Participatory Propaganda in Seven Simple Steps

Participatory Propagandaa
in 7 Simple Steps
First published in Canada by Alicia Wanless in 2017
Cover Art by Jesus Rivera
Copyright © Alicia Wanless, 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
PDF Version
Alicia Wanless

CONTENT.
CONTENT.
INTRODUCTION
007
PROPAGANDA FROM WITHIN
079
WHAT IS PROPAGANDA?
009
COPING WITH PARTICIPATORY PROPAGANDA
082
7 SIMPLE STEPS
013
A POPULIST SECRET?
086
1. HYPER-TARGETED AUDIENCE ANALYSIS
018
DEVELOP A FIREWALL FOR YOUR MIND
089
2. CREATE INFLAMMATORY CONTENT
023
REFERENCES
092
3. INJECT CONTENT INTO ECHO CHAMBERS
039
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
102
4. MANIPULATE ALGORITHMS
044
CONTACT INFORMATION
103
5. MOBILISE FOLLOWERS TO ACTION
050
6. WIN MEDIA ATTENTION
062
7. RINSE AND REPEAT
073
WHY PARTICIPATORY PROPAGANDA MATTERS?
076

Acknowledgments
Introduction.
7
None of this would be possible without the
love and support of my husband, Michael
Berk, who not only encourages my research,
but also edits all of my writing. His insights
into behavioural security analysis are also
invaluable contributions to my work.
How do you know you aren’t a propagandist?
Becoming a propagandist is easier than you think.
You go online, search things that interest you. Soon
you find others of like mind that share your beliefs
and ideas. The more you read and share, the more
content with a similar view begins to appear in
your Facebook feed and search returns. Your
like-minded friends help, of course, because they
too are finding news and memes that resonate
with your shared thinking. From time to time, a
relative or past acquaintance might challenge your
posts, but you quickly engage in a public debate
online, attempting to demonstrate the error of this
detractor’s thinking. Worse comes to worst, you
might block people who really don’t get it. But it
doesn’t matter. Your perspective is the correct one,
which means you are in the right for trying to show
others the light.
Yet, have you stopped to think what all of this
means? Why do you share ideas? What’s your aim
in arguing a point online? If any of your answers
include wanting to make people feel a certain way,
change a particular point of view, or get others
behind a cause – you might be a propagandist.
This series explores how propaganda is changing
in a Digital Age, outlining an emerging hybrid
model that is participatory, actively engaging target
audiences in the spread of persuasive messaging.

What is Propaganda?
9
That’s a good question. Most people don’t really
know. In fact, many academics are still debating
what is and what isn’t propaganda. It is a serious
problem, because while the experts are lost in
semantics, those who wish to persuade people are
effectively doing so with very little resistance.
For most people, war propaganda probably comes
to mind when they think about the term. More
specifically, one might think of propaganda as
those old posters promoting the sale of victory
bonds, or the keeping of secrets. Propaganda is
also more commonly considered in the context of
who produced it, be it the Nazis, Soviets, or North
Koreans.
Propaganda is more than posters, a movie or the
place where it originates, however. Propaganda is
really about mass persuasion. In its most neutral
sense, propaganda “means to disseminate or
promote particular ideas.” 1
Falling down the theoretical rabbit hole for a
second, analysis of propaganda has tended to
focus not just on the sharing of information, but
the intent in disseminating messaging to influence
an audience. For example, the legendary father of
modern public relations, Edward Bernays, viewed
propaganda as a necessary tool for a healthy
democracy, shaping opinions for the better. 2
Harold Lasswell’s propaganda theory focused on
“Who Says What, In Which Channel, To Whom,

