Aaron Erlich, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said it’s important to make people aware of misleading information online. But he said the wording in the CSIS campaign was “not the most straightforward” and appeared to be an attempt not just to educate but to invoke fear.
Erlich said clumsy messaging can backfire, and he would like to know if the messaging was tested at all to see how it would be received.
It’s topical and I’m glad they’re being direct about it. Any more direct and it would have just been Putin’s face with a speech bubble. Unfortunate that the used Russian cultural themes but eh, it is what it is.
The Soviet Union is dead and gone. What this makes me think is that our spy agency is headed by someone old and out of touch with what disinformation looks like these days. Some cold warrior who hasn’t taken in any new information in 30 years.
[edit] I got kinda curious about this so I looked it up. The head of CSIS is David Vigneault.
Do you sense a theme? No Iran? No Saudi Arabia? They threatened us with our own 9/11.
Tell me this guy doesn’t seem like he’s living in 1950.
What about that particular poster makes you think of the Soviet Union?
The font, the Cyrillic letters, the colours, the art style, the Russian nesting doll… you know, just all of it.
So like…Russian?
The Soviet aesthetic.