman.com/post/fall-of-trust-rise-of-populist-action/
206. Gary E. Hollibaugh, ‘Presidential Appointments and Public Trust’, Presidential Studies Quarterly
46, № 3 (2016), 620.
207. Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communi-
cation 43, № 4 (1993): 52.
208. Richard Overy, The Morbid Age (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 2.
209. Jan-Jonathan Bock and Sami Everett, Trust in Crisis: The Emergence of the Quiet Citizen, eds.
Julian Hargreaves, Asher Kessler and Austin Tiffany (Cambridge: Woolf Institute, 2017), 6–9.
210. David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections: The Case For Democracy, trans. Liz Waters (London:
The Bodley Head, 2016).
211. Pierre Rosenvallon, Counter-Democracy Politics in an Age of Distrust, ed. Arthur Goldhammer
(Leiden: Cambridge UP, 2008), 1–2.
212. Hollibaugh, ‘Presidential Appointments’, 620.
213. Marc J. Hetherington and Jason A. Husser, ‘How Trust Matters: The Changing Political Rele-
vance of Political Trust’, American Journal of Political Science 56, № 2 (2012): 312.
214. Ibid.
215. Joseph Gershtenson and Dennis L. Plane, ‘In Government We Distrust: Citizen Skepticism and
Democracy in the United States’, The Forum 13, № 3 (2015): 482.
216. Ibid.
217. Yun-han Chu, ‘How Do the Millennials See It? The Future of Democracy, Legitimacy and Gover-
nance in Asia’, Global Asia 11, № 3 (2016): 48.
218. Margaret Vice, ‘President Putin: The Russian Perspective’, Pew Research Centre, 20 June 2017,
accessed 20 September 2017, http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/20/president-putin-rus-
sian-perspective/
219. British Social Attitudes 30, ‘Key Findings: Trust, Politics and Institutions’, British Social Attitudes,
2012, http://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-30/key-findings/
trust-politics-and-institutions.aspx; John R. Hibbing and James T. Smith, ‘Is it the Middle that is
Frustrated?’, American Politics Research 32, № 6 (2004): 653.
220. Micah L. Sifry, WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency (New York: OR Books, 2011), 14.
221. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Alessio Cornia and Antonis Kalogeropoulos, ‘Challenges and Oppor-
tunities for News Media and Journalism in an Increasingly Digital, Mobile, and Social Media
Environment’, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and Council of Europe Report,
October 2016, 6.
222. James Roger and Andriy Tyushka, ‘Hacking’ into the West: Russia’s ‘Anti-Hegemonic’ Drive and
the Strategic Narrative Offensive’, Defence Strategic Communications 2 (2017): 48.
223. Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson, ‘Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyber-

