---
title: Firehosing
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/
description: The firehose of falsehood is high-volume, multi-channel output that ignores internal consistency, aiming at exhaustion. Definition, the tell and examples.
section: Techniques
---

![Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-interwar.jpg)

[Techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/) · Computational

# Firehosing

In brief

RAND's 2016 model describes high volume and velocity across many channels, with no concern for consistency, aiming at exhaustion rather than belief in any one claim; contradictory stories in one week mark it.

![Illustration: several fire hoses spraying overlapping streams of illegible ink and text across a page.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/technique-cards/firehosing.jpg)

Illustration, not an archive object

On this page

- [History and effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#history-and-effect)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#how-it-works)
- [Why it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#why-it-works)
- [Examples across eras and sides](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#examples-across-eras-and-sides)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Where it ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#where-it-ends-edge-cases-and-legitimate-persuasion)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#sources)
- [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#case-studies)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/#images)

Related techniques

[Flooding the zone](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/flooding-the-zone/) [Sleeper effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/sleeper-effect/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/)

Also called Firehose of falsehood, Flood with falsehood

High-volume, high-velocity, multi-channel output that does not care about internal consistency; the goal is exhaustion, not persuasion of one claim.

## The tell

Contradictory stories in the same week; volume is the message.

## Not this

A newsroom publishing many true items quickly.

## [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/)

- [Continued influence effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/continued-influence-effect/)
- [Illusory truth effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/illusory-truth-effect/)

## [Write](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/)

- [Anatomy of deception: how documented operations worked, and how to spot them](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/deception-anatomy/)
- [Fair, grey or deception: where each archive technique sits](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/the-line/)

On this page

## History and effect

Named and described by RAND researchers Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews in 2016, studying Russian state media output.

It exhausts the audience's capacity to fact-check through sheer volume and velocity, so persuasion happens through fatigue rather than belief in any single claim.

Lineage: RAND 'Firehose of Falsehood' (Paul & Matthews 2016)

## How it works

Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews of RAND (2016) described four features of what they called the "firehose of falsehood" model of Russian state propaganda: it is high-volume and multichannel; it is rapid, continuous and repetitive; it lacks commitment to objective reality; and it lacks commitment to consistency. They argued that it drew on Soviet-era practice but differed in speed and scale, carried by a global broadcaster, websites, officials' briefings, social media accounts and paid commenters. No single claim has to win. The output works when the audience concludes that the truth cannot be known, or that every account is equally partisan.

The MH17 record shows the sequence. Four days after the airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July 2014, a Russian Defence Ministry briefing showed satellite images of what it said were Ukrainian Buk launchers and pointed to a Ukrainian Su-25 jet near the airliner ([Russian Defence Ministry satellite image, MH17 briefing](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/mh17-buk-briefing-image-2014/)). Later official and state-media accounts moved between a fighter-jet attack, a Buk launched from Ukrainian-held ground, and claims about the missile's serial number; these accounts contradict one another. Bellingcat catalogued the sequence in 2018. The Joint Investigation Team concluded that the missile came from a launcher of the Russian army's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, and a Dutch court convicted three men in absentia in 2022. Russia rejects these findings.

A second mechanism targets the people who check. Researchers at CheckFirst and Reset.Tech (2024) documented an operation they named Operation Overload, which sent large numbers of fakes to fact-checkers and newsrooms with requests to verify them, spending the checkers' time and turning each debunk into further distribution. The archive's [Matryoshka's midterm clips: borrowed faces and a borrowed logo](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/matryoshka-midterm-clips/) case describes the same method aimed at US midterm candidates, with small measured reach. The volume is the point: each item is cheap to make and expensive to refute.

## Why it works

Repetition builds belief. The illusory truth effect (Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein and Thomas Toppino 1977) shows that repeated statements are rated as more likely true, and Lisa Fazio and colleagues (2015) found the effect holds even when people know the correct answer. Hearing a claim from several apparently separate sources adds weight (the multiple-source effect, Stephen Harkins and Richard Petty 1981), which is why the same line across broadcaster, spokesperson and accounts matters more than any one outlet.

