How Syria's White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine

Fil 18/12/2017

How Syria’s White Helmets became victims of an online propaganda machine | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/18/syria-white-helmets-conspiracy-theories

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4c03b71f209fa5d67f39eaf35fc7f38c56d1ea63/257_620_4917_2950/master/4917.jpg?w=1200&h=630&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=crop&crop=faces%2Centropy&bm=normal&ba=bottom%2Cleft&blend64=aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxvYWRzLmd1aW0uY28udWsvMjAxNi8wNS8yNS9vdmVybGF5LWxvZ28tMTIwMC05MF9vcHQucG5n&s=07b933daaa0e656a2b64624a418c1a68

The Russian strategy has been very successful at shaping the online conversation about the White Helmets. By gaming the social media algorithms with a flood of content, boosted by bots, sock puppet accounts and a network of agitators, propagandists are able to create a “manufactured consensus” that gives legitimacy to fringe views. Even Russia’s official channels, such as its UK embassy Twitter accounts, post memes discrediting the organisation.
“If you scroll through tweets about the White Helmets, pretty much every other conversation is equating them with Isis, calling them terrorists. It looks like they are the bad guys,” said Sam Woolley, who studies computational propaganda at the University of Oxford

un article qui va « un peu » à l’encontre de ce qu’on lit en général sur seenthis…

#propagande #Syrie #Russie #fow

#Syria

Fil

Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA 18/12/2017

Existe-t-il des journalistes qui ont été sur place pour vérifier ?

Kassem @kassem CC BY-NC-SA
Reka @reka CC BY-NC-SA 18/12/2017

#white_helmet #casques_blancs

Reka @reka CC BY-NC-SA
Nidal @nidal CC BY 18/12/2017

Technique de l’homme de paille : prendre RT, les sites fafs et complotistes, et soigneusement ignorer les longs articles de Max Blumenthal (par exemple) sur Alternet :
►https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/how-white-helmets-became-international-heroes-while-pushing-us-military
En revanche, citer Kristyan Benedict ou Eliot Higgins comme des sources objectives sur le sujet. Sources objectives qui ne sont d’ailleurs pas là pour fournir des infos factuelles, mais des opinions (argument d’autorité) :
“This is the thing that has annoyed not just the Assad regime and Russian authorities but a lot of the propagandists who work in their orbit,” said Amnesty International’s Kristyan Benedict, a crisis response manager who specialises in Syria.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” said Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative reporting collective Bellingcat, “but it was then completely misused by people who have an agenda.”

Ça donne du coup des phrases totalement fabuleuses de ce style :
“It’s all part of an effort to delegitimise western efforts to stabilise Syria,” he said.

Les efforts occidentaux pour stabiliser la Syrie ? #Really ?

Nidal @nidal CC BY
Nidal @nidal CC BY 18/12/2017

Ça m’avait échappé : l’auteure de l’article, Olivia Solon, est une spécialistes des nouvelles technologies (Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba, tout ça) et, à regarder sa page sur le Guardian, n’a jamais écrit auparavant à propos de la Syrie :
▻https://www.theguardian.com/profile/olivia-solon
Misère de la data-visualisation : j’y connais rien mais je peux démontrer des trucs avec des beaux graphiques.

Nidal @nidal CC BY

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