89
 balkans?’, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Sloane School, 1996).
224. Stephan Lewandowsky et al., ‘Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and
Successful Debiasing’, Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13, № 3 (2012): 112.
225. Nic Newman et al., Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017, 40.
226. Jonathan Albright, ‘Welcome to the Era of Fake News’, Media and Communication 5, № 2
(2017): 87–8.
227. Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis, ‘Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online’, Data &
Society, 15 May 2017. https://datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_MediaManipulation-
AndDisinformationOnline.pdf, 19.
228. Emily Pronin et al., ‘The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others’, Personality
and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, № 3 (2002): 369.
229. Albert C. Gunther, ‘Biased Press or Biased Public?,Attitudes Toward Media Coverage of Social
Groups’, Public Opinion Quarterly 56, № 2 (1992): 151.
230. Pew Research Center, ‘Partisanship and Political Animosity in 2016’, 22 June 2016, accessed 9
September 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2016/06/22/partisanship-and-political-ani-
mosity-in-2016/
231. Gunther, ‘Biased Press’, 161.
232. Jovan Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), 6.
233. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know
and the Public Should Expect, Completely Updated and Revised (New York: Three Rivers Press,
2007), 3.
234. Paul Gronke and Timothy E. Cook, ‘Disdaining the Media: The American Public’s Changing
Attitudes Toward the News’, Political Communication 24, № 3 (2007): 259.
235. Vian Bakir and David M. Barlow, Communication in the Age of Suspicion: Trust and the Media
(Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave, 2007), 206.
236. AC24 Mission Statement, translated from Czech, http://www.ac24.cz/zpravy-z-do-
mova/299-podekovani-ctenarum-ac24
237. World Wide Web Foundation, ‘Open Data Barometer—Fourth Edition’, 23 May 2017, accessed
19 October 2017, https://webfoundation.org/research/open-data-barometer-fourth-edition/
238. Half of U.S. journalists questioned say they have changed their reporting practice, 41% in
EMEA and 34% in Asia Pacific. ‘Fake News Lifts Trust in Traditional Media’, WARC, 8 September
2017, accessed 12 October 2017, https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/news/fake_news_
lifts_trust_in_traditional_media/39256
239. Bellingcat, ‘About Bellingcat’, 2017, accessed 30 September 2017, https://www.bellingcat.com/
about/
240. Paul Radu, ‘The Azerbaijani Laundromat’, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project,
4 September 2017, accessed 17 September 2017, https://www.occrp.org/en/azerbaijanilaun-
dromat/
241. Liesbet van Zoonen, ‘I-Pistemology: Changing Truth Claims in Popular and Political Culture’,
European Journal of Communication 27, № 1 (2012): 56.

90
Route 7 – Daesh and its Single Truth
Kierat Ranautta-Sambhi

242. Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, ‘Paths to Victory’, Rumiyah, Issue 2, October 4, 2016, 18. https://clari-
onproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
243. ‘Daesh’ is an acronym of the full name of the group in Arabic, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq
wa al-Sham. This chapter has chosen to use this nomenclature, rather than Islamic State, IS,
ISIL, ISIS, or any other name, as many believe that denying the group the use of the term
‘state’ serves to challenge the legitimacy of its self-declared caliphate—see Zeba Khan, ‘Words
Matter in “ISIS” War, so Use “Daesh” ’, Boston Globe, 9 October 2014, https://www.bostonglobe.
com/opinion/2014/10/09/words-matter-isis-war-use-daesh/V85GYEuasEEJgrUun0dMUP/
story.html
244. Brett Boudreau, ‘We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us’: An Analysis of NATO Strategic Commu-
nications: The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, 2003-2014 (Riga:
NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, April 2016), 69, https://www.stratcom-
coe.org/we-have-met-enemy-and-he-us-analysis-nato-strategic-communications-internation-
al-security-assistance
245. Mervyn Frost and Nicholas Michelsen, ‘Strategic Communications in International Relations:
Practical Traps and Ethical Puzzles’, Defence Strategic Communications 2, (2017): 27, 33.
246. Ibid., 22.
247. Leo Bogart, Premises for Propaganda (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 131.
248. Pieter Van Ostaeyen, ‘Some Remarks on the Islamic State’s First Issue of Dābiq Magazine’, Bell-
ingcat, 2 August 2014, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2014/08/02/some-remarks-
on-the-islamic-states-first-issue-of-dabiq-magazine/
249. ‘The Return of Khilafah’, Dabiq, Issue 1, July 5, 2014, 4–5, https://clarionproject.org/islam-
ic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
250. Michael Pregill, ‘ISIS, Eschatology, and Exegesis: The Propaganda of Dabiq and the Sectarian
Rhetoric of Militant Shi’ism’, Mizan: Journal for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations
1, №.1 (2016): 8, http://www.mizanproject.org/journal-post/eschatology-and-exegesis/
251. Although the Disbelievers Dislike It, Video by Al-Furqan Media, November 16, 2014, 15:12,
https://clarionproject.org/gruesome-islamic-state-video-announces-death-peter-kassig-50/
252. Stanley McChrystal, Commander’s Initial Assessment, NATO International Security Assistance
Force, 30 August 2009, 2–3, https://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/
Assessment_Redacted_092109.pdf
253. ‘Towards the Major Malhamah of Daqib,’ Rumiyah, Issue 3, 11 November 2016, 25, https://clari-
onproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
254. Ibid.
255. For example, Issue 12 of Dabiq was circulated in November 2015, almost a year before Dabiq
was retaken; it explained that such tests were an inevitable part of discerning the true be-
lievers from the non-believers as, according to a Hadīth: ‘A person is tested with tribulation to
the extent of his religious practice. If his practice is strong, the tribulation he faces is stronger.
[…]’: ‘Baqiyah: It Will Remain’, Dabiq, Issue 12, 18 November 2015, 17, https://clarionproject.

