COMMUNICATION CONTEXT AND DISINFORMATION

One of the most interesting stories from the Greek mythology, the one about the Trojan horse, is well known to us through Virgil’s “The Aeneidˮ and Homer’s “The Odysseyˮ. After 10-year siege of Troy, upon advice of the seer Calchas, the Greeks built a hollow wooden horse in which they hid their best soldiers led by Odysseus. After the Greek army seemingly ended the siege and retreated behind the near hills the Trojans brought the wooden horse into the city as spoils of war and started to celebrate “the end of the siege”. Although they were warned to beware the devious Greeks, the Trojans continued with the celebration, while Odysseus using the right moment, opened the gates of the city with the help of his soldiers after which the Greeks easily defeated the drunk Trojans.

The story about the Trojans horse is one of the oldest instances of using disinformation for military purposes. In this story the disinformation is embodied in the wooden horse who served as a tool for confusing and manipulating the enemy. This confusion helped the Greeks to infiltrate into the city which easily fell and was sacked after the Trojans falsely believed that the siege was over.

The effectiveness of disinformation is based exactly on confusion and deception through an illusion that the things are not as they seem, such as we think, expect or believe them to be. In that sense, disinformation is most harmful when it is combined with other information that are either true or widely accepted as “general facts of reality” or they are common attitudes. Disinformation is like drops of poison in a beverage that we drink regularly. The mixture with the drink is crucial so that we don’t suspect that we drink some kind of poison. That is why in today’s interconnected world, disinformation blooms and it easily operates in situations and contexts when our “critical guard” is down.

The communication context is one of the most important factors for the effectiveness and spreading of disinformation.

We usually receive disinformation through the media or the web-pages we trust because they share similar views with us, as well as through sources and publishers who reflect our simplified views of reality, based on prejudice and stereotypes. Then, through public figures, journalists, columnists, Twitter users or web-portals that we like and that we trust uncritically.

One of the recent local cases was the tweet of the MP Antonio Miloshoski about the decisions of the European Council from 18 June 2019, which was uncritically transmitted by a large number of online and electronic media. This post was later denied by the chairman of the meeting, George Ciamba from Romania.

Very often disinformation is dropped and spilled in Facebook pages dedicated to various hobbies, culinary topics, recipes and similar online corners where we feel relaxed and only look for some easy fun.

A recent local example were also the recycled posts about the s.c. Dalai Lama’s test with three mysterious questions, which should tell you ‘what kind of person you are and who should help you to reach into your soul’. The alleged connection between the Dalai Lama and this test was denied some 15 years ago and it is related with an anonymous post on an online forum in 1998. This still didn’t stop the local online media, together with the Serbian and Croatian media, to write again about this topic, while the readers did not refrain to click on these articles in large numbers.

This type of disinformation content for fun has harmful influence on us, since we develop a habit not to check information and start to accept it uncritically. It gradually develops a kind of laziness in receiving information, but it also creates a context in which disinformation can be planted and spread very fast, especially through various groups on Facebook or through other social media.

For these reasons, in today’s interconnected world, disinformation is easily spread and it’s harder to detect all those places where it can show up and then easily reach the “ordinary readerˮ. According to the research of the magazine “Scienceˮ, disinformation spreads six time faster on social media than on the other information platforms. The parallel expansion of the online media, social media and disinformation is not accidental.

Fact-checking, detection and marking of media and person-manipulators, on various platforms is becoming a Herculean venture. The detection of a media or of a journalist that publishes disinformation, propaganda, speculation etc. was much more simple before compared to today.

Though it really is a Herculean venture, luckily it is not Sisyphean. The combination of detecting sources of disinformation with media education can bring good results. Sometimes the readers, visitors and viewers should act like every day is April Fools’ Day, they should carefully read and follow the news, and they should trust them only after they thoroughly check them and they turn to be true.

Sead Dzigal