How the domestic aesthetics of Instagram repackage QAnon for the masses When I showed some of these Instagram accounts to Sophie Bishop, a lecturer in digital humanities at King’s College London, she identified in all of them a “very recognizable,” feminine-coded aesthetic. “It’s aspirational, and then it’s also authentic enough to allow for relatability,” she […]
Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind
The behavioral techniques that are being employed by governments and private corporations do not appeal to our reason. The term “propaganda” has been replaced by “a behavioral approach to persuasive communication with quantifiable results.” One We are living in an age in which the behavioral sciences have become inescapable. The findings of social psychology and behavioral […]
Nostalgia reimagined
Neuroscience is finding what propaganda has long known: nostalgia doesn’t need real memories – an imagined past works too He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past. But when he […]
Disinformation campaigns are murky blends of truth, lies and sincere beliefs – lessons from the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation. In this environment, false narratives – the virus was “planned,” that it originated as a bioweapon, that COVID-19 symptoms are caused by 5G wireless communications technology—have spread like wildfire across social media and other communication platforms. Some of these bogus narratives play a role […]
