{"id":674,"date":"2022-04-05T10:29:53","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T14:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/?p=674"},"modified":"2022-07-21T14:09:04","modified_gmt":"2022-07-21T18:09:04","slug":"propaganda-and-information-manipulation-in-groups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/2022\/04\/05\/propaganda-and-information-manipulation-in-groups\/","title":{"rendered":"Propaganda and information manipulation in groups"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, UB School of Management expert Kate Bezrukova examines how misinformation takes root in groups<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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A destroyed residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine. Photo: \u0410\u043b\u0435\u0441\u044c \u0423\u0441\u0446\u0456\u043d\u0430\u045e<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Kate Bezrukova and Chester Spell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kate
Kate Bezrukova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine has, of course, dominated world attention, I\u2019ve been trying to understand what ordinary Russians think of this in as \u201cunfiltered\u201d a manner as possible\u2014by asking personal contacts directly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of these contacts are friends back from my time in college, living in Moscow. Like old friends everywhere, we\u2019ve been supporting each other through the worst of Covid, talking about kids, books, and our jobs for years. So, just after the invasion began, I asked them directly, \u201cWhat the heck has been going on with Russia since I left 22 years ago?\u201d Would they, from a Russian perspective, be able to justify what is euphemistically called a \u201cwar of choice\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My initial questions\u2014to my surprise, perhaps borderline shock\u2014were asked right back at me. Having grown up with a firsthand experience of how Russian media operates and the limitations of any independent news agencies, I was aware that the story this group was getting would not be at all like what we hear in the Western world. Yet, I was still surprised by how they interpreted the war and the causality of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our interactions over the next weeks included endless texts about denazification (even though many countries have far-right presence), liberation, and Russia fighting two wars at the same time, with the U.S. being the biggest villain. There was also the conviction that Ukrainian modeling agencies were staging horrifying pictures of injured civilians for the Western press, that Ukrainians were barbarians shelling their own people, and finally, parroting Vladimir Putin\u2019s bizarre read of history (and it is bizarre) that Ukraine is not a nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, I wondered how it was even possible for anyone, much less people I\u2019ve cherished as friends for decades, to believe this nonsense in the 21st century. But then it occurred to me that in our interactions prior to the war, regular topics, like kids\u2019 books or Russian authors, would spark a huge range of opinions\u2014yet they had a surprisingly unified response regarding the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How misinformation takes root in groups<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This got me thinking about several concepts and phenomena extensively researched in groups and teams that could help explain what I was hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the concept of conformity<\/strong> can explain how and why group pressure leads to these responses and outcomes, as people bring their behavior into alignment with a group\u2019s expectations and beliefs. (See Asch\u2019s 1956 line experiment, when 76% of the group made erroneous conforming judgments about the length of three lines that were obviously of different lengths.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do people conform? There are two main reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n