Chapter 25: Exercises

Military Propaganda, Psychological Operations, and PSYOP

Exercise 25.1 — Leaflet Anatomy Analysis

Individual | Written Assignment | 600–800 words

Select one military PSYOP leaflet from the Gulf War (1990–91) or the Afghanistan campaign (2001–02). Reproductions of both campaigns' leaflets are publicly available through the National Security Archive, the Propaganda Leaflets Project, and various declassified military records repositories. Your instructor can also provide a curated selection.

Apply the five-part anatomy introduced in the Primary Source Analysis section of this chapter:

  1. Source — Is the source identified? Is it military, allied government, or obscured? What institutional interest does the source have? Does source disclosure increase or decrease effectiveness in this case?
  2. Message — What is the core behavioral objective of the leaflet? What is the primary claim? Is the claim accurate?
  3. Emotional Register — What emotion is the leaflet designed to produce in its target audience? What specific design elements (image, word choice, layout) serve this emotional objective? Is the emotional appeal calibrated to the likely cultural context of the target audience?
  4. Implicit Audience — Who is this leaflet actually designed to reach? Not the geographic population over which it was dropped, but the specific subset of that population whose beliefs or behavior make them susceptible to this particular message?
  5. Strategic Omission — What relevant information is missing from this leaflet? What would a fully accurate and comprehensive version include? Does the omission constitute deception or legitimate selective framing?

Conclude with an ethical assessment: where does this leaflet fall on the white/gray/black propaganda spectrum, and on the legitimate/illegitimate military information operation spectrum? Defend your assessment.

Exercise 25.2 — The Five O'Clock Follies and Contemporary Briefings

Individual | Comparative Analysis | 700–900 words

The "Five O'Clock Follies" was the nickname given by journalists to the daily military press briefings in Saigon during the Vietnam War — briefings that consistently presented the war as proceeding favorably when field realities indicated otherwise. The nickname expressed journalists' contempt for the credibility gap between official statements and observable conditions.

Part A: Research the Five O'Clock Follies using at least two of the following sources: David Halberstam's The Making of a Quagmire, Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, William Hammond's official U.S. Army history The Military and the Media 1962–1968, or contemporaneous journalism. Identify three to four specific documented examples in which official briefing statements were contradicted by field realities known to journalists at the time.

Part B: Select one contemporary military press briefing from the past decade (transcripts are available through the Pentagon's official press briefing archive at defense.gov, or through news organization transcripts). Analyze it using the same framework: What claims are made? What evidence supports or contradicts those claims? What questions do journalists ask, and how are they answered? Is there a contemporary credibility gap evident in the briefing you selected?

Part C: Compare the two briefing contexts. What has changed since Vietnam in how military press briefings are conducted? What structural features — pool reporting, embedded journalism, pre-approved imagery, limited independent access — shape contemporary briefing dynamics differently than the relative access journalists had in Vietnam? In your assessment, which era's briefings were more credible, and why?

Exercise 25.3 — The Centcom Sock Puppet Program

Individual | Research and Legal Analysis | 500–700 words

The Centcom "Operation Earnest Voice" sock puppet program, revealed by the Guardian in March 2011, raised significant legal and ethical questions about the limits of military information operations in the digital age.

Research the program using primary sources and news coverage. The Guardian's original reporting (by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain, March 17, 2011) is the foundational source. Additional reporting appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and subsequent academic analysis in security and communication studies journals.

Address the following questions in your analysis:

  1. What was the program designed to do? What were the specific operational objectives? What languages and platforms were targeted?
  2. What legal authority was claimed for the program? How did military legal officers argue it complied with Smith-Mundt and Title 10 restrictions?
  3. What were the specific legal problems critics identified? What is the argument that the program violated its own legal framework?
  4. Structurally compare the Centcom program to what the Mueller Report documented about the Russian Internet Research Agency's operations. Where are the meaningful differences? Where is the structure identical?
  5. What was the program's effect on the credibility of legitimate U.S. government social media activity when it was revealed? How does exposure of a black or gray information operation affect the source's broader credibility?

Conclude with your own assessment: was the program a legitimate military information operation, an illegitimate domestic propaganda operation disguised as a foreign MISO, or something more ambiguous? What legal framework changes, if any, would you recommend?

Exercise 25.4 — Tariq's Community: Media Literacy Response Design

Individual | Applied Design | 600–800 words

Following 9/11, the "See Something, Say Something" campaign — launched initially by New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority in 2002, later nationalized by the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 — became one of the most extensive domestic information campaigns in recent American history. The campaign was designed to enlist ordinary citizens in counter-terrorism surveillance by reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement.

Research the campaign's design, dissemination, and documented effects. Sources include the DHS campaign's own materials (available through dhs.gov archives), journalism covering the campaign's implementation, and academic research on the effects of counter-terrorism surveillance campaigns on minority communities.

Design a media literacy response targeting Arab-American and Muslim-American communities — the communities most directly affected by the campaign's racialized implementation. Your response should:

  1. Analyze the campaign as propaganda: Apply the source/message/audience/omission framework. What is the campaign designed to produce? Who bears the cost of the campaign's implementation as practiced?
  2. Identify the specific media literacy needs: What does the target community need to understand about this campaign that they may not currently know? What is the gap between the campaign's stated purpose (counter-terrorism) and its documented effects (racialized surveillance)?
  3. Design a specific intervention: Create either (a) a one-page media literacy guide aimed at the target community, explaining the campaign and providing specific, practical guidance; or (b) a curriculum outline for a two-session workshop covering the same material.
  4. Address the limits of media literacy: Is individual media literacy sufficient to address a systematic surveillance apparatus? What structural or policy interventions would complement a media literacy approach?

Exercise 25.5 — Group: Design a PSYOP and Its Counter

Group (3–5 students) | Simulation and Counter-Analysis | 90-minute session + 400-word writeup per student

Setup: Your group will design a fictional military PSYOP campaign using publicly available U.S. military doctrine, then design the counter-propaganda response.

The scenario: A fictional country (invent your own name, geography, and political context) is experiencing an armed insurgency. A coalition of democratic nations has been asked by the country's government to provide military assistance. The coalition's MISO team must design a leaflet campaign targeting insurgent fighters in a specific region, encouraging defection to the government side.

Phase 1 — PSYOP Design (use doctrine): Using the target audience analysis, message development, and product design framework from U.S. Army Field Manual 3-53 (available publicly through Army Publishing Directorate), develop: - A target audience analysis for the insurgent fighters (demographics, motivations, existing beliefs, key vulnerabilities) - Three key messages, with supporting arguments for each - A rough design for one leaflet product (sketch or description) - An effectiveness assessment plan

Phase 2 — Counter-Propaganda Design: Shift roles. You are now an analyst for the insurgency's information operation. Using the same target audience analysis framework, develop: - The counter-propaganda response to the defection campaign - Specific message techniques designed to inoculate fighters against the PSYOP messages you designed in Phase 1 - One counter-product (counter-leaflet or equivalent)

Individual Writeup: After the group session, each student writes 400 words reflecting on: What did this exercise reveal about the relationship between PSYOP design and counter-propaganda design? What were the limits of the PSYOP approach? What made the counter-propaganda effective or ineffective? What ethical questions arose during the design process?

Chapter 25 | Part 5: Domains