Media manipulation

Media manipulation refers to orchestrated campaigns in which actors exploit the distinctive features of broadcasting mass communications or digital media platforms to mislead, misinform, or create a narrative that advance their interests and agendas.^[1][2][3]

In practice, media manipulation tactics may include the use of the use of rhetorical strategies including logical fallacies, deceptive content like disinformation, and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding them out, by inducing other people or groups of people to stop listening to certain arguments, or by simply diverting attention elsewhere. In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul writes that public opinion can only express itself through channels which are provided by the mass media of communication – without which there could be no propaganda.^[4] It is used within public relations, propaganda, marketing, etc. While the objective for each context is quite different, the broad techniques are often similar.

As illustrated below, many of the more modern mass media manipulation methods are types of distraction, on the assumption that the public has a limited attention span.

Activism is the practice or doctrine that has an emphasis on direct vigorous action especially supporting or opposing one side of a controversial matter.^[5] It is quite simply starting a movement to affect or change social views. It is frequently started by influential individuals but is done collectively through social movements with large masses. These social movements can be done through public rallies, strikes, street marches, and social media.^[6]

Advertising is a form of promotion that seeks to persuade a specific audience to purchase a good or service. One of the first types of marketing, it aims to influence its target market to either buy, sell, or carry out a particular action.^[7] This tends to be done by businesses who wish to sell their product by paying media outlets to show their products or services on television breaks, banners on websites and mobile applications.

These advertisements are not only done by businesses but can also be done by other groups. Non-commercial advertisers are those who spend money on advertising in the hope of raising awareness for a cause or promoting specific ideas.^[8] These include interest groups, political parties, government organizations, and religious movements. Most of these organizations intend to spread a message or sway public opinion rather than sell products or services. Advertising can be found not only on social media but also on billboards, in newspapers, in magazines, and even through word of mouth.

A hoax is something intended to deceive or defraud. Misleading public stunts, scientific frauds, false bomb threats and business scams are examples of hoaxes.^[9]

Propagandizing is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda is commonly created by governments, but some forms of mass communication created by other influential organizations can be considered propaganda. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the desired result in audience attitudes. While the term propaganda has justifiably acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples (e.g. Nazi propaganda used to justify the Holocaust), propaganda in its original sense was neutral, and could refer to uses that were generally benign or innocuous, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging persons to report crimes to the police, among others. ^[10]

Propaganda uses societal norms and myths that people hear and believe. Because people respond to, understand and remember more simple ideas this is what is used to influence people's beliefs, attitudes and values.^[11]

Psychological warfare is sometimes considered synonymous with propaganda. The principal distinction is that propaganda occurs typically within a nation, whereas psychological warfare usually takes place between nations, often during war or the cold war. Various techniques influence a target's values, beliefs, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior. Target audiences can be governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

This tactic has been used in multiple wars throughout history. During World War II, the western Allies, expected that the Soviet Union would drop leaflets on the US and England. During the conflict with Iraq, American and English forces dropped leaflets, with many of the leaflets telling the people how to surrender. In the Korean War both sides would use loud speakers from the front lines.^[12] In 2009 people in Israel in the Gaza war received text messages on their cell phones threatening them with rocket attacks. The Palestinian people were getting phone calls and leaflets warning them that they were going to drop rockets on them. These phone calls and leaflets were not always accurate.^[13]

Public relations (PR) is the management of the flow of information between an individual or an organization and the public. PR may include an organization or individual gaining exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require direct payment. PR is generally created by specialized individuals or firms at the behest of already public individuals or organizations as a way of managing their public profile.

Astroturfing is when there is an intent and attempt to create the illusion of support for a particular cause, person, or stance. While this is mainly connected to and seen on the internet, it has also happened in newspapers during times of political elections.^[14] Corporations and political parties try to imitate grassroots movements in order to sway the public to believing something that is not true.^[15]

Clickbait refers to headlines of online news articles that are sensationalized or sometimes wholly fake. It uses people's natural curiosity to get people to click. In some cases clickbait is used to generate income; more clicks mean more money is made with advertisers.^[16] But these headlines and articles can also be used to influence a group of people on social media. In some cases, they are constructed to appeal to the interest group's pre-existing biases and thus to be shared within filter bubbles.^[17]

Information laundering is a method of using a less trusted or less popular platform to publish a story of dubious origin or veracity for the purposes of reporting on that report rather than the story itself. This technique serves to insulate the secondary, more established media from having to issue a retraction if the report is false. Generally, secondary reports will report that the original report is reporting without verifying or making the report themselves.^[18]

