Peter Pomerantsev is emerging as the pre-eminent war reporter of our time, the Martha Gellhorn or Ed Murrow of the brutal campaigns against fact ... It is required – and bleakly entertaining – reading for anyone wanting to understand the surreal scale and intent of the efforts to destabilise democracies ... Pomerantsev punctuates his investigations with fragments of memoir, which illustrate the fact that he was, in many ways, born to his current role ... Pomerantsev offers compelling fine detail of the ways in which social media campaigns would stoke fears about threats to a national way of life and offer simplistic solutions.

Pomerantsev’s book is beautifully written. Sometimes it’s virtually travel writing...Yet it is densely argued too, and its theses are strong ... Why is truth taking such a battering? Here Pomerantsev is at his most philosophical, and I love it ... I suppose there are points in this book when Pomerantsev’s ability to write beautiful prose might be doing quite a lot of the heavy lifting. The distinction between old-fashioned protest and new, populist parody pseudo-protest is obviously subjective, and I’m not sure he always calls it right. Such as with Corbynism, which he seems to identify as the latter ... Still, his lived experience, his background, and most of all his restless globetrotting, mean that his conclusion has to be taken seriously, and what a conclusion it is.

...what happens to society when information ceases to be scarce? This is the question Peter Pomerantsev explores in his finely written and deeply intelligent This is Not Propaganda ... Pomerantsev’s thesis is simple: In an age of information abundance, the belief that the best ideas will triumph has been discredited ... We now have access to more information than ever but facts are losing their power ... Yet Pomerantsev decries the idea of censoring the web. To lie is after all, not illegal—and nor should it be. This logic, he argues, rolls back the gains made by those who fought for freedom of expression ... He concedes that regulation does have a role but is often inadequate or wrong—a panicked response from governments still unable to properly understand the Internet. What is needed is transparency. We are all in the dark about the precise nature of, say, Facebook’s algorithm, which presents information to us in ways we cannot understand and for reasons we cannot discern, and which Pomerantsev correctly observes is therefore a form of censorship in itself. Break open the Facebook algorithm, he says, and let us know who exactly is trying to influence us.

... insightful though distractingly underedited ... Pomerantsev diagnoses our fact-distorting age with understanding and acuity, but his proposed remedies are altogether hazier. Nostalgic for the certainty of Soviet dissidents who believed there was 'no middle between truth and lies,' he calls for the regeneration of 'freedom, rights — all those big words that have been bled of their vitality.' The final pages briefly sketch out his vision of an online culture that would empower the public to shape the flow of information, and an ethically engaged journalism that would stick to the facts. But amid the countervailing flood of disinformation surveyed, it will take more than such reveries to turn the tide.

Pomerantsev has plenty to back up his bleak assessment of the situation ... Although This Is Not Propaganda is, by design, 'not an academic work', it is larded with facts, figures and interviews that bespeak years of investigation ... Many of the problems it diagnoses will be familiar: Russian troll armies; the growth of authoritarianism and populism across the world; the post-truth era and poisonous influence of social media in political polarisation. Where it shines is in Pomerantsev’s meetings with people at the sharp end of these things – from better-known figures such as Philippine investigative journalist Maria Ressa to the 'rooted cosmopolitans' who are helping Turkish activists stay one step ahead of police patrols, or locals caught on opposite sides of the conflict in the Crimea ... almost as head-swimmingly hyperactive as the processes it uncovers; and though it works as an evocation of the networked complexities of the modern world, readers might wish for an index ... both shocking and entertaining, as well as insightful. And yet, for all this, there is a sense that the things he is looking at are simply moving too fast to be usefully discussed in anything so slow as a book. At the time of writing, Ressa is on trial for libel; who knows where she will be in a week’s time. For all its qualities, This Is Not Propaganda feels akin to a nuanced essay on icebergs written from the tilting deck of the Titanic. It is worth reading, but you had better read it fast.

... does not explore solutions to the problems posed by the weaponisation of social media by today’s populist authoritarians. But it does set out, eloquently and movingly, what is at stake. Pomerantsev is an accomplished storyteller and is adept at the use of visual imagery ... essential reading on this online battle between love and hate, and powerful testimony that in this crucial fight, social media platforms can no longer be allowed to sit on the fence.

Pomerantsev describes this book as part reportage, part intellectual adventure and part memoir, which is exactly what it is. It’s an engrossing combination and the reason it works is because he writes so engagingly, with conviction and creative oomph ... makes a powerful argument that the flooding of social media with manipulated messages helps create a new 'ersatz normality' ... The most useful thing Pomerantsev has done is highlight the dangers in the age of disinformation and information abundance, which is a step towards recognising and then countering them. The problem is, if all around you is liquid, it’s often very hard to stay afloat.

Like many dealing with these profoundly difficult issues, Pomerantsev is short on answers. But he has posed the questions forcefully using well-reported case studies backed up by academic research.

Parodying protests, creating discord to 'confuse, dismay, divide and delay'—these and other tactics have been used in the upheavals in Ukraine, Syria, England (Brexit), and, of course, in the U.S. during the presidential election of 2016, which, frustratingly, the author scarcely touches. In fact, much of the author’s exploration barely scratches the surface, and the memoir aspect is tentative ... A work that one wishes would dig much deeper.