Natalie Nougayrede is right to highlight the risks of propaganda (In an age of lies and distortion, self-defence is essential, 31 January). Technology enables the lightning fast circulation of narratives and as a result international public opinion can be increasingly volatile. Propaganda and “fake news” present real risks to our values and stoke divisions within and between countries. Educating people to spot the wheat of truth from the chaff of lies becomes ever more important.

But this is not sufficient. The best way to call the bluff of misleading propaganda is to build strong trusting relationships. In the digital age, face-to-face contact becomes more important. It can be essential in sustaining respectful and peaceful ties with other countries against a headwind of misinformation and attempts to divide.

Amid “Twitter storms” and “alternative facts” we need meaningful relationships built on the bedrock of personal experience and trust. We can do this by encouraging more international student exchange; collaborative global scientific, cultural and sporting connections; and rejuvenating school and civic exchanges. These may be our best insurance policy against destabilising digital narratives.

John Dubber

Head of policy and external relations, British Council

• Natalie Nougayrede tells us about a discussion with a group of young Russian journalists. Some were from as far away as Siberia and were resilient to propaganda because they had got used to it, they claimed.

I visited Irkutsk, Siberia, in 1988. I had a meeting with a group of school teachers who told me they loved England because of all our freedoms and our prosperity. I asked them if they had not seen pictures on TV of police attacking striking miners and of homeless people sleeping in doorways. They said they had but that they did not believe it. They thought it was just communist propaganda.

People can claim to see through propaganda but it is not that simple.

Noel Hannon

London

• Natalie’s insightful discussion on propaganda is well overdue – the subject is little discussed in western democracies, unsurprisingly. While teaching media studies over many years ranging from the mid-1980s to 2011, propaganda was ever present, whatever the medium. I found that a very effective way of surmounting the difficulty of definition and explanation was to first analyse a number of advertisements. Western capitalism was invaluable in explaining the propaganda of both liberal democracies and totalitarian regimes. No wonder our establishment dismisses media studies.

Nick Jemmett

Retired teacher of English and media, Falmouth, Cornwall

• So the Russians are guilty of spreading false narratives. They are mere amateurs in this craft compared with the west. Weapons of mass destruction, 45-minute warning, mobile germ warfare labs, Kuwaiti babies torn from their incubators by invading Iraqi troops and Gaddafi’s “supposed” intention to wreak genocidal havoc on Benghazi spring to mind.

Yugo Kovach

Winterborne Houghton, Dorset

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