Information without context can create a different narrative than that same information with context.

You see this in racially biased crime reporting. Without context, you see that one demographic is disproportionately prone to being arrested and convicted of crimes. The conclusion being aimed for is the expected racist one.
With context, you see that criminality is roughly equally distributed, but that certain classes of crime are enforced with prison more often, that different demographics get disproportionately more attention from law enforcement, and that due to socioeconomic factors different demographics are more likely to inhabit income brackets where the likely types of crime are more likely to be harshly enforced.

Information without context can be misleading. If someone seems to care about the conclusion you take away more than some bit of context that makes that conclusion less forgone, thats a sign they might be pushing a narrative.

There is, unfortunately, a contrasting rhetorical trick where someone provides such an overwhelming amount of context that you cannot possibly handle all of it in a reasonable amount of time.

Exactly where the line is is unfortunately not something I think there’s a simple answer for determining. I try to determine if it seems like the person is using the information to support their point, or if they’re using it to drown out opposition.

The best propaganda is built on a foundation of truth. You’ll see this on fascist websites that love to flood their feeds with “black on black crime” stories, to heavily promote “white woman attacked by black man” news narratives, and to repeatedly post images of young black/latino men with facial tattoos or in mug-shot photos. Any individual statement can be validated as true, but deliberate miss-sampling of information leads the audience to develop broad negative biases towards certain demographics.

Then you get a drum-beat of assertions about skin color as a heuristic for public safety. People are asserted as dangerous because of their skin color and you need to be proactive in keeping yourselves away from these people through… white flight and neighborhood gentrification, panicked public responses to black people, reporting black people in your neighborhood to the police as “suspicious”, leaning towards prosecution/high sentencing of black suspects when you’re a member of a jury pool, organizing with your neighbors to harass and expel black neighbors, pressure your school/local community center to hold back/suspend/expel black students disproportionately, and otherwise make your community hostile to black residents until you get a segregated neighborhood through public pressure.

The combination of the cherry-picked information and the advocacy for populist segregation leads to more interracial conflicts and an increased anxiety between white and black residents. This sets off a wave of self-confirming incidents - you get to see more black people in your neighborhood punished by authority figures, which leads naive viewers to believe more of the “minorities are inherently evil” media narratives. More conflicts feed into the social media scene of cherry-picked video clips and biased news articles, with “innocent white person victimized by evil black person” becoming received wisdom rather than something you need to read in a headline anymore.

People are trained into becoming racist over time by the engineered social dynamics.

Things like “lies of omission” basically.

Check out the NYTimes when they’re not just lying… Any hegemonic media really.

In addition to what frazorth said, you can change how a statement is interpreted by simply using a passive voice. Compare “Alice was hit by Bob” to “Bob hit Alice”. Both statements are identical, but the former is a lot less accusatory towards Bob. This technique is used when reporting about Police abuse, or about how the civilians in Gaza are treated.

“I make more money than last year” when i make lwss inflation-adjusted

“we have reached record incomes” when you make more money than ever but still less than you should (i.e. your competitor went bankrupt and you failed to capture their customer-base)

It’s all about the 💫Framing🌟

You’ve never heard of people bending the truth?

Saying something factually correct, but misleading because parts are omitted?