propaganda - The Art of the Prank

July 27, 2013December 15, 2023

Newsjacking Defined: Same Old Story, New Name

“Newsjacking” With a Dark Twist: When Hoaxes Infiltrate the News Cycle
by Mandy Nagy
LegalInsurrection.com
July 10, 2013

There is a term known as “newsjacking,” and it refers to the takeover of a news story or narrative and using it for other purposes. See the example in that link about when Oreo took over the power outage during the Super Bowl 2013, and you”ll understand exactly why such a term was ever coined. It”s typically seen as a positive term – the creative pairing of media savvy and perfect timing, resulting in a viral news success.

But there is a more sinister likeness to newsjacking that is increasingly employed today, especially given the advent of social media. And this is a version that comes with a dark twist.

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We see it in more primitive fashion when big stories break on social media: The trolls who post fake photos or fake reports of sharks swimming in the streets during a hurricane, or the Sandy Hook child who was (not) killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, or false reports of the NYSE being under three feet of water during Hurricane Sandy – the posts that trick mainstream media and leave them backtracking on their stories in the midst of the flurry.

And then there are those who craft their own narratives in a much more savvy way – some out of whole cloth, some mixed in with a little truth – and inject them into the news to achieve a particular gain, often a politically motivated one.

Read the rest of this article here.

February 17, 2012December 15, 2023

Putin on Trial [English & Russian]

Putin fake arrest video resonates with Russians
by Elizabeth Flock
Washington Post
February 17, 2012

The prime minister of Russia stood in handcuffs inside a cage, looking downcast, as a judge questioned him.

Watch Vladimir Putin in “jail”. Click on “cc” for English subtitles

The video showing Vladimir Putin on trial for corruption and terrorism was clearly a fake, but it went viral anyway “” attracting millions of viewers since it was posted on YouTube several days ago, the Associated Press reports.

Called “The Arrest of Vladimir Putin,” the video comes a week after thousands of Russians protested in Moscow against the prime minister, who will run for a third term as president March 4. Putin was president from 2000 to 2008, and has been prime minister ever since. He is widely expected to win the presidential election, despite the public”s discontent, which peaked with widespread protests in December.

Continue reading “Putin on Trial [English & Russian]”

December 2, 2010December 15, 2023

A Personal Correspondence from Julian Assange

Editor’s note: The Art of the Prank is in receipt of previously unpublished content from the vast archive of WikiLeaks documents. We feel we have an obligation, in the pursuit of freedom of information, to publish these excerpts as we receive them. We will continue to post them as they are sent to us. We realize the danger Julian Assange faces. We can honestly say we do not know where he is.

Joey;

Thank you for your offer to publish some of the more controversial classified U.S. government documents WikiLeaks brought into the public domain on the 28th of November 2010. Although The New York Times and the Guardian began publishing some of the 251,287 WikiLeaks documents, The New York Times has bowed to government pressure and decided to withhold some passages and in some cases, entire cables whose disclosure, they claim, could compromise American intelligence efforts and even upset U.S. domestic political stability.

Some of the documents being withheld which will give the world unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign and domestic activities, appear to be benign except as to cause some embarrassment to certain public figures. One cable withheld is about Silvio Berlusconi, who, while contemplating a run for the Italian presidency, took a medical holiday in Luzern, Switzerland to have a very large “OMERTA” tattoo removed from his back by surgical laser. Also, he and Vladimir Putin have been described by an aid as having had an alcohol and drug fueled “boys night,” shooting out the windows of the UK Consul General’s empty parked Daimler with automatic weapons the pair borrowed from their bodyguards on a Berlusconi Moscow visit.

Sarah Palin attempted to secretly adopt two Downs Syndrome infants through an Asian adoption agency. The Chinese balked when Palin revealed that she needed stand-ins for Trig, Continue reading “A Personal Correspondence from Julian Assange”

April 11, 2010December 15, 2023

Harnessing a Mythical Creature — China & The Internet

China”s Censors Tackle and Trip Over the Internet
by Michael Wines, Sharon LaFraniere & Jonathan Ansfield
The New York Times
April 7, 2010

Beijing “” Type the Chinese characters for “carrot” into Google”s search engine here in mainland China, and you will be rewarded not with a list of Internet links, but a blank screen.

Don”t blame Google, however. The fault lies with China”s censors “” who are increasingly a model for countries around the world that want to control an unrestricted Internet.

Since late March, when Google moved its search operations out of mainland China to Hong Kong, each response to a Chinese citizen”s search request has been met at the border by government computers, programmed to censor any forbidden information Google might turn up.

“Carrot” “” in Mandarin, huluobo “” may seem innocuous enough. But it contains the same Chinese character as the surname of President Hu Jintao. And the computers, long programmed to intercept Chinese-language searches on the nation”s leaders, substitute an error message for the search result before it can sneak onto a mainland computer.

This is China”s censorship machine, part George Orwell, part Rube Goldberg: an information sieve of staggering breadth and fineness, yet full of holes; run by banks of advanced computers, but also by thousands of Communist Party drudges; highly sophisticated in some ways, remarkably crude in others. Continue reading “Harnessing a Mythical Creature — China & The Internet”

April 6, 2010December 15, 2023

Collateral Cover-up

Editor’s Note: This video depicts graphic and deadly American military action against unarmed, non-combatant people, two of whom were Reuters journalists holding cameras standing on a street in Iraq in 2007. The incident was vetted by the military and apparently covered up. WikiLeaks obtained the footage from military whistleblowers and stands by its authenticity. It is difficult to watch. Proceed with caution.

Collateral Murder – Short Version [17:47]

WikiLeaks has released a classified U.S. military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad — including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.

The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured. After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own “Rules of Engagement”…

For further information and/or to see the longer version of this video, please visit the special project website, CollateralMurder.com

thanks Don