91
 org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/; see also ‘From Hijrah to Khilafah’,
Dabiq, Issue 1, 5 July 2014, 39–40, https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagan-
da-magazine-dabiq-50/
256. Ibid., 26–27.
257. ‘Stories of Victory after Patience’, Rumiyah, Issue 4, 7 December 2016, 30, https://clarionproject.
org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
258. Abul-Hasan al-Muhajir, ‘Be Patient, for Indeed the Promise of Allah is True’, Rumiyah, Issue 9, 17
May 2017, 26, https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
259. Stanley B. Cunningham, The Idea of Propaganda: A Reconstruction (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2002), 115.
260. Whilst some regard desires as causes of emotion, this essay follows the view that desires are
components of emotion: Rainer Reisenzein and Sabine A. Döring, ‘Ten Perspectives on Emo-
tional Experience: Introduction to the Special Issue’, Emotion Review 1, № 3 (2009): 195–205.
261. ‘Remaining and Expanding’, Dabiq, Issue 5, 21 November 2014, 20–33, https://clarionproject.
org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq-50/
262. See Mara Revkin, The Legal Foundations of the Islamic State (Washington DC: Brookings
Institution, July 2016), 15, https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-legal-foundations-of-the-
islamic-state/
263. Ibid., Table 1, Articles 3 & 9; see Mara Revkin, ‘ISIS’ Social Contract’, Foreign Affairs, 10 January
2016, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/syria/2016-01-10/isis-social-contract
264. The ‘bread compact’ has constituted an integral part of the social contract in Syria since the
1970s when the government began subsidising bread; the Assad regime—under Hafez al-As-
sad then Bashar al-Assad—has ‘treated the bread subsidy as an indisputable governmental
responsibility toward its citizenry’: José Ciro Martínez and Brent Eng, ‘Struggling to Perform
the State: The Politics of Bread in the Syrian Civil War’, International Political Sociology 11, № 2
(2017): 130–147.
265. José Ciro Martinez and Brent Eng, ‘Islamic State Works to Win Hearts, Minds with Bread’,
Al-Monitor, 29 July 2014, https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/islam-
ic-state-bread-subsidies-syria-iraq-terrorism.html; ‘Q&A: How Bread is Helping Families Survive
in Syria’, Mercy Corps, 25 October 25 2016, https://www.mercycorps.org/articles/syria/qa-how-
bread-helping-families-survive-syria
266. For example, see Martínez and Eng, ‘Islamic State Works to Win Hearts, Minds with Bread’:
in Aleppo, Daesh distributed a pamphlet outlining the services that it would provide which
explicitly included mentioned the promise to ‘manage bakeries and mills to ensure access to
bread for all’.
267. Issue 1 of Market Price Watch for Syria, published by the World Food Programme in October
2014 (after conflict in Syria had escalated), recorded an average price of public (subsidised)
bread at SYP33/kg: World Food Programme, Syria Country Office: Market Price Watch, Issue 1,
October 2014, http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp269746.
pdf?_ga=2.254370632.152178184.1502717991-712290590.1501535873 Since 2014, prices
have fluctuated but have remained significantly inflated, with the July 2017 report putting
the average price at SYP80/bundle (1.5kg) (approximately SYP53/kg): World Food Pro-
gramme, Syria Country Office: Market Price Watch, Issue 32, July 2017, https://docs.wfp.org/

