Propaganda engl web pr

Ihor Kulias
edited by
Nataliya Lyhachova and Otar Dovzhenko

Ihor Kulias
edited by
Kyiv — 2018

UDK 32.019.5
К90
Kulias I.
How to recognize propaganda in the media / edited by N.
Lyhachova, O.Dovzhenko, Kyiv, 2018. — 40 pages
Propaganda in our time went beyond totalitarian regimes. Today, it is also poses
danger to democratic states that only learn to resist propaganda attacks. Ukraine,
with its unstable society, the situation of the undeclared war with Russia (and, con-
sequently, continuous information attacks within the so-called hybrid war) and
media space controlled by the oligarchs is particularly vulnerable to propaganda
manipulations both from the side of the aggressor country and the internal ones.
Media expert Ihor Kulias considers propaganda in the media through the prism of
professional journalism standards. He gives examples of the most typical manifesta-
tions of propaganda, which at the same time are violation of standards. This simple
and obvious set of indicators of propaganda can be used by anyone who does not
want to be deceived and distribute false or distorted information among others.
The text will be useful for teachers of media literacy, journalists, analysts and just
responsible citizens.
UDK 32.019.5
The production of this brochure became possible with the financial support
of the Danish International Development Agency (Danida). The content of
the brochure is sole responsibility of Detector Media NGO and does not nec-
essarily reflect the position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.
© NGO Detector Media, 2018
© Kulias I., 2018
© Pocheptsov H., 2018
К90.

Introduction. Heorhiy Pocheptsov.
How the information world has changed 6
Foreword 10
What is the propaganda picture of the world built of 13
Three phenomena of mass consciousness that help propaganda 17
How propaganda violates and imitates the standards of journalism 19
Afterword 36
CONTENT

6 How to recognize propaganda in the media
I
n our eyes, the status of information and information space has
changed. We were growing up and living in one space, but now it is
fundamentally different. Once, Francis Fukuyama wrote about the
end of history, which the humanity had reached, but with the advent
of the Internet one can say that the mankind received new history. And
propaganda reappeared in this new history. But now it is implemented in
the digital world and is based on other media. It found itself a basic safe
harbor in social media.
Today’s propaganda first came back in positive contexts, such as promot-
ing the healthy lifestyle. This also happened because in the West the term
“propaganda” was, roughly speaking, forbidden. Students simply did not
want to take such courses at universities because, as it seemed to every-
one, propaganda died together with totalitarian states. But instead of it, it
was easy to use the terms “information wars”, “information operations”,
“operations of influence” or “public diplomacy”. But they only describe a
slightly different reality: it is influence on the audience of another coun-
INTRODUCTION
HOW THE INFORMATION
WORLD HAS CHANGED

7How the information world has changed
try. And Soviet propaganda was born and firmed up to influence its own
people. Incidentally, in the United States there is even a ban on using such
methods for their own population.
Today, propaganda has returned to politics as promotion of own view
of the world, which differs from the views of another social group. Pri-
or to this, Joseph Nye introduced the notion of attractive soft power, in
contrast to coerce hard power. Developing on this his idea, it should be
emphasized that the hard power is more likely to be aimed to change be-
havior in the nearest future and more often these changes are expected
in physical space, and the soft power is aimed at the value changes in the
minds, therefore, it works in long-term projects and changes our vision of
the world.
Propaganda has returned to the new digital world together with fakes.
The British Government asks to abandon this term and to call all these
things misinformation. Many scientists in their classifications try to take
motivation into account, because only a conscious distortion of informa-
tion can be a fake. If a person had no desire to deceive, this could have
been a mistake.
Propaganda is systemic rather than accidental distortion of information.
Social media have provided all the opportunities for this. It was never be-
fore that billions of people could be addressed instantly and anonymously,
but the Internet and social media made it possible. Examples of this were
Russian information interventions in the presidential elections (USA and
France) or referendums (Brexit and the independence of Catalonia). There
are also examples of attempts to intervene in parliamentary elections in
some European countries. All this has attracted particular attention, since
it was an attempt from another country to exert such influence.
How was it done? Trolls in uniforms and without had instructions on po-
litical targeting, that is to influence a person, based on their psychological
portrait. This psychological portrait of a person and of the corresponding
group of people who think the same way was made on the basis of the likes
and other information that a person leaves behind on Facebook. So it was
possible to get into the well-established preferences which make it possible
to understand the points of vulnerability: for what and against what the

person is, what worries them the most today, for what they will stand,
whom they consider as their main enemy, and who is their ally.
At these information groups of people the messages from a conditional
citizen of the same country were directed and for this reason fake accounts
on Facebook were created. These messages had to strengthen the polariza-
tion which already existed in the mass consciousness.
The purpose in the United States, for example, was to create chaos in the
heads because, as you know, conservative voters do not like changes; the
Democrats are for changes but not the Republicans. The use of such meth-
ods in some other countries, such as Germany, also led to the right parties
getting into the parliament.
A characteristic feature of our time is the significant polarization of the
population. People do not want to listen to the opposite arguments at all;
they try to be in their informational environment, because it is more com-
fortable for them. Therefore, they love to share messages that correspond
to their picture of the world with others. And they share them exclusively
with their like-minded fellows. This life in the same information atmos-
phere is called “echo chamber”.
Fakes include negative content, because such content spreads faster and
wider than positive content. And the main spreader is a person whose
point of view coincides with this content. The following three things are
needed for the success of a fake campaign: the methods of psychological
profiling and targeting, the development of negative content that corre-
sponds to the polarization which is in the heads of the inhabitants of the
country, and the bots that carry out the work of the initial dissemination,
in order to reach as many people as possible. And then people send these
texts to their acquaintances themselves. This is a model that once worked
to share jokes and rumors.
Even after attracting attention to this problem, mass consciousness is
still not ready to distinguish between true and false news. For example,
recent studies have shown that even students at Stanford University are
following content without paying attention to the sources of information.
And without the source, it is difficult for us to assess the authenticity of
what we get.