In search engine marketing, websites use market research from past searches and other sources to increase their visibility in search engine results pages. This allows them to guide search results along the lines they desire, thereby influencing searchers.^[19]

Businesses have many tactics to entice customers to their websites to generate revenue, such as banner ads, search engine optimization and pay-per-click marketing tools. They all serve a different purposes and use different tools that appeal to multiple types of users. Banner ads appear on sites in an attempt to attract visitors to a linked website. Search engine optimization is a technique in which a website is optimized to received a higher ranking from the search engine, causing it to be returned more often in searches.^[20][21] Pay-per-click involves certain words being highlighted because they were bought by advertisers to then redirect to a page containing information or selling whatever that word pertained to. By using the internet, users are susceptible to these types of advertisements without a clear advertising campaign being viewed.

Commonly known as "smoke screen", this technique consists of making the public focus its attention on a topic that is more convenient for the propagandist. This particular type of media manipulation has been referenced in popular culture. For example, the movie Wag the Dog (1997) illustrates how the public can be deceitfully distracted from an important topic by presenting another whose only quality is that of being more attractive.

Politicians might distract the public from domestic issues by diverting attention to global issues in order to reduce pressure domestically.^[22]

This is a variation of the traditional arguments known, in logic as ad hominem and ad populum but applied to countries instead of individuals. This technique consists of refuting arguments by appealing to nationalism or by inspiring fear and hate toward a foreign country or all foreigners. It has the potential to be important since it gives the propagandists the power to discredit any information coming from other countries.^[23]

Some examples are:

Q: "What do you think about Khokara's politics on X matter?" A: "I think they've been wrong about everything for the last 20 years or so..."

Q: "Your idea is quite similar to the one proposed in Falala." A: "Are you suggesting Falala is a better country than ours?"

An informal fallacy. The "straw man" consists of appearing to refute the opponent's argument while attacking another topic. For it to work correctly the topic that was refuted and the one that should have been refuted need to be similar.

This is a combination of the straw man fallacy and the ad hominem argument. It is often used to incriminate someone in order to argue the innocence of someone else.

Audio manipulation is an artificially generated audio created by artificial intelligence (AI) to create a realistic-replication of someone's voice. AI uses machine learning models and can replicate the specific characteristics of a target voice, such as pitch, tone, and cadence. It is commonly used to deceive and cause disruption.^[24] This is often referred to as Audio Deepfake. Audio manipulation may be used to clean or enhance an audio for entertainment industry projects, or in the case of deepfakes, used to deceive and commit fraud for profit or influence.

Visual media can be transformed through photo manipulation, commonly called "photoshopping." This can make a product, person, or idea seem more appealing. Specific product features are highlighted to attract and persuade the public, and specific editing tools are used to enhance the photo. Some techniques include cropping, resizing, airbrushing, color-enhancing, and removing or adding subjects from the original image. The motivation for photo manipulation may be for pure artistic creativity or more nefarious reasons to deceive. Photo manipulation is used extensively in the advertising and fashion industry and has been the subject of controversy for its part in false advertising and promoting unrealistic images of beauty.^[25]

Video manipulation is a variant of media manipulation that targets digital video using a combination of traditional video processing and video editing techniques and auxiliary methods from artificial intelligence like face recognition. In typical video manipulation, the facial structure, body movements, and voice of the subject are replicated in order to create a fabricated recording of the subject. The applications of these methods range from educational videos to videos aimed at (mass) manipulation and propaganda, a straightforward extension of the long-standing possibilities of photo manipulation. This form of computer-generated misinformation has contributed to fake news, and there have been instances when this technology was used during political campaigns in an attempt to influence the outcome.^[26]

A compliance professional is an expert that utilizes and perfects means of gaining media influence. Though the means of gaining influence are common, their aims vary from political, economic, to personal. Thus the label of compliance professional applies to diverse groups of people, including propagandists, marketers, pollsters, salespeople and political advocates.

Means of influence include, but are not limited to, the methods outlined in Influence: Science and Practice:^[27]

• Authority
• Commitment and consistency
• Reciprocation
• Scarcity
• Social proof

Additionally, techniques like framing and less formal means of effective obfuscation, such as the use of logical fallacies, are used to gain compliance.

Related topics

Notable compliance experts

Notable media manipulation theorists

• "The Persuaders" Frontline
• "Understanding Jargon: A Short Bibliography" by Philip E. Agre