{"id":1117,"date":"2021-12-03T15:31:10","date_gmt":"2021-12-03T20:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/extraocadsmhr\/?post_type=chapter&p=1117"},"modified":"2022-02-14T19:32:24","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T00:32:24","slug":"disinformation-is-spreading-beyond-the-realm-of-spycraft-to-become-a-shady-industry-lessons-from-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/extraocadsmhr\/chapter\/disinformation-is-spreading-beyond-the-realm-of-spycraft-to-become-a-shady-industry-lessons-from-south-korea\/","title":{"raw":"3b. \"Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea\" (Short news article)","rendered":"3b. “Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea” (Short news article)"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction to the article \"Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea<\/a><\/span><\/span>\"<\/h1>\r\nMany citizens of North America and Europe have a tendency to believe that disinformation is a recent phenomenon that only plagues the west.\r\n\r\nThat is simply incorrect.\r\n\r\nIn her article, \"Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea,\" author K. Hazel Kwon traces the long history of disinformation in South Korea back to 2008 as well as how it has even become its own separate industry.\r\n\r\nUnless we know disinformation's historical context, we have less of a chance to capably deal with its negative and unpredictable consequences.\r\n\r\n
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Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea<\/a><\/span><\/h2>\r\nK. Hazel Kwon,\u00a0<\/span>The Conversation<\/em>, November 15, 2021 8:11am EST\r\n\r\nDisinformation, the practice of blending real and fake information with the goal of duping a government or influencing public opinion, has its origins in the Soviet Union. But disinformation is no longer the exclusive domain of government intelligence agencies.<\/span>\r\n\r\nToday\u2019s disinformation scene has evolved into a marketplace in which services are contracted, laborers are paid and shameless opinions and fake readers are bought and sold. This industry is emerging around the world. Some of the private-sector players are driven by political motives, some by profit and others by a mix of the two.<\/span>\r\n\r\nPublic relations firms have recruited social media influencers in<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>France and Germany<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>to spread falsehoods. Politicians have hired staff to create fake Facebook accounts in<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Honduras<\/a><\/span>. And<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Kenyan Twitter influencers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>are paid 15 times more than many people make in a day for promoting political hashtags. Researchers at the University of Oxford have tracked government-sponsored disinformation activities in 81 countries and<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>private-sector disinformation operations in 48 countries<\/a><\/span>.<\/span>\r\n\r\nSouth Korea has been at the forefront of online disinformation. Western societies began to raise concerns about disinformation in 2016, triggered by disinformation related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Brexit. But in South Korea, media reported the first formal disinformation operation in 2008. As a researcher who<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>studies digital audiences<\/a><\/span>, I\u2019ve found that South Korea\u2019s 13-year-long disinformation history demonstrates how technology, economics and culture interact to enable the disinformation industry.<\/span>\r\n\r\nMost importantly, South Korea\u2019s experience offers a lesson for the U.S. and other countries. The ultimate power of disinformation is found more in the ideas and memories that a given society is vulnerable to and how prone it is to fueling the rumor mill than it is in the people perpetrating the disinformation or the techniques they use.<\/span>\r\n
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From dirty politics to dirty business<\/h2>\r\nThe origin of South Korean disinformation can be traced back to the nation\u2019s National Intelligence Service, which is equivalent to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The NIS formed teams in 2010\u00a0<\/span>to interfere in domestic elections<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>by attacking a political candidate it opposed.\r\n\r\nThe NIS hired more than 70 full-time workers who managed fake, or so-called\u00a0<\/span>sock puppet<\/a><\/span>, accounts. The agency recruited a group called Team Alpha, which was composed of civilian part-timers who had ideological and financial interests in working for the NIS. By 2012, the scale of the operation had grown to\u00a0<\/span>3,500 part-time workers<\/a><\/span>.\r\n\r\nSince then the private sector has moved into the disinformation business. For example, a shadowy publishing company led by an influential blogger was involved in a high-profile\u00a0<\/span>opinion-rigging scandal<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>between 2016 and 2018. The company\u2019s client was a close political aide of the current president, Moon Jae-in.\r\n\r\nIn contrast to NIS-driven disinformation campaigns, which use disinformation as a propaganda tool for the government, some of the private-sector players are chameleonlike, changing ideological and topical positions in pursuit of their business interests. These private-sector operations have achieved greater cost effectiveness than government operations by skillfully\u00a0<\/span>using bots to amplify fake engagements<\/a><\/span>, involving social media entrepreneurs like\u00a0<\/span>YouTubers<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>outsourcing trolling to cheap laborers<\/span><\/a>.\r\n

Narratives that strike a nerve<\/h2>\r\nIn South Korea, Cold War rhetoric has been particularly visible across all types of disinformation operations. The campaigns typically portray the conflict with North Korea and the battle against Communism as being at the center of public discourse in South Korea. In reality, nationwide polls have painted a very different picture. For example, even when North Korea\u2019s nuclear threat was at a peak in 2017,\u00a0<\/span>fewer than 10 percent of respondents<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>picked North Korea\u2019s saber-rattling as their priority concern, compared with more than 45 percent who selected economic policy.\r\n\r\nAcross all types of purveyors and techniques, political disinformation in South Korea has amplified anti-Communist nationalism and denigrated the nation\u2019s dovish diplomacy toward North Korea. My research on\u00a0<\/span>South Korean social media rumors<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>in 2013 showed that the disinformation rhetoric continued on social media even after the formal disinformation campaign ended, which indicates how powerful these themes are. Today I and my research team continue to see references to the same themes.\r\n

The dangers of a disinformation industry<\/h2>\r\nThe disinformation industry is enabled by the three prongs of today\u2019s digital media industry: an attention economy, algorithm and computational technologies and a participatory culture. In online media, the most important currency is audience attention. Metrics such as the number of page views, likes, shares and comments quantify attention, which is then converted into economic and social capital.\r\n\r\nIdeally, these metrics should be a product of networked users\u2019 spontaneous and voluntary participation. Disinformation operations more often than not manufacture these metrics by using bots, hiring influencers, paying for crowdsourcing and developing computational tricks to game a platform\u2019s algorithms.\r\n\r\nThe expansion of the disinformation industry is troubling because it distorts how public opinion is perceived by researchers, the media and the public itself. Historically, democracies have relied on polls to understand public opinion. Despite their limitations, nationwide polls conducted by credible organizations, such as\u00a0<\/span>Gallup<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>Pew Research<\/a><\/span>, follow rigorous methodological standards to represent the distribution of opinions in society in as representative a manner as possible.\r\n\r\nPublic discourse on social media has emerged as an alternative means of assessing public opinion. Digital audience and web traffic analytic tools are widely available to measure the trends of online discourse. However, people can be misled when purveyors of disinformation manufacturer opinions expressed online and falsely amplify the metrics about the opinions.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile, the persistence of anti-Communist nationalist narratives in South Korea shows that disinformation purveyors\u2019 rhetorical choices are not random. To counter the disinformation industry wherever it emerges, governments, media and the public need to understand not just the who and the how, but also the what \u2013 a society\u2019s controversial ideologies and collective memories. These are the most valuable currency in the disinformation marketplace.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n
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Quiz<\/h2>\r\nQuiz on \"Disinformation is spreading beyond the realm of spycraft to become a shady industry \u2013 lessons from South Korea<\/a><\/span>\"<\/strong>\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"68\"]\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"69\"]\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"70\"]\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"71\"]\r\n\r\n
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