10
11
With What Effect?” 3 Herman and Chomsky’s
model of propaganda dealt more with the Western
corporate media environment, and how media
set the agenda among the population. 4 Jacques
Ellul wrote that “propaganda is the expression
of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by
individuals or groups with a view to influence the
opinions or actions of other individuals or groups
for predetermined ends through psychological
manipulations.” 5 According to Jowett and
O’Donnell, “propaganda is the deliberate,
systematic attempt to shape perceptions,
manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to
achieve a response that furthers the desired
intent of the propagandist.” 6 Similarly, Canadian
philosopher Randal Marlin defines propaganda as
“the organised attempt through communication to
affect belief or action or inculcate attitudes in a large
audience in ways that circumvent an individual’s
adequately informed, rational, reflective judgment.”
7
There is an important distinction in all of these
definitions: propaganda isn’t just about sharing
information; it’s about wanting something to
happen as a result of spreading a message.
Propaganda can be based on truth or lie; the
veracity of it matters only insomuch as credibility
affects the desired outcome. Reaching back
safely into history for another example, the use
of the mistreatment of Belgians 8 at the hands
of Germans in the First World War was used in
propaganda messaging to gain support for Britain’s
involvement in the conflict. The British government
(the propagandist) was sucked into an unpopular
war, and needed its citizens (the audience) to be
so supportive that young men would fight in the
conflict (the propagandist’s desired intent), thus
media coverage and other messaging such as
posters were used to spread an emotive reason for
so doing (the propaganda).
This understanding of propaganda, however, must
be adapted in a Digital Age. One major issue arises
in the current context: the limited sender-receiver
model of most propaganda theory.
Propaganda has traditionally followed a very topdown
communication model. The propagandist
issues persuasive messaging aimed at achieving
a specific outcome among the target audience.
As such, it’s been rather one-way – like most
mass media. With the internet and social media,
however, the audience can in fact become coopted
to propagate persuasive messaging too –
and this is much more dangerous, as people are
more likely to believe those familiar 9 to them or
those they view as influential. 10
The spreading of content through members of
online communities, or participatory propaganda,
goes beyond simply achieving the propagandist’s
desired intent, (for example, convincing people to
vote for a specific candidate), but engages them
such that they become active in furthering that
message to other people, multiplying its influence
effects manifold.
While neither deliberately manipulative messaging,
nor proselytisation are new techniques in the timehonoured
tradition of winning hearts and minds,
the speed and scale at which audiences can be
swayed and recruited have significantly increased
thanks to the internet, indicating it is time to adapt
the concept of propaganda for a Digital Age.
Likewise, as people are increasingly plugged in
and dependent on information communication
technologies (ICTs), the reach of propaganda –
particularly if it resonates with a target audience
– can become all-encompassing and difficult to
escape.

Participatory
Propaganda in Seven
Simple Steps.
13
Propaganda is changing in a Digital Age. Audiences
are no longer passive consumers of persuasive
content, but active in its creation and spread,
helping to further the agenda of propagandists
whose messaging resonates with the target’s
world view.
Participatory propaganda moves beyond a oneway
form of communication (the propagandist
using mass media to persuade a passive target
audience), to a “one-to-many-to-many more” form
of communication (the propagandist engaging
in dialogue with the target audience such that
more people are recruited to spread persuasive
messaging to others, essentially snowballing the
effect). Participatory propaganda offers the ability
to truly dominate the information space through
volume of messaging, delivered through a mix of
real people and automated accounts, effectively
making it difficult to discern where fake ends and
authenticity begins.
A modern political campaign fits the model of
traditional propaganda as defined by Jowett and
O’Donnell, 11 namely the “deliberate, systematic
attempt to shape perceptions” (e.g. popular
opinions of Trump and Clinton) such that it “directs
behaviour to achieve a response” (e.g. support for
Trump in the form of online participation and voting)
furthering “the desired intent of the propagandist”
(e.g. the Trump campaign).

14
15
In a Digital Age, this traditional approach is evolving
into a participatory propaganda model in which the
target audience is no longer passively consuming
persuasive messaging but also becoming active
in producing and distributing such content. The
original propaganda message triggers, reinforces,
or exacerbates pre-existing sentiments associated
with the message in a way that prompts the
consumer to actively engage in its propagation
through available social networks, both on and
off-line. Even if modified through the consumer’s
own interpretation, the core message remains
intact, and even acquires ‘new life’. At the same
time, online monitoring tools enable the original
propagandist to follow and assess the spread
of his or her messaging, adapting strategies in a
constant feedback loop.
In this context, then, a more appropriate definition
might be:
Participatory propaganda is the deliberate,
and systematic attempt to shape perceptions,
manipulate cognitions, direct behaviour,
co-opting grassroots 12 movements as
well as recruiting audience members to
actively engage in the spread of persuasive
communications, to achieve a response
that furthers the desired intent of the
propagandist.
In reviewing the Donald Trump 2016 presidential
election campaign, seven steps emerged
that clearly demonstrated the application of a
Participatory Propaganda model:
1. Conduct hyper-targeted audience analysis;
2. Develop inflammatory content that erodes
faith in the opponent and manipulates
audience cognitive biases: Fake news; Memes;
Data Leaks/Hacks;
3. Inject this content into echo chambers
identified through audience analysis;
4. Manipulate Feed and Search Algorithms;
5. Mobilise followers to action;
bringing together research conducted by others on
the Trump campaign and background information
of each of the seven steps, as well as ongoing
6. Win media attention: Be a trend; Stage a work aimed at filling in the gaps. Specifically, this
Scandal; or Commune with the news; and
7. Rinse and Repeat.
original research includes social network and
content analysis of Facebook pages including three
that supported Trump during the election, as well
In analysing this participatory propaganda model,
what follows is a combination of a literature review
as seven conservative-leaning and seven liberalleaning
media outlets.
FACEBOOK PAGES ANALYSED
PRO-TRUMP CONSERVATIVE LIBERAL
Citizens for Trump
Eagle Rising
Wake Up & Reclaim
America
Breitbart
The Glenn Beck Program
Fox News
Infowars
The Sean Hannity Show
The Blaze
The Drudge Report
CBS News
CNN
MSNBC
NPR
The New York Times
PBS
The Washington Post

