Media manipulation

Media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests.[1] Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies 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.[2] 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.

Contexts

Activism

Main article: Activism

Activism is the practice or doctrine that has an emphasis on direct vigorous action especially supporting or opposing one side of a controversial matter.[3] It is quite simply starting a movement to effect or change social views. It is frequently started by influential individuals but is done collectively through social movements with large masses.[4] These social movements can be done through public rallies, strikes, street marches and even rants on social media.

A large social movement that has changed public opinion through time would be the ‘Civil Rights March on Washington’, where Martin Luther King Jr. performed his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech attempting to change social views on African Americans in the United States of Americ, 28 August 1963. Most of King’s movements were done through non-violence rallies and public speeches to show the white American population that they were peaceful but also wanted change in their community. In 1964, the ‘Civil Rights Acts’ commenced giving African Americans equality with all races.

Advertising

"Daisy", a TV commercial for the re-election of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. It aired only once, in September 1964, and is considered both one of the most controversial and one of the most effective political ads in U.S. history.
Main article: Advertising

Advertising is the action of attracting public attention to something, especially through paid announcements for products and services.[5] This tends to be done by businesses who wish to sell their product by paying social 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 certain groups. Non-commercial advertisers are those who spend money on advertising in a hope to raise awareness for a cause or promote specific ideas.[6] These include groups such as interest groups, political parties, government organizations and religious movements. Most of these organizations intend to spread a message or sway public opinion instead of trying to sell products or services. Advertising can not only be found on social media, it is also evident on billboards, newspapers, magazines and even word of mouth.

Hoaxing

Main article: Hoax

A hoax is something intended to deceive or defraud. When a newspaper or the news reports a fake story, it is known as a hoax. Misleading public stunts, scientific frauds, false bomb threats and business scams as hoaxes.[7] A common aspect that hoaxes have is that they are all meant to deceive or lie. For something to become a hoax, the lie must have something more to offer. It must be outrageous, dramatic but also has to be believable and ingenious. Above all, it must be able to attract attention from the public. Once it has done that then a hoax is in full effect and has succeeded in capturing the attention of the public.

The word hoax became popular in the middle to late eighteenth century.[7] It is thought to have come from the saying ‘hocus pocus’. Hocus pocus means to talk with meaningless, which is typically designed to trick others or conceal the truth about a situation. It is thought to be derived from a conjuror in the time of King James who called himself ‘The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus’, where he would perform a trick and call out a phrase beginning with “hocus pocus”.

The key word in something becoming a hoax is “public”. A hoax cannot be a hoax if only a few people know and it is kept private. A lie or a deception only becomes a hoax when it is acknowledged by the public and the community. A popular hoax that is evident in today’s times would be the ‘Microwave your spoon’ hoax. This hoax originated from a video which shows a metallic spoon being heated inside microwave. It then further on suggests that it is easier to eat ice cream when the spoon is first microwaved. The only problem is, microwaving your spoon would break the microwave. This hoax has fooled many people on social media into believing that the spoon could be microwaved, only to find that their microwave would explode. The point of this hoax was to show how gullible people can be on social media and to prove that not everything you read or see on the internet is true.

Marketing

Main articles: Marketing and Sales

Marketing is the management process in which goods and services move from concept to the customer.[8] Marketing is also linked to the 4 P’s of the marketing mix, which includes product, price, place and promotion.

Product is the first of the four P’s as it is one of the most important. A product can either be a tangible good or an intangible service that fulfills a need or a want of the consumer.[9] Whether you are selling toys or providing luxury massage treatments, it is important that you have a clear grasp of what you are selling and what makes it unique to other products before you can market it successfully.

Price deals with the understanding of how much your product or service is worth. Understanding who your target market is and how much they are willing to pay for the product will determine the price you can offer for your product or service.

Promotion comes into play once we have gotten a product and the price has been placed accordingly. Promotion deals with the advertising, social media marketing and public relations marketing in order to familiarize the consumer with the product. Making sure the product is well promoted ensures the consumer can make decisions on whether the product or service can be applied to them.

Place is the final p, which deals with where the product should be sold. Knowing where your target market shops or finds the product is crucial to how they interact with the product. It is then crucial to choose the best place to sell your product, whether it is at a shopping mall, a small shopping strip or even online.

Political campaigning

Main article: Political campaign

Political campaigning is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided. In modern politics, the most high profile political campaigns are focused on candidates for head of state or head of government, often a President or Prime Minister. Political campaigns are often organised by wealthy individuals and political parties working in concert.

