Social media mind games - Manipulation using social media
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/6fa7d4ee-d6bb-11e1-ba60-00144feabdc0.html#axzz221qvhIw2Last week, Holiday published the first book that sets out to blow the whistle on all the darkest arts of spinning the social media, under the catchy title Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.
By any standards, this is an astonishing, disturbing book. Holiday has worked for several years as a self-proclaimed media manipulator, running campaigns for companies such as American Apparel. He is now intent on revealing all the tricks that his ilk use to influence – if not control – us via the social media. Unsurprisingly, many of these stories are chilling. He describes, for example, how media manipulators and a hungry blogosphere routinely pervert the political process, creating the kind of gimmicks seen in the Republican presidential nomination race earlier this year (remember Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and so on?). The stories of his antics in the celebrity world are also shocking (one particularly memorable scene describes how Holiday placed posters in Los Angeles, deliberately defaced them and then sent indignant posts to blogs about the “vandalism” under false names to get a storm of publicity for his friend, the author Tucker Max).
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Moreover, this is not the first point in history when mob rule has driven the media. In the 19th century, when American papers started marketing themselves on the street for the first time, the so-called “yellow press” was as sensational as the social media today – and as easily manipulated. However, that earlier wild phase of journalism later self-corrected, to a degree, when papers such as the New York Times started to sell themselves as credible alternative sources of news as the public got tired of excessive drama.
Perhaps that counter-reaction will happen again; after all, social media is still a young phenomenon. And Holiday says a key reason he wrote this book is that he hopes to start an outcry about media manipulation – and thus another backlash. But what makes 2012 different from 1912 is that not only can news now spread with stunning speed, but corporate power is better organised than ever before. The more that modern society becomes addicted to quick-fix information and instant media gratification, the greater the risk that a new generation grows up with very different ideas about what is “real”. That may not matter (much) for Detroit; but it has dangerous consequences for politics as a whole. Particularly when the US is facing so many profound economic challenges – and a potentially crucial (and manipulated) set of election campaigns.
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importance of this topic.
I'll bet you have had some experiences with this stuff. I know I have and I just now realized that I should be keeping a personal log of this stuff.
The only solution I can think of is to call ourselves and others (respectfully and rationally) to account for honesty and ethics. We NEED to be doing this on an ongoing basis.
Thanks VERY much for this post, flamingdem!
It might be enough to read the reviews and get the drift of the idea.
Who has time to read with all this social media to consume!
I am a snacker these days and don't read whole books anymore. Plus, why pay 
The idea is what I want -- that people can be easily manipulated by social media
and if you grow up with that as your baseline -- people under 30 get most of their
"news" on Facebook for example, then they won't have the same critical thinking
as someone who read newspapers where a certain standard is demanded, but
your mileage may vary.. it's always up to the reader to research and the web
gives us that ability.
It's better to know what's going on, that's for sure, it will only get more honed over time.
Thanks!