Corrections lag. The continued influence effect (Hollyn Johnson and Colleen Seifert 1994; reviewed by Stephan Lewandowsky and colleagues 2012) means a retracted claim keeps shaping reasoning, especially when no alternative explanation fills the gap. A firehose fills the gap with several alternatives at once, so the documented account becomes one option among many. Attention is finite: Zeynep Tufekci (2017) and Margaret Roberts (2018) describe flooding as a way to control information by burying it rather than blocking it. Hannah Arendt (1951) wrote of totalitarian propaganda producing audiences ready to believe everything and nothing. Measured effects on attitudes are a separate question: Gregory Eady and colleagues (2023) found no measurable relationship between exposure to the Internet Research Agency's 2016 Twitter campaign and changes in US voters' attitudes or behaviour.

## Examples across eras and sides

- **KAL 007 (1983, Soviet Union, government and TASS; partial analogue).** After a Soviet interceptor shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Sakhalin on 1 September 1983, killing all 269 aboard, initial Soviet statements did not acknowledge the shootdown; later, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov told a press conference the airliner had been on a deliberate intelligence mission. The shift between incompatible accounts fits the inconsistency feature; the volume and multichannel features of the RAND model do not apply to a pre-internet state press. (Alexander Dallin, *Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers*, 1985.)
- **Iran Air Flight 655 (1988, United States, Defense Department; partial analogue).** After the cruiser USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Strait of Hormuz on 3 July 1988, killing all 290 aboard, early official US statements said the airliner had been descending toward the ship and flying outside the commercial air corridor. The Navy's own investigation (the Fogarty report, August 1988) found it had been climbing and inside the corridor, and in 1992 Admiral William Crowe acknowledged to Congress that the Vincennes had been in Iranian territorial waters, which earlier accounts had not said. The US later paid compensation to victims' families without admitting liability (1996 settlement at the International Court of Justice). As with KAL 007, successive official accounts contradicted one another; the volume and multichannel features do not apply (Department of Defense, *Formal Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655*, 1988; John Barry and Roger Charles, "Sea of Lies", *Newsweek*, 13 July 1992).
- **Crimea (2014, Russia, head of state and state media).** On 4 March 2014 Vladimir Putin said the armed men without insignia in Crimea were local self-defence forces; on 17 April he said Russian servicemen had stood behind the Crimean self-defence forces. The first account was replaced rather than corrected, the pattern the RAND model calls a lack of commitment to consistency. (Kremlin transcripts of the 4 March 2014 press conference and the 17 April 2014 Direct Line broadcast.)
- **MH17 (2014 to 2022, Russia, Defence Ministry and state media).** See [Russian Defence Ministry satellite image, MH17 briefing](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/mh17-buk-briefing-image-2014/): the archive tags the pattern of mutually contradictory accounts over several years, not any single image. (Bellingcat, "The Kremlin's Shifting, Self-Contradicting Narratives on MH17", 2018; Joint Investigation Team, 2016 and 2018; District Court of The Hague, 2022.)
- **COVID-19 origin accounts (2020, China, foreign ministry and state media).** On 12 March 2020 foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian wrote on Twitter, "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan." Over 2020 Chinese state media also gave prominence to suggestions that the virus first appeared in other countries, and that it entered China on imported frozen food. These accounts point to different places. The European External Action Service reported that official Chinese sources and state media promoted claims that the virus originated outside China. The origin of the virus remains disputed, and the archive takes no position on it. (EEAS, special reports on COVID-19 narratives and disinformation, 2020.)
- **Operation Overload / Matryoshka (2023 to 2026, Russia-aligned network).** Short videos with stolen news logos, cloned voices and many shifting accusations, pushed across platforms and sent directly to fact-checkers. See [Matryoshka's midterm clips: borrowed faces and a borrowed logo](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/matryoshka-midterm-clips/). (CheckFirst and Reset.Tech, *Operation Overload*, 2024; Germany's BfV, 2026, as recorded in the case study.)