9How the information world has changed
Man was not ready for the new information world. A newspaper or tele-
vision as a source of news have a professional journalist in their structure
who finds the facts, and an editorial review of the facts for authenticity.
Only after this, the information is being spread. Social media do not have
such levels of information protection before spreading them. Therefore,
a massive amount of facts that do not correspond to reality comes to the
world. This can be an accidental action by one person. But when this is a
systemic action by organizations aimed at influencing the mass conscious-
ness, it becomes dangerous.
We make decisions based on the information we have. If the information
is true, our decision will be correct. If the information is distorted, our de-
cision will be erroneous, one that will cause negative consequences.
Journalism has become a place where propaganda has found its safe
harbor, since both the journalist and the reader have lost the ability to dis-
tinguish between facts and interpretations. A journalist thinks something
is true, and the reader reads about it as about the plain truth.
Propaganda exists and will exist, as there will always be social groups
with different views. And every such social group will promote its views
into the public space. Therefore, important becomes the struggle against
its manifestations at the level of the media content: non-dissemination,
blocking, contradiction and debunking of attempts to manipulate social
consciousness.
The text of Ihor Kulias is useful because it transfers the concept of
“propaganda” that is applied to media content from the plane of evalu-
ative judgments (“we do not like it, therefore, it is propaganda”) in the
plane of specific features that can be defined and measured. It is impor-
tant that the signs of propaganda which the author describes are tied to
violations of well-known by media professionals and recognized profes-
sional standards. This means that propaganda can not only be effective-
ly recognized, but also separated from genuine journalism, the one that
adheres to standards.
Heorhiy Pocheptsov

P
ropaganda is spreading of certain views and ideas for man-
aging the behavior of society in the direction desired by the
propaganda ordering party through the media and in other
ways (for example, in artistic works, on billboards and city-
lights, and once before, simply on posters). This is one of the possible
definitions of this phenomenon. What does it bring to society? Bene-
fit or harm? Things that are likely to be useful to society (for example,
a healthy lifestyle) can be propagated; but it is not the fact that these
things are really useful for the whole society and at the same time for
each individual.
But in the history of mankind, the greatest damage was caused and is
caused by political propaganda. Through manipulations with informa-
tion, it disseminates certain views and ideas in the mass consciousness.
The views and ideas which ultimately make it possible for certain polit-
ical forces to fight for power, and then hold that power. With the help
of propaganda, political forces can fool “the population under their ju-
risdiction”, sow hate and intolerance in society, cover up corruption and
theft of budget money, launch wars and avoid responsibility for their
actions.
Political propaganda may be fragmentary when politicians promote
a certain message through certain media. But where the totalitarian or
authoritarian state manages to take control of all or almost all of the
media, propaganda becomes all-pervading and systematic. It draws an
FOREWORD
“All propaganda is lies, even when
one is telling the truth.”
George Orwell

11Foreword
unreal “picture of the world” for society and society begins to live in this
world created by the propagandists. The whole content of all media is
solely subordinated to the tasks of state propaganda. For example, in
the totalitarian Soviet Union, the mass media were called “mass com-
munication and propaganda media”. Because it was believed that Soviet
propaganda is about the good and the eternal.
The biggest part of the population of most post-Soviet countries now
receives information from television programs, fewer from the radio,
and even less from online media outlets. The study, conducted at the
request of the non-governmental organization Detector Media, showed
that 86% of Ukrainians receive news primarily from Ukrainian TV
channels. A totalitarian or authoritarian government may not get rid of
separate online outlets, but they are still read by a minority of people.
Or, such a government may even quite deliberately leave small “gaps”
for the dissatisfied (as for example outlets such as “Echo of Moscow”,
“Dozhd” or “Novaya Gazeta” in Russia). But they will be read or listened
to by a few people. The majority will still stay in the large propaganda
media field.
Among examples of systemic propaganda, Soviet and Russian ones
are the closest to us. And if the first one was mainly for “internal use”,
then the second one is a “dual-use commodity”. On the one hand, Rus-
sian propagandist media keep the lion’s share of the population of their
country in a fictional world; on the other hand, they use their own exter-
nal media (such as Russia Today) or the media in post-Soviet countries
owned by the allies of the Kremlin for hybrid war.
Unlike Russia, there is a bigger, though, somewhat bizarre pluralism in
the Ukrainian media space. This is due to the fact that various media be-
long to different oligarchs, which, in their turn, support different politi-
cal forces. Therefore, any propaganda in Ukrainian mass media can only
be considered as fragmentary. In Ukrainian audience, unlike the same
Russian, there is at least a choice in any segment of the media world.
And also there is the opportunity to compare how the same events are
presented by the media from various political camps, if desired. We now
have media that propagate in favor of the current government; media

that propagate in favor of the opposition; even media, which promote
the propaganda of the aggressor state - Russia - in Ukraine. There is
a small number of independent outlets, some of which are self-fund-
ing, some are supported by the non-oligarchic businesses, some exist at
the expense of foreign grants. And there is also maybe not ideal, but a
public broadcaster. In the early 2000s, under the presidency of Leonid
Kuchma, the head of his administration – Viktor Medvedchuk – tried
to take Ukrainian media under the full control by temnyks [rules that
set guidelines on what can be covered and how it should be covered in
the media – Translator]. And he succeeded partly. In 2003-2004, most
of the major media published identical content ordered from Bankova
[The street where the Administration of Ukrainian President is located
– Translator]. But in the end, this system crashed because of massive
journalistic protests during the Orange Revolution.
This text does not claim to be scientific; it is rather a collection of hints
on how you can distinguish propaganda products in the general infor-
mation flow that falls on our heads every day. To do this, first we will
examine what any propaganda products generally contain of, and with
what methods and means are they created. The key to understanding
is the fact that the creators of any political propaganda always careful-
ly disguise it as journalism, as media product (news, political essays,
public-political talk shows, etc.). This means that the propaganda prod-
uct has all the visible signs of a media product. But even with the mini-
mal critical analysis of such a product, one can always find out that the
objective of propaganda is achieved by deliberate and conscious
violation of the standards of journalism. This means that the stand-
ards (or the laws of the journalistic profession) are either violated by the
propagandists in a subtle way, or simply imitated.

