"Der Begriff der "alternativen Fakten" hat in den vergangenen Jahren einen raschen Aufstieg erfahren. Mit ihm verbindet sich die Sorge, dass "alternative", den Tatsachen widersprechende Deutungen bestimmter politisch relevanter Sachverhalte zugenommen haben - und dass dies auf ein Schwinden des gete
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ilten Wissens in der Gesellschaft hinweise. Doch was sind eigentlich "alternative Fakten", und wie ist ihre Verbreitung zu verstehen? Wie der Soziologe Nils C. Kumkar darlegt, gehe es hierbei nicht lediglich um fehlgeleitete Annahmen über die Welt, die durch die "richtigen" Informationen korrigiert werden könnten. Für ein Verständnis des Phänomens relevant sei vielmehr die kommunikative Funktion, die es in Prozessen der öffentlichen Meinungsbildung einnehme. Empirisch arbeitet er anhand von drei Beispielen - der Debatte um die Zuschauerzahl bei der Amtseinführung Donald Trumps, der Verbreitung von Publikationen, die den menschengemachten Klimawandel anzweifeln, sowie der Debatte um die "Querdenker" und die Corona-Maßnahmen - heraus, dass die Nutzung "alternativer Fakten" stets in vorgängige gesellschaftliche Konflikte eingebettet ist. Innerhalb dieser Konflikte erfüllten sie weniger die Funktion, glaubhafte Deutungen zu vermitteln, als die, Verwirrung zu stiften. Der Autor plädiert dafür, diese hintergründigen Konflikte in den Blick zu nehmen, um das Phänomen "alternative Fakten" besser verstehen und ihre Verbreitung bekämpfen zu können." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Das Ausmaß an Desinformation hat in den vergangenen Jahren stark zugenommen. Vor diesem Hintergrund ermöglicht dieser Leitfaden Kommunikationsverantwortlichen aus Abgeordnetenbüros, Ministerien und Behörden einen niedrigschwelligen Einstieg in den strategisch-kommunikativen Umgang mit Informati
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onsmanipulation. Im Gegensatz zur Desinformation umfasst Informationsmanipulation auch weitere manipulative Aktivitäten wie zum Beispiel die Verbreitung propagandistischer Inhalte oder die Einrichtung von Bot-Netzwerken. Der Leitfaden stützt sich dabei zum Teil auf wissenschaftliche Befunde, zum Teil auf normative Annahmen und Erfahrungswerte im Rahmen der Projektarbeit." (Zu diesem Leitfaden)
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"Organized propaganda and public opinion manipulation are increasing in Indonesia’s cybersphere. Specifically, since 2019, there has been a marked rise of cyber troop campaigns that serve to mobilize public consensus for controversial government policies. Cyber troop operations played a crucial ro
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le in three controversial events in which public opinion had been initially critical of the government policy at issue. These were, first, the revision of the Law on the Corruption Eradication Commission in September 2019; second, the launch of the New Normal policy during the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020; and third, the passing of the Omnibus Law for Job Creation in October 2020. In all three cases, there is clear evidence of cyber troops manipulating public opinion in support of government policy. In all three cases, the cyber troops manufactured consent by flooding social media with narratives that promoted the governing elite’s agenda, often using deceptive messages and disinformation that were amplified by numerous “buzzer” and “bot” accounts. Thereby they effectively drowned out oppositional discourses on social media and neutralized dissent, especially as mainstream media simultaneously echoed the cyber troops’ narratives. The ever more systematic use of cyber troops—and the considerable resources spent on such operations—indicates increasing co-optation of Indonesia’s cybersphere for elite interests. This threatens to undermine the quality of public debate and democracy in Indonesia because cyber troop operations not only feed public opinion with disinformation but also prevent citizens from scrutinizing and evaluating the governing elite’s behaviour and policy-making processes, which further exacerbates Indonesia’s ongoing democratic regression." (Executive summary)
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"In diesem Buch werden in 18 Kapiteln Phänomene der Kommunikation im digitalen Zeitalter vorgestellt und die psychologischen Hintergründe anhand von wissenschaftlichen Theorien und Analysen erörtert. Viele Menschen sind verunsichert durch eine Medienwelt, die unausgewogen erscheint (Fake News, L
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genpresse), in der man durch Clickbait manipuliert wird und in der Social Bots bald nicht mehr einfach von echten Chatpartnern zu unterscheiden sind. Abseits aller Hysterie erhalten die Leserinnen und Leser Einblick in faszinierende Erkenntnisse der Psychologie, mit deren Hilfe sich die schillernden Phänomene der Kommunikation im digitalen Zeitalter besser verstehen lassen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"By day, Julia Ebner works at a counter-extremism think tank, monitoring radical groups from the outside. But two years ago, she began to feel she was only seeing half the picture; she needed to get inside the groups to truly understand them. She decided to go undercover in her spare hours – late