![President Putin seated facing journalists at Novo-Ogaryovo, 4 March 2014](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/firehosing-putin-press-conference-2014-03-04.jpg)

*President Vladimir Putin (seated, centre) answering journalists' questions on Ukraine at Novo-Ogaryovo, near Moscow, on 4 March 2014. Presidential Press and Information Office (kremlin.ru), cropped by a Wikimedia Commons editor. CC BY 4.0 (also offered under CC BY 3.0).*

![Armed men in uniform without national insignia at a gate of the Ukrainian military base at Perevalne, Crimea, 9 March 2014](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/firehosing-perevalne-unmarked-soldiers-2014.jpg)

*Armed servicemen without national insignia at the Ukrainian military base at Perevalne, Crimea, on 9 March 2014, between the 4 March and 17 April statements quoted above. Photo: Anton Holoborodko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.*

![The guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes (CG 49) at sea, June 1986](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/images/firehosing-uss-vincennes-1986.jpg)

*The guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes (CG 49) at sea, June 1986, two years before the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655. U.S. Navy photograph, Naval History and Heritage Command NH 106519-KN. Public domain (U.S. government work).*

## How to spot it

- Line up the sender's accounts of one event over a month. Do they agree with each other?
- When a claim is disproved, does the sender correct it or move to a new one?
- Do outlets that look independent carry the same claim at the same time from a common origin?
- Are the claims arriving faster than any investigation of the event could have produced them?
- Is the message "here is what happened", or "no one can know what happened"?
- Is material being sent to fact-checkers and journalists in bulk, asking them to check it?

## Where it ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion

- **Evolving honest accounts.** Newsrooms and officials revise early reports during breaking news. The difference is that they flag corrections and move toward a single evidenced account; a firehose moves between accounts without correcting any.
- **Pluralism is not a firehose.** Many independent outlets disagreeing is how open media works. The technique requires one actor, or a coordinated set, producing the contradiction.
- **Volume without contradiction.** Gary King, Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts (2017) estimated that the Chinese government fabricates hundreds of millions of social media posts a year, mostly cheerleading and distraction rather than argument; Charlie Winter (2015) counted over a thousand Islamic State propaganda items in a single month, built around a consistent set of themes. Both are high-volume but consistent, closer to [Flooding the zone](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/flooding-the-zone/) or [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/) than to firehosing.
- **Domestic politicians in democracies.** Some commentators have applied the RAND label to Donald Trump, whose false or misleading claims the Washington Post Fact Checker counted at 30,573 over his term (Kessler, Rizzo and Kelly, 2021). Others dispute the fit: the RAND model describes a state apparatus coordinating many channels, and the count combines claims the Post rated false with claims it rated misleading. The archive applies the same four features to any actor of any party or country and tags only where all four are documented.
- **Neighbours.** Repeated falsehoods that outlive their source are the [Sleeper effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/sleeper-effect/); items built to provoke anger are [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/); answering one charge with a list of others is [Whataboutism](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/whataboutism/).

## Sources

- Arendt, Hannah, *The Origins of Totalitarianism*, Harcourt, Brace, 1951.
- Bellingcat, "The Kremlin's Shifting, Self-Contradicting Narratives on MH17", 2018.
- CheckFirst and Reset.Tech, *Operation Overload: How Pro-Russian Actors Flood Newsrooms with Fake Content and Seek to Divert Their Efforts*, 2024.
- Dallin, Alexander, *Black Box: KAL 007 and the Superpowers*, University of California Press, 1985.
- Barry, John, and Roger Charles, "Sea of Lies", Newsweek, 13 July 1992.
- US Department of Defense, *Formal Investigation into the Circumstances Surrounding the Downing of Iran Air Flight 655 on 3 July 1988* (Fogarty report), 1988.
- Eady, Gregory, et al., "Exposure to the Russian Internet Research Agency foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior", Nature Communications, 2023.
- European External Action Service, special reports on narratives and disinformation around the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020.
- Fazio, Lisa K., Nadia M. Brashier, B. Keith Payne and Elizabeth J. Marsh, "Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth", Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2015.
- Harkins, Stephen G., and Richard E. Petty, "Effects of source magnification of cognitive effort on attitudes: An information-processing view", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1981.
- Hasher, Lynn, David Goldstein and Thomas Toppino, "Frequency and the conference of referential validity", Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1977.
- Johnson, Hollyn M., and Colleen M. Seifert, "Sources of the continued influence effect", Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1994.
- Kessler, Glenn, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, "Trump's false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years", The Washington Post, 2021.
- King, Gary, Jennifer Pan and Margaret E. Roberts, "How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument", American Political Science Review, 2017.
- Lewandowsky, Stephan, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Colleen M. Seifert, Norbert Schwarz and John Cook, "Misinformation and its correction: Continued influence and successful debiasing", Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 2012.
- Netherlands Public Prosecution Service / Joint Investigation Team, MH17 findings, 2016 and 2018; District Court of The Hague, MH17 judgment, November 2022.
- Paul, Christopher, and Miriam Matthews, *The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model: Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It*, RAND Corporation, 2016.
- Roberts, Margaret E., *Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall*, Princeton University Press, 2018.
- Tufekci, Zeynep, *Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest*, Yale University Press, 2017.
- Winter, Charlie, *Documenting the Virtual "Caliphate"*, Quilliam Foundation, 2015.

