Crank Up The Fear

The important thing here: PSYOP plays on our emotional responses in specific ways to achieve specific behavioral outcomes that can alter how our communities function or how we govern ourselves.

One must appreciate the ability to say that hindsight is often 2020, especially when it comes from 2020. The entire article, written before the worst of it had yet to happen, gave us some tips on what to do to combat the psy ops underway.

So, what can you do about it?

As we discuss information threats specific to the current landscape, it’s important to return to the question guiding this blog series: What does it mean to be a better information citizen? Let’s go through the parameters we laid out and discuss what that means for this case.

The first 3 are connected:

To acknowledge that disinformation and online influence campaigns are increasing in frequency and importance because they effectively exploit elements of human psychology, media feedback loops, and the algorithmic/engagement architecture of information networks on the internet. In short, we must accept that disinformation campaigns work in altering perception and behavior, including our own, which is why foreign and domestic malign actors invest time and resources into deploying them

To consciously evaluate how you act as a citizen in a connected, digital world facing crisis; to understand that how you engage and amplify information shapes the overall information environment for you, your community, and your nation; and to choose to be a better consumer and purveyor of information in that landscape

To scrutinize both the sources of information in front of you and the conduit for how it reached you. Is the origin of the information documented, verified, and trustworthy? Do you know the poster/amplifier of that information or understand their motivations?

With the text message/screenshots campaigns, we should understand how these messages are specifically designed to bypass our information defenses, seem like trusted information, exploit our emotional responses to threats to our community and our loved ones in times of uncertainty, and make us both absorb the message and transmit it on to others. This transmission “just to be sure” is fanning the flames of a campaign that aims to polarize us and spark conflict.

Be a roadblock for these types of campaigns: transmission stops with you.

To be constantly vigilant not just about the veracity of the information before you, but the purpose of it. Why is it in front of you, why now, and what does it aim to achieve?

I remain convinced that this is the single most important question when we are evaluating pieces of information in front of us. And I think in these times of heightened anxiety and uncertainties and questions, we need to understand that a lot of inflammatory information is being put in front of us to elevate that sense of panic. Does the information ask us to do something and does it make sense? When this relates to current events, it’s important to be well-informed and have a broad base of knowledge about what is actually happening.

To understand how the tactics and narratives of disinformation target us, work on us — all of us — and how we, as individuals, can alter those outcomes, limit their reach in our communities, and disincentivize investment into future disinformation campaigns

To endeavor to positively engage others to encourage the habits of good information citizenship

https://standuprepublic.com/current-information-operation-topics-someone-is-psyoping-americans-and-you-should-be-really-pissed-off-about-it/

As you well know, the operation to crank up the fear is obvious to those of us who have been involved in military psy ops before, even in a slight “combat-support” role.