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A good place to start might be a book like 'Autocracy, Inc.' by Anne Applebaum. Unrelated to this but her book on the Holodomor, 'Red Famine,' is amazing too. She's an expert on modern authoritarianism. The book's about autocrats in general but deals a lot with disinformation and propaganda. It'll give you a pretty high level view of who those people are, what their goals are, and how disinformation fits into their strategies. A big part of recognizing disinfo is being able to evaluate whose interests a piece of (dis)info might serve.
You'll find a lot of books about Russian disinformation because Russia has been the most active, the most ambitious, and the most successful at weaponizing propaganda. I'd look for books written by academics but who are writing for a popular audience. 'Active Measures' by Thomas Rid is an example. That book in particular goes into the origin of disinformation in the Soviet Union (the term was actually coined by Stalin) and how it carried over into modern Russia. Russia's a good starting point too because everyone else has copied them like crazy -- although they're now openly collaborating, Republicans are stealing from this playbook.
Bellingcat is good resource to get into the anatomy of disinformation networks and operations. They're the gold standard in open source investigations and have uncovered some insane shit -- disinfo networks, Russia downing MH17, a network of Russian illegals (like in 'The Americans'). Reports like this one are extremely detailed and get into the nuts and bolts of how propaganda networks are structured and how information passes through them. Their ability to track down spies using the Russian equivalent of door dash is internet MacGyver shit too.
Caroline Orr Bueno is a disinformation researcher whose newsletter Weaponized Spaces also dives pretty deep into disinformation networks, often tracing it back to a single point of origin. She links to a lot of great resources and is super accessible. She's also awesome. I assume she's moved on to bsky but she used to be on Mastodon and would answer any questions you had about her work. Good person!
For those on supported platforms who want to stay informed: Anne Applebaum is also active over at @anneapplebaum@journa.host. :)
Just yesterday I watched the BBC documentary HyperNormalisation from 2016, and it has completely changed the way I understand disinformation. I would recommend it to everyone.
The term hypernormalisation comes from a Soviet author, who used it to describe the sense in the late stage soviet union that nothing was real, nothing mattered, and nothing could ever change. When you know everything you're told is a lie and everything you do is effectively part of the lie, it becomes incredibly hard to create an effective opposition; everything exists within the framework of lies.
Putin perfected this political theatre in Russia, and Trump has taken Putin's strategies to the US. But the documentary argues that the west has been creating a "fake world" for much longer; a useful apolitical landscape where friends and enemies are clearly defined, and the complexity of the real world are conveniently left out. The overarching goal was the stability of the system; specifically, the balance of power between the US and the Soviets, and Kissinger's fucked up vision for international politics.
It explains, among other things, how Gaddafi could be our greatest enemy one day, BFF with Bush and Blair the next, and killed via an American drone strike the day after, all while western media expects us to completely accept the narrative.
It also talks about the development of cyberspace, the different visions for it, and how eventually it turned into algorithms feeding us distorted reflections of ourselves to the interest of anonymous third parties.
It's a long documentary, but I strongly recommend it. I think it captures some of the underlying problems that brought us to where we are today, and it gives a more honest description than pretending like everything was fine until Trump came along.
Watch it on archive.org or on Peertube (the instance seems somewhat unstable). Here's the Wikipedia article.
Wasn't Gadaffi killed by a mob?
He escaped his palace in a convoy, the leading car of which was bombed by a US drone. He then tried to escape on foot and hide, the mob/resistance caught up with him, and had him executed.
So basically it was a NATO mission, just with extra steps so that we can claim not to be directly responsible.
So why say he was killed by a drone strike?
Sorry - that was me writing too quick. For all intents and purposes the drone strike was the end of him, but you're right he was not killed by it though its purpose and function was clearly to eliminate him, and it did so successfully.
I changed "by" to "via" for accuracy.
I love the question and hope to see some good responses here.
If someone reading this has Ryan Mcbeth's ear they might want to point him to this post. He'd likely have good suggestions. Here's one of his lectures on disinformation: https://www.youtube.com/live/THfi_lxBvW0
Edit: Here's another much shorter video of his on disinformation: https://youtu.be/DZ6eMYW7Xwc
Oh, this is great! I like that he regularly uploads, too. I'll have to dig through so many of his videos and that's a good thing.
I recommend these two books:
PR! - A Social History of Spin
They're older, but I don't think you need "modern examples", once you understand how it works, the techniques immediately and obviously apply to social media.
Thank you! I heard about Manufacturing Consent before but it completely escaped my radar.
These youtube videos dissect some good examples of various forms of disinformation :