Tag: disinformation

Russian state disinformation campaigns

Two interesting reports:

European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (2023). Digital Services Act: Application of the risk management framework to Russian disinformation campaigns. Publications Office of the European Union.

“During the first year of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, social media companies enabled the Kremlin to run a large-scale disinformation campaign targeting the European Union and its allies, reaching an aggregate audience of at least 165 million and generating at least 16 billion views. Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.”

Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (2023). Russia’s African coup strategy.

“Today we are sharing a report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) on Russian influence operations in Africa, principally focused on the Niger coup. We believe it is vital there is wider understanding of the ways in which the internet is being used to stoke political instability around the world.”

Communication is probably more than 7% verbal

“Have you ever heard the adage that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal, i.e. body language and vocal variety? You probably have, and if you have any sense at all, you have ignored it.” Philip Yaffe wades into this one. The first two pages provide a concise summary of the 1967 studies that produced this 7% figure:

Subjects were asked to listen to a recording of a woman’s voice saying the word “maybe” three different ways to convey liking, neutrality, and disliking. They were also shown photos of the woman’s face conveying the same three emotions. They were then asked to guess the emotions heard in the recorded voice, seen in the photos, and both together. The result? The subjects correctly identified the emotions 50 percent more often from the photos than from the voice.

In the second study, subjects were asked to listen to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking (honey, dear, thanks), three to convey neutrality (maybe, really, oh), and three to convey disliking (don’t, brute, terrible). Each word was pronounced three different ways. When asked to guess the emotions being conveyed, it turned out that the subjects were more influenced by the tone of voice than by the words themselves.

The original studies behind the figure look interesting for what they actually tried to do rather than the bullshit claims that resulted.

Originals

Mehrabian, A., & Wiener, M. (1967). Decoding of inconsistent communications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 6(1), 109–114.

Mehrabian, A., & Ferris, S. R. (1967). Inference of attitudes from nonverbal communication in two channels. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 31(3), 248–252.

Can you bullshit a bullshitter?

You can bullshit a bullshitter, except if they also have high cognitive ability, according to Littrell et al. (2021).

Littrell, S., Risko, E. F., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2021). ‘You can’t bullshit a bullshitter’ (or can you?): Bullshitting frequency predicts receptivity to various types of misleading information. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(4), 1484–1505.