The firehose of falsehood, or firehosing, is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels. The high volume of messages and the use of multiple channels are effective because people are more likely to believe a story when it appears to have been reported by multiple sources. Traditional counterpropaganda efforts are ineffective against this technique.
About Firehose of falsehood in brief
The firehose of falsehood, or firehosing, is a propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels. Since 2014, when it was successfully used by Russia during its annexation of Crimea, this model has been adopted by other governments and political movements around the world. The high volume of messages and the use of multiple channels are effective because people are more likely to believe a story when it appears to have been reported by multiple sources. The success of this approach flouts the conventional wisdom that communication is more persuasive when it is truthful, credible, and non-contradictory. Traditional counterpropaganda efforts are ineffective against this technique, according to researchers at the RAND Corporation and the Marshall Fund of the U.S.
Researchers suggest the squirt gun of truth, among other tactics, could be used to counter the firehoses of falsehood with the lawsuit threat, the ad hominem attack, and the Deepfake video threat, among others. The technique has been successfully used to spread debunked theories about the supposed dangers of vaccination by Antivaxxers to spread discredited theories about vaccination. It has been claimed that Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and White House Chief Strategist in the administration of President Donald Trump, once described himself as a Leninist.
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This page is based on the article Firehose of falsehood published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