13What is the propaganda picture of the world built of?
T
he author in advance apologizes for the large number of quo-
tation marks in this section. It is impossible to do without
them when talking about specific quotes, or about concepts
manipulated and distorted by propaganda.
Propaganda (especially of the state level in totalitarian or authori-
tarian states) is most often a powerful systemic phenomenon where
all propagandist materials without exception form a single, coherent,
internally consistent (for uncritical perception, of course), and at the
same time, a picture of the world that is relatively easy for the average
person to understand, which is beneficial to the subject of propaganda.
Often, the government is this subject, because the government usually
has more levers of media influence than the opposition. But in non-to-
talitarian countries, oppositional forces including those that are, for ex-
ample, supported from abroad can act as subjects of propaganda. This
picture of the world is being created using a certain set of propaganda
tools.
First of all, this picture of the world is “black and white”. Everything
in it receives clear evaluation (what is “correct”, and what is “wrong”,
what is “good”, and what is “evil”). Accordingly, in this picture of the
world, the division into “friends” and “enemies”, “our” and “their”
is very clear. In the propaganda picture of the world there are no half-
tones. Everything should be “compartmentalized”.
And according to this, propagandists give to all and everyone clear
labels – definitions that should immediately give the audience a “prop-
er understanding” what is it about – whether it is about “good” or “bad”.
So, Russian state propaganda says today that “junta” rules in Kyiv, that
there is a “fascist regime” in Ukraine and that “militiamen” and “rebels”
are fighting in the east of Ukraine. For comparison: Chechens who fought
for Chechnya’s independence from Russia have always been called by
WHAT IS THE PROPAGANDA PICTURE
OF THE WORLD BUILT OF?

Russian propagandists, in contrast, “Chechen terrorists” and “assailants.”
It was even when they did not commit terrorist attacks against the civil-
ian population and fought with regular Russian troops. Labels can be
quite creative, for example, the humorous term “green men” launched
in March 2014 was the perfect trick to substantiate the thesis “we are
not there”. It sounded humorous, non-threatening and even positive, de-
spite the fact that in fact these “green men” were Russian soldiers, armed
to teeth and ready to kill Ukrainians.
The next step is dehumanization of the “enemies”. On the one hand,
propaganda depicts these “enemies” in the darkest colors (“The West
is rotting”, “Europe is Sodom and Gomorrah,” “bloodthirsty Ukrainians
ruthlessly destroy the peaceful population of Donbas,” etc.). On the oth-
er hand, it emphasizes purportedly the insignificance of entire social
groups or even nations (“khokhol”, “bulbash”, “churka”, “gayropeans”,
“pindos”, etc.).
Further, propagandists in every possible way substantiate the
“correctness” of what “their ones” or “friends” do. For example, any
action by the government, any words by a pro-government politician are
reported by the propagandists as something uniquely correct and mean-
ingful. One can recall here all the nonsense that the Soviet authorities
did, and how the Soviet mass media presented all these endless materi-
als of the twenty-something Communist Party Congress. Everything was
reported by the Soviet propaganda from the following standpoints: “the
government cannot be mistaken”, “the government knows better”, “the
governments know what they are doing”. Now in Russia, the sufficient
reason for “infallibility” is that “Putin HIMSELF said so.”
On the contrary, it is the justification that “enemies” do everything
“wrongly” and “badly”. In general, there is a constant filtering of any
information in such a way that only positive news is published about
“theirs”, and only negative about the “enemies”.
In addition, conspiracy theory is included. The “enemies” are only
busy inventing different ways to “play dirty tricks on our country, our
government, our people” (“Russia is a besieged fortress”, “The US orches-
trate Russophobia all over the world”, etc.).

15What is the propaganda picture of the world built of?
Propaganda creates a systematic foundation for its “world”, constantly
rewriting history for current needs. That is where mythologems, con-
venient for propagandists, come from; such as, for example, the widely
spread by Russian propaganda idea that “Russians, Ukrainians and Be-
larusians are one nation.” In spite of the fact that these are three differ-
ent nations, each of which has its own history. Or the false mythologem
about “the primordially Russian Crimea” serves as the “argumentation”
of even more bizarre myth of “Chersonesus as the Russian Korsun, where
Vladimir baptized the Russians” (which still did not exist as a nation at
that time). Propaganda for personal needs can rewrite not only history
but also other sciences.
Another commonly used method of propaganda is the substitution
of notions. The meaning of individual words is completely distorted, or
the definition is used not as intended. For example, Russian propagan-
dist media call assailants in the Donbas “militiamen”. Meanwhile, the
meaning of the word “militiamen” is civilians who help their army de-
fend the country from an external enemy. Donbas assailants of Ukrain-
ian origin, on the contrary, help the army of a foreign invader to fight
with the army of their country. Another example: from the Soviet times
the word “fascism” was, for some reason, used to call German Nazism or,
more broadly, any Nazism, although in reality, the word “fascism” was
the self-determination of purely Italian Nazism – the ideology and the
state system of the dictator Mussolini.
Another technique is the division of notions. For example, Russian
propaganda and its disseminators in Ukraine actively promote the idea
of “compromise peace” (of course, on the conditions of complete surren-
der of Ukraine), justifying it with the false idea that “a wedge was driven
between us by Ukrainian politicians, and there is nothing for ordinary Rus-
sians and Ukrainians to divide” and so on.
An extremely powerful method of propaganda is generalization. We
speak about it when an individual event is generalized to the level of
a tendency with the following “conclusions” of the propagandists: “all
Ukrainians are so”, “all Georgians are so”, etc. (“so” means, of course,
“bad”). And then the same generalization is used in the opposite direc-