16
The three pro-Trump pages were chosen as a • Facebook page like networks. Beginning
sampling of those supporting his candidacy, with with an initial “seed” page, all of the other
one showing its open support through the name Facebook pages liked by the seed are collected
(Citizens for Trump), another having been found in a directed network of pages, meaning the
spreading fake news 13 supporting Trump (Eagle data shows which page likes which. Using
Rising), and a third standing out as a node in initial, an analytical took called Gephi, 17 these
exploratory network analysis (Wake Up & Reclaim networks can be visualised. The data in this
America).
pull also included information regarding page
categories, follower numbers, and rates of
Drawing from a Pew Research Centre survey on engagement.
Political Polarization and Media Habits 14 , seven • Facebook page posts. All of the posts made
media outlets trusted consistently by respondents by these pages during the month leading up to
who self-identified as liberal or conservative the election (7 October to 7 November 2016)
were selected. One substitute was made on the were also collected, including information
Conservative-trusted side, which was Infowars, regarding the type of post, engagement rates
given the role it played in the election. 15
and embedded links.
The following publicly available data for all of these With that, let’s look at each step of the Participatory
pages was collected using Netvizz: 16 Propaganda model in more detail.

18
1. Conduct
Hyper-Targeted
Audience Analysis.
19
other entities could now follow whatever else he
a person’s character better than an average co-
might do on the internet.
worker. With 70, it could ‘know’ a subject better
Everything you do online leaves a trace. Have you
ever searched for something in Google – maybe
information about a town you planned to visit or
something you wanted to buy – and then suddenly
noticed ads for those very same things beginning
to appear in your Facebook feed? That highly
targeted ad placement is part of the wonderful
world of behavioural advertising. 18
In the emerging field of behavioural advertising,
marketers collect information about what you do
online to then position extremely targeted ads in
front of you. Activities that can be tracked include
what websites you visit, the Facebook pages you
have liked, and the things you’ve searched for
online. This information is cross-referenced against
your online profiles to match demographic data
such as geographic location, age, gender and other
publicised interests. Armed with this information
behavioural advertisers help match those who
have something to sell with those who are most
likely to buy it.
The use of online trackers to capture this information
is pretty common. Researcher Jonathan Albright
found in looking at 114 conspiracy websites
supporting Trump during the election that he
had inadvertently connected to 474 so-called
third parties. 19 This means that in visiting those
114 sites, Albright wasn’t just reading the online
content in front of him, but unwittingly receiving
upwards of 3000 tracking cookies, such that 474
Nearly every website analysed by Albright was
connected back to Facebook, mostly via “like”
buttons for both posts and related promotional
pages on the social network. This is important,
because your Facebook activity reveals even more
about you than cookie tracking could ever hope.
In analysing the things you like on Facebook,
one researcher at Cambridge University is able
to know you better than your parents or friends.
Dr Michal Kosinski developed an algorithm 20 that
correlates the things you have liked – posts, pages,
comments – on Facebook to Big Five or OCEAN 21
personality traits. The accuracy of this model is
astounding. According to Kosinski as per a feature
in Huffington Post:
“With a mere 10 ‘likes’ the model could appraise
than a friend; with 150 likes, better than their
parents. With 300 likes, Kosinski’s machine could
predict a subject’s behavior better than their
partner. With even more likes it could exceed what
a person thinks they know about themselves.” 22
Such analysis of the things you like on Facebook
help pull together a psychographic picture of you:
how you think, what your tastes are, what bothers
you, with whom you talk, and essentially how you
will react to a message. This data can be acquired
through Facebook apps and quizzes that request
access to your account information – and can be
bolstered through all the other personality tests
and surveys 23 you might complete in the course of
your life online.
Cambridge Analytica, (a firm not connected to
Kosinski or his employer), which worked on both

