Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity
... Este acoplamiento e hibridación de ambas esferas está originando grandes cambios en los procesos de construcción de la opinión pública y en el propio sistema democrático (Habermas, 2023). Con la consolidación de la segunda era de la inteligencia artificial (IA), la opinión pública se ha convertido en objeto de deseo de organizaciones gubernamentales, grandes corporaciones tecnológicas y poderes económicos alrededor del mundo (García-Marzá y Calvo, 2022Woolley, 2023). ...
... Diciembre 2024 ISSN:1133-6595 -E-ISSN:2013-035X -www.cidob.org colectivos que introducen los propios datos y contenidos (García-Marzá y Calvo, 2022;Woolley, 2023); sino que ahora se actúa por medio de diversos instrumentos e infraestructuras en dos niveles distintos: uno subsistémico (en la esfera pública digital), en el cual se introducen aquellos datos que permitan la construcción del patrón de opinión pretendido, y otro sistémico (en la esfera privada y gubernamental), en el cual se detectan exclusivamente los patrones de opinión de la esfera pública digital deseados 2 . ...
... Sobre este punto, cabe destacar que la capacidad de generar cantidades ingentes de contenidos sintéticos y la hibridación de estos con los creados por humanos provocan que las personas sean incapaces de detectar la sinteticidad de los contenidos e interpreten todos los contenidos de la esfera pública digital como naturales, atribuyéndolos directamente a contenidos creados por personas. A este hecho se le suma la imposibilidad en muchos casos de identificar y verificar los contenidos engañosos o directamente falsos introducidos deliberadamente por «públicos usufructuarios» con la intención de persuadir, manipular o adulterar la opinión pública, es decir, mediante fake news, desinformación, propaganda computacional, deep fakes, entre otros (Habermas, 2023;Meikle, 2023;Woolley, 2023) y, ahora, a través de deep-synthetic (Calvo y Saura García, 2024). ...
Este artículo profundiza en el cambio estratégico de la manipulación de la opinión pública por medio de la colonización algorítmica, el imperialismo tecnológico, la generación de datos y la creación de contenidos sintéticos. Ello es utilizado por organizaciones gubernamentales, grandes corporaciones tecnológicas y poderes económicos para amenazar la integridad de la democracia a través de la alteración de los procesos de racionalización y sentido, así como los flujos de comunicación implicados, lo que conduce a la aparición de patologías sociales, anomalías y distorsiones en la esfera pública digital. El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar las principales estrategias vinculadas con las tecnologías digitales disruptivas para la creación de sentido y la manipulación de la opinión pública y, especialmente, criticar los impactos y desafíos que subyacen a este nuevo contexto democrático algoritmizado, sintetificado y masivo para la propia opinión pública y la democracia.
... First, there is the creation of deepfakes and disinformation by workers in one industry to manipulate workers in another, as in the creation of deepfakes by a publicist to garner news attention. However, the more pronounced concern lies with parties outside legitimate media organizations, such as individuals or groups that spread political propaganda that makes its way into mainstream news (Woolley, 2023), attack a company or an individual to harm their reputation (Karinshak & Jin, 2023), or create false endorsements in advertising for financial gain (Kietzmann et al., 2021). A single deepfake or message of disinformation could affect professionals across industries. ...
... At the same time, the crisis might undermine the credibility of the news organization, thus requiring journalists to engage in damage control and potentially leading the public to call for advertisers to boycott the news outlet in response. The fast-growing scale and scope of false information affects more than the media workers who have to wade through it and rectify its consequences; the legitimacy of entire industries can be undermined as the veracity of media content becomes murkier and truth and fiction become harder to discern (Woolley, 2023). ...
... The examination of individual media industries and their content enables the understanding of individual instances of the implications of AI for audiences, but such an approach cannot get at the totality of what is transpiring. One of the problems of contemporary media research in an age of AI is that it proceeds from assumptions about older forms of media that were once more distinct and contained, and it has not adapted to new message flows and new players pervading and reshaping the media ecosystem, including autonomous technologies (Woolley, 2023). ...
