From lionheart's article on the Skripal attack:
Sergei Skripal and the Russian disinformation game
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45454142
A loosely-defined network of Russian state actors, state-controlled media, and armies of social media bots and trolls is said to work in unison to spread and amplify multiple narratives and conspiracies around cases like the Skripal poisoning. The goal is no longer to deny or disprove an official version of events, it is to flood the zone with so many competing versions that nothing seems to make sense.
"What is really striking is that you no longer see the Russian machine pushing a single message, it pushes dozens of messages," said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who studies Russian disinformation. "The idea is to confuse people."
[...]
"The more different theories you put out, the more different Google results you're going to get," said Mr Nimmo. "So instead of seeing two or three different versions of the story you're seeing 20 or 30. And for someone who is not following the story regularly that becomes more and more confusing until they give up. And at that point, the Russian disinformation has had its effect.
[...]
A key component in recent iterations of the tactic has been the use of humour and ridicule. When a UK inquiry found in 2016 that Russian president Vladimir Putin "probably approved" the murder of Litvinenko, a hashtag - #putinprobablyapproved - spread through Twitter, with tweets suggesting Mr Putin had "probably approved" the assassination of JFK, the invasion of Iraq, climate change and more.
In the hours after the UK named the suspects in the Skripal case, a flood of near-identical tweets used pictures of comedians, historical figures and Hollywood spies - from Joseph Stalin to Jason Bourne - in place of the suspects, mocking the UK's announcement.
[...]
"The strategy is optimised for the internet, it's meant to go viral," said Mr Nimmo. "That's why mockery and sarcasm and attempts at funny memes are so much a part of this ... It is disinformation for the information age.