20
21
the Cruz and Trump campaigns purports to be
using similar tracking techniques 24 to identify target
audiences and create customised, persuasive
messaging intended to illicit a specific response.
There has been some debate as to how genuine
Cambridge Analytica’s claims are 25 – but it isn’t so
much whether these techniques happened in the
2016 presidential campaign or not, it is that this
• Group #1: The Supporters – This group
consists of people who already support the
candidate and as such make the most ideal
candidates to become propagandists in a
participatory propaganda model. In terms
of Trump, this would include the 681,864
people following Eagle Rising, the 249,720
behind Citizens for Trump, and the 29,121
who like Wake Up & Reclaim America.
can be persuaded. People are more likely
to believe those familiar 26 to them or those
they view as influential, 27 and 20% of those
surveyed by Pew Research Centre in 2016
said “they’ve modified their stance on a social
or political issue because of material they saw
on social media, and 17%” had perspectives
changed this way about a political candidate. 28
• Group #4: The Forgetables – this group is not
likely to change their mind. In the 2016 election
example, these are the die-hard Clinton
supporters. Nothing Trump could say would
ever persuade this group to switch sides. The
tactic for mitigating this group is to drown out
their attempts to propagandise The Unlikelys.
Of course, each segment can be further divided for
is where things are headed regardless. The fact is,
Content delivered to this group will aim to
• Group #3: The Unlikelys – this group
hyper-targeted messaging campaigns, but this is a
that there is a wealth of information collected about
encourage their active support in spreading
has fundamentally opposing views to the
quick generalisation. With knowledge of who the
each and every one of us when we engage online.
a propaganda message. The Supporters will
propagandist such that they are never likely
audiences are and what makes them tick – it’s on
This data can paint a very accurate picture of who
be called on to help recruit the next group;
to be swayed, however, they are also not
to step two.
you are, which can in turn be used to segment you
yet fervently behind the opposing camp. In
into ‘target audiences’, and feed very manipulative
• Group #2: The Winnables – these people
a political campaign, the aim with this group
content aimed at provoking an intended response.
are possible supporters who are likely to be
is to discourage them from supporting the
swayed with the proper message delivered
opponent. No vote at all is better than a vote
For example, voters in the 2016 U.S. presidential
by the right person at the appropriate time.
for the other candidate.
election might be broken out in the following
The Winnables might not be on board at
broader audience groups:
the outset, but via their connections to The
Supporters or sentiments on key issues they

2. Create Inflammatory
Content.
23
With audiences segmented and psychographics
mapped, the next step is to develop inflammatory
content that erodes faith in the opponent and
manipulates audience cognitive biases.
Such content need not only be produced by the
campaign itself. Indeed, spreading and amplifying
content created by supporters is sometimes more
effective as it helps create an appearance of
grassroots support for the campaign. It is this mix
of content originating from the official campaign
as well as that by supporters that contributes to a
participatory propaganda model.
The Trump campaign benefited from at least three
types of inflammatory content: fake news; memes;
and data leaks.
FAKE NEWS
Fake news isn’t a new phenomenon.
Disinformation, “inaccurate or manipulated content
that is spread intentionally”, 29 has been used in
conflict for centuries. In 480 BC, for example, the
Athenian Themistocles beat the Persian Xerxes
with disinformation 30 - tricking his opponent
into believing Greek recruits were deserting.
Disinformation has continued to be used in conflict,
including in the Falklands War when BBC airwaves
were commandeered to broadcast a fake radio
station aimed at demoralising Argentine troops.
And if Trump’s recent presidential campaign is any
indication, disinformation remains a common tactic
in politics aimed at discrediting an opponent.

25
FAKE
NEWS
What is new is the ease with which disinformation
can now be published and spread. With tools, such
as Wordpress, an online content management
system, it really takes little effort to create a website
capable of publishing whatever the creator wishes
– and social media enables the spread of that
content like never before. Indeed, the rate at which
disinformation is being spread online prompted
a report 31 on the subject by Facebook in April
2017 along with disclosure about what the social
network aims to do about it.
One form of disinformation, fake news, has been
well documented in the context of the 2016 U.S.
presidential election. As Facebook defines it in
its report, fake news consists of “articles that
purport to be factual, but which contain intentional
misstatements of fact with the intention to arouse
passions, attract viewership, or deceive.” 32
Fake news is a global problem. 33 Lies spread
faster online than the truth. 34 Conspiracy theories,
often a feature of fake news, reduce complex
issues to “binary opposition, simplifying - and
misrepresenting - the political space.” 35 And as
Facebook noted in its report, governments and
non-state actors alike are spreading disinformation
online. 36
A person’s degree of partisanship is directly
correlated to their likelihood of believing conspiracy
theories or fake news. 37 And news shared by
known trusted opinion leaders on Facebook
influences audience perspectives. 38 Taken in
this context, it is alarming that Trump spreads
fake news, 39 and in his sharing, might account
for why one study found that those known false
news stories favouring Trump were shared 30
million times on Facebook to the 8 million shares
bestowed on those favouring Clinton in the three
months leading up to the election. 40

