In early March 2015, Ukrainian Information Policy designer Joel Harding laid out what to expect going forward in the following statements: "In military IIO operations center on the ability to influence foreign audiences, US, and global audiences, and adversely affect enemy decision making through an integrated approach. Even current event news is released in this fashion. Each portal is given messages that follow the same themes because it is an across the board mainstream effort that fills the information space entirely when it is working correctly.
The purpose of "Inform and Influence Operations" is not to provide a perspective, opinion, or lay out a policy. It is defined as the ability to make audiences "think and act" in a manner favorable to the mission objectives. This is done through applying perception-management techniques that target the audiences emotions, motives, and reasoning.
These techniques are not geared for debate. It is to overwhelm and change the target psyche.
Using these techniques, information sources can be manipulated and those that write, speak, or think counter to the objective are relegated as propaganda, ill-informed, or irrelevant.--Harding
While the above sounds gloriously overoptimistic, Harding, along with his little band of Kremlin Troll hunters, personally started developing the idea of organizations capable of blackballing journalists and publications in a way that could not be construed as censorship.
From another March 2015 article--A "Disinformation Charter" for Media and Bloggers: Top-down censorship should be avoided. But rival media, from Al-Jazeera to the BBC, Fox and beyond, need to get together to create a charter of acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Vigorous debate and disagreement are, of course, to be encouraged--but media organizations that practice conscious deception should be excluded from the community. A similar code can be accepted by bloggers and other online influencers.
This "Disinformation Charter" for responsible behavior (Ministry of Truth?) he describes is to fight "conscious deception" can only be weighed against how he describes Propaganda. "The word is frequently used to describe any news emerging one's opponent."-- Harding
Journalists that need to be excluded are those "our side" label as propagandists or active measure agents.
Harding's connections in media are very large. Through his friend Mathew Armstrong, Harding had access to and the ear of the board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG board was staffed by the who's who of network and radio broadcast, print media and shortwave CEO's and heavy hitters. They are behind RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty).
On the other end of this in 2015, Joel Harding was assembling a group of miscreants to attack the social networks of different journalist and publications. The crude logic behind a direct assault was that by developing, training, and overseeing vast troll networks they could speak over their opposition (people that their employers wanted to be silenced) and subdue dissident online conversation and control the information.
Where this wasn't feasible, they set up hack and harass attacks at various publication to get them to stop publishing hard-hitting journalists. This still hasn't been effective because it caused publishers to dig in and harden their internet properties instead.
The softer, more indirect approach Harding pushed in March 2015 quickly developed into the unified media strategy he wanted for the US and Europe. Control the information and don't allow contradicting information or news into the media stream. When it does get in, call it propaganda.
Enter Propornot.
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