How should scholars make sense of the rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence in media work? In this commentary, we argue that researchers can begin by stepping outside of their intellectual silos to see how the challenges and opportunities posed by generative AI are commonly shared across the media industries. We focus on three primary mass communication domains—advertising, journalism, and public relations—to illustrate how media professionals across these fields are adopting similar AI technologies (e.g., machine learning, natural language processing, and recommender systems) for often similar purposes (e.g., content creation, audience engagement, and business operations). Even more, the uptake of AI has profound consequences—for ethical norms as well as roles and relationships of humans and machines—that may be best understood across media industries more so than within them in isolation. Ultimately, a more cross-industry approach to scholarship could develop a more encompassing picture about AI's impact on media work and media consumption.
... Este fragmento pone en evidencia el enorme potencial manipulativo que pueden atesorar los ecosistemas ciberfísicos. Los diferentes actores interesados en influir en los procesos electorales y en el sistema democrático en general se han dado cuenta del enorme potencial de los grandes conjuntos de datos y han desarrollado innovadoras tecnologías para adaptar sus mensajes propagandísticos (Hersh, 2015;Wylie, 2019;Da Empoli, 2020;Schick, 2020;Woolley, 2023). Esta situación ha provocado la creación de una infraestructura de propaganda computacional capaz de crear contenidos altamente personalizados para influir específicamente en determinados segmentos de la sociedad basándose en los patrones extraídos de los grandes conjuntos de datos de los ecosistemas ciberfísicos (Howard, 2020;Dawson, 2021;Woolley, 2023). ...
... Los diferentes actores interesados en influir en los procesos electorales y en el sistema democrático en general se han dado cuenta del enorme potencial de los grandes conjuntos de datos y han desarrollado innovadoras tecnologías para adaptar sus mensajes propagandísticos (Hersh, 2015;Wylie, 2019;Da Empoli, 2020;Schick, 2020;Woolley, 2023). Esta situación ha provocado la creación de una infraestructura de propaganda computacional capaz de crear contenidos altamente personalizados para influir específicamente en determinados segmentos de la sociedad basándose en los patrones extraídos de los grandes conjuntos de datos de los ecosistemas ciberfísicos (Howard, 2020;Dawson, 2021;Woolley, 2023). ...
... La capacidad del microtargeting político de realizar una propaganda computacional automatizada, algoritmizada, personalizada, e incluso sintética, permite dirigir contenidos específicos, hacia votantes específicos, en momentos específicos y vincularlos directamente con sus características intimas, sus sesgos y sus vulnerabilidades para lograr una persuasión y manipulación política máxima (Bashyakaria et al., 2019). Además de estas características, que ya de por sí adulteran los procesos democráticos y ponen en serio riesgo los principios básicos de las democracias deliberativas occidentales (Habermas, 2021), estos efectos negativos se pueden agravar a través de la difusión de contenidos ligados con informaciones de dudosa veracidad, desinformaciones, fake news o deep fakes (D'Ancona, 2019;Howard, 2020;Nightingale y Farid, 2022;Woolley, 2023) o por medio del bombardeo de propaganda a determinados colectivos con rasgos antisociales, impulsivos o agresivos para que estos se inflamen y creen un clima de distorsión social " (Garcia y Sikström, 2014;González Moraga, 2015;Jamieson, 2018;Wylie, 2019). Dawson (2021) resume esta situación diciendo que el microtargeting político: allows individual-level messaging to be deployed to influence voting behavior and is able to be leveraged for more insidious dis/misinformation campaigns. ...
This article focuses on the dangers to democratic processes of one of the main instruments of political propaganda, the so-called political microtargeting. This type of microtargeting allows you to direct specific content, towards specific people, at specific times and link them directly to their individual characteristics, biases, and vulnerabilities. The objective of this article is to expose the operation and the various types of political microtargeting, show the harmful consequences of this technique on democratic processes and propose solutions to address these negative consequences. To achieve this objective, on the one hand, the extraction, exploitation, and use of large data sets for the creation of various types of personalized political propaganda will be detailed and, on the other hand, the various existing proposals will be analyzed to limit the negative effects that can cause political microtargeting and to enhance the functioning of Western democracies.
