Firehose of falsehood
The firehose of falsehood is a propaganda model in which large volumes of rapid, repetitive and sometimes inconsistent messages circulate across many channels without a consistent commitment to factual accuracy. Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews described the Russian version in their 2016 RAND analysis. They argue that volume can crowd out competing information, while repetition makes claims familiar and several apparent sources can lend them credibility.
- Pekka Kallioniemi, “In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll be talking about the Russian style of online propaganda and disinformation, “Firehose of Falsehood”. It’s a commonly used Kremlin strategy for Russian information operations, which often prioritizes quantity over quality.”, May 4, 2023 (thread) (pdf) (audio) (website)
Destroy and ridicule the idea of truth
“ The “firehose of falsehood” works not just by flooding voters with misinformation. It’s a “say anything, but don’t forget to say everything” model. You broadcast so many different messages that at least one will matter a LOT to a given voter. And they can contradict one another.
The Firehose of Falsehood: the Russian style of propaganda for an age of information abundance.
- High volume and multi-channel approach
- Shameless in its willingness to broadcast lies
- No commitment to, or requirement for consistency
- Rapid, continuous and repetitive messaging
- Point is not to persuade but to confuse and overwhelm
- Assumes a low trust environment and lowers it further
- Number of arguments matters more than their quality
- Drown out competing messages through sheer volume
- — Jay Rosen [1]
- Roman Skaskiw, “Nine Lessons of Russian Propaganda”, 2016: “3. Destroy and ridicule the idea of truth. Many people, including Peruvian statesman and Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargo Llosa, have observed that Russian propaganda destroys meaning.”
- Roman Skaskiw, “Westerners STILL don't understand. The goal isn't to convince you. It's absurdity -- to make nothing true, and ridicule anyone who attempts to discover truth. Only in such a polluted environment, are the whims of their Czar supreme, and the darkness of their history palpable.”
- Jan Krepelka, “Libertarianism is against aggression (5)”, 2022, “Libertarianism is the opposite of nihilism”
Bothsidesism and whataboutism
“ russia is not squeaky clean. russia is what it is. And we are not ashamed of showing who we are.
- — Sergey Lavrov, “Lavrov: Russia is not squeaky clean and not ashamed”, 17 June 2022
The goal of russian propaganda with the firehose of falsehood is not to prove that russia is right, or that russia are the “good guys”. Indeed, they admit they’re not. The goal is to instill doubt about who the good guys are, or that there can be any, by creating confusion, chaos, complexity. russia might be bad, sure, but what about...
A case in point is russia’s invitation to Roger Waters to speak on their behalf at the United Nations. He didn’t deny russian aggression, that would be too obvious, too ridiculous, and would not convince anyone to switch sides anyway. But... let’s add some lies to water it down: “The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation was illegal. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. Also, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked. So, I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms.” See, all of a sudden, the russian invasion of Ukraine is still wrong... but not so bad! (How exactly does someone go about “provoking” a genocidal invasion, “provoking” the bombing of restaurants and shopping centers, “provoking” the rapes and torture chambers? No need to worry about that!)
It might be hard to deny that Wagner are nazis or terrorists, or that russia is a corrupt, dictatorial regime, but what if instead there’s doubt about Ukraine having some issues too? Nobody’s perfect, right? Doesn’t even need to be proved, instilling doubt is enough in order to push for questioning US support for Ukraine. Bothsidesism is much easier to achieve than altering the truth: since no regime is ever flawless, as long as the firehose of falsehood can create reasonable doubt through information overload, why support either side in the conflict? And that’s all that russia needs: not for the West to support russia, but merely for the West to stop helping russia’s victims.
Skripal coverage
Gordon Ramsay and Sam Robertshaw analysed 735 articles mentioning the Skripal poisoning published by RT and Sputnik from 4 to 31 March 2018. They coded 138 distinct narratives, including 26 about geopolitical motives and conflict, 20 about Novichok, and 11 “alternative” narratives from Western-government or Russia-critical voices. The total describes the range of explanations carried in the outlets’ coverage, including statements quoted from opponents. The study separately records who supplied each narrative and how often it appeared.Weaponising news, pp. 24–26, table 4.2
More
- Putin targets lots of Americans with disinformation. One example? Anti-vaccine groups: “anti-vaccine groups that are already skeptical of the U.S. government are now primed to disbelieve the official U.S. government narrative around Ukraine.”
