The Three Steps: Embed This Model

Step 1: Something in your environment triggers your emotions.

Step 2: You experience a feeling / feelings with a certain (set of) qualities: anger, fear, disgust, sadness, or enjoyment.

Step 3: You react in a particular way, either reflexively (automatically) or carefully, to that feeling.

I want us counter Disinfolklorists to embed this way of modelling a mental routine we experience a thousand times a day into our minds: Trigger, Experience, Reaction. It is essential for realising the full power of Disinfolklore as an analytical method for parsing Russian (and indeed all forms of) Disinformation, and much else besides.

Source: How the ‘Great Migration Troll’ Hacks Our Minds

The foundational three-step definition of TER. Where page 1 introduces the Dalai Lama/Ekman model, this passage provides the formal instructional specification: three numbered steps, five core emotions (anger, fear, disgust, sadness, enjoyment), and the directive to “embed this” as a mental routine. The author frames TER not merely as a theoretical model but as an essential analytical method for parsing all forms of disinformation — a tool that operates thousands of times daily whether we are conscious of it or not.

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