Participatory Propaganda in Seven Simple Steps

Develop a Firewall for
Your Mind.
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Where does all this manipulation leave you,
Dear Reader? Like it or not, your mind is the new
battleground in a Digital Age. While the U.S. has
had laws in the past to protect citizens from being
propagandised to by their own government, 172
there are no such restrictions on political
campaigns, corporations, or foreign governments,
really. Moreover, policing the interconnected,
global world of the internet is next to impossible.
A website taken down in the U.S. today, can just
as easily come back up in Tuvalu tomorrow. So,
you, alas, must retrain your brain to cope with
the distorted information space that is our “onlife”
world.
Don’t look for technological solutions. While ICTs
might have brought us to this challenge, they are
not likely to take us out of it. Sure, the internet
giants will attempt various solutions to counter
fake news and bots, but a company’s bottom line
is to make money, not prevent your manipulation at
the hands of campaigns – who, it might be added,
pay a lot more money to position ads in your feed,
than you likely do to use that social network.
Think twice before engaging with apparent news
content online. Even the most reputable outlets
have been known to get the story wrong. Fake
news isn’t just a problem for those who lean to
the right of the political spectrum. Anti-Trump
content, 173 particularly coverage that purports to
be the key to his impeachment is spreading like