tion: “As they are all so bad, it means that this one is just as bad, because
he is one of them.”
Propaganda consists not only of the media product: certain things
have a completely material nature. Thus, in order to give propaganda
the possibility to imitate “pluralism” and “democracy” in Russia,
long ago, the government created a quasi-opposition (the “opposition”
Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democrat-
ic Party of Russia constantly and tirelessly simulate for the media the
struggle against the government, which does not prevent them from
receiving their guaranteed places in the State Duma on fake elections.
They “oppose” the government with argument, safe for the latter, while
on all major issues, they vote in favor of the ruling party).
Propaganda creates propagandist clichés which are stereotypic ex-
pressions that briefly and mainly in the form of slogans give an unam-
biguous assessment of the subjects of politics, socio-political phenome-
na, etc., and often at the same time are a call to certain actions beneficial
to the propaganda ordering party (“no one is forgotten, nothing is forgot-
ten”, “we can repeat”, “Crimea is ours”, etc.).
Frequent repetition of the message with minor variations. For exam-
ple, before the referendum in Russia in April 1993 (in essence, concern-
ing confidence in President Yeltsin or composition of the State Duma),
propaganda replicated and reiterated repeatedly in various mass media
and in outdoor agitation a simple for a layman message “yes, yes, no, yes”
to achieve the desired result for the president in the plebiscite on four
different questions. And in the end, this propaganda reached its goal.
When the truth which is uncomfortable to the authorities cannot be
completely hidden, the multiplicity-of-versions tool is turned on. To
blur the real circumstances of certain events and to distract public atten-
tion from the real version, the propaganda machine alternately launch-
es a variety of pseudo-versions of the events. Vivid example: as during
these years Russian officials and propagandistic mass-media circulated
multiple versions of shooting down the MH17 flight, first that it was
“shot down by a Ukrainian fighter aircraft”, then it was “shot down by
the Ukrainian Buk missile system”, and so on.

17Three phenomena of mass consciousness that help propaganda
I
t is unlikely that the ideologist of the Third Reich Joseph Goebbels
was the pioneer of the first propaganda phenomenon, but he first
formulated that: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed”.
Post-war Soviet propagandists and present-day Russian ones ac-
tively used and use the Goebbels’ guidelines. The latter have also sig-
nificantly improved them. Plus, they have in their hands a much more
powerful weapon of mass destruction of consciousness than Goebbels
had - they have television and the Internet to their services.
The second phenomenon of propaganda is based on the laziness of the
average laymen. They are not accustomed to looking for true informa-
tion, but consume what is given to them. And the television plays a ma-
jor role in this, because there is no need to make any effort. Because in
a beautiful wrapper of alleged news, of alleged feature programs, of al-
leged social-political talk shows, propaganda “feeds” these laymen with
the wrong picture of the world. The rule of the “mashed herring” (this
is, by the way, a term of Soviet counter-propaganda) works here when
a certain message is repeated everywhere and many times in different
variations and forms. And fake facts, thanks to multiple repetitions, be-
come for the laymen their usual “reality”. Their picture of the world con-
sists of them, politicians and officials speak about them with intelligent
faces on the television and they are “analyzed” by “respectable experts”.
And when it became already for the laymen “the world in which they
live”, changing their beliefs becomes almost - and for many - absolutely
impossible.
THREE PHENOMENA
OF MASS CONSCIOUSNESS
THAT HELP PROPAGANDA

Because the third phenomenon switches on. The laymen do not want
to consume information that does not even break their picture of the
world but just minimally puts it in question. And therefore they choose
only those sources of information, those media which constantly con-
firm their picture of the world, and reject all others which do not con-
firm it or even – what is more – contradict it. It is not for nothing that it
took not years but decades to break in the public consciousness a com-
pletely fake picture of the world, which was painted for decades of the
Soviet time by the newspaper Pravda and the program Vremya, “History
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” and “Marxist-Leninist phi-
losophy”. But even now, in a pluralistic Ukraine, where it is possible to
freely choose sources of information, there are a lot of people (mostly
in the older generations) who continue to live in the imaginary Soviet
world.

19How propaganda violates and imitates the standards of journalism
BALANCE OF OPINION STANDARDBALANCE OF OPINION STANDARD1.1.
HOW PROPAGANDA VIOLATES
AND IMITATES THE STANDARDS
OF JOURNALISM
Types of violations of the standard by propagandists
■ Complete absence of balance of opinions. The easiest way for a
propagandist is to pretend that a certain party to the conflict does not
exist at all. And this same party to the conflict is not given word in the
material at all without any explanations. In systematic propaganda, ed-
itorial teams have full bans on giving word to specific opposition poli-
ticians. For example, at the time of temnyks, major Ukrainian TV chan-
nels did not give word to the main then-rival of the government - Viktor
Yushchenko. Or now, in the Russian propagandist media, no word is
given to the oppositionist Nawalnyi.
■ Imitation of the balance of opinions with formal provision of the
word to the opponent. In the material, the word can be given to the op-

ponent’s representative, but they will provide unconvincing arguments
(which propagandists will carefully choose from what was said, and
sometimes, completely twist the meaning of it with the help of editing).
Sometimes, as answer to the representative of this “friendly” political
force, in the material, the opponent will say something related to a com-
pletely different topic. Through these two simple for implementation
methods, propagandists not only add “persuasiveness” to the material
by imitating the balance of opinions, but also create an impression in
the audience that the opponent does not even have anything to say in
terms of matter.
■ Imitation of the balance of opinions in the form of “expert
assessment”. This way, firstly, creates in the audience the illusion of
pluralism of opinions, and secondly, adds “persuasiveness” to the words
and deeds of the propaganda ordering party, since “experts” in the ma-
terial will always comment in favor of this party’s arguments.
This imitation can be achieved in different ways. The experts can be
quite real and comment in favor of the ordering party because they con-
sciously support them.
The experts can be quite real but comment in favor of the authorities
under pressure, for example, because of being “on the hook” of secret
services, the prosecutor’s office, the police or the tax authorities. Or they
are experts which the ordering party manages to bribe – whether with
money, offices, or some kind of preferences for their companies, etc.
Of course, when real experts comment in such a way, it is not easy to
determine the moment of manipulation. In such cases, it makes sense to
dig in the past, where it is possible to find interesting things. For exam-
ple, what the expert says today can completely be discordant with what
he or she said on the same topics earlier. Or it turns out that the analyt-
ical structure of this expert had problems with the law enforcement or
the tax authorities some time ago, and then these problems were solved
quietly.
Another kind of “expert assessment”, which is beneficial for propa-
gandists, is the presentation of political consultant of specific political