The media manipulates political campaigns through the Ads and the News. News reporting is used as a frame under which viewers can understand the campaign ads. If the news reports are inconsistent with the ad, the power of the ad is diminished. When the two are consistent, the power of both is magnified. (Jamieson, 1992). The political party works with the media to ensure their ads are consistent with the news reporting, in order to have the full effectiveness out of their advertisements. George Bush’s media advisor Roger Ailes believes the three criteria that attract media coverage are pictures, mistakes and attacks. "You try to give them as many pictures as you can. If you need coverage, you attack, and you will get coverage." (Jamieson, p. 138, 1992). Media manipulation is involved in political campaigning when the news reports on an advertisement that has false claims but leaves the authenticity of the claims unexamined. Jamieson, 1992, stated that through the general election of 1988, there were 75 articles reported on the political campaign ads, yet only 1.7 percent of the lines discussed the accuracy of the ads. Political parties make up lies or exaggerate about their competitors in order to gain public support, the media only choose to report on it if they’re set to gain anything, an example is if the political party they support (due to funding or policies) is lying about the opposition, the media will not report on the claims.

Although this manipulation is minimal in comparison to what’s happening in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin has implemented heavy censorship onto the media, especially investigative and political reporting. (Ostrow, 2013). Putin’s censorship is done to ensure the public only hear about the stories his government want them to hear. Ostrow claims that since the year 2000, investigative journalists have been murdered at a rate of more than one per month. To put it into perspective, being an investigative reporter in Russia is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Since 2004, all television stations are state owned and the large majority of radio stations that broadcast news are also state owned. (Ostrow, 2013). Putin’s heavy control over the media ensures everything that is reported stays in the favour of his leadership.

Propagandising

Main article: Propaganda

Propagandising 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 powerful organisations can be considered propaganda as well. 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 chosen 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.

Psychological warfare

Main article: Psychological warfare

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

Public relations

Main article: Public relations

Public relations (PR) is the management of the flow of information between an individual or an organization and the public. Public relations 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 specialised individuals or firms at the behest of already public individuals or organizations, as a way of managing their public profile.

Techniques

Distraction types

Distraction by nationalism

Main article: Transfer (propaganda)

This is a variant on the traditional ad hominem and bandwagon fallacies applied to entire countries. The method is to discredit opposing arguments by appealing to nationalistic pride or memory of past accomplishments, or appealing to fear or dislike of a specific country, or of foreigners in general. It can be very powerful as it discredits foreign journalists (the ones that are least easily manipulated by domestic political or corporate interests).

A: "I think they have been wrong on every major issue for the past 20 years."

Straw man fallacy

Main article: Straw man

The "straw man fallacy" is the lumping of a strong opposition argument together with one or many weak ones to create a simplistic weak argument that can easily be refuted.

Distraction by scapegoat

Main article: Scapegoat

A combination of straw man and ad hominem, in which your weakest opponent (or easiest to discredit) is considered as your only important opponent.

Distraction by phenomenon

A strategy illustrated in the 1997 movie Wag the Dog involves the public being distracted from an important issue by a separate issue which preoccupies media attention. This strategy can backfire if the fabricated event is derided as an attempted distraction.

Distraction by semantics

This involves using euphemistically pleasing terms to obscure the truth. The concept of "states' rights" was invoked to defend the continuation of slavery in the United States on the eve of the American Civil War, and again to fight against the American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s. The work of Frank Luntz is a notable example when focus groups are convened and the favorable or unfavorable characterizations are used in the selection of special code wording. The more favorable characterization of politicized concepts is thus chosen for future political campaign repetition.

Distraction by regression

This method uses the previous state of the opponent propaganda to prevent the negotiation of actual issues.

Distraction by misleading

This method injects false issues into the opponent's propaganda or attempts to create connections with falsities. Repetition of falsehoods from numerous outlets, nearly simultaneously, is one of the most effective means to mislead by distraction.

