Toxic Narratives and Russia’s Influence around the World - with Marketing Expert Julia Karpushina

Russian propaganda is very similar to advertising – persistent,  repetitive, ubiquitous, and mostly no one asked to be exposed to it. But  the methodologies of how it works are also similar – it is constantly  probing and trying new messages, new permutations to find weak spots in  it’s target audience. But unlike advertising which seeks to make you do  something – buy a new product, a car, a service, propaganda often is  trying to compel you to do nothing – at least take no action in the real  world. That’s because it seeks to sow confusion, indifference, and  inaction. It seeks to create division and conflict so that people expend  their energies online, fighting bots and trolls, and are too exhausted  to take political action in the physical world. Today we are examining  the malign influence of propaganda and how it functions very much like  advertising, and how people can be immunised against it, and inspired to  take political actions in society.