Firehose of falsehood

The firehose of falsehood, or firehosing, is a term coined by RAND Corporation for a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels (such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency. RAND Corporation, a US military-funded organisation which claims to promote the "public welfare and security of the United States", describes the firehose of falsehood as a contemporary model for Russian propaganda under president Vladimir Putin.

The firehose of falsehood has been used in propaganda across the world, including by current and former governments and major political parties in the United States, Russia, Canada, Australia, and Brazil, former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte, Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, former U.S. president Donald Trump, the Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, and the anti-vaccine movement.

Characteristics

According to the 2016 RAND Corporation publication that coined the term, the firehose of falsehood differs from many older propaganda techniques in its method and aims. Much larger numbers of messages and channels are used in the internet age, and a "shameless" approach is employed to disseminating falsehoods and contradictory messages. The immediate aim of the firehose is to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the audience. The firehose takes advantage of modern technology, such as the Internet and social media, as well as recent changes in how people produce and consume news.

RAND's authors describe the firehose of falsehood model as having four distinguishing factors:

1. It is high-volume and multichannel,
2. It is rapid, continuous, and repetitive,
3. It lacks a commitment to objective reality; and
4. It lacks commitment to consistency.

The high volume of messages, the use of multiple channels, and the use of internet bots and fake accounts are all effective because people are more likely to believe a story when it seems to have been reported by multiple sources. In addition to official news sources, for example, actors disseminate propaganda using dozens of proxy websites, whose connection to said actors are "disguised or downplayed." People are also more likely to believe a story when they think many others believe it, especially if those others belong to a group with which they identify. Thus, an army of trolls can influence a person's opinion by creating the false impression that a majority of that person's neighbors support a given view.

The RAND Corporation analysis focuses exclusively on Russia, with firehosing presented as a uniquely Russian technique. Conversely, Michael Collins, White House Correspondent for USA Today, writes that Russia was not the first to use this technique, and that propaganda has always been a common tool used by governments throughout history to try and justify conflict. He cites examples of similar propaganda efforts from Western governments and intelligence services going as far back as 1941. Collins quotes Nicholas J. Cull, a professor, historian and propaganda specialist at the University of Southern California, as saying: “It’s important to remember that the good guys, as we now think of them, have used fakes and disinformation”.

Examples

RAND describe the Russian government's use of the firehose of falsehood as having evolved "since" the Russo-Georgian War, "if not before". According to RAND, the Russian government has continued to use this propaganda technique as part of its disinformation campaigns targeting Ukraine. Christian Caryl, writing for The Washington Post, describes the Russian government's use of the technique in news and entertainment aimed at Russian-speaking minorities in the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. RAND also noted Russia's use of the firehose technique during its involvement in the Syrian civil war. For example, in November 2017, Russian state media published a set of images which claimed to show U.S.-backed coalition forces collaborating with Islamic State militants. This was met with a U.S. counter-claim that the images were screen captures from a video game. In 2019, according to the science writer William J. Broad of The New York Times, Russian state-funded broadcaster RT America began a "firehose of falsehood" campaign to convince Americans that 5G phones were a health hazard.

Writing for the Bangladesh Institute of Peace & Security Studies, Simen Agnalt Nilsen describes U.S. state-run media outlets, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Marti, as following the Russian "firehose of falsehood" model.

Andi Sweet, writing for the student peer-reviewed MacEwan University journal, MUSe, likens the digital PR agency Topham Guerin's campaigns for the Conservative Party of Canada and the Liberal Party of Australia to a firehose of falsehood model:

"Guerin stated that an effective social media campaign needs to “surprise, shock, and arouse,” with anger being the most critical arousal emotion. Low-quality memes are more effective than high-quality professional ads because of three factors...volume, variety, and speed". The Australian Broadcasting Corporation described Topham Guerin as a “social media firehose... designed to corral the faithful and convert the fence-sitters”."