Este artículo se centra en los peligros para los procesos democráticos de uno de los principales instrumentos de propaganda política, el llamado microtargeting político. Este tipo de microtargeting permite dirigir contenidos específicos, hacia votantes específicos, en momentos específicos y vincularlos directamente con sus características, sesgos y vulnerabilidades individuales. El objetivo de este artículo es exponer el funcionamiento y los diversos tipos de microtargeting político y mostrar las posibles consecuencias nocivas de esta técnica en los procesos democráticos. Para lograr este objetivo, por una parte, se detallará la extracción, explotación y utilización de grandes conjuntos de datos para la creación de diversos tipos de propaganda política personalizada y, por otra parte, se analizarán las diversas propuestas existentes para limitar los efectos negativos que puede causar el microtargeting político y para mejorar el funcionamiento de las democráticas occidentales.
... The power of this smaller scale influence has been recognized and adopted by political actors through the hiring and deployment of "nanoinfluencers" on social media (Woolley, 2023, p. 88). These nanoninfluencers traditionally have fewer than 5,000 followers but are specifically recruited and paid by political campaigns and parties (Woolley, 2023). The logic behind these choices is that "these regular people have more intimate, local connections" and their messaging will "hit harder" (Woolley, 2023, p. 88). ...
... information. Yet when this information is patently false, as in the case of misinformation (Jack, 2017;Wardle & Derakhshan, 2017), it can have disastrous effects on democracy (Howard, 2020;Woolley, 2023;Woolley & Howard, 2018) and public health (Bridgman et al., 2020;Lee et al., 2022). ...
... As detailed within the literature surrounding microcelebrity, micro-influencers, and nanoinfluencers (Himelboim & Golan, 2023;Marwick, 2013;Park et al., 2021;Woolley, 2023), the political impact of social media influencers extends beyond mere follower count. Influencers with a moderate, but intimate and devoted following may exert meaningful sway over a niche community. ...
U.S. anti-abortion activists use social media to advocate for their cause. While influencer scholarship has proliferated within media studies, the advent of political influencers remains understudied, despite their ability to influence public opinion. Through 16 interviews with anti-abortion political influencers combined with digital observation, we examine the emergent tactics of “progressive” anti-abortion influencers. We find that these influencers co-opt marginalized communities’ ideological frameworks and experiences of discrimination in an effort to influence public opinion on abortion. We build upon the concept of identity propaganda from Reddi, Kuo, and Kreiss, but crucially reveal the ways in which these influencers mobilize their own experiences of oppression as members of marginalized communities themselves. Thus, we put forth the theoretical concept of embodied political influencers to articulate these influencers’ aim to change political opinion through identifying as members of marginalized groups, calling on their own historical—and at times contemporary—experiences of subjugation to propagate embodied propaganda.
... One of the most oft-mentioned concerns related to generative-AI as a propagandist tool relates to its potential to increase the quantity of disinformation (15,16) while facilitating its propagation (17). By augmenting the production of disinformation, AI tools are thought to present the potential to reduce time and cost constraints for propagandists (18,19). ...
Can AI bolster state-backed propaganda campaigns, in practice? Growing use of AI and large language models has drawn attention to the potential for accompanying tools to be used by malevolent actors. Though recent laboratory and experimental evidence has substantiated these concerns in principle, the usefulness of AI tools in the production of propaganda campaigns has remained difficult to ascertain. Drawing on the adoption of generative-AI techniques by a state-affiliated propaganda site with ties to Russia, we test whether AI adoption enabled the website to amplify and enhance its production of disinformation. First, we find that the use of generative-AI tools facilitated the outlet’s generation of larger quantities of disinformation. Second, we find that use of generative-AI coincided with shifts in the volume and breadth of published content. Finally, drawing on a survey experiment comparing perceptions of articles produced prior to and following the adoption of AI tools, we show that the AI-assisted articles maintained their persuasiveness in the postadoption period. Our results illustrate how generative-AI tools have already begun to alter the size and scope of state-backed propaganda campaigns.