92
 api/documents/WFP-0000021001/download/?_ga=2.165755770.519864571.1505592301-
1264417817.1505592301
268. ‘A-Raqqa Student: “Daily Life Is Good” under ISIS’, Syria Direct, 27 April 2014, http://syriadirect.
org/news/a-raqqa-student-‘daily-life-is-good’-under-isis; see Martínez and Eng, ‘Islamic State
Works to Win Hearts, Minds with Bread’; Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, ‘ISIS Alternates
Stick and Carrot to Control Palmyra,’ New York Times, 28 May 2015, https://www.nytimes.
com/2015/05/29/world/middleeast/isis-alternates-stick-and-carrot-to-control-palmyra.html
269. Whether flour or loaves are distributed for free or at reduced prices, or through bakeries able
to open because of fuel provided by the group: Martínez and Eng, ‘Islamic State Works to Win
Hearts, Minds with Bread’.
270. Mara Revkin and William McCants, ‘Experts Weigh In: Is ISIS Good at Governing?’, The Brookings
Institution, 20 November 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2015/11/20/experts-
weigh-in-is-isis-good-at-governing/
271. However, this is not to say that Daesh no longer appeals to emotions to gain credibility. Rather,
a different emotion comes to the forefront—fear, instead of hope and desire, comes to feature
more predominantly in Daesh strategic communications. Having somewhat lost hope that
Daesh is able to provide the desired services (as well as security and justice) in territories under
its control, many local residents give credence to Daesh strategic communications out of
fear—from fear of the alternative (for example, see ‘The Iraq Report: Political Deadlock Threat-
ens Post-IS Peace Hopes’, The New Arab, 17 May 2017, https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/
indepth/2017/5/17/The-Iraq-Report-Political-deadlock-threatens-post-IS-peace-hopes), to fear
of being branded a non-believer and having to face the associated consequences.
272. Ajiit Maan, ‘Narratives Are About “Meaning,” Not “Truth” ’, Foreign Policy, 3 December 2015,
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/03/narratives-are-about-meaning-not-truth/
273. Gerry Osborne, ‘Strategic Communications: Insights from the Commercial Sector’, NATO Stra-
tegic Communications Centre of Excellence, 26 April 2017, 17, https://www.stratcomcoe.org/
strategic-communications-insights-commercial-sector

Route 8 – North Korea and its Different, Single Truth

Douglas Gray
274. As defector Park Sang-hak recounts, even to say the word ‘famine’ was a crime. Birrell, Ian.
‘How Could Our Country Lie So Completely?: Meet the North Korean Defectors’, The Guard-
ian, 27 August 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/aug/27/north-korea-defec-
tors-ian-birrell
275. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 953.
276. Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, ‘Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy Tools of Authoritarian Con-
trol in North Korea’, International Security 35, № 1 (2010): 44–74.
277. As in the excerpt above. See also: Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (New York:
New Press, 2004), 124–7.
278. Excerpt from a 2003 Year Two textbook for North Korean primary schools. Andrei Lankov,

