Propaganda at work

How I dealt with disinformation

This was written for the Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) Symposium. The STSC is a small online community of creators of various kinds. Once a month, STSC members create something around a set theme. This time the theme was “propaganda.” To support the work of the STSC, do subscribe. If you are a writer, consider joining yourself. You gain access to a private Discord group and opportunities to have your writing seen by a wider group of people. To do so, sign up as a paid subscriber on our founder’s, Thomas J. Bevan, personal Substack . Tom will send you an invite for our Discord group. Do tell him I sent you. Please note: the number of contributing writers is capped at 300.

According to the OED, propaganda is:

“The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a particular cause or point of view.” 

For the purposes of this essay I’m going to adapt that slightly, so that I can write about a work situation that I think others may be able to relate to. I’m going to talk about changing the narrative. I believe that what I have to say may be applied in other contexts, so here goes.

In one of my jobs I was in charge of a technical support team for schools. It didn’t take me long to work out that they were very good. If a school phoned up with a problem, they either fixed it remotely or went in and dealt with it in situ. The turnaround time was excellent as far as I was concerned.

However, like many people who wanted to get on with the job, they weren’t great at customer communication. They would go into a school, fix the problem, and then whizz out again and go to the next job.

They kept a record of what they had done, but as we’ll see, that didn’t help.

These days, since Goebbels was unleashed upon the world, we associate the word “propaganda” with lies and disinformation. There was plenty of that going on. I was continually being told by my line manager that at the headteachers’ meeting he chaired people there had been complaining about the service, or rather the lack of it, from my team. I was even called into the Director of Education’s office once, where we had this conversation.

DoE: Mr X has complained directly to me that he never sees anyone from the technical support team.

Me: Oh, I’m surprised at that, but I will look into it. Just out of interest, did you know that Mr X’s son has set up a rival service and is trying to take over the work in schools?

DoE: Is he?

Me: Yes. I’m sure that has no bearing on the matter at all, but I just thought I’d mention it.

I didn’t hear anything from Mr X again.

The key thing here was the need to have information. In order to gain such information I didn’t engage in underhand tactics and I didn’t listen to gossip. What I did do was hold weekly team meetings where we would discuss any issues arising. A member of my team would tell me, for instance, that when they went into School A the head of technology told her that he’d been approached by such and such a person. So that’s how it was possible to gather information and piece it all together, like a jigsaw.

But that is all somewhat hit and miss. I realised that what we really needed was cold had facts. I spoke to the head of the technical team. (I was the manager, he was the technical manager, responsible for prioritising jobs and allocating people to them.)

Me: I’d like you to print out a report for me please on how many schools the team has visited in the past month, how many jobs they completed, and how long it took them.

Head of tech team: I can’t do that.

Me: Why not? You put the data in, don’t you?

HTT: Yes, but the software only allows us to put data in, not get anything out.

Me: That’s ridiculous. What’s the point of it then?

HTT: There is no point. We were just told to do it by one of the managers.

Me: OK, we need a new program. Could you scout out a few please, by the end of the week?

He did so, and the ones available were outlandishly priced. I decided to create a spreadsheet for the team.

At the same time, I instructed the team to make sure that they made their presence known to the headteacher or school secretary, and asked them to rate the service on a form I devised for the purpose, and sign it. The idea was that this would be put into the spreadsheet as well. The team didn’t like the idea, because it smacked of monitoring. It was, but they suspected the information would be used against them; I assured them that it wouldn’t¹.

A couple of weeks later the system proved its worth. This is what my line manager reported back to me after his next meeting with the headteachers, having been supplied by myself with a very detailed report from the new spreadsheet:

Headteacher 1: The technical team are useless. You never see them.

Line manager: That’s funny. They were in your school last Wednesday. That is your signature on the form isn’t it?

Headteacher 2: But they’re rubbish at their job.

LM: That’s strange. You evaluated their visit to you last Friday as excellent. That is your signature, isn’t it?

I was also able to furnish both my line manager and the Director of Education with a report showing that 98% of problems were fixed within two working days, and more often than not on the same day. Also, that 99% of visits were rated “Excellent” and the rest “Very good”.

The misinformation and disinformation dried up.

I think the moral of this story is that the best way of tackling disinformation and misinformation is to be a better propagandist than the people who are doing the disseminating. In my view, the best way of achieving this is to use hard facts. Even if it doesn’t have the desired effect straight away, in the end the truth comes out.

1. I feel I should mention at this point that I’d only been in the job five minutes, so my various teams had not yet learnt to trust me.