Media manipulation
[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.
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.
[6] Advertising is a form of promotion that seeks to persuade a specific audience to purchase a good or service.
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 usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the desired result in audience attitudes.
During World War II, the western Allies, expected that the Soviet Union would drop leaflets on the US and England.
[12] In 2009 people in Israel in the Gaza war received text messages on their cell phones threatening them with rocket attacks.
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.
[14] Corporations and political parties try to imitate grassroots movements in order to sway the public to believing something that is not true.
This technique serves to insulate the secondary, more established media from having to issue a retraction if the report is false.
[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.
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.
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.
AI uses machine learning models and can replicate the specific characteristics of a target voice, such as pitch, tone, and cadence.
Some techniques include cropping, resizing, airbrushing, color-enhancing, and removing or adding subjects from the original image.
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.
Thus the label of compliance professional applies to diverse groups of people, including propagandists, marketers, pollsters, salespeople and political advocates.