forces in the role of unbiased “political scientist”. In these cases, the in-
terdependence of these “political scientists” is easily traceable in their
background; it is enough just to google them.
And, finally, another common type of “expert assessment” is provided
by pseudo-experts who constantly work for propagandists. This practice
is rather widespread on some Ukrainian TV channels. In particular on
Inter, NewsOne and channel 112, comments are given by personalities in
the role of experts but their background and experience is in no way able
to confirm their competence in the issues they comment. These “experts”
work with propaganda media “on long distance.” These same media, first
of all, the television, specially hype them into the role of “experts”. There
is another sign of the unreal competence of such “experts”, except for
their background. This is their anything-goes approach: the day before
yesterday they commented on the conflict between anti-corruption bod-
ies, yesterday, it was the quality of the new armament of the Ukrainian
army, and today they comment on the topic of the single local church.
INFORMATION ACCURACY STANDARDINFORMATION ACCURACY STANDARD2.2.
■ Fictional facts and events. Propagandists operate not only with
real facts, but also they invent certain facts and events that did not take
place for real in order to confirm certain mythologems. A classic exam-

ple is the story disseminated by the Russian propagandist media in July
2014 stating that “Ukrainian soldiers in Slovyansk crucified a three-year-
old boy in full view of his mother”. This fictitious story was told for Rus-
sian television by an “eyewitness”. It is clear that numerous attempts by
journalists from different countries to find confirmation of this story by
other residents of the city did not yield any results. That does not pre-
vent Russian propagandists from continuing to recall this story as real.
It is very difficult to distinguish fictional facts promptly, because their
refutation requires time. But even when these refutations appear, the
majority of the audience loyal to the propagandistic media will not hear
them, because here work the three phenomena of public consciousness
mentioned above. That is why propagandists have one more Goebbels
rule: “The thicker you grease, the more will remain.”
■ Distorted facts, or arbitrary interpretation of facts. This is a
separate case of prior violation of the standard. But in this case, propa-
gandists chose not a fictional story, but real facts, which they distort to
some extend in order to justify a particular propaganda mythologem.
This distortion is easy to notice by comparing the propaganda reports
on facts with the way they are presented by high-quality media. For
example, on September 28, 2018, the Russian propaganda channel
“Russia-24” in support of the mythologem about “the beginning of the
religious war in connection with the process of providing autocephaly to
the Ukrainian Church” broadcasted a “news material” stating that “in
Ivano-Frankivsk region, nationalists seized a temple of the Moscow Pa-
triarchate”. In fact, the local authorities decided to return to the music
school a room that was rented out 17 years ago to a neighboring church
of the Moscow Patriarchate. Remarkably, a little later, the presenter on
Ukrainian TV channel NewsOne Vyacheslav Pikhovshek used the same
interpretation of events as the Russian channel.
■ Fictional thoughts. The propagandists may attribute words to a
particular person that this person did not say, using the fact that the
propagandist media will not give that person the word to refute. Or it

may be the interpretation of the words by this person with a partial or
complete distortion of the content of what was said. Thus, in September
2018, Russian propagandist media followed by the pro-Russian media in
Ukraine, claimed that the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament Andriy
Parubiy “called Hitler the biggest Democrat” (which was a good confir-
mation of the Russian mythologem about “fascist government in Kyiv”).
In fact, Parubiy mentioned Hitler as the greatest manipulator who skill-
fully used democratic instruments, in particular the referendum, to ob-
tain sole dictator powers in Germany.
Another way of manipulating a person’s mind is to quote their words,
taken out of context, when they present words said in certain circum-
stances, as said in totally different circumstances. To determine such .
■ Use of wrong images. On television or on the Internet, propagan-
dists can illustrate a specific mythologem with images that have noth-
ing to do with the true circumstances of the events described. So, for
example, in 2014, Russian propagandist media repeatedly illustrated
the reports on the war in the Donbas with images shot before in Iraq,
Afghanistan and other areas of hostilities.
■ Using the staged images. The propagandists themselves organize
certain “events” in order to illustrate their own mythologems. For ex-
ample, Russian propagandists organized “mass protests” in European
countries during the largest European crisis with migrants, and then
they used images of these “protest” in their mass media. To create the
image of the “crowd”, it is actually enough to get a group of a dozen
“activists” which are paid to be involved in. But to organize really mass
“demonstrations in support of the government”, dependent public sec-
tor workers are brought in. This non-wise technology is widely used in
Russia, and was practiced in Ukraine during the days of Leonid Kuchma
and Viktor Yanukovych. But even now, the regular formal opening cere-
monies of something by the same President Petro Poroshenko or Prime
Minister Volodymyr Hroysman, are also beginning to become “crowded”
due to doctors, teachers and students who are forced to attend them.

■ Using questionable sociology. “The data of sociological surveys”
on a variety of topics is a very common way of confirming the propagan-
dist mythologems. The “sociology” which is needed by propagandists
can come from different sources.
In the last two decades in Ukraine, both pro-government and oppo-
sition propaganda machines create pseudo-sociological services in
the same way as they create pseudo-experts. These “agencies” have
no serious history, but they have loud and convincing names (such as
“All-Ukrainian Sociological Service”, “Freedom and Democracy Founda-
tion”, “All-Ukrainian Institute of Sociology”, “Institute of Global Strate-
gies”, etc.). It is enough to say that in Ukraine, according to the database
of the resource texty.org.ua, about seven dozen of such pseudo-socio-
logical services were created. These services give their creators the
necessary results, which are then voiced by propagandist media. The
untrustworthiness of such surveys is evidenced by the real background
of these agencies: they are not members of authoritative sociological
associations, they do not work with businesses, that is, they do not earn
money by surveys for business structures, their “polls” appear once in
a blue moon, often closer to the election, and almost always it is not
known who their true founders and owners are.
But the situation with sociology may be worse: when the results
which are needed by propagandists are provided by quite real sociolog-
ical agencies. This can happen through bribery or blackmail. A classic
example of the great manipulation with sociology is the history of the
second round of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine. Then, two
real Ukrainian sociological agencies with experience and reputation
(Socis and Social Monitoring) falsified the results of the exit polls in
favor of the candidate Viktor Yanukovych. Judging by the nervous reac-
tions of representatives of these sociological agencies to the exposure
of their manipulation, they did so under pressure from the authorities.
But the fact remains, and the reputation of these agencies has been
completely lost.
What concerns electoral sociology, the following should be kept in
mind. In totally or partially totalitarian and dictatorial states, even

well-conducted sociological surveys give uncertain results, because
people surveyed by sociologists are often afraid to frankly express their
true thoughts and preferences that are contrary to the official course.
Hence, unrealistic (from the point of view of sociology as a science) al-
most 100-percent support of the dictator or the wars he unleashed, as is
the case in the same Russia in the polls of the VTsIOM [Russian Public
Opinion Research Center], the Public Opinion Foundation or the Levada
Center. The high level of support for the current government can be ex-
plained by the high level of fear in society.
However, propagandists can also manipulate the real results of sur-
veys. Therefore, according to the standards of journalism, when pub-
lishing sociological data, it is always necessary to indicate not only the
surveying agency, but also the ordering party of the research (it is one
thing, if it was the party of power, the other, if it was an opposition par-
ty, and a different one, if it was a public organization, etc.).
Propagandists can manipulate the data of sociologists, replacing the
wording of the question. It is quite common practice in Ukraine to order
sociologists to ask the following questions: “Who, in your opinion, will
become the next president of the state?”, and the results of this poll are
presented as answers to the classic electoral question: “For whom would
you vote if the elections were held the next Sunday?” Of course, in case
of such a manipulation, the candidate of the ruling party or a popular
populist, “receive” considerably more votes, because, answering the first
question, people predict the victory of such a candidate through falsifi-
cations, popularity, etc., although they themselves may actually vote for
another candidate. In order to see this manipulation, one should look at
the official report of sociologists, which they certainly publish on their
own website on the Internet.

Note: in most of the post-Soviet countries, journalism
has inherited from the Soviet journalism a rath-
er lighthearted attitude to professional stand-
ards. In particular, this also applies to certain
lack of commitment towards full references to
sources of information, the approximation, the
blurriness of these references, the desire for
unjustified generalizations, and so on. There-
fore, in itself the violations of the standard of
reliability, which will be discussed further, may
occur in those materials that have nothing to
do with propaganda. The presence of such vi-
olations in the material may indicate probable
propaganda only in combination with violations
of other important standards: accuracy, bal-
ance of opinions and the standard of separation
of facts from opinions (which we are going to
discuss later).
INFORMATION RELIABILITY STANDARDINFORMATION RELIABILITY STANDARD3.3.

■ References to sources on the Internet (and it does not matter
whether we talk about pages in social networks, Internet media or pages
of official organizations). Such references in real journalism are intrinsi-
cally unreliable in the absence of any confirmation from trusted sources
as the Internet is too dynamic and too vulnerable. In any segment of the
Internet, there is a high probability of inaccurate information emerging
due to technical failures and human errors, or due to targeted hacking
attacks. The latter circumstance is extremely aggravated by the hybrid
war that Russia leads around the world, and the information component
of its war against Ukraine is crucial.
A striking example occurred on May 26, 2014, the day after the vote
on the extraordinary elections of the President of Ukraine. The Russian
propagandist “First Channel” has shown in the news broadcast a fake
screenshot of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission’s website with
the results of the still ongoing counting of votes. From that screenshot,
you could see that the candidate Dmytro Yarosh from the “Right sector”
was leading explicitly. In fact, the Security Service of Ukraine managed
to prevent a hacker attack on the website of the Central Election Com-
mission, and propagandists of the First Channel probably did not receive
from the Federal Security Service the order to cancel the material and
broadcasted this fake. An open question remains: and if the Security
Service of Ukraine could not prevent the hacker attack? Then this fake
almost surely would have been shown by dozens of television broad-
casts, including Ukrainian ones!
■ Internet as a technology for “stovepiping”. For the “stovepiping”
of false facts and thoughts, the propaganda machine uses a simple tech-
nique: one-time or “long-playing” pseudo-media are created on the In-
ternet. From these, using the copy and paste method, fake information
goes hell for leather spreading over real Internet media, the editorial
teams of which do not have too high requirements for information ver-
ification (and this, unfortunately, is the majority of them). From there,
these fictional facts go to propagandist media with references to more
authoritative sources.

