Table of Contents
What is Truth-Making? Disinformation, Information Manipulation, Cognitive Warfare
We are all familiar with the terms "fake news" or "fake news". After Britain's exit from the European Union and the Trump election in the United States, the general public began to notice the existence of fake news directly.
Originally, "information manipulation" was limited to the use of information to influence people's perceptions, similar to advertising. In recent years, however, there has been a tendency for people to include false information. The White House spokesman for the Trump administration used the term "alternative fact" in a blatant press conference, bringing the war of perceptions in the U.S. to another level. Public figures with a large following use information to create "facts" that are completely contrary to the original public perception, and at the same time, accuse the traditional media, which is originally credible, of being a producer of fake news. The public figure with a large following uses information dissemination to create "facts" that are completely contrary to the original public perception.
It's just another way of presenting the argument so that people are confused and you don't know how you're going to judge it in the future.
To gain insight into how information operations have been 'applied' in a variety of different areas in recent years, the contents of Manufacturing Truth provide case studies from countries around our world:
- French far-right supporters collaborate with American alternative right internet users. The messages produced in the United States can be localized with fake French identities, puppet accounts, anonymous chat rooms, and online collaborations to exchange information that can influence the election.
- Indonesia's network marketing executives monitor social media sites, write scripts, decide on the tempo of the post, produce the content, and then tweet it from hundreds of different accounts to sculpt the social discussions that their clients need. They copy material from reliable media outlets, rewrite the content, and have an internal checking mechanism.
- The German far right uses communities to create information ecosystems, build networks of companionship to form subcultures, and convince their supporters of alternative facts.
- China uses state power to support an entire industry of opinion leadership, cultivating Internet celebrities of different colors and languages to promote the "China Story" to the world. China's information control uses internet surveillance and censorship to guide public opinion, and the official narrative is disseminated through local organizations and reproduced locally, shaping the publicity model of government, business, and the people as a whole. The information environment in China has created a unique pink culture.
- Taiwan's LINE groups are full of questionable information, such as groundnut leaves beaten with milk to cure three highs, gout, and other seemingly innocuous untruths that are relayed and shared in large numbers in the groups. Many of these untruths are in fact organized communications, articles from content farms, and gold diggers can earn traffic and advertising profits by sharing them.
After the recent major political events, governments have come to understand that a war of perception has begun. Internationally, non-democracies such as Russia can use the inherent characteristics of democracy to weaken the Western alliance by widening the divide in democratic societies. Within countries, many politicians and parties have learned to create a voice, and governments have learned to use similar communication techniques to counter disinformation by ordering campaigns and countering rumors.
Everyone's a Networker
In Taiwan, the term cyber army seems to be equated with fake information. Talking about cyber army always gives people the impression that there is a main figure behind the scenes controlling a group of soldiers who follow orders, as if it will be over once a war is resolved, but the reality is much more complicated. The use of the internet and technology to manipulate information has become an industry, and it is needed for the image building of public figures, policy promotion, product marketing, and even so-called personal branding. What many people in the community do not yet understand is that there are far more people than we realize who are involved in the dissemination of untruthful information, both consciously and unconsciously, and probably even ourselves.
Some of the messages that cause misperceptions may be parodies or funny creations, inadvertent misrepresentations, falsehoods, out-of-context or rewritten news, or deliberately fabricated fake news that never happened.
There are two types of cybersquads, those who are hired and those who are volunteers. Both forces may be instructed by their clients to play games on the Internet to raise their profile.
Let's start with the employed kind. Employed webmasters are usually quite simple, ranging from content farms to self-branded webmasters.
(Many people are not familiar with the term "content farm", but we've probably seen content generated by content farms before, such as the LINE group where groundnut leaves are beaten with milk to cure three highs. The main purpose of content farms is to make money from online advertising, and the higher the traffic, the more money they make. The model is basically to produce a large amount of content in a low-cost way, such as processing articles from current affairs news and then using robots to disseminate them to generate traffic. In order to generate a better traffic flow, an operational structure of message production, message monitoring and message dissemination has been developed).
Whether it's a content farm or an internet sensation, there are those who make money sharing unimportant topics, and there are those who do it for a specific purpose. What we need to understand is that message manipulation creates an industry chain of principals, big players, medium players, and employees. The industry is driven by demand, and demand itself can be of many kinds, not all of them harmful to the creation of fake news, and some of them may be motivated by high ideals.
Let's talk about voluntary message spreaders. The average person usually spreads information, for example by forwarding articles on LINE or FB.
