https://ethanzuckerman.com/2023/12/02/disinfo-and-elections-in-the-global-majority/
These narratives emerge online, from hired guns and from individual partisans. The language for the narratives online differs between countries. Brazil has firm policies, set by the electoral court, allowing them to order removal of disinformation, and so that’s the term of choice in the Brazilian context. Jonathan and team see the problem as broader than disinformation, including different forms of propaganda, and refer to this online speech as “influence operations”. I like this term, as it includes a particularly tricky type of speech: participatory propaganda, where partisans spread and shape narratives on their own, not necessarily because they are receiving commands as part of a “cyber army”.