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Manufacturing Consensus

Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity

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Manufacturing Consensus

By: Samuel Woolley
Narrated by: Lloyd James
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About this listen

An in-depth exploration of social media and emergent technology that details the inner workings of modern propaganda

Until recently, propaganda was a top-down, elite-only system of communication control used largely by state actors. Today, as Samuel Woolley argues, social media has democratized propaganda, allowing nearly anyone to launch a fairly sophisticated, computationally enhanced, propaganda campaign. Woolley shows how social media, with its anonymity and capacity for automation, allows political groups to create the illusion of popularity through computational tools (such as bots) and human-driven efforts (such as sockpuppets—real people assuming false identities online—and partisan nano-influencers) and then either create a bandwagon effect by bringing the content into parallel discussions with other legitimate users, or mold discontent for political purposes.

Drawing on eight years of original international ethnographic research among the people who build, combat, and experience these propaganda campaigns, Woolley presents an extensive view of the evolution of computational propaganda, offers a glimpse into the future, and suggests pragmatic responses for policy makers, academics, technologists, and others.

©2023 Samuel Woolley (P)2023 Blackstone Publishing Americas Elections & Political Process Politics & Government United States Technology

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This book extends our understand of propaganda to the new era of social media; a phenomenon the author calls computational propaganda. The general gist is that technology has changed propaganda in a number of ways, mostly notably it has decentralised it. Whereas it used to be top-down from the political elite via main stream News channels (BBC, CNN, Fox) and newspapers, now anyone can engage in it through the use of social media by creating bots (automated social media profiles), sockpuppet accounts (fake accounts if real people), partisan nanoinfluencers (paid propaganda with people with around 10,000 followers). These can be used to spread whatever to thousands of people at a time, gaming the algorithm which makes it trend on peoples account. This is then picked up by traditional media thinking that its actually a trending topic of discussion when it isn't giving it a false sense of importance. The book argues that this is now used quite heavily not only by governments and political movements across the world, but individuals with enough fervour to spread their ideology. Some people are now so proficient at it that they turn it into a business.

While the book introduces some novel ideas, it lacks any depth really. It would have been great to see detailed case studies on how theses bots and sockpuppets about were used, its reception, and its impact. I think Channel 4 in the UK did a wonderful job looking at Cambridge Analytica's computational propaganda during the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. This book teases you with examples from Equador, Mexico, Russia, India, and Turkey, but hardly get into any detail all. It just says the ruling party in Turkey uses bots to undermine its opposition, Russia used bot o help Trump win, India's fascist BJP party uses fake stories to spread on Facebook groups and WhatsApp becuase they can't be detected easily. No detail whatsoever, just statements. For this reason, this book could have been 10% its length and we would have lost no substance at all

Good start but very very geneal

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