Although sometimes propagandists do not even wait for reposts. So,
for example, in June 2016 a series of materials was published in Rus-
sian propagandist media about “Ukrainian doctor proudly telling how he
disposed of wounded militias on a surgical table”. At the same time, the
reference to the source of information was as follows: “Ukrainian tele-
vision”. In fact, the “Ukrainian television” was a newly created website
ukrlife.tv, where at that time there was only one looped video with the
“doctor”, moreover, with the caption “live broadcast”.
■ References to blurred sources of information about facts. In
high-quality media, the journalist receives information from a particular
person and, according to the reliability standard, submitting this infor-
mation, should refer to this particular person with a brief explanation
of the person’s competence. The references of such kind, as “our sources
in the government”, “they say in the mayor’s office”, “the police do not
report”, etc., are incorrect and untruthful (which automatically violates
the standard of information accuracy, as the information told by one
particular person to the journalist is for some reason presented using
plural form). In propagandist materials, such references disguise the
complete lack of sources when publishing false information, but they
also seems to add credibility to what the propagandists said.
■ Links to completely anonymous, in no way defined sources. This
is even a higher level of unreliability, because it is not possible to under-
stand from these references at all who the people talking are and how
these sources are related to this information. On Russian propagandist
channels, pseudo-references of the following type are very popular:
“some sources report”, “as reported by different sources”, “was reported
in the media”, “according to sources familiar with the situation in the
Verkhovna Rada”, etc. This experience is actively copied by Ukrainian
propagandist resources.
■ Generalized reference to undefined groups of people. These are
pseudo-references of such a kind as “people say”, “many are confident”,

“commonly known”, etc. These pseudo-references indicate that the prop-
agandist has no real source of information. Moreover, any generaliza-
tion is not true by definition.
■ Presentation of facts without any reference to their source. This
can only testify that these facts are invented by propagandists.
■ Presentation of a subjective opinion with a generalized ref-
erence to its authorship. This is even a more gross violation of the
standard than the presentation of facts without correct references to
the source. A subjective opinion is inseparable from the subject who ex-
presses it. Therefore, references that imitate the credibility of the au-
thors of opinions without naming them are completely incorrect. They
look as follows: “experts believe”, “analysts say”, “experts are confident”,
etc. Hereby in most cases, the opinions of the propagandists themselves
are expressed.
■ Complete generalization of subjective opinion to large groups of
people. This technique is actively used by propaganda in order to impose
an opinion on the “correctness” of a certain message on the audience,
because (according to the Soviet habit) “the majority cannot be mistak-
en” (“the entire Soviet people in a single impulse are warmly supporting
the peaceful course of the Communist Party and the Soviet government and
angrily condemn the malicious intrigues of world imperialism”). Incorrect
and untruthful are generalized pseudo-references of propagandists of
the following type: “The majority of the inhabitants of the occupied terri-
tories support”, “almost all Ukrainians are concerned”, “residents of Kyiv
believe”, “residents of Odesa hope”, etc. It is clear that pseudo-references
of this kind, which do not rely on solid data of real sociology, are at the
same time a violation of the information accuracy standard (because it
is not a fact whether the “majority” actually support something, or it is
the “minority”, and definitely it is not a fact that “all” do) . The standard
of balance of opinions is violated here too, because in these cases the
audience does not hear those who think differently than propagandists.

■ Subjective opinions of the author or the central figure of the
material are presented as a fact. This is well illustrated by the already
mentioned story with the “crucified boy”, because an invention of a
pseudo-eyewitness was presented as a fact. Often, unproved accusations
can be presented as facts (“he is a corrupt official and a bribe taker”, “she
stole budget money”, “they are agents of the Department of State”, etc.).
■ Subjective opinions of the author of the material not supported
by facts. A fairly common technique is when a propagandist makes ab-
solutely unfounded conclusions.
■ Subjective opinions of the author of the material based on false
facts. This violation works together with the violation of the accura-
cy of information standard, which has already been discussed. Often in
this scheme, first comes the opinion, conclusion or evaluation needed
by the propagandist, and already for it, a fact is invented and put into
circulation.
STANDARD OF SEPARATION OF FACTS FROM THOUGHTSSTANDARD OF SEPARATION OF FACTS FROM THOUGHTS4.4.

■ Subjective opinions of the author of the material built on a ten-
dentious (incomplete) selection of facts.
The selective presentation of facts that are convenient for the propa-
gandist’s “conclusion”, and the dissembling of facts that contradict this
“conclusion” are at the same time also a violation of the standard of
information completeness (which will be discussed below).
■ Subjective evaluations that give beneficial to the propagandist
emotional coloration to certain facts, ideas, individuals or groups. For
this, epithets with a clearly defined positive or negative connotation are
used. Therefore, in the Russian propaganda, along with the label “Don-
bas rebels” often stands the identification “heroic”, and next to the label
“Kyivan junta”, on the contrary, stands the identification “cowardly”.
■ Subjective assessments that substitute facts. It happens when the
propagandists say that “the authorities are doing a lot”, instead of saying
how much exactly have they done.
■ Judgmental vocabulary which plays the role of some kind of
terminology and labels.
In propaganda materials, there are clear markers of “bad” and
“good”. In the current hybrid war against Russia, propagandists use a
large number of such words: “Banderites”, “Ukrainian fascists”, “punish-
ers” on the one hand and “rebels”, “residents of young republics”, “mili-
tias” on the other hand.
■ Judgmental audio noise.
This may be, for example, a sarcastic music combined with the image
of those who are the target of the propagandist. In propagandistic
talk shows on television and on the radio, there is a specially organ-
ized noise of approval and applause when a “friend” says something
“right” and, conversely, an outraged noise and whistling when a “foe”
says something “wrong”. This is done so that the audience understands
everything “correctly”.

■ Selective presentation of facts to the topic of the material. In
propagandist materials, almost all the facts in any topic are not provided
in full. The propagandists carefully select from the real facts only those
which confirm the picture of the world that is represented by propagan-
da. For example, in May 2010, all pro-government Ukrainian media con-
cealed the incident with a falling wreath and President Viktor Yanukovych
during laying wreaths along with Medvedev in front of the Unknown Sol-
dier’s monument in Kyiv.
■ Lack of important backgrounds to understand the topic. The
most widespread here is the lack of mentioning of what the politician
or official said or did before about the topic which is important today.
In fact, such backgrounds often are completely discordant with today’s
statements and actions. The audience has mainly «short memory» and
to remind it of things the politicians would like to forget is exactly one
of the most important tasks of high-quality journalism. In propaganda,
however, any backgrounds, negative for the ordering party, of course, are
never mentioned.
■ Incomplete presentation of sociological data. Propagandists can
INFORMATION COMPLETENESS STANDARDINFORMATION COMPLETENESS STANDARD5.5.

