Frag Out! Magazine
Issue link: https://fragout.uberflip.com/i/1086092
activity pursued by independent media, or- ganizations, or persons. This applies also to activity in social media, where it is simply much easier to assume false identities and reach precisely selected social groups. It is perfectly observable in the activity of Russian troll farms pursued in recent years, especially when such farms are 'fed' with information about social me- dia users, which lets them target their in- formation attacks even more accurately – like a guided bomb. An example is the regularly used – recently being used at the time of the "Anakonda 18" exercise – piece of fake news in the form of fake interviews with or statements made by high-rank officers, said to claim that the level of training among the Polish soldiers is low, the equipment in use is inoperable, and the army is eaten away by various types of pathological behavior (all the more con- vincing because there is a grain of truth in that). Those capable of fact-checking will be able to verify the authenticity of such ac- counts, particularly because they appear on hardly reliable sites, and shared from those sites across social media. But such news is addressed at those who won't check its authenticity because they are unable to or because the presented 'facts' match their views – the said exercise event showed, unfortunately, that there were people who took the piece of news at face value and spread it further. A typical quality of disinformation activity is that it is not aimed at changing one's at- titude quickly. Rather, it involves more or less sophisticated schemes to verify the existing beliefs and attitudes, leading to the audience of fake news react with something like "huh, I've always known that..." and sharing such news further with a comment like "well, didn't I tell you?". Producing fake news means that it is possible to generate various content, targeted at different audi- ences – those of both left- and right-wing views alike, those sentimentalizing over the Polish People's Republic and those expressly anti-communist. That's why, paradoxically, we should be more alert to news or opin- ions that are rather in line with our views than against them. This causes an additional problem related to counteracting such dis- information practices. Bombarding the society with fake and half- true information alone may be effective only to some extent. Fake news can be denied, and disinformation can be exposed. But it's a whole different story when there are some convenient facts created, in the form of some real event – so there is an event, and now all it takes is to impose the desired interpretation of it. An example can be a terrorist attack, es- pecially one carried out leaving few traces but pointing to a specific person or group to blame. Considering the Polish reality and the present political frenzy – let's imagine that there's a rally featuring a well-known politician and someone takes a shot (or a few shots) at the politician, missing the tar- get. The shooter disappears, leaving a car- ANALYSIS