26
27
Beyond Trump, his far-right supporters used
Facebook pages to push fake news. 41 According
to some analysis “fake news” outperformed “real
news” on Facebook during the election. 42 Fake
news sites were found by Jonathan Albright in
hyperlink analysis to be choking out mainstream
media in online networks. 43 And in a more recent
study by the Oxford Internet Institute looking at
Twitter posts shared in Michigan during the election
- 46.5% of “content that is presented as news and
information about politics and the election is of an
untrustworthy provenance” compared to 25.9%
coming from professional news organisations. 44
The links shared to the three Trump supporting
Facebook pages reviewed for this study were
mostly non-mainstream media. On average, link
posts comprised 53.22% of updates made by the
pro-Trump pages. Eagle Rising shared more links
than the other two (83.25% of posts), with nearly
half of those links (45.4%) pointing to the page’s
own website eaglerising.com, which contains
coverage speculating on connections between
Clinton, terrorists and Nazis, for example, and the
Clinton campaign’s alleged use of psychological
warfare (which in turn points back to another site
shared by these pages called ipatriot.com).
After Breitbart, the most shared domain to
Citizens for Trump was gatewaypundit.com, a
blog that has posted many questionable articles
on Hillary Clinton, including that she secretly called
for Trump’s assassination, had suffered a brain
seizure, and that she had a gum and immune
disorder. During the period between 7 October to
7 November 2016, Citizens for Trump shared 13
Gateway Pundit articles, accounting for 4.32% of
all link posts, including one speculating on Clinton’s
health that enjoyed 321 shares on Facebook. Wake
Up & Reclaim America also shared 14 Gateway
Pundit articles, including this post suggesting
Clinton was involved in having Supreme Court
Justice Scalia assassinated.
Nearly 80% of Americans received information
about the election via a news source. 45 The media
is one of the main sources of information to help
voters make informed decisions – fake news (even
the satirical variety) increases feelings of inefficacy,
alienation, and cynicism 46 - sentiments that drive
people towards populism.
Fake news sites, beyond sowing doubt, are also
useful tools for tracking visitors, as explored
through Jonathan Albright’s research in the last
section.

28
100
Facebook Post Type by Percentage
80
60
Photo
Video
Status
Link
40
20
0
Citizens for
Trump
Eagle Rising
Wake Up &
Reclaim America

30
31
MEMES
If fake online news is the new
disinformation, memes are the Digital
Age equivalent of propaganda posters.
A “unit of cultural transmission, or unit of
imitation”, 47 memes are often humorous phrases,
images or videos that are copied or adapted with
slight variations and then shared online.
During the 2016 election, Facebook groups
sprang up dedicated to sharing “dank memes”
supporting all sides 48 and Palmer Luckey, a
controversial Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur,
funded a “meme factory” to support Trump. 49 Socalled
“meme battalions” created visual content
that “relentlessly drew attention to the tawdriest
and most sensational accusations against Clinton,
forcing mainstream media outlets to address
topics – like conspiracy theories about Clinton’s
health – that they would otherwise ignore.” 50
Memes reduce the public policy debate 51 to shallow
sound bites and ridicule stripped of contextualised
understanding of available political choices. This
contributes to ‘media endarkenment’ 52 reducing
complex political issues to simplified entertainment
and misinformation, which is perfectly suited to
populist rhetoric.
Memes are also reminiscent of past propaganda
posters that aimed to demonise the enemy. In
the examples below, both sets use some form of
humour to convey its message, and both attack
the enemy. The propaganda posters of the past,
however, were restricted to time and space, and
it is reasonable to assume that the propagandist
who created them could be identified through basic
content and contextual analysis. With memes,
however, this becomes much trickier. Obviously, in
the examples below, the aim of the Clinton memes
is to discourage people from voting for Hillary
Source for Second World War Propaganda Posters:
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

32
33
Clinton, but anyone could have made these – and
many more participated in their spread.
Memes (among other visual content) are among
the posts that perform best in terms of user
engagement on social networks such as Facebook.
Take the posts of Breitbart, for example. Breitbart
is a right-wing media outlet that supported Trump
in the election. (Indeed, Breitbart’s former head,
Steve Bannon, became a chief strategist to Trump
after he assumed the Oval Office.) In analysis
conducted by the Colombia Journalism Review,
while only 5% of Breitbart’s Facebook posts
contained images, those posts “accounted for half
of the page’s most shared” updates. 53
Memes account for a considerable number of posts
on community Facebook pages such as Wake Up
& Reclaim America, which were also expressed
supporters of Trump during the campaign. In
analysis of 1330 posts made by Wake Up &
Reclaim America in the month leading up to the 8
November 2016 election, nearly half were image
posts – and 65% of those photos were shared
by the page from posts made by other Facebook
users or pages.
Memes make for ideal inflammatory content in the
participatory propaganda model. Not only are visual
posts more likely to be shared online, memes can
help foster the appearance of grassroots support.
Given how challenging it is to trace a meme back
to its creator, campaigns can easily generate such
visual content and upload it via fake accounts.
Unsuspecting supporters will readily share memes
on social networks, encouraging participation
in a very low-impact manner. Average internet
users can also easily create memes to support
a campaign, thus participating in the spread of
propaganda more actively. In short, memes offer
variety in co-opting supporters in participatory
propaganda.
Post shared by Wake Up & Reclaim America from the Liberal
Wackadoodles Facebook Page