... To complicate matters further, bots (automated agents) and humans are not a simple binary, but exist on a spectrum. For example, automated agents are not always entirely automated; we observe hybrid accounts in which individuals have agents post for them at certain times while operating accounts directly at others (Woolley 2023). Future technologies will likely further blur this distinction between humans and bots, such as "Generative Ghosts," digital avatars designed to live on after a person has passed away (Morris and Brubaker 2024). ...
Two substantial technological advances have reshaped the public square in recent decades: first with the advent of the internet and second with the recent introduction of large language models (LLMs). LLMs offer opportunities for a paradigm shift towards more decentralized, participatory online spaces that can be used to facilitate deliberative dialogues at scale, but also create risks of exacerbating societal schisms. Here, we explore four applications of LLMs to improve digital public squares: collective dialogue systems, bridging systems, community moderation, and proof-of-humanity systems. Building on the input from over 70 civil society experts and technologists, we argue that LLMs both afford promising opportunities to shift the paradigm for conversations at scale and pose distinct risks for digital public squares. We lay out an agenda for future research and investments in AI that will strengthen digital public squares and safeguard against potential misuses of AI.
... Contemporary social media-centric information environment thus becomes seen as an 'attention factory' (Valaskivi, 2022). While for most, the above is typically taken to lead towards societal fragmentation, polarization, and disintegration, others tend to focus on how technological tools and artefacts can be used to manufacture and mobilize support and consent (Woolley, 2023). Nevertheless, whichever effect is taken to be the point of reference, the overall sentiment remains, yet again, a nostalgic one: of a more robust and reliable public sphere having been pulled from under society's feet and traditional truth conventions been undermined. ...
Today’s most prominent discussions of post-truth are united by a kernel of nostalgia, framing the present time as one of cognitive and moral decay and as open to abuse by populists. Meanwhile, this chapter demonstrates that the true object of nostalgia is, instead, the detached and disembodied rational Cartesian subject. Hence, instead of diagnosing the problems facing today’s societies, the mainstream discourse on post-truth manifests close affinities with its own object of critique—(frequently nostalgic) populism. Instead of focusing on a singular truth that has to be made great again, the political landscape postulated in this chapter is one populated by a multitude of truth-utterances, interrelating with each other on a groundless terrain without the possibility of an ultimate fixed order or grounding truth in what is conceptualized as the tragic domain of politics. Only then, it is argued, can a truly pluralist account of political discourse be embraced.
... In large-scale applications like content recommendation and language processing, this is deeply unrealistic and ethically questionable [KZ18,BGMS21]. After all, many of these systems fit social media activity and web-crawled datasets [SSP + 13, CND + 23], which are heavily poisoned by doxed personal data, hate speech and state-sponsored propaganda [Woo23,Yur19,And23]. In fact, the survey [KNL + 20] found that such data poisoning, i.e. injections of misleading inputs in training datasets [BNL12, SMS + 21], has become the leading AI security concern in the industry. ...
This paper advances the understanding of how the size of a machine learning model affects its vulnerability to poisoning, despite state-of-the-art defenses. Given isotropic random honest feature vectors and the geometric median (or clipped mean) as the robust gradient aggregator rule, we essentially prove that, perhaps surprisingly, linear and logistic regressions with parameters are subject to arbitrary model manipulation by poisoners, where H and P are the numbers of honestly labeled and poisoned data points used for training. Our experiments go on exposing a fundamental tradeoff between augmenting model expressivity and increasing the poisoners' attack surface, on both synthetic data, and on MNIST & FashionMNIST data for linear classifiers with random features. We also discuss potential implications for source-based learning and neural nets.
