A dexterous media manipulator, a talented marketer and a capable PR man - all these qualities are successfully combined in himself by Ryan Holiday, the author of today's book. Come up with another fake news? No problem! Arrange a "black" PR campaign for the film? Easy - put a couple of offensive stickers on movie posters and watch the reactions of bloggers and the public! The world of mass media and media resources is diverse, but by no means neat, which the author repeatedly reminds of. Despite his occupation, Ryan Holiday is still a nice guy, because he does not attract the reader to adopt the vicious methods of the media system, but urges to be ready to resist it, knowing its strengths and weaknesses. Let's analyze the key ideas of the book.
Idea 1. The media system is imperfect, and there are people who take advantage of its weaknesses
These people are media manipulators. Bloggers live off news feeds, traffic for them is money. Media manipulators are the same unscrupulous bloggers or their sponsors who are able to create rumors and speculation, literally, from scratch. Is it worth reminding that in the 21st century many large print media, radio journalists and, or all the same television, draw information from blogs.
Bloggers are the same journalists, only iterative. Iterative journalism, unlike traditional journalism, does not at all imply verifiability of facts immediately before publication, but implies making edits to "posts" taking into account relevant information. Someone presents iterative journalism as real-time journalism, they say, it allows you to update information almost every second. However, the author has a different opinion. Posting rumors, guesses, half-truths, and, at times, outright lies does not mean keeping the audience informed of events, it is a process of outright feeding with lies. Such a system is beneficial to everyone except the blog readers themselves - it is beneficial to bloggers who receive money for almost nothing; beneficial for publishers of large media, saving their own efforts,that in a different scenario, they would definitely go to check the facts and conduct an investigation … Yes, and let's not forget that bloggers love to exaggerate the same topic tirelessly, constantly supplementing it with “piquant” details and “intriguing” details.
Of course, initially, iterative journalism was supposed to be a flexible system in which it would be possible to constantly make changes, but later, in practice, it turned out that bloggers are not eager to be responsible for the quality of the information presented, and, even more, they are in no hurry to make edits to their the same messages and certainly do not consider themselves obligated to apologize for their mistakes.
Idea 2. Iterative journalism is bad for the reader
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As we may have found out earlier, the virtues of iterative journalism, such as speed of transmission or the race to eliminate errors or inaccuracies, are nothing more than common myths behind which lie inaccurate information and tangible material interests of "pseudo-journalists." Bloggers, like representatives of many professions, absolutely do not like criticism or accusations of irresponsible presentation of information. Do you want the blogger to edit the news? It doesn't matter, just call his mistake not “error”, but “inaccuracy”, “unverified data”!
Edits really don't matter in iterative journalism, and human psychology is to blame. So, a group of political scientists from the University of Michigan found out an interesting feature of human thinking - people do not believe in edits, moreover, after making edits, people begin to believe in the original information even more. It turns out that making corrections not only does not help to eliminate inaccuracies, but also strengthens people's faith in the truthfulness of conclusions from the initial inaccurate information.
This feature of the human psyche turned out to be especially convenient for bloggers. The scheme is simple - they found an "empty" news feed, excited the public, and then made their alleged "refutations". The scheme is surprisingly simple. And if you add another clickbaiting headline, which will surely attract the scattered attention of the reader with its unbearable delusion, then the shameless blogger will certainly get his stack of "wooden" ones. The "trick" is that a person spends a lot of time on comprehending the unthinkable from many headlines and therefore believes more strongly in stories from articles.
Idea 3. Reliable sources on the Internet are just an illusion
The media on the Internet are closely interconnected, one can even say that a lie launched in one Internet source and “copied” by its colleagues has every chance of becoming true in the minds of the audience. Such intercopy is called the practice of delegation of trust, and this happened due to the banal saving of resources and simplification of information retrieval. Due to the delegation of trust, the so-called. link economy. Its positive sides are quick exchange of information and simplified access to information, negative - information is, to put it mildly, unverified, and “available” information turns out to be just viral disinformation. Is anyone personally responsible for online disinformation? No one. Some major publications shift the blame onto other large publications, from which they "borrowed" material,and bloggers completely ignore the "duck" they missed to the masses. Nobody likes to admit and correct mistakes, because the recognition, albeit a single one, of their incompetence is reflected in traffic - users do not like sources that are often “wrong”. Internet traffic is money, the more it is, the more money a blog or online publication brings. In the 21st century, the one who knows how to create traffic and direct it in the right direction will be the main generator of the company's profit. The more visitors to an online media site, the larger and more respected it is considered, and, accordingly, looks more expensive. The problem is that sensational news feeds are needed to generate traffic, and there are not so many of them, if we are to be unbiased. Therefore, sensations have to be created from scratch and untwisted. It's very simple: more sensational,- more powerful traffic, more powerful traffic, - the publication brings more money. Internet media attract readers with catchy headlines, dubious sensations and other arsenal of "jaundiced" rags and "tabloid" publications. Primitive reader's curiosity now reigns supreme, and there is always a reason for its appearance.
Idea 4. Stages of information trading
The author noticed that the media manipulate information along the same cycle, called "up-chain trading". The cycle is very simple: small blogger - small news outlet - large news outlet. Of course, there are different variations of the cycle, but, in general, its essence is as follows. A tragic and revealing example of the manipulative cycle happened in 2011, when Pastor Terry Jones decided to defiantly burn the Koran. First, a freelancer posted the news, then it was picked up by local publications, and then the pastor reached the major media. The result was as follows - mass riots in Afghanistan with dozens of victims, as well as the growth of xenophobia in society. The cycle is perfect only if you are a clever manipulator of public opinion.
Idea 5. Bloggers willingly cooperate with media manipulators
The profession of a journalist in most publications is difficult to call prestigious - a lot of work and little money. Blogging can generate good income and does not require a lot of dedication. Allegedly "helping" a blogger is quite easy - give him a ready-made free text or make a good gift in exchange for recommendations to blog subscribers. Outstanding bloggers can make a sensation out of nothing, and this ability is successfully used by media manipulators by buying ads from bloggers.
Idea 6. Anger and resentment get the most attention from the audience
High-quality and useful news exists, but they are not in demand, since traffic is much less sensational. It is especially good if the pseudo-sensation causes in a person either "righteous" anger or "great" indignation. Only news that is aimed at the emotional response of readers can become viral. Emotions are the response to the news, and the response to the news is the activity on the blog, and an open opportunity for manipulating opinions.
Idea 7. About distorted reality
The Internet media are not looking for the truth exactly, they are always looking for traffic. The eternal search of media for ways to monetize traffic only leads to the fact that the most disgusting or deceitful ordered materials get into the news. The author brings us to the conclusion that life is quite ordinary, prosaic, and there are very few sensations in it, but people's requests lead to the fact that the media churns out sensations in batches, and form some kind of their own, distorted reality. It is more interesting for a person to live in a distorted reality, and, over time, he even ceases to understand where reality is nondescript and boring, but genuine, and where it is bright, attractive and false to the core. The reader can only live in the illusion of being informed, and it is very scary for us to realize this, but it is more scary to understand thatthat people with obvious pleasure accept the distorted reality from the mass media and spend their already precious limited time on thinking about minor events.