35
DATA LEAKS
Transparency is key in the Digital Age. Information
has a way of coming out. With mobile devices and
constant access to Internet, the concept of public
space has forever changed. Everything can be
captured and shared quickly – without consent.
Even things thought to be secret – particularly if
communicated or saved digitally – are no longer
protected, as hackers can and will access such
information and share it.
Through a data breach, sensitive or protected
data is accessed by an unauthorised party.
This can occur when an insider decides to
leak confidential information, or through
deliberate hacking of digital systems, usually
accessed through social engineering attacks.
In terms of the 2016 election, Clinton was dogged
by several hacks and leaks, giving Trump a political
advantage. These included the hacking of her Chief
of Staff John Podesta’s emails, 54 and the leaking of
things she said about Bernie Sanders supporters
in the past. 55 A data hack was also what led to
the discovery of the private email server Clinton
used while serving as Secretary of State, 56 the FBI
investigations for which hampered her campaign.
Such hacks and leaks were certainly discussed
online. In analysing Facebook posts made between
7 October to 7 November 2016, all of the pro-Trump
pages assessed made mention of “Wikileaks”,
a non-profit that aims to “open governments”, 57
which in that time frame had shared more of
the leaked Podesta emails to its website. Of the
posts made to three Facebook pages analysed
that supported Trump, 65 mentioned “Wikileaks”
during the month leading up to the 8 November
election, accounting on average for 2.75% of
all posts made during that period. Both the
conservative- and liberal- leaning media outlets

36 37
While it can be argued that leaks increase
transparency and hold governments to account,
there is an adverse effect, as well. Populists use
hacks and leaks to deliberately erode trust in the
government, decreasing faith in the established
order fuelling anti-elite cynicism. 58 This tactic
worked well against Hillary Clinton, who as a former
First Lady, and long-time politician could easily be
taken as the embodiment of the established order.
The sensationalism that surrounds a data leak in
the media can often distract from other important
questions, such as who is behind it and what are
their motives? This is not to say that the substance
of a leak is not important, however, understanding
the context is equally as imperative.
With inflammatory content created to manipulate
the target audience in hand, it’s time for step three:
analysed made mention of “Wikileaks” in this
timeframe too: the seven right-leaning pages
mentioned “Wikileaks” 131 times accounting for
2.72% of all posts made on average, whereas the
left-leaning pages referenced it 47 times, or in
just 0.46% of all posts. The pages for InfoWars,
Sean Hannity, and Wake Up & Reclaim America
referenced “Wikileaks” on average more than the
others accounting for 44% of all mentions found.
Of course, sometimes data hacks or leaks aren’t
really needed to turn someone’s words against
them. An ad in which Clinton is quoted as referring
to young African-American men as “superpredators”
and other manifestations of it were
used to dissuade African-American voters from
supporting Clinton and were delivered to that
demographic via Facebook’s targeted advertising
platform. 59

3. Inject Inflammatory
Content into Echo
Chambers.
39
The online world is a crowded market space.
It isn’t enough to simply create content that
resonates with an audience; it must be delivered
directly to them. In a Digital Age, propagandists
can reach you through the Facebook pages you
follow, your social media feeds and networks,
trending topics on Google, and traditional media.
Step Three then is to inject this deliberately
provocative content into echo chambers identified
through audience analysis. The key here is to have
a desired actionable outcome from the content –
whether that be to share it, sign up for a mailing
list, or troll the comments section of news sites.
An online echo chamber is a digital space
where content reflecting a specific point of
view reverberates, exposing those within it to
only that one prevailing perspective. Digital
technologies enable the creation of echo chambers
or filter bubbles. In fact, it only takes a matter of
days to become part of a filter bubble, as two
German journalists discovered in a recent online
experiment. 60 Once inside an echo chamber, a
user is fed content fitting pre-existing views and
preferences, such as political party affiliation. 61
Echo chambers are created in part by algorithms
that sort information, 62 but more so by the choices
63 64
individuals make about content consumption.
Echo chambers identified during the 2016 election
were strengthened by a growing animosity
between political camps, 65 as well as a lack of media
trusted by both Republicans and Democrats 66 and

40
41
thus information exchange was hindered across
partisan right-wing Facebook pages feeding
party lines. 67 In a recent survey conducted by the
followers 38% fake content. 73 A section of the
KIND Foundation, 54% of respondents admitted
anonymous message board, 4Chan, (called “/pol”
that their social media feeds “mostly reflect
for “politically incorrect”), as well as The_Donald, a
worldviews similar to their own”, with only 5%
subreddit on the social news aggregation platform,
saying they see opposing perspectives. 68
Reddit, were both found to be channels for pushing
memes supporting Trump and attacking Clinton. 74
Echo chambers, once identified, can be injected
with persuasive information that conforms to
As noted earlier, the three pro-Trump Facebook
existing beliefs held by followers, encouraging
pages shared more alternative media sources than
the spread of that content, turning those inside
mainstream links in the month leading up to the
the filter bubble into propagandists. Moreover, as
2016 election. Of those links shared to the pro-
a group of researchers at Yale University recently
Trump pages and pointing to the conservative- and
found, “political echo chambers not only isolate
liberal-leaning pages also analysed, most were
one from opposing views, but also help to create
incubation chambers for blatantly false (but highly
salient and politicised) fake news stories.” 69
Echo chambers facilitate the spread of conspiracy
theories, 70 and those supporting Trump shared fake
news during the election, 71 72 with some hyper-
from either Fox or Breitbart. The page Eagle Rising
shared none of the 14 media pages analysed, and
the 1143 links posted between 7 October and
7 November 2016 pointed to just 14 websites,
including eaglerising.com
A manual categorisation of pages based on names
and content reveals that the three pro-Trump page
networks are decidedly part of right-leaning echo
chambers. Nearly all (94.1%) of the Citizens for
Trump network are right-leaning, pro-Trump pages,
while 82.7% of those within the Eagle Rising
network are. As the Wake Up & Reclaim America
page contained over 5,000 pages, a sampling
of 1,000 pages were manually categorised,
representing 18.8% of the total. While 67.8% of
these were right-leaning pro-Trump pages, most
other pages covered topics reflected in Trump’s
campaign rhetoric, such as pro-Christian, anti-
Muslim, pro-military, pro-police, anti-immigration,

