Media manipulation refers to coordinated efforts to exploit broadcast and digital platforms in order to mislead, misinform, or shape narratives in service of particular interests.
Media manipulation, a term popularized by 📝Ryan Holiday in his book 📝Trust Me I'm Lying, encompasses the rhetorical strategies, logical fallacies, and deceptive tactics used to influence how stories spread through the press and social platforms. Its methods range from outright 📝disinformation and 📝Propaganda to subtler techniques of suppression, diversion, and attention engineering.
Internet-specific forms include 📝Astroturfing, 📝clickbait, information laundering, and search-driven tactics such as SEM and 📝SEO. Emerging techniques add AI-driven voice cloning, audio deepfakes, and manipulated photo and video. Many of these efforts lean on persuasion principles catalogued by Robert Cialdini, including appeals to authority and scarcity, and on the observation associated with Jacques Ellul that public opinion largely expresses itself through the channels mass media provide.