93
 The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (New York: Oxford UP,
2015).
279. Jane Portal, Art Under Control in North Korea (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), 27.
280. Byman and Lind, ‘Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy Tools’, 44–74.
281. Jae-Cheon Lim, Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea: The Leader State (New
York: Routledge, 2015).
282. Byman and Lind, ‘Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy’, 53.
283. ‘Kim Jong-un Stars in a New North Korean TV Documentary’, The Telegraph, 8 January 2012.
284. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 241–54.
285. For an in depth discussion, see: Charles K. Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and
the World, 1950–1992 (New York: Cornell UP, 2013), 31.
286. Brian Myers, The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves—and Why it Matters
(New York: Melville House, 2010), Chapter 5.
287. Christensen provides an interesting analysis of authoritarian regimes’ legitimacy cultivation
through xenophobia. Thomas Christensen, Useful Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic
Mobilization, and Sino-American Conflict, 1947–1958 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996).
288. Jacques Ellul. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (S.I.: Vintage Books, 1973).
289. Lim, Leader Symbols, 12.
290. Andrei Lankov provides a noteworthy analysis of the Machiavellianism of North Korean
leaders, along with a powerful historical context of North Korea’s worldview: Andrei Lankov,
The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013).
291. Kenneth H. Williams, LeMay on Vietnam (Washington DC: Air Force History and Museums
Program, 2017), 78.
292. Myers, The Cleanest Race, 75.
293. Ibid., 164.
294. Bruce Bennet, Preparing North Korean Elites for Unification (Santa Monica: RAND Corpora-
tion, 2017).
295. Helen-Louise Hunter, Kim Il-sung’s North Korea (Westport: Praeger, 1999), 212.
296. Myers, The Cleanest Race, Chapter 5.
297. Jacques Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign
Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002).
298. Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Politics and Propaganda: Weapons of Mass Seduction (Manches-
ter: Manchester UP, 2004), 173.
299. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Harvard: Harvard UP, 1960), 5.
300. Oh Kongdan and Ralph Hassig, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Politics’, Current History 103, № 674
(2004): 273–9.
301. George F. Kennan, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, July 1947. Available at
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1947-07-01/sources-soviet-con-
duct
302. Stanley Lubman, ‘The Dragon as Demon: Images of China on Capitol Hill’, Journal of Contem-
porary China 13, № 40 (2004): 541–65.

94
Route 9 – Russia and its Many Truths
Alexander Averin

303. ‘Questions and Answers about the East StratCom Task Force’, EEAS, 14 January 2017, https://
eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/2116/-questions-and-answers-
about-the-east-stratcom-task-force_en; Disinformation Review by the EU vs Disinformation
campaign, https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinfo-review/
304. Panarin defines information warfare as ‘a form of confrontation, in which parties use special
(political, economic, diplomatic, military and other) methods, ways and means to influence
the information environment of the opponent and protect one’s own interests and achieve set
objectives’, Igor Panarin and Lyubov Panarina, Information War and Peace [Информационная
война и мир] (Moscow: ОЛМА-ПРЕСС, 2003), 20.
305. Konstantin Volkov, ‘Захарова предложила в ООН создать стратегию борьбы с
дезинформацией’, RGRU, 25 April 2017, https://rg.ru/2017/04/25/zaharova-predlozhi-
la-v-oon-sozdat-strategiiu-borby-s-dezinformaciej.html; ‘Захарова: в СМИ США развернута
кампания дезинформации о якобы вооружении Россией талибов,’TASS, 25 July 2017,
http://tass.ru/politika/4439373; ‘Захарова обвинила Евросоюз в дезинформации о ситуации
в Алеппо,’ TVC, 16 December 2016, http://www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/106788
306. ‘The Guardian View on Russian Propaganda: the Truth is Out There’, The Guardian, 2 March
2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/02/guardian-view-russian-pro-
paganda-truth-out-there
307. Owen Matthews, ‘Vladimir Putin’s Empire of Lies’, The Spectator, 26 July 2014, https://www.
spectator.co.uk/2014/07/vladimir-putins-empire-of-lies/; David Smith and Jon Swaine, ‘Russian
Agents Hacked US Voting System Manufacturer before US Election—Report’, The Guardian, 5
June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/05/russia-us-election-hack-
voting-system-nsa-report
308. Sergey Chekinov and Sergey Bogdanov, Forecasting the Character and Content of Future Wars:
Problems and Judgments [Прогнозирование характера и содержания войн будущего:
проблемы и суждения] (Moscow: Министерство обороны РФ, 2015), 45.
309. In July 2014 Russian state TV aired a story about a small boy nailed to a board in eastern
Ukraine for a crime his mother committed. Independent sources say it never happened.
310. Arkady Ostrovsky, ‘Special Report: Inside the Bear’, Economist, 22 October 2016, https://www.
economist.com/news/special-report/21708879-when-soviet-union-collapsed-25-years-ago-
russia-looked-set-become-free-market
311. Alexander Kolpakidi and Klim Degtyarev, External Intelligence of the USSR [Внешняя разведка
СССР], (Moscow: Эксмо, 2009), 630.
312. Mark Kramer, The Soviet Roots of Meddling in U.S. Politics, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo
No. 452, January 2017, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/sites/default/files/policy-memos-pdf/
Pepm452_Kramer_Jan2017.pdf
313. Ibid.
314. Chekinov and Bogdanov, Forecasting, 44.
315. Roland Heickerö, Emerging Cyber Threats and Russian Views on Information Warfare and Infor-