42
pro-life views and biker groups. If these topics
are combined, the rate of pages within the Wake
Up & Reclaim America network that reflect views
shared by Trump supporters is 95.7%. Given that
only two pages were found to express counter
views – across all three page networks – it is safe
to say these networks comprise a filter bubble of
sorts.
Such echo chambers further populism by polarising
the electorate into an “us” and “them”, and reduce
the ability of voters to discern relevant and factual
information from bad, enabling politicians to play on
confirmation bias, while also arousing suspicions
about the opposition.
After priming echo chambers with manipulative
content, the next step will be to amplify the noise –
this can be done by:
Domains Shared By Eagle Rising
URL
# of
Posts
% of Link
Posts
conservativevideos.com 80 7.00%
conservativebyte.com 65 5.69%
clashdaily.com 63 5.51%
politistick.com 63 5.51%
theblacksphere.net 62 5.42%
allenwestrepublic.com 61 5.34%
100percentfedup.com 52 4.55%
constitution.com 39 3.41%
proudcons.com 32 2.80%
dennismichaellynch.com 20 1.75%
ipatriot.com 16 1.40%
thetrumptruck.com 2 0.17%
usherald.com 2 0.17%

44 45
4. Manipulate Feed &
Search Algorithms.
In a study by Jonathan Albright, alt-right affiliated
A Google search using the article’s title as exact
sites were found to be choking out mainstream
terms, returns the original post, as well as several
media. 87 Albright looked at 117 sites that had been
nearly exact reprints on other sites, with some
publicly connected to the alt-right by verification
linking back to The Blacksphere article. A search for
sites such as Snopes, Fake News Watch, Real
The Blacksphere url returns 734 results, including
Internet giants, such as Facebook 75 and Google, 76
84
The more Trump was searched, the higher content
or Satire, and Media Bias Fact Check. Albright
posts from rightwingnews.com, teapartytribune.
use processes called algorithms to provide users
about him ranked in subsequent search returns -
then crawled those websites to collect hyperlinks,
com, and thegatewaypundit.com. Some of these
with content they think is wanted. 77
a competitive advantage when first page search
finding 80,587 hyperlink connections. Using
links are posted by other users in comment sections
returns garner 92% of all click through traffic. 85
Gephi, he then visualised this network to discover
and online forums, and Sharescount 88 suggests
Algorithms are important in the information
that these websites were effectively dominating
the URL was shared 12.5K times across social
environment. Search returns have been found to
Google Search algorithms can be gamed in at least
major news outlets.
networks. The article was also picked up by online
sway voter decisions. 78 Regardless of who controls
two ways:
trend aggregators like Trendolizer, 89 indicating the
the returns, algorithms also enable echo chamber
development, 79 , 80 which polarises the electorate.
HYPERLINKING AND SEEDING OF
CONTENT
Drawing from posts shared to the three pro-Trump
pages in the lead up to the election, a simple
Google search of article titles sheds some light
efforts to spread this content had some impact.
Indeed, absent on the first page of another search
return (made in a separate web browser logged
Algorithms also had a role in the 2016 elections.
Google search auto-completes and returns
favoured Trump, spreading false information with
a far-right bias. 81 Fake news supporting Trump
trended on Facebook 82 through algorithms. And
Trump was more searched than Clinton on Google. 83
Posting content, such as fake news, on multiple
websites and linking back and forth between
sources helps boost content in Google search
returns, 86 and if nothing else, can bury opposing
information from appearing in the first pages of
returns.
on how such networks function. In one example,
Eagle Rising shared an article from the blog the
blacksphere.net entitled “Hillary Clinton: Calls
Blacks Professional Never Do Wells”. This post
garnered 157 shares on Facebook.
into a different Google account) for the key words
“Is Hillary Clinton a racist?” are any posts refuting
the idea she might be. (This experiment was then
repeated in a different country, on another internet
service provider, on a new computer with similar
results).

