Patrick Butler summarizes the tricks used by trolls to dupe journalists in How journalists can avoid being manipulated by trolls seeking to spread disinformation.
The reported techniques are:
- Capturing the narrative
- Disguising a forgery as a leak
- News spamming
- Keyword squatting
See Butler’s post and the links therein for more details.
If that sounds difficult, consider what Wikileaks did with the Podesta Emails.
A true leak of accurate copies of emails, the drib, drib, drab, release cycle by Wikileaks kept low-grade office gossip at the center of media attention.
I have long complained about the Wikileaks strategy of dragging out leaks but media attention to the Podesta emails proves me wrong, if your goal is to keep media attention on trivial content.
I’m not unsympathetic to journalists who want to fight “misinformation.” In a perfect world we would all fight “misinformation.” But so long as “misinformation” and efforts against it advance Western government approved views, eschewing “misinformation” looks like a bad plan.