... Moy and Rinke (2012) reviewed bandwagon studies and noted numerous complexities and inconsistencies of correlational studies, but two experimental studies (Farjam, 2021;Nadeau et al., 1993) found a significant bandwagon effect. A significant bandwagon effect is assumed by Internet influence operations that use bots, sockpuppets, and paid influencers to try to influence public opinion (The Manufacture of Consensus, Woolley, 2023). ...
This article explores the meaning and importance of hate in intergroup conflict, especially in conflict that moves to genocide or politicide. Review of controversies in defining hate leads to definition of hate as an extreme form of negative identification that includes perception of bad essence . Negative identification is inverse caring for others, as seen in studies of schadenfreude and gluckschmerz . Studies of dehumanization suggest that two forms of bad essence can be distinguished: evil human (entitativity essentializing) and infrahuman animal (natural kind essentializing). Studies also show that those who essentialize more are more ready to punish indiscriminately all members of a rival group—thus essentializing facilitates killing by category. Application of the negative‐identification‐bad‐essence definition of hate in the Nazi, Cambodian, and Rwandan cases indicates that leaders of political mass murder hate their victims, but that hate is relatively unimportant for those who do the killing. For the mass public that leaders and perpetrators claim to represent, the importance of hate as defined here is currently unknown. Implications are considered for measuring hate in texts and polls and for future directions of research on hate.
... The centralized exploitation of large, highly detailed and diverse datasets, knowledge asymmetries, the monopolization of innovation and the dominance of digital fiefdoms allow big digital corporations to carry out predictive and behavioral manipulation actions based on microtargeting, neurotargeting, information distortion and artificialization of public opinion (Ash, 2016;Saura García, 2023;García-Marzá & Calvo, 2024), in the creation of resonance chambers, bubble filters, spaces of social conformity or hypersocialization (Pariser, 2011;Sunstein, 2017Sunstein, , 2019Aral, 2021;Woolley, 2023), and in the use of gamification, digital nudging and captology (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009Wörsdörfer, 2018). These activities have sociopolitical implications that negatively impact the fundamental principles of democracy. ...
This article critically examines the domination exerted by big digital companies on the current social, economic, and political context of modern societies, with a particular focus on the implications for the proper functioning of democracy. The objective of this article is to introduce and develop the concept of datafeudalism, expose its emergence for the proper functioning of modern societies and democracy, and to propose courses of action to reverse this situation. To achieve this purpose, firstly, the evolution from surveillance capitalism to datafeudalism will be discussed. Secondly, the structures and operating logic of data feudalism will be analyzed. Thirdly, the harmful impacts of datafeudalism on the proper functioning of the democratic systems of the European Union will be examined. Finally, an attempt will be made to outline courses of action that will make it possible to reverse the situation of economic, social and political tyranny exercised by big digital companies through datafeudalism.
... It is important to note that the repercussions of offline discourse onto online spheres has been well documented in media and communication literature, especially connecting offline political events to platformed political expression (Bucy, et al., 2020;Doroshenko and Lukito, 2021). Political online and offline spheres do not exist in isolated vacuums but rather are constantly evolving and shaping one another (Bossetta, et al., 2023;Woolley, 2023). There are computationally deduced direct lines from offline events to online fervor. ...
Online antisemitism rears its head during times of political instability, especially during contentious elections. This paper uses the 2022 Pennsylvania Gubernational governor race as a case study to examine what political topics spur antisemitic expression on Twitter. Both rich political and antisemitism discourses are offered by this election that featured a Jewish Democrat candidate Josh Shapiro and far-right Republican candidate Doug Mastriano. Over 800 tweets were qualitatively analyzed through critical discourse analysis to understand both Shapiro’s political tweets and the antisemitic reply tweets. This study addresses the gap of what online political contexts leads to instances of antisemitism on Twitter during political elections. Grounded in antisemitism and political propaganda literature, this study shows that particularly controversial topics of abortion rights and extremism in politics led to the highest amount of antisemitic expression. Dominantly, Jewish political control conspiracies were used as simple explanations for particularly turbulent political topics.
