It's interesting to watch how western propaganda has kind of slipped more and more in recent years. I think the Ukraine war stuff was far more successful than they had ever dreamed it could be, and so they've just kind of decided that they don't need to improve or up their game after that, just do more "greatest hits" type stuff. If they end up in an actual "boots on the ground" conflict with Iran, there'll be a "ghost of Tel-Aviv" and stories about old ladies destroying Iranian drones with pickle jars.

[–] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Propaganda strategy now increasing works on a 'flood the zone' mentality. There's too much information with the internet not just allowing but incentivising alternate media, the content economy, engagement farming etc to try and carefully control information.

So instead the strategy is the open all the taps on every pipe and spew as much sewage into the sphere as possible, while using the media-political establishment to relentlessly harras, smear, and victimise anyone on the other side of your issue.

It's a strategy the British state-media establishment basically perfected 35-45 years ago and the internet just supercharged the amount of bandwidth you have to fill, but also the ease of doing it.

There are of course highly specific and more insidious propaganda projects and psychological operations directed at high value groups or individuals of course, but for the most part it's a wall of noise, repeatition, and relentlessly attacking individuals to create a chilling effect.

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

And at the same time, deliberately ensuring their working class citizens don't have access to proper understandings of materialism and critical thinking skills ensures they have no way to accurately gauge the flood of information, so they just choose whatever answers feel good or familiar, which just so happen to be the ones most supporting the status quo. Some people don't fall for that of course, but most of those people will fumble blindly in the flood of information and are just as likely to find something toxic and dangerous (like far right ideologies).