Why is this interesting? - The Propaganda Edition

Colin here. I was just in Rwanda for a few days and was impressed by Kigali, the capital city. The country has made a tremendous amount of progress in becoming a harmonious and cohesive society in the wake of the horrors that happened just 25 years ago. As part of the trip I went to the genocide museum, which tells a detailed story of the 1994 genocide, in which close to a million Rwandans were killed while international authorities like the UN stood by and did nothing. According to the BBC, “In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.”

The entire history is worth reading about in detail, but I was particularly struck by the role that propaganda played. According to The Human Security Centre:

...media outlets such as the newspaper ‘Kangura’, ‘Radio Rwanda‘ and in 1993 ‘Radio Mille Collines‘ (RTLM), became tools of mass propaganda. These media sources portrayed extreme ethnic distinctions, defining Tutsis as ‘the enemy’ and Kangura published the infamous Hutu ‘Ten Commandments’, a widely circulated, militant ‘Hutu Power’ doctrine. Sometimes popular music was mixed with incitement to murder. Propaganda fuelled hysterical fear of Tutsis and blurred the line between the RPF and domestic Tutsis. Consequently, Tutsis in general were identified as an ‘invading force’ and in emphasising the ‘alienness’, cleverness and deceitfulness of Tutsis, propaganda established them as a ‘permanent threat’. A lack of alternative media sources in Rwanda contributed to the attention these outlets received. ...What made propaganda particularly effective was the simultaneous dehumanisation of Tutsi and the legitimisation of their extermination.

Why is this interesting?

Propaganda has a longstanding history in conflict, warfare, and ethnic division. But to learn how quickly simmering resentment was escalated into a surge of murder in Rwanda was hard to comprehend. When you’re confronted with the images—the children, the brutality that it caused—it is a punch to the stomach.

When I managed to clear my head, it reminded me of a story that I recently read, detailing a recent phenomenon where modern day lynchings in India have been happening based on rumor and innuendo that spreads on WhatsApp groups, quickly. According to Buzzfeed News:

In June [2018] rumors about child kidnappers shared on the service inspired a mob of hundreds to lynch a 29-year-old man and his friend who were passing through a village in Karbi Anglong, a district in the eastern part of the country. In July, two weeks after the Rainpada incident, hundreds of people hurled stones at an IT worker who was visiting the South Indian village of Murki, killing him. Since May, there have been at least 16 lynchings leading to 29 deaths in India where public officials say mobs were incited by misinformation on WhatsApp.

This isn’t isolated to India. There’s been reports of similar vigilante style murders based on mistaken identity in Brazil as well. The problem was so pervasive that it led WhatsApp to ban message forwarding to large amounts of Indian users in an attempt to contain the flow on the platform.

The Rwandan propaganda back in the early 90’s was a slow burn, brought to a boil with sharp rhetoric and dehumanizing language. It took place on radio and newspapers and lead to widespread genocide. As platforms like WhatsApp continue to unite most of the developed and developing world, they have a ton of sway. There is speculation the platform played a role in spreading disinformation about the recent Brazilian election, leading a group of researchers to call for an end to mass message forwarding, like what was banned in India, globally. “The [nefarious actors] rely on a combined pyramid and network strategy in which producers create malicious content and broadcast it to regional and local activists, who then spread the messages widely to public and private groups,” the researchers explained. “From there, the messages travel even further as they are forwarded on by believing individuals to their own contacts.”

Same methods, new platform, and a faster pace. No broadcast on the radio printing press needed: Just minimal inflammatory content and the power of the forward button.

So while no new platform has played a role approximating the scope and scale of the outcome of the Rwandan genocide, as we’ve seen in countless other examples covered in WITI, the huge magnifying effect that platforms can play needs to be monitored and overseen. Otherwise, I fear the same patterns could be repeated with a different, more frightening scope, scale, and virality. (CJN)

Map of the Day:

From a blog post announcing Google’s latest “private subsea cable that will connect Africa with Europe.” First, I didn’t know Google had their own subsea cables and second, that’s a lot of them. (NRB)

Quick Links:

The NBA renewed its deal with Tencent recently. This particular bit shocked me: “The NBA describes Tencent as its biggest partner outside of the United States. Last season, 490 million fans in China watched NBA programming on Tencent’s platforms, nearly three times the viewership of the 2014-2015 season, when the NBA first began streaming on Tencent.” 490 million is a lot. (NRB)
This article about electroactive bacteria is bonkers. Basically some scientists have discovered living wires. (NRB)
Wired has questions about the US approach to 5G. “The United States is alone in this mission to make millimeter wave the core of its domestic 5G networks. The rest of the world is taking a different approach. Other nations vying for wireless leadership are not putting high-band airwaves front and center now. Instead, they are focusing on building 5G networks with mid-band spectrum, because it will support faster, cheaper, and more ubiquitous 5G deployment.” (NRB)

Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)