■ Using propagandist clichés instead of real information. The
propagandist language always uses a large number of fixed expression,
STANDARD FOR THE INFORMATION COMPREHENSIBILITYSTANDARD FOR THE INFORMATION COMPREHENSIBILITY6.6.
present quite reliable results of sociology, but from these results they will
only select figures beneficial for them, while hushing up other signifi-
cant positions. So, in electoral surveys propagandists can say about the
increase in the rating of a certain candidate, while concealing that the op-
ponent’s rating is even higher. Such “wonders of sociology” were shown
by major TV channels in late 2003 on the threshold of the presidential
election, where the main candidates were Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor
Yanukovych. Sometimes concealing the statistical error declared by the
sociologists will distort the real picture, as, for example, it may cast doubt
on the “unconditional” leadership of a particular candidate when the dif-
ference in the results is within this error. Well, in the end, it would be
correct to remind the audience that the results of sociological surveys are
only predictions of true will, because they can be influenced by various
additional factors, for example, by the same fear of the authorities and
their special services, by the desire to be in mainstream of opinions, etc.

frequent repetitions of which works with the consciousness of people at
the level of neuro-linguistic programming. Frequent repetition of these
expressions constantly “confirms the correctness” of propagandist mes-
sages, adding to them “persuasiveness” for a non-critical viewer / listen-
er / reader. Examples of such clichés from current Russian propagan-
da: “getting up from the knees”, “spiritual bonds”, “values of the Russian
world”, etc. These clichés are more for domestic Russian consumption.
But there are those that play a significant role in the hybrid war and are
duplicated not only by Russian propagandist media, but also by pro-Rus-
sian mass media and pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine: “civil war in the
east”, “compromise is the foundation of peace,” etc.
■ Intentionalcomplicationtoprovide“additionalpersuasiveness”.
Due to this, propaganda can explain to the laymen the “correctness”
of certain actions and opinions of the government. The mechanism of
action of this violation of the standard is as follows: with help of this
complication, the audience is compelled by the idea that “you see how
difficult it is, you do not get a complete understanding of it, but the pres-
ident and the government are unlike you and know what they are doing
and are doing it for your sake.” Thus in the Soviet Union, the newscast
Vremya told about how many centners of wheat per hectare were har-
vested by farmers in the Kuban, in the Kirovohrad region or in the Cen-
tral Non-Chernozem Region. This is despite the fact that most of the au-
dience of the Vremya was unlikely to know what a centner was, what a
hectare was and why there are more of these centners per hectare in the
Kuban or in the Kirovohrad region than, for example, in the Arkhangelsk
region of Russia or in Karelia (which belonged to that same “Central
Non-Chernozem Region”).

Types of violations of the standard
by propagandists
■ Complete concealing of facts, opinions and events which are
inconvenient for propagandists. For propaganda purposes, the stand-
ard of the prompt delivery of information is violated almost always by
the absolute concealing of information which is inconvenient for prop-
agandists. In editorial boards of propagandist media, there is always a
written or unwritten prohibition on mentioning certain types of events,
quoting particular individuals. There are always clearly highlighted la-
bels in propagandist editorial boards: “we talk about this”, “we do not
talk about this”. Therefore, certain events and certain personalities are
not present in the information picture of every day, which is created by
the propagandist media. In most cases, self-censorship of the editorial
staff is enough for this. For separate events beyond the usual list of un-
written prohibitions, decisions are made by experienced censors – in-
formation service managers, or propagandist centers distribute special
guidelines with prohibitions on covering important events which are not
desired by the propagandists.
■ Publishing information with intentional delay. Theoretically, it is
also possible that certain information published with a deliberate delay
may be perceived by the audience somehow differently than if it had
been reported on time. It is due to a serious change in some contexts. It
should not be forgotten that propaganda is becoming more inventive.
THE STANDARD OF PROMPTNESSTHE STANDARD OF PROMPTNESS77

“All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.” This opin-
ion by the author of 1984, perhaps the most frightening dystopia novel,
was made to the epigraph because Orwell knew very well what he was
talking about. During the Second World War, he himself was forced to
engage in propaganda on the BBC radio. And even though it was an-
ti-Nazi propaganda which was made with an unquestionably good goal,
George Orwell himself did not treat counter-propaganda much better
than propaganda. And eventually, he wrote his novel in which the per-
haps most important storyline was ruthless state propaganda. It trans-
formed the life of the characters of the novel into hell.
In a normal democratic society, people do not need propaganda; they
need genuine truthful information about what is happening in the world
around them.
And a person who lives in a wrong world imposed by propaganda is
forced to make false decisions. Starting with the everyday things – what
to buy, how to save money, from what to protect yourself and your chil-
dren – to the fundamental ones – for who to vote in elections, to lash out
at your neighbors from national minorities or to protect them from po-
groms, to go to anti-war rallies or go as “volunteer” to the armed forces
to unjust war against neighboring countries and nations.
It is very difficult to distinguish propaganda from genuine informa-
tion, from high-quality journalism, but one needs to learn how to do
this; to understand which world we live in; and to make informed deci-
sions, not imposed by propaganda. So that in the end, we do not have to
hear from all mass media Orwell’s:
«“War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.”
This is what definitely no one of us needs!
AFTERWORD

POPULAR SCIENCE EDITION
Ihor Kulias
edited by
HOW TO RECOGNIZE PROPAGANDA
IN THE MEDIA
Literary editor — Katrina Rozkladay
Design and layout: Yana Dobryanska
Passed for printing: 04.12.2018
Number of copies

NGO Detector Media
Kyiv — 2018

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