95
 mation Operations (Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI), 2010), 18–20, http://
www.highseclabs.com/data/foir2970.pdf
316. Vladimir Slipchenko, Future War (A Prognostic Analysis) [Война будущего (прогностический
анализ)], January 1998. https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/112810/4/Slipchenko_-_Voii-
na_budushchego_%28prognosticheskiii_analiz%29.html
317. Ibid., Quoted in Keir Giles, Handbook of Russian Information Warfare, NATO Defense College,
November 2016, 4, https://krypt3ia.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/fm_9.pdf
318. Typically, maskirovka is understood as a form of support of combat operations aimed at mis-
leading the enemy’s intelligence about the location, quantity, composition of one’s troops
as well as providing false impressions about one’s objectives and intentions. Maskirovka
is achieved through the use of technical means, disinformation and deceptive actions,
concealment of truths and spreading of lies, etc. Maskirovka can be tactical, operational and
strategic.
319. I. Sharavov, ‘On the Issue of Information War and Information Weapons [К вопросу об
информационной войне и информационном оружии]’, Foreign Military Review, № 10
(2000): 2–5, http://militaryarticle.ru/zarubezhnoe-voennoe-obozrenie/2000-zvo/6616-k-vo-
prosu-ob-informacionnoj-vojne-i-informacionnom
320. Timothy Thomas, ‘Dialectical versus Empirical Thinking: Ten Key Elements of the Russian
Understanding of Information Operations’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11, № 1 (1998):
40–62.
321. Can Kasapoglu, Russia’s Renewed Military Thinking: Non-Linear Warfare and Reflexive Con-
trol, NATO Defense College, Research Paper № 121, 25 November 2015, 2, http://www.ndc.
nato.int/news/news.php?icode=877
322. Georgiy Smolyan, ‘Reflexive Management is the Technology of Making Manipulative Deci-
sions [Рефлексивное управление — технология принятия манипулятивных решений]’,
Humanitarian Technologies 63, № 2 (2013), http://gtmarket.ru/library/articles/7309
323. A. Vilkov, S. Nekrasov, and A. Rossoshansky, Political Functionality of Modern Russian Media
[Политическая функциональность современных российских СМИ], (Saratov: Nauka,
2011), 3, http://nammi.ru/sites/default/files/2.pdf
324. Ibid., 3–4.
325. Ostrovsky, ‘Special Report’.
326. Giles, Handbook of Russian Information Warfare, 22.
327. Ibid.
328. Ibid., 46.
329. Lawrence Alexander, ‘Social Network Analysis Reveals Full Scale of Kremlin’s Twitter Bot
Campaign’, GlobalVoices, 2 April 2015, https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-krem-
lin-twitter-bots/
330. Dmitry Volchek and Daisy Sindelar, ‘One Professional Russian Troll Tells All’, RadioFreeEurope,
25 March 2015, https://www.rferl.org/a/how-to-guide-russian-trolling-trolls/26919999.html
331. Ibid.
332. Giles, Handbook of Russian Information Warfare, 54.
333. ‘Not a Single War in Recent Years has Started Without Powerful Press ‘Artillery’—RT Edi-
tor-in-Chief,’ Russia Today, 5 July 2017, https://www.rt.com/news/395336-media-russia-chi-

