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Chapter 1: What is slopaganda and how is it being used by Iran?
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Chapter 2: What examples of slopaganda have emerged in recent times?
It's a new sort of warfare we have never witnessed before and it's not taking place on the battlefield. It's the new propaganda or slopaganda and Iran is proving to be very effective at it. Today, Brett Shafer at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue on how Iran is using meme warfare to win support around the world. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily.
Brett, AI slop was last year's word of the year, but it seems we have a new contender that is slopaganda. What on earth is that?
So it is effectively an amalgamation of the two. So you're dealing with all of this sort of low quality AI produced content that we see across the internet in so many different forms, but now being applied to war propaganda. So it is effectively just combining the new technology with something we've obviously dealt with for generations to create this sort of low quality mass-produced
propaganda that's been produced by AI.
And Iran is proving to be pretty good at this sloppaganda. So just give me some examples of what we've been seeing. Donald Trump often features highly, doesn't he?
He does. He does. And there's a couple of different networks at work here. So there's sort of the official Iranian accounts. So those would be diplomats and government officials and their state media, but also just sort of pro-Iran voices online. And it's hard to tell if they have any connection to the government, but they're the ones producing a lot of this AI content.
And then it is being shared by state media. It's being shared by embassies, by diplomats. So you've got kind of fan accounts online that are creating some of these Lego inspired videos. Those have gone very viral. had rap videos being created. We've had a bunch of AI-generated images being created online. As you said, often making a caricature out of Trump.
And then these are spreading through sometimes official channels, but also unofficial channels as well.
Yeah, and they're getting heaps of views, right? I mean, there's a video of Donald Trump as an 80s pop star that's received a lot of views.
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Chapter 3: How are Iranian diplomats adapting to social media for propaganda?
trying to counter this then? It's using memes too, is it?
It is. It is. And, you know, we've seen throughout the war, the White House as well, putting out some AI generated memes. We've seen war footage spliced together with video game footage. So they are attempting to also sort of speak to the new language of the Internet.
You want to see me do it again? You want to see me do it again?
I'm not sure that is landing quite as well, especially outside of the U.S. I mean, it's certainly resonating with supporters of Trump here. But I think outside of the U.S., I'm not sure that that style is working quite as well. And again, I think that gets a lot to the power dynamics here. It just plays very different when the U.S.
is engaging in this kind of memified propaganda than when the Iranians or another country does it.
All right. So the Iranian government seems to have the meme, if you like, up a hand. But tell me, whose minds then are they changing? Who is being influenced, do you think, by these videos?
Well, I think what it's done is it's softened Iran's image globally. I mean, if you go back to 100 days ago, Iran was really a pariah state. There are claims that they had potentially murdered thousands, if not tens of thousands of protesters. And outside of that, Iran did not have a very positive global image. Their image was quite negative. They were seen as a regressive regime.
They were seen as authoritarian. And so now, at least audiences on X are seeing them a little bit as a plucky underdog here. They're coming across as a bit more playful. And so I think many audiences have sort of lost the sort of history of who these embassies are representing.
And so I do think that that has had an effect on global public opinion, because now Iran is seen as the underdog taking on the United States and not as an authoritarian government that has cracked down on protesters at home.
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