... One way to do this is to situate propaganda within specific mediascapes or media ecologies and examine its content and vehicles of dissemination. Of particular note is the advent of new computational vehicles of propaganda, such as bots, sockpuppet accounts and partisan nano-influencers, that anonymize and/or the production of misinformation and other forms of information pollution (see Woolley, 2023). Here, there is space for an intersection between propaganda studies, and recent developments in digital and cultural criminology on the mediatization of cultural representations of crime, justice and harm (Powell et al., 2018;Ferrell et al., 2008). ...
Criminology and propaganda studies have both substantially influenced political, public and commercial thought yet not as a co-ordinated, embedded twine. Propaganda studies identify how narratives are constructed, conveyed and embedded within public and political discourses. To enhance existing debates, this article stirs the criminological cauldron with critical insights from propaganda analyses. Criminology is an evolving crucible, a gravitational black hole that imbues, harnesses and inculcates diverse perspectives in the pursuit of originality, criticality and creativity. By drawing on historical and contemporary propaganda scholarship we aim to enrich criminological theory, policy and practice. Our intention is not to critique, supplant or subvert existing criminological discourse but to invigorate it with the proponents, and prospects of propaganda studies.
... 5 As with other domains of misinformation, it is these larger media sources-invested with various forms of social, cultural, political, and economic power-that reach, engage, and influence larger audiences (Brennen, Simon, Howard, & Nielsen, 2020). This is to say nothing of the various forms of "computational propaganda" (Woolley, 2023) employed by TERFs and their allies to supplement their mass media campaigns. For example, using the Meta Ad Library, which publicly catalogs the sponsored posts about social issues, elections, and politics on Facebook and Instagram, we can see the central role disinformation has played in opposition to transgender rights in both the United States and United Kingdom. ...
This study investigates how political engagement and news cynicism predict social media news users' belief in disinformation and support for political violence, with a focus on the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Drawing on a U.S. national survey (N = 1,003), our findings reveal that the relationship between social media news use and disinformation beliefs is mediated by political participation and news cynicism, which, in turn, increases support for violence. To better understand the role of social media use, we compared mainstream and alternative social media platforms, finding that both are linked to greater disinformation beliefs, with alternative media emerging as the stronger predictor. These findings underscore the participatory nature of disin-formation ecosystems, which amplify false information, mobilize individuals, and thrive in contexts marked by cynicism in mainstream media and heightened political enthusiasm. While citizen engagement is crucial for sustaining democracy, these results suggest it can also inadvertently facilitate harmful outcomes.
Miljoonia nuoria seuraajia liikuttavat somevaikuttajat tunnettiin pitkään lähinnä nuorten idoleina, uuden ajan julkisuuden henkilöinä, jotka mainostavat meikkejä ja tuottavat hassuja videoita YouTubeen. Viime vuosina somevaikuttajien poliittinen herääminen on huomattu julkisessa keskustelussa ja akateemisessa tutkimuksessa. Poliittisia ja yhteiskunnallisesti merkityksellisiä sisältöjä tuottavat vaikuttajat ovat houkuttelevia kumppaneita myös harhaanjohtavaa informaatiota ja propagandaa tuottaville ja levittäville toimijoille. Nouseva tutkimussuuntaus, joka yhdistää somevaikuttajatutkimusta ja somevaikuttajapropagandaa on toistaiseksi keskittynyt vahvasti läntisiin maihin ja poliittiseen viestintään. Ideologista vaikuttamista harjoittavat myös kaupalliset ja ei-valtiolliset toimijat, kuten erilaiset järjestöt. Tässä katsauksessa tarkastelen somevaikuttamisen katvealuetta, pimeää puolta ja esitän, että propaganda on käsiteviidakossa toimiva termi, jota voidaan hyödyntää myös muiden kuin poliittisten toimijoiden manipuloivaan vaikuttavaan viestintään.