There are several reasons why people usually spread information voluntarily. For example, sometimes it's for ideals we believe in, which may be a bit abstract, such as spreading health care information to help a friend, or thinking that a video is a good critique of current affairs. As news and advertisements are becoming more and more similar, when people absorb information through social networking sites, they are often judged by who shared it, rather than the original source of the information, and if they don't have the ability to recognize it, they may accidentally pass on inaccurate information.
Volunteers on the periphery may be key players in the transmission of inaccurate information.
Another type of voluntary spreading is emotionally driven. Perhaps it is dissatisfaction with the status quo, simple dislike of a person or a political party, or something like that. Often, when it comes to political content, people just want the freedom to speak.
Volunteers do not care whether the message is true or false, they just want to enjoy the freedom to speak.
Because people are easily motivated by emotions, Content Farm Text specializes in creating content that is easy to stir up emotions and use this to increase traffic.
Even if some people are able to recognize inaccurate information, they will still share it.
Is there a solution to message confusion?
If we can't solve the problem of message confusion, the mass polarization of information manipulation will only create a more serious problem - social division.
Facts are becoming more and more difficult to ascertain, and people are only trusting their own camp's sources of information.
Therefore, we must ask ourselves whether there is a solution to the confusion of messages.
The problems we are facing now seem to be caused by the popularization of the internet starting twenty years ago and the advancement of social platforms in the last ten years.
The spread of digital publishing technology has made it easier to "create" inaccurate content; the Internet has made it easier to "publish" inaccurate content; and social media has made it easier to "disseminate" inaccurate content.
However, information manipulation has always existed in human society and is not a new invention. New communication technologies may result in the reshaping of worldviews, and there are precedents in history. For example, the invention of printing in Martin Luther's time made it possible to use pamphlets to quickly publicize ideas, and many messages at that time were suspected of being false, which later gave rise to the concept of censorship of the printed word. In the United States, there was also media chaos in the 19th century. Later, in the late 19th century, the Progressive movement emphasized professionalism, and the public detested bipartisan fighting, and the media became professional and self-regulated. The social status of professional journalists was raised, and the media was recognized as the fourth estate, which managed to survive with a balance between professional and commercial interests. All these can be regarded as precedents of the problem of information chaos.
Technological advancement is not entirely a bad thing. In fact, the social platform revolution once represented the hope of a generation.
Democracy has a chance to enter an ideal era through the Internet, and they have to utilize Internet technology to practice transparent politics, class mobility, and fair participation in democracy. In Taiwan, the rise of the g0v community and the Sunflower Movement need no introduction.
The innovation of the tool itself was originally very simple. It was the combination of network technology and economic forces that transformed the simple transmission of information. The social network revolution is a revolution not only because of the speed of digital communication, but also because of another aspect: the platforms don't just deliver messages, they also have a large number of tools to understand the preferences of their readers. Almost all social networking platforms use the ability to cater to preferences or to accelerate the spread of certain messages as a profit-making tool. In a way, it's a revolution in the business model, affecting every industry and taking information operations to a whole new level.
Exercise fake message immunity
So, can we just turn off and ignore social software? Just turning it off and not listening or watching it won't help. Why? First of all, it's hard to do. We all need to use social software to communicate. Also, even if I don't listen or watch, people will still watch, and that doesn't solve the social problem. We need to understand that the way we perceive things has changed, and that some content may be unfounded, it may be maliciously produced, or it may be inaccurately reproduced or distributed in a non-malicious way. It's dangerous to take it all in without defense. What we need today is to develop information literacy and immunity to disinformation.
If I were a teacher, I would have to teach my students to see who the source of that message is, what media it is, whether it is "interpreting" the information, adding personal opinions, and in fact, if they can just do a background check to see what that website is doing, half of the problem will be solved.
Fortunately, as stated in Truth in Motion, there are now official and civilian-supported organizations in various countries, including Taiwan, that have begun to create rumor databases that can help us verify information. These databases include rumors reported by the public, which are then passed on to responsible teams and online volunteers for verification, along with facts and credible sources of information.
In order to really solve problems, we must consciously verify information, consciously resist the instinct of laziness, check different sources of information on everything, get used to recognizing information from different positions, and think independently.
1. The truth is not black and white and you need to be skeptical about everything.
2. Ensure that there is a diversity of sources of information and do not overindulge in the news.
3. read more, focus on what you really love, and make yourself the best in your field.
Postscript: What kind of book is Made of Truth?
The author of the book "truth manufacturing" Liu Chi-xin is a Taiwan journalist, the whole book is very good to read, but also very much like a news documentary, very faithfully presented the role of each person in the information manufacturing segment to the reader. After reading this book, you will have the feeling that you have traveled around the information manufacturing industry, and it is recommended that those who are interested in knowing more details can find it and read it.
Where can I buy "Made of Truth"?
Fact-Checking Web Resources
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