Brazilian journalist Renan Borges Simão defines the political campaign of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a firehose of falsehood, noting the great extent to which it has affected the Brazilian political sphere, the grave consequences, and the difficulty in finding effective tactics to counter it.

In the United Kingdom, the Leave Campaign have been described as using a firehose of falsehood model during the 2016 Brexit referendum.

According to the author and former military intelligence officer John Loftus, Iran has been using similar methods to incite hatred against Saudi Arabia, the United States, and Israel. He claims that some fake news that is attributed to Russia was actually planted in the Western press by Iran.

During Indonesia's 2019 presidential race, the incumbent, Joko Widodo, accused Prabowo Subianto's campaign team of disseminating hateful propaganda aided by foreign consultants and cited "Russian propaganda" and the "firehose of falsehood" model.

According to the Mother Jones editor Monika Bauerlein, the firehose technique is increasingly being used against the press by American politicians. She warns readers to expect an increase in the use of several related tactics: the lawsuit threat, the "fake news" denial, and the ad hominem attack. Deepfake video also poses a serious threat, according to the Belgian journalist Tom Van de Weghe, who warns that "we've only seen the beginning of fake news."

The firehosing technique has been successfully used by the anti-vaccine movement to spread debunked theories about the supposed dangers of vaccination.

Amy Zegart writes that the firehose of falsehood is available for hire from private espionage services and information warfare specialists such as Psy-Group. This now-defunct company, staffed by former Israeli intelligence officers, whose brochures featured the tagline “Reality is a matter of perception”, was contracted for a variety of firehosing activities, some of which resulted in their investigation as part of the inquiry into interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. Zegart writes:

"The company’s alleged activities included everything from creating a sham European think tank that churned out reports favoring the parliamentary election campaign of a client to creating websites making false claims disparaging the opponent of a client running for the local hospital board in Tulare, California, a town of just sixty thousand people. As former senior Israeli intelligence official Uzi Shaya put it, “Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds. . . . You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It’s a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It’s a no-man’s land"."

Countermeasures

Conventional counterpropaganda efforts are ineffective against this technique. As researchers at RAND put it, "Don't expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth." They suggest:

• repeating the counterinformation
• providing an alternative story to fill in the gaps created when false "facts" are removed
• forewarning people about propaganda, highlighting the ways propagandists manipulate public opinion
• countering the effects of propaganda, rather than the propaganda itself; for example, to counter propaganda that undermines support for a cause, work to boost support for that cause rather than refuting the propaganda directly
• internet censorhip, ordering Internet service providers and social media services to block content, and
• conducting electronic warfare and cyberspace operations.

Researchers at the German Marshall Fund suggest, among other things, being careful not to repeat or amplify the original false claim; repeating a false story, even to refute it, makes people more likely to believe it. Security expert Bruce Schneier recommends teaching digital literacy as part of an 8-step information operations kill chain.

Another countermeasure is to respond quickly as events unfold, and to be the first to tell the story. In "How We Win the Competition for Influence", a 2019 article for the U.S. Military Review journal, army strategists Wilson C. Blythe and Luke T. Calhoun cite an example of this happening in the aftermath of the Battle of Khasham during the Syrian civil war. In February 2018, U.S. airstrikes killed approximately 100 pro-government fighters in a contested set of events. Immediately afterwards, the U.S.-led coalition published a news release titled "Unprovoked attack by Syrian pro-regime forces prompts coalition defensive strikes". In response to the news, reporters from around the world flooded the coalition with queries, and so the coalition "succeeded in setting the agenda for the media coverage that followed", with media outlets "forced to lead their stories with the coalition narrative of events". In their article, Blythe and Calhoun stress the importance of consistent messaging. They compare information operations to other weapons used by the military to target an enemy and achieve a desired result: "The information environment is an inherent part of today's battlefields."

See also

• Big lie
• Gaslighting
• Gish gallop
• Illusory truth effect
• Information warfare
• Post-truth politics
• Propaganda techniques
• Spreading (debate)

External links

• Why obvious lies make great propaganda, Vox, 31 August 2018