Manufacturing Consensus
Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19966712 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Samuel C Woolley (0000-0002-2619-7628, corresponding author), Samuel Woolley |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | Manufacturing Consensus (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Yale University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.12987/yale/9780300251234.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4386957595 |
| Open Library | OL37991153M |
| ISBN | 9780300251234 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
This book is an exploration of modern propaganda and disinformation, with a focus on how social media and other digital communication tools and tactics are leveraged in global attempts to manipulate public opinion. Central ideas and analyses are garnered via qualitative data from eight years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with the people who make and track online spin campaigns in Brazil, Ecuador, Germany, Hungary, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This long-term, comparative, and transnational work informs the book’s core argument: Automation and anonymity are used over social media, chat apps, and other online media with the goal of manufacturing consensus. Digital propagandists use bots, sockpuppets, and partisan nanoinfluencers to create the illusion of popularity for particular ideas or people in an effort to create bandwagon support. These attempts to amplify or suppress certain streams of information can lead to falsely generated social media trends, the silencing of journalists and activists, and the spread of misinformation through online and offline media. In an update to Herman and Chomsky’s “propaganda model,” this book suggests that social media firms have joined—and at least partially usurped—mass broadcast media firms as the gatekeeping tools of the powerful. However, powerful actors are not the only ones creating today’s computational propaganda. In many ways, the ability to propagandize has been democratized—small-scale groups and even individuals have used automated and anonymous technologies in bids to game the flow of information
Advertising · Business · Digital media · Gatekeeping · Internet privacy · Media studies · Political science · Popularity · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Misinformation and Its Impacts
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |