NEWSWATCH: “Beware the Russian Elephant” – The American Interest/ Peter Pomerantsev

“As the West considers how to respond to the Kremlin’s use of bots, trolls, fake news, and hacks as tools of foreign policy, the way we describe things will define whether we prevail.

The most insidious element of Moscow’s information war could be the very idea of information war itself. In ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant’ the cognitive linguist George Lakoff defines winning and losing in politics as being about framing issues in a way conducive to your aims. … ‘When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame … when you are arguing against the other side, do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame -and it won’t be the frame you want.’

… it means entering a labyrinth of language, where each turn opens up a new puzzle, where worlds are created with the words one utters. Describe ‘it’ as an ‘information war’ and one landscape arises. Is it the one we want? …”

Click here for: “Beware the Russian Elephant” – The American Interest/ Peter Pomerantsev