## Case studies

- [Matryoshka's midterm clips: borrowed faces and a borrowed logo](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/matryoshka-midterm-clips/) — Matryoshka's midterm clips: borrowed faces and a borrowed logo

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Putin answering questions, 4 March 2014 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vladimir_Putin_answered_journalists%E2%80%99_questions_on_the_situation_in_Ukraine_(2014-03-04).jpeg) (kremlin.ru) | CC BY 4.0 (kremlin.ru) |
| Unmarked servicemen at Perevalne, 2014 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014-03-09_-_Perevalne_military_base_-_0206.JPG) (Anton Holoborodko) | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
| USS Vincennes, 1986 | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USS_Vincennes_(CG-49)_underway_at_sea,_in_June_1986_(NH_106519-KN).jpg) (U.S. Navy, NHHC) | Public domain (U.S. government work) |

## In the collection

[Firehosing in the collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#technique=firehosing)

- [Russian Defence Ministry satellite image, MH17 briefing](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/mh17-buk-briefing-image-2014/) (Jul 21, 2014 · Firehosing)

## In the watch briefs

[All 11 briefs](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/#technique=firehosing)

- Sep 20, 2026Impersonated — [A Kremlin-attributed Matryoshka video farm branded celebrity deepfakes as CNN so midterm attacks on Democrats would read as news.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260920-1600Z-matryoshka-midterms/) — [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Narrative laundering](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/narrative-laundering/)
- Sep 17, 2026Impersonated — [Matryoshka reused Cameo clips and a stolen CNN mark so U.S. midterm feeds would treat celebrity smears of Democrats as news.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260917-2320Z-matryoshka-midterms/) — [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/)
- Sep 17, 2026Impersonated — [Matryoshka laid cloned Cameo voices and a stolen CNN bug over celebrity faces so midterm voters would hear Hollywood denounce Democrats.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260917-0022Z-matryoshka-cameo-midterms/) — [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Manufactured consensus](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/manufactured-consensus/)
- Sep 15, 2026Impersonated — [Matryoshka pasted CNN skins and celebrity Cameo deepfakes onto anti-Democrat midterm videos and then attacked the first debunk.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260915-1015Z-matryoshka-us-midterms/) — [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Astroturfing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/astroturf/)
- Sep 14, 2026Impersonated — [Operation Matryoshka seeded fake ARD and BBC skins plus celebrity deepfakes to smear 53 German candidates before the September Landtag votes.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260914-1425Z-matryoshka-german-landtag/) — [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Flooding the zone](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/flooding-the-zone/) [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/)
- Sep 11, 2026Impersonated — [Matryoshka recycles Cameo celebrity clips and fake CNN brands to smear named U.S. Democrats as its first documented midterm batch.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260911-2300Z-matryoshka-us-midterms/) — [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/)

## In campaigns

- [PRC-linked AI content farms targeting Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/china-taiwan-ai-farms/)
- [Operation Matryoshka / Overload — German state elections 2026](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/matryoshka-germany-2026/)

## Related techniques

[Flooding the zone](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/flooding-the-zone/) [Sleeper effect](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/sleeper-effect/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/)