96
 na-simonyan/
334. Neil MacFarquhar, ‘A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories’, New York Times,
28 August 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disin-
formation.html?mcubz=0
335. Pavel Koshkin, ‘The Paradox of Kremlin Propaganda: How it Tries to Win Hearts and Minds’,
Russia Direct, 2 April 2015, http://www.russia-direct.org/analysis/paradox-kremlin-propa-
ganda-how-it-tries-win-hearts-and-minds
336. Timothy Thomas, ‘Russia’s 21st Century Information War: Working to Undermine and Desta-
bilise Populations’, Defence Strategic Communications 1, (2015): 22.
337. Chris McGreal, ‘Vladimir Putin’s “Misinformation” Offensive Prompts US to Deploy its Cold
War Propaganda Tools,’Guardian, 25 April 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/
apr/25/us-set-to-revive-propaganda-war-as-putin-pr-machine-undermines-baltic-states
338. See James Rogers and Andra Martinescu, ‘After Crimea: Time for a New British Geostrategy
for Eastern Europe?’, (London: The Henry Jackson Society, September 2015), http://henry-
jacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/After-Crimea.pdf
339. James Rogers, Andriy Tyushka, ‘Hacking into the West: Russia’s ‘Anti-Hegemonic’ Drive and
the Strategic Narrative Offensive,’ Defence Strategic Communications 2 (2016): 47.
340. Ibid., 36.
341. Ivan Blagoy, ‘Австрия временно приостанавливает действие Шенгенского соглашения
из-за случаев насилия в Германии,’ 1TV, 16 January 2016, https://www.1tv.ru/news/2016-
01-16/3330-avstriya_vremenno_priostanavlivaet_deystvie_shengenskogo_soglasheni-
ya_iz_za_sluchaev_nasiliya_v_germanii
342. Victor Ganin, ‘Очередной фейк Первого канала?’, TJournal.Ru, 17 January 2016, https://
tjournal.ru/20998-ocherednoy-feyk-pervogo-kanala
343. Eugenie Zhukov, ‘Полиция опровергла сообщения СМИ об изнасиловании русской
девочки в Берлине,’ Deutsche Welle, 17 January 2016, http://www.dw.com/ru/
полиция-опровергла-сообщения-сми-об-изнасиловании-русской-девочки-в-
берлине/a-18985480
344. Kay-Alexander Scholz, ‘Nationwide German Poll: Merkel’s Popularity Dips to Five-Year Low’,
Deutsche Welle, 1 September 2016; Rogers and Tyushka, ‘Hacking into the West’.
345. Thomas, ‘Russia’s 21st Century Information War’.
346. Giles, Handbook of Russian Information Warfare, 1–2.
347. James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1990), 201.

Route 10 – Countering Fake News

Jente Althuis and Siri Strand
348. Allcott and Gentzkow, ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election’; Haigh, Haigh,
and Kozak, ‘Stopping Fake News’.
349. 114th Congress (2015–2016), National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017.
350. Ibid.

