MANIPULATION OF CONFLICTS IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA

NEWS WAR WITHOUT TRENCHES

MANIPULATION OF CONFLICTS IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA

Enrique Castejon-Lara

©April, 2022

The appearance of the social media, thanks to the versatility of the Internet, was welcomed by many people, especially the young ones, because they allowed, in a more agile and expedited way than the first "group messengers" applications, to connect with friends and relatives. For that reason, those new communication “channels” became very quickly in the most fantastic and enjoying virtual social connection. However, when this new technological resource expanded itself exponentially —to unimagined proportions—, the situation changed radically. The manipulative experts, from all ideological sides, began to flood them with their distorted messages, and that transformed the funny social media in a very worrying swamp of lies.

This alarming situation, however, is not an exclusive phenomenon of the 21st century or the digital age. Since the emergence of the mass media —starting with the newspapers—, they were seen as possible "combat weapons" on the ideological field and, in the mid-20th century, as an effective mechanism to combat in the own place of war. The two sides in conflict during World War II used specialists in manipulation of the human mind to send negative messages to the enemy and positive ideas to the allies. At that time, these strategies transcended the printed media and adopted the new ones (radio, television and movies).

After that, and with the help of many of the same "manipulator experts" of World War II, the postwar political forces continued using and, even, improving the propaganda techniques popularized by Joseph Goebbels and many others that emerged as a consequence of the "experimentation" in the area of collective human behavior. That was the beginning of the Cold War, a new kind of ideological rivalry, without warlike confrontation. However, despite the fact that this period of political and geopolitical tensions between the main dominant nations in the world in theory culminated in the early 1990s, these practices are still being used today.

No doubt, the "vulnerability" of the human mind has been the best ally of these "unscrupulous communicators." Sometimes, anything they say, according to the basic principles of manipulation techniques (especially those related to false "convincing argumentation") is more "credible" than all the experts and scientists’ explanations through traditional mass media.

It is, then, an extremely interesting —and worrying— phenomenon, because the saturation of manipulated “confidential” messages through social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter begin to obtain a “dark power” capable to convince uninformed people of a “reality” totally contrary to what is, indeed, happening in the scientific, technological, political and academic world. That's what the manipulators are betting on, as they know their lies will spread with a “snowball” effect caused by the unsuspecting users who forward them. As a result, fake news is being accepted more easily. This is one of the main reasons why this communicational universe in cyberspace has become a "paradise" for the manipulation and creation of chaos in digital information flows.

REFERENCES

CASTEJON-LARA, Enrique. Fake news conspiracy. Kindle Direct Publishing, 2019.

PACKARD, Vance. Hidden persuaders. Editorial LG. United States, 2007.