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nights, holidays, weekends – adopting five different identities, and joining a dozen extremist groups from across the ideological spectrum. Her journey would take her from a Generation Identity global strategy meeting in a pub in Mayfair, to a Neo-Nazi Music Festival on the border of Germany and Poland. She would get relationship advice from 'Trad Wives' and Jihadi Brides and hacking lessons from ISIS. She was in the channels when the alt-right began planning the lethal Charlottesville rally, and spent time in the networks that would radicalise the Christchurch terrorist. In Going Dark, Ebner takes the reader on a deeply compulsive journey into the darkest recesses of extremist thinking, exposing how closely we are surrounded by their fanatical ideology every day, the changing nature and practice of these groups, and what is being done to counter them." (Publisher description)
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"Julia Ebner verfolgt hauptberuflich Extremisten. Undercover mischt sie sich unter Hacker, Terroristen, Trolle, Fundamentalisten und Verschwörer, sie kennt die Szenen von innen, von der Alt-Right-Bewegung bis zum Islamischen Staat, online wie offline. Ihr Buch macht Radikalisierung fassbar, es ist
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Erfahrungsbericht, Analyse, unmissverständlicher Weckruf. Als Extremismusforscherin stellen sich ihr folgende Fragen: Wie rekrutieren, wie mobilisieren Extremisten ihre Anhänger? Was ist ihre Vision der Zukunft? Mit welchen Mitteln wollen sie diese Vision erreichen? Um Antworten zu finden, schleust sich Julia Ebner ein in zwölf radikale Gruppierungen quer durch das ideologische Spektrum. Sozusagen von der anderen Seite beobachtet sie Planungen terroristischer Anschläge, Desinformationskampagnen, Einschüchterungsaktionen, Wahlmanipulationen. Sie erkennt, Radikalisierung folgt einem klaren Skript: Rekrutierung, Sozialisierung, Kommunikation, Mobilisierung, Angriff." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Las personas basan sus decisiones y participación democrática en la información de la que disponen y si dicha información es deliberadamente manipulada a través del uso indebido de sus datos personales, sus decisiones posteriores podrían no ser genuinas. En el presente documento, los analista
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s de estudios se adentran en los principales elementos que problematizan la relación entre Democracia y Protección de Datos Personales en la era digital, reflexionando acerca de las investigaciones que comenzaron a gestarse desde las ciencias sociales, pero que se traspasaron a los actuales asesores y consultores políticos para que -con evidencia científica- fuese más probable la elección de algún candidato. También analizan el rol decisivo que han asumido los datos personales para que, a través de algoritmos y la integración de un sinnúmero de bases de datos, puedan influenciar las decisiones políticas de los ciudadanos. También indagan en la transformación y adaptación que han asumido los partidos políticos frente a la digitalización para no perder el nexo con la ciudadanía, la identificación de sus necesidades desde el comportamiento social visible, sus deseos y motivaciones, lo que evidencia un cambio de paradigma del control ciudadano. Exploran las herramientas para lograr influenciar las decisiones de los ciudadanos y analizan estrategias para minimizar el riesgo que conlleva la digitalización, actualizando, por ejemplo, la legislación vigente, empoderando a la ciudadanía respecto al uso de sus datos personales y generando un mayor comportamiento ético por parte de organismos o empresas que tratan esos datos personales. Dada la utilidad y los riesgos que se observan en la relación que se establece entre Democracia y Protección de Datos Personales en la era digital, consideramos que es tiempo de ir subsanando los vacíos regulatorios e informar a la ciudadanía sobre los eventuales riesgos que conlleva el desarrollo digital, para que así cada cual pueda disfrutar de sus beneficios y aceptar conscientemente sus riesgos o evitarlos, en la construcción de una sociedad mejor." (Presentación, página 4)
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"Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage o
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f immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics." (Publisher description)
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"Governments around the world have dramatically increased their efforts to manipulate information on social media over the past year. The Chinese and Russian regimes pioneered the use of surreptitious methods to distort online discussions and suppress dissent more than a decade ago, but the practice
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has since gone global. Such state-led interventions present a major threat to the notion of the internet as a liberating technology. Online content manipulation contributed to a seventh consecutive year of overall decline in internet freedom, along with a rise in disruptions to mobile internet service and increases in physical and technical attacks on human rights defenders and independent media. Nearly half of the 65 countries assessed in Freedom on the Net 2017 experienced declines during the coverage period, while just 13 made gains, most of them minor. Less than one-quarter of users reside in countries where the internet is designated Free, meaning there are no major obstacles to access, onerous restrictions on content, or serious violations of user rights in the form of unchecked surveillance or unjust repercussions for legitimate speech." (Page 1)
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"Which instruments and approaches do incumbent elites employ to skew media coverage in favour of their preferred candidate in a presidential election? What effects do these strategies have on news content? Based on two case studies of the presidential election campaigns in Russia in 2000 and in 2008
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, this investigation identifies the critical internal mechanisms according to which these regimes work. Looking at the same country, while it transformed from a competitive into a hegemonic authoritarian regime, allows one to make a diachronic comparison of these two regime types based on the Most-Similar Systems Design. The book explicates the subtle differences between competitive and hegemonic regimes, different types of media manipulation strategies, the diverging extent of media instrumentalisation, various interactions among state actors, large business owners, the media, and journalists, the respective effects that all these factors and interactions have on media content, and the peculiar types of bias prevalent in each type of regime." (Publisher description)
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"Cyber troops are government, military or political party teams committed to manipulating public opinion over social media. In this working paper, we report on specific organizations created, often with public money, to help define and manage what is in the best interest of the public. We compare su
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ch organizations across 28 countries, and inventory them according to the kinds of messages, valences and communication strategies used. We catalogue their organizationalforms and evaluate their capacities in terms of budgets and staffing. This working paper summarizes the findings of the first comprehensive inventory of the major organizations behind social media manipulation. We find that cyber troops are a pervasive and global phenomenon. Many different countries employ significant numbers of people and resources to manage and manipulate public opinion online, sometimes targeting domestic audiences and sometimes targeting foreign publics. The earliest reports of organized social media manipulation emerged in 2010, and by 2017 there are details on such organizations in 28 countries. Looking across the 28 countries, every authoritarian regime has social media campaigns targeting their own populations, while only a few of them target foreign publics. In contrast, almost every democracy in this sample has organized social media campaigns that target foreign publics, while political-party-supported campaigns target domestic voters. Authoritarian regimes are not the only or even the best at organized social media manipulation. The earliest reports of government involvement in nudging public opinion involve democracies, and new innovations in political communication technologies often come from political parties and arise during high-profile elections. Over time, the primary mode for organizing cyber troops has gone from involving military units that experiment with manipulating public opinion over social media networks to strategic communication firms that take contracts from governments for social media campaigns." (Executive summary)
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"Die Fallanalyse hat gezeigt, dass eine Erzählung vom Krieg 1992-93 propagiert wird, die einer abchasischen Version des Narrationsschemas 'Die Vertreibung von fremden Feinden' entspricht. Ein zentrales Element der Erzählung ist zudem, so ergab die Interpretation, eine betont positive Darstellung d
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es Kriegsalltags. Durch sie wird einerseits das bereits existierende Bild der heldenhaften Soldaten gestützt. Andererseits wird der Nachkriegsgeneration 20 Jahre nach Kriegsende eine gewissermaßen harmlose Version des Kriegsgeschehens angeboten, mittels Film und Konzerten werden begleitend affektive Erlebnisse ermöglicht. So soll die Identifikation der Nachgeborenen mit diesem Teil des abchasischen Gründungsmythos, den sie selbst nicht erlebt haben, angeregt werden." (Seite 37)
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"The research is based on a survey of 45 industry professionals from 15 countries [...] The principal finding is that there is a de facto global consensus on how media organizations understand the manipulation ofimages. Manipulation is seen as involving material changes to an image through the addit
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ion or subtraction of content, and is always deemed unacceptable for news and documentary pictures. Manipulation is therefore a specific form of processing, where the material change to the image through the addition or subtraction of element(s) is designed to deceive or mislead the reader/viewer. Adjustments (such as limited cropping, dodging and burning, toning, color adjustment, conversion to grayscale) to photographs are accepted. These are usually described in terms of“minor“changes being permitted while “excessive“ changes are prohibited." (Executive summary)
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