Distraction by horror

This method tries to create a connection between an opponent's propaganda and horrific events. (For example, when a minority is being arrested by the police and one attempts to create a connection with past unjust actions)

The most common example of distraction by horror is the ongoing conflict between African American’s and the U.S police. There have been many cases of unfair police brutality against African Americans, most of which go to trial and the police get away with it, which only adds fuel to the fire. (Sadler, 2009). Black slavery in the seventeenth century all the way through to the establishment of black ghettos in the late nineteenth century depended upon systems of white policing. Without those systems, it would have been difficult developing and maintaining the white racial superiority that’s claimed to be happening currently. (Cashmore; McLaughlin, 1991). Racial profiling becomes a bigger problem when police brutality is combined with it. (Sadler, 2009). Although police brutality is a very real problem for African Americans, distraction by horror is a method that’s used to blame the police for racial discrimination due to the unjust historic events. It’s highly unlikely the overall police brutality is due to this issue, this is because each police officer is different. There’s multiple reasons for the excessive force, and although none of the reasons are justified, blaming it all on the past historical events is a distraction by horror.

Other types

Appeal to consensus

Main article: Argumentum ad populum

By appealing to a real or fictional "consensus" compliance professionals attempt to create the perception that their opinion is the only opinion, so that alternative ideas are dismissed from public consideration.

Censorship

Main article: Censorship

Censorship is a technique whereby public communication is suppressed. It can be done by powerful organizations such as governments or moral campaigns, or by individuals who engage in self-censorship. It occurs for a variety of reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children, to promote or restrict political or religious views, to prevent slander and libel, and to protect intellectual property. It can be a way of influencing the public discourse, by determining what can and cannot be said. It may or may not be legal.

The media often use censorship when reports might reflect poorly on their own country. This is commonly done in the United States, where brutal terrorism and torture practiced by their own sponsored forces are denied public airing. (Parenti, 2002).

An example of this is the 1965-1966 Indonesian killings, where at least 500,000 people were killed in a successful attempt to overthrow the communist party, which was supported and financed by the United States and British governments. (Parenti, 2002). It’s stated that both countries did everything in their power to ensure the Indonesian army would carry out the mass killings. (Braddock, 2009). The censorship by the media meant the public did not know what was going on, and at the very least did not know their own country was involved in the killings. This story was the greatest act of political mass murder since the Nazi Holocaust, yet it took three months before it received passing mention in Time magazine, and a further month before it was reported in the New York Times. (Parenti, 2002). This took place during the middle of the Cold War, which was already a fight against communism, this meant the U.S. public already knew about the conflict between their country and the Soviet Union, and if the public knew they were involved in the Indonesian killings, the public’s opinion on the fight against communism may have changed. The killings in Indonesia were censored by the media in order to restrict the public’s political views, as this would have been a bad look on the U.S government at the time, if the public knew they were funding the killings.

Demonisation of the opposition

This is a more general case of distraction by nationalism. Opposing views are ascribed to an out-group or hated group, and thus dismissed out of hand. This approach, carried to extremes, becomes a form of suppression, as in McCarthyism, where anyone disapproving of the government was considered "un-American" and "Communist" and was likely to be denounced, or during The Great Purge, when political opponents were repressed as "Anti-Communists" and "agents of the West".

Fear mongering

Main article: Fear mongering

Fear mongering (or scaremongering) is the use of fear to influence the opinions and actions of others towards some specific end. The feared object or subject is sometimes exaggerated, and the pattern of fear mongering is usually one of repetition, in order to continuously reinforce the intended effects of this tactic to frighten citizens and influence their political views. It often states that if something is or is not done, a disastrous event will occur, and that by voting for or against it this can be prevented. The end result is the voter being scared into changing their vote or opinion to one more favorable to the person that is fear mongering. In a good marginalization, there is reason to believe the claim because the professional says the claim is true. This is because a person who is a legitimate expert is more likely to be right than wrong when making considered claims within his area of expertise.

Fear is used by terrorists to intimidate people in order to achieve political ends, but at the same time, politicians use it too. (Peron, 2013). An example of fear mongering within the media is the September 11 attacks on the United States, the US media used terror to promote US military power and geopolitical ends. (Kellner, 2006). Kellner stated that for several days after the events of September 11, US television suspended broadcasting of advertising and TV entertainment, and focused solely on the attacks. It is a common fact that terrorism is a huge fear, even before the 9/11 attacks, now directly after the attacks the media reinforced the events to frighten citizens. There is evidence of this with the repetitive images of the planes hitting the towers and people jumping out of windows, which is intended fear mongering used by the US media which pushed for a war fever and retaliatory feelings that helped against public support for a form of military intervention. (Kellner, 2006). There is evidence that Bush and his administration team wanted to fight head on, referring to the conflict as a war between good [The US] and evil [Islamist Radicals]. (Kellner, 2006). This shows the possibility that the media was on Bush’s side, and used their power to push for public support. The Times editor, Richard Beeston, attributed the attack to Osama bin Laden, reporting that "several extremist Middle Eastern groups and governments have the motivation to launch devastating attacks against the United States, but only one man has the experience and audacity to cause so much bloodshed". (Beeston, 2001, p. 5).