Globally, far-right populisms are seeing a new resurgence fueled by digital technologies. This paper explores such modalities by taking the case of Hindu right-wing mobilization in social media- and physical- spaces in India. Specifically, I examine the media event around the release and reception of The Kashmir Files in 2022, which, while only one in a series of similar films, is exemplary for the scale of its jingoistic reception. While the study is rooted in India, its implications are wider and provide a model for understanding transmedia, convergent, right-wing ecologies elsewhere. Such ecologies enforce an understanding of how the aesthetic object (in this case, film), moves beyond its intended frame (the screen). Rather, through acts of repeated circulation, fragmentation, and de/re-contextualization, they produce a distributed, affective form of populist participation that can be described as viral nationalism.
The growing popularity of social networks has amplified their capacity to form public opinions. The opinion formation process is affected by social factors and social phenomena such as spiral of silence and echo chambers. In this article, we present a directed homophilic preferential attachment (DHPA) model to capture the dynamics of social network generation and rewiring (network dynamics) and to take the variation of attitudes and characteristics of users when expressing their opinions and their desire to establish relationships with others into account (opinion dynamics). The proposed model not only integrates network dynamics and opinion dynamics but also accounts for homophily and the formation of social phenomena that create consensus or polarity. This results in more realistic outcomes compared to similar models. In addition, the model can contrast factors that drive consensus with those that drive polarization. DHPA provides necessary facilities for examining the impact of different factors on the opinion formation process. It enables us to analyze the circumstances to reach consensus and polarity. It is shown that the network generated by the proposed DHPA model appropriately conforms to real social networks. We have examined the impact of some important social factors by conducting a number of sensitivity analysis scenarios on the model, which led to interesting results.
Big digital companies have become key elements in economy, communication, education, and politics in 21st century societies. The neutral ideology in their digital platforms, applications, and services, as well as the exponential growth in their activities can be used by world superpowers —especially the United States and China— to implement geostrategical operations, massive social manipulation or influence democratic processes with the objective of increasing their power and dominance over other nations. The aim of this paper is to state the different strategies of digital expansionism performed by the United States and China, and, additionally, to showcase the negative consequences of these strategies on the population and democracies of the European Union. The first section of this paper will define the concepts of digital sovereignty and digital expansionism as well as their importance in 21st century geopolitics. Next, the important role that big digital companies have on digital expansionism will be analysed, and the usage of digital authoritarianism and digital instrumentarianism performed by the United States and China will be further examined. Finally, the negative consequences of the implementation of these methods in the democratic systems of the European Union will be analysed, as well as what possible solutions there might be for said consequences.
Social media have caused adaptations to existing conceptualizations of democratization, democratic backsliding, and authoritarian hardening. One attempt to capture how social media may solidify authoritarian tendencies while maintaining the government’s popularity is the concept of informational autocracies: rule primarily through the manipulation of information. In this paper, we contribute to Guriev and Treisman’s conceptualizations, who coined the term “informational autocrats” and relied on case studies from around the world. Overall, we expand on existing literature on social media and informational autocracies via a discussion of encrypted messaging apps (e.g., WhatsApp or Telegram) in such contexts. Using a qualitative comparative approach consisting of 68 interviews across 11 country case studies, our analyses demonstrate that the relative secrecy offered by encryption messaging apps can benefit state propagandists and authoritarian tendencies.
How do terrorists persuade otherwise decent citizens to join their violent causes? Guided by early mass communication research investigating propaganda’s efficacy and the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, we investigated the persuasive moral appeals employed by terrorist organizations known to be successful at recruiting others to their causes. We compiled a database of N = 873 propaganda items created by N = 73 violent terrorist organizations and content analyzed the moral appeals emphasized in each. Results revealed that terrorist groups’ ideologies and motivations predicted the moral values they emphasized in their propaganda, and that ingroup loyalty and fairness appeals featured prominently across all propaganda. Terrorist groups’ emphasis on purity in their propaganda was positively correlated with their attack frequency and with the number of human casualties they caused worldwide and in the USA. Terrorists’ emphasis on ingroup loyalty in propaganda was also positively correlated with the number of US human casualties they caused. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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