97
351. Smith-Spark, ‘Czech Republic Sets up Unit to Counter Fake News Threat’.
352. Kjær, ‘Udenrigsministeriet Søger Specialist, Der Skal Afsløre Og Bekæmpe Russiske
Løgne’.
353. In cooperation with the OSCE, OAS, and African Commission on Human and People’s
Rights; OSCE, ‘Joint Declaration on Freedom of Expression and ‘‘Fake News’’, Disinforma-
tion and Propaganda’.
354. Rettman and Eriksson, ‘Germany Calls for EU Laws on Hate Speech and Fake News’; Faio-
la and Kirchner, ‘How Do You Stop Fake News? In Germany, with a Law’.
355. Hohmann and Pirang, ‘Germany’s Misguided Social Media Law Is a Minefield for U.S.
Tech’.
356. Shead, ‘Facebook Says Germany’s Fake News Rules Don’t Comply with EU-Law’.
357. Freedom House, ‘Latvia Country Report Freedom of the Press 2015’.
358. Sikdar, ‘If You Are a WhatsApp Group Admin, Better Be Careful’.
359. Connolly et al., ‘Fake News: An Insidious Trend That’s Fast Becoming a Global Problem’.
360. Ibid.
361. Ibid.
362. See for instance: Gordon, ‘Canada’s Government Shouldn’t Be in the Business of Policing
“Fake News” ’.
363. Al-Rodhan, ‘Post-Truth Politics, the Fifth Estate and the Securitization of Fake News’.
364. Allcott and Gentzkow, ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election’, 218–219;
Gentzkow and Shapiro, ‘Media Bias and Reputation’.
365. Davies, ‘The BBC Is Using “Slow News” to Fight Fake News’.
366. Jackson, ‘BBC Sets up Team to Debunk Fake News’.
367. BBC News, ‘Fact-Checking Fake News in the French Election’.
368. Woolf, ‘How to Solve Facebook’s Fake News Problem: Experts Pitch Their Ideas’.
369. O’Malley and Levin, ‘How to Counter Fake News’.
370. Woolf, ‘How to Solve Facebook’s Fake News Problem: Experts Pitch Their Ideas’.
371. Facebook, ‘Search FYI: An Update to Trending’.
372. ’Crowdsourcing’ is, according to Technopedia.com, defined as ‘a process through which
a task, problem or project is solved and completed through a group of unofficial and
geographically dispersed participants’.
373. Woolf, ‘How to Solve Facebook’s Fake News Problem: Experts Pitch Their Ideas’.
374. Ibid.
375. Marr, ‘Fake News: How Big Data And AI Can Help’.
376. Kafka, ‘Facebook Has Started to Flag Fake News Stories’.
377. O’Malley and Levin, ‘How to Counter Fake News’.
378. www.pheme.eu
379. Marr, ‘Fake News: How Big Data And AI Can Help’.
380. Woolf, ‘How to Solve Facebook’s Fake News Problem: Experts Pitch Their Ideas’.
381. Ibid.
382. Ibid.
383. First Draft, ‘About First Draft’.
384. https://firstdraftnews.com/project/crosscheck/

98
385. Ibid.
386. Ibid.
387. Full Fact, ‘What Is Full Fact?’
388. Belingcat, ‘About Bellingcat’.
389. Ibid.
390. POLYGRAPH.info, ‘About Polygraph.info’.
391. Sydell, ‘We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here’s What We Learned’.
392. Ibid.
393. Kirby, ‘The City Getting Rich from Fake News’.
394. Virginia Tech, ‘Countering Fake News with Contagions’.
395. Andre, ‘The War Against Fake News’.
396. Rowland and Tatham, ‘Strategic Communication & Influence Operations: Do We Really
Get It?’.
397. Allcott and Gentzkow, ‘Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election’, 232-233.
398. Gray, ‘Lies, Propaganda and Fake News: A Challenge for Our Age’.
399. Rowland and Tatham, ‘Strategic Communication & Influence Operations: Do We Really
Get It?’
400. Shorenstein Center, ’Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action’.
401. Google, ‘Ad Grants’.
402. Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler, ‘The Nature and Origins of Misperceptions: Understanding
False and Unsupported Beliefs About Politics’.
403. Ibid.
404. Shorenstein Center, ‘Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action’.
405. Thorson, ‘Identifying and Correcting Policy Misperceptions’.
406. Shorenstein Center, ‘Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action’.

99
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