Another example of fear mongering comes from disease outbreaks such as Ebola. This fear mongering can come from organisations, public speakers or the media. Dave Hodges, from the common sense show, and Dr. Jane Orient are claiming that "thousands of West Africans are in Central America, being taught to speak Spanish, posing as Central American immigrants and are coming across [The U.S’] southern border carrying Ebola." (Hodges, 2014). The issue with Hodge’s article is that he does not produce any relevant sources to his claims, only referencing conversations he’s had with unnamed sources. Hodges stated "I was traveling to San Diego for vacation and had a chance encounter with a Border Patrol agent in a convenience store. I approached him, gave him my business card and promised not to use his name and proceeded to ask him questions about the border." (Hodges, 2014). Making claims as serious as this, without providing sufficient evidence and research is a form of fear mongering. Combining these sort of articles with media coverage on the disease outbreak causes unnecessary fear among citizens.

Media specific

Search engine marketing

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, and thereby influence searchers.[10][11]

Compliance professionals

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.

Techniques

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

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

See also

Related topics

Notable compliance experts

Notable media manipulation theorists

Notes

  1. ↑ Coxall, Malcolm (2 Mar 2013). Caswell, Guy, ed. Human Manipulation - A Handbook. Cornelio Books. ISBN 978-8-4940-8532-1.
  2. ↑ Ellul, Jacques (1973). Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Ch. 2.Trans. Konrad Kellen & Jean Lerner. Vintage Books, New York. ISBN 978-0-394-71874-3.
  3. ↑ "Definition of Activism". Merriam-Webster. 2015.
  4. ↑ "What is Activism". Permanent Culture Now. 2016.
  5. ↑ "What is Advertising". Study.com. 2016.
  6. ↑ "Non-commercial Advertising". Business Dictionary. 2015.
  7. 1 2 "What is a Hoax". Hoaxipedia. 2016.
  8. ↑ "Marketing". Business Dictionary. 2016.
  9. ↑ "The Four P's in Marketing". Purely Branded. 2016.
  10. ↑ "What Is Search Engine Optimization / SEO". Youtube: Search Engine Land. Retrieved 26 July 2015.
  11. ↑ Ratliff, James; Rubinfeld, Daniel (May 2014). "Is There a Market for Organic Search Engine Results and Can Their Manipulation Give Rise to Antitrust Liability?". Journal of Competition Law and Economics: 1–25.

References

  • Beeston, R. (2001, September 12). Bin Laden Heads List of Suspects, Terror in America. Times.
  • Braddock J, (7 July 2009), Historian says US backed "efficious terror" in 1965 Indonesian Massacre, World Socialist Website.
  • Cialdini, Robert B., Influence: Science and Practice, 4th Edition, 2000. New Jersey: Allyn & Bacon.
  • E. Cashmore; E, McLaughlin, (1991). Out of Order: Policing Black People, Routledge.
  • Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.
  • Ewen, Stuart, PR! A Social History of Spin, New York: Basic Books, 1996.
  • Ewen, Stuart and Ewen, Elizabeth, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.
  • Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
  • Hodges, D. (2014, August 3). West Africans Are Streaming Across the U.S. Southern Border Carrying the Ebola Virus. The Common Sense Show.
  • J Bohannon, (27 May 2015). I Fooled Millions of People into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss, Here’s How. IO9, Gizmodo, Debunkery.
  • Jamieson, H. K, (1992). Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction and Democracy. Oxford University Press.
  • J Ostrow, (26 June 2012). Politics in Russia: A Reader. Sage Publications
  • Jowett, Garth S. and O'Donnell, Victoria, Propaganda and Persuasion, Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 1999. ISBN 0-7619-1147-2.
  • J Turner-Sadler, (2009). African American History: An Introduction. Peter Lang Publishing.
  • Kellner, D. (2006, August 15). 9/11, Spectacles of terror, and media manipulation. Miscellany.
  • Parenti M, (Spring 2002), Monopoly Media Manipulation, Mediterranean Quarterly
  • Peron, J. (2013, October 1). Are You Scared Yet? Huffington Post.
  • Lutz, William D., Doublespeak, New York, NY: HarperPerennial, 1990. ISBN 0-06-016134-5.
  • Rushkoff, Douglas, "They Say", in Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say, New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.

Further reading

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 14, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.