10 media manipulation strategies

Next, we show the strategies that political and economic powers use to massively control citizens.

Although popularly we may be little familiar with his name, We owe Sylvain Timsit a valuable contribution. This French writer formulated in 2002 the 10 media manipulation strategies which political and economic powers use to massively control citizens. And although 15 years have passed, his decalogue continues to be a very powerful and current argument today.

It is considered a ranking of mass manipulation maneuvers. Its purpose, according to its own author, is to create docile, submissive and obedient individuals; as well as making capitalism, inequality and neocapitalism emerge.

Timsit’s publication went viral in a few minutes. AND Its authorship was erroneously attributed to the American writer Noam Chomsky.. Although it is true that there are certain glimpses of Chomsky’s thought in his statements, especially in relation to the critical analysis of the role of mass media in society. The 10 media manipulation strategies stated by the French writer are the following:

“In a totalitarian state it does not matter what people think, since the government can control them by force using batons. But when you can’t control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the typical means of doing that is through propaganda.”

-Noam Chomsky-

1. Distraction

Distraction consists of diverting the public’s attention from important issues and preventing them from being interested in essential knowledge.such as those referring to science, economics, psychology, and cybernetics.

One way to distract the masses is by flooding the media with news that is banal, or less relevant to social progress. The goal is to distract and keep people’s minds busy.

2. Problem – Reaction – Solution

This method is equivalent to launching a “probe balloon” in politics. That is, it consists of testing the population by spreading rumors or ideas to assess how they would be received by individuals.

Its media analogue resides in create a problem and then, based on the public’s response, solve it and establish themselves as social saviors. A Machiavellian example would be allowing urban violence to intensify, or organizing violent attacks, with the aim of making the public the one to demand security laws and policies that are detrimental to freedom.

3. Graduality

It seeks to manipulate citizens in such a way that manage to accept socially unjust decisions. To do this, he does it progressively, little by little and in successive years.

For example, if the objective is to fire 80% of the staff of a large public company, the media, aware of such information, will incorporate negative news regarding it (decline in sales, fall in the stock market, rumors of a takeover bid… ). Thus, little by little, it will raise awareness and prepare citizens for the “big news.” If the exclusive had been given suddenly, it would have led to a social revolt.

4. Differ

Another of Timsit’s media manipulation strategies is to present unpopular decisions as “necessary”, “for a better future” or “for your own good”. They make the public naively believe that citizen sacrifices will actually result in a notable subsequent improvement.

Read Also: Do you know cognitive dissonance?

So, the public is getting used to living in an unsatisfactory way; and, Through a habituation effect, they end up normalizing their marginal circumstances. In the future, the population is already resigned and unable to demand what they fought for in the first instance.

5. Infantilize the public

The greater the intention to manipulate individuals, the more they choose to use an infantilizing tone. Many times, The media addresses viewers as if they were children. Sweetened plots, characters or intonations are used that treat citizens as if they had little maturity or were mentally weak. The objective is, as we said at the beginning, to seek a reaction that is also submissive and docile in the population, without an ounce of critical sense.

6. Appeal to emotion

The emotional aspect is much more powerful than aseptic and purely objective reflection. Therefore, the media takes advantage of this reality and They appeal to that emotional and sensitive dimension to manipulate us.

So, They cut off the critical sense of all citizens and control their reasoning. Let us remember how powerful fear is and how it is capable of mobilizing people for a supposedly “greater” cause.

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity

For the French writer, The media prefers an audience far from intellectuality and culture.. Keeping them isolated from all types of knowledge and knowledge allows them to manipulate them more easily and prevents them from adopting attitudes of insubordination or rebellion. Information is power.

An example of this strategy could be reducing the quality of public education or restricting access to new technologies that facilitate knowledge.

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8. Stimulate to contribute to mediocrity

Closely linked to the previous one, this is one of the media manipulation strategies that goes most unnoticed: do the programs offered to us on television respond to the tastes of citizens or are they imposed by the media? That is to say, Do we see what we want or what they want us to see?

For Timsit it is very clear: We live hypnotized by consumerism and banality. We neglect to be knowledgeable about what is happening around us because we are trained in a complacent mediocrity.

9. Self-blame

At the same time that they educate us in ignorance, The media makes us believe that we alone are to blame for our misfortunes. And that our little ability makes us unhappy and unsuccessful. They seek self-incrimination through self-exculpation.

In this way, instead of rebelling against the system, the public becomes self-deprecating, blames itself, and becomes demotivated; thus inactivating a possible social mobilization.

10. Total public knowledge

To be able to control you have to know. And the current oligarchies have taken care of it perfectly. For the French author, psychological, social and technological advances allow large companies to know how each individual breathes. The “system” knows us and thanks to its power it can exercise the manipulation that best suits it at all times.

To conclude, it is worth noting that this decalogue with Timsit’s media manipulation strategies It is one of the most used currently to study the system of powers. Do you know more methods of mass population control that the media use today?