46
Through a mixture of reposting content across
multiple sites, linking back, adding such articles
to comment sections on other media sites
and message boards, and encouraging social
shares, propagandists are able to flood news
and search feeds with the same message,
driving the opposition’s counter message down
in rankings. Through the active sharing of such
content by supporters, both on social media and
in other forums, the propaganda model remains
participatory. This approach helps to account for
the upwards of 40% of directed organic traffic 90 to
the right-wing sites Albright analysed.
BOTNETS
Lobby groups, 91 governments, 92 and businesses, 93
are among the many who are using astroturfing
and bots to distort the information space for
strategic purposes. Posting fake comments and
reviews aims to harness the cognitive bias of
“social proof”. 94 Bots had a “small but strategic
role” in Brexit Twitter chatter with 1% of accounts
generating one third of all messaging on the topic, 95
and bots have also been identified in Venezuelan
political discourse. 96
Astroturfing is the use of fake online accounts
or other means to make a message appear to
be coming from another source, helping foster
the illusion of grassroots support. A botnet is a
series of devices connected via the internet and
controlled by an owner who uses them to execute
tasks, such as sharing a specific post on Twitter.
Botnets can manipulate algorithms. Twitter bots
gamed Google’s algorithm for displaying “real
time news” into promoting disinformation during
a 2010 senate election in Massachusetts. 97
During the 2016 election, pro-Trump Twitter Bots
dominated discussion about the U.S. election 5 to
1 over pro-Clinton messaging, and “strategically
98
colonised pro-Clinton hashtags,” according

48
to Oxford Internet Institute research. Bots also
accounted for nearly one-fifth of online discussion
about the election, 99 negatively affecting political
discourse by drowning opposing views. This
domination in online discourse helps explain
Trump’s success in Google search rankings.
The use of astroturfing and bots to create the
illusion of grassroots support is a particularly
negative phenomenon in democratic societies
where the vox populi provides legitimacy to
decision-making by elected representatives.
Beyond botnets and hyperlink seeding, Trump
supporters were also effective at encouraging
regular people to become propagandists too –
which leads us to Step 5:

50
5. Mobilise Followers
to Action.
51
Once inside an echo chamber, consuming content
that manipulates known cognitive biases, you
are more likely to become active in supporting
a candidate or a cause. Campaigns provide
followers with simple actionable steps along with
provocative content to help turn unsuspecting
users into propagandists – which is what makes
this new model participatory. Actions might
include: telling people to share content; co-opting
or borrowing influencer accounts to share content;
or encouraging trolling activity to stifle debate.
New research has found that anyone can become
a troll under the right conditions, 100 “behaving in
a deceptive, destructive, or disruptive manner”
online. 101 And nothing quite brings out the troll in a
person like a political conviction.
To many, Trump is a troll, 102 103 104 but he was
also supported by a legion of online trolls during
the election, 105 spreading disinformation 106 107 and
attacking Clinton supporters online. 108 The Trump
campaign and his supporters certainly mobilised
followers.
In Jonathan Albright’s research, he noted that many
of those far-right sites analysed featured persistent
email enrolment pop-up windows. 109 Email is one
of the most overlooked tools in a propagandist’s
toolkit, and looking back to the 2008 presidential
election, email played a major role in galvanising
support for Barack Obama. 110
Other existing online communities were also
tapped to support Trump. Researcher Gilad Lotan
found a group called the United States Freedom
Army – who believes the left is engaging the right
in a civil war (which, indeed, is a common refrain
made across pro-Trump pages). The United
States Freedom Army offered its members a
monthly directive on actions to take on Twitter,
and elsewhere in the spread of their content and
support for Trump. 111
The United States Freedom Army has also been
known to ask people with Twitter accounts with
more than 20K followers to either actively engage
or offer their accounts on loan to contribute to the
Wake Up &
Reclaim America
Eagle Rising
Citizens
for Trump
campaign, as demonstrated in a LinkedIn post
calling for support. 112
A CASE STUDY IN MOBILISATION:
PRO-TRUMP GROUPS
The three pro-Trump pages all attempted to
mobilise their audiences. Citizens for Trump
and Eagle Rising, however, were arguably more
successful than Wake Up & Reclaim America,
Average Shares on Facebook Posts
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Average

52
53
with 100,208 edges between them. To put that
The pro-Trump network wasn’t just bigger in
into perspective, similar data pulls were made
comparison; it was also more closely integrated
on two media page groups. The three pro-Trump
between pages with an Average Weighted Degree
pages had 16.3 times more nodes and 55.86 times
of 18.502 compared to that of the conservative-
more edges than the liberal-leaning media group,
leaning media group at 9.01 or the liberal-leaning
and 6.45 times more nodes and 55.86 times more
at 5.404 (the higher the number, the greater the
edges than the conservative-leaning media group.
average number of edges that touch a node in the
network).
Looking at the three pro-Trump pages separately,
each network contains a considerable percentage
Pages liking each other demonstrate a possible
of pages that have self-categorised on Facebook as
channel for the spread of information, but this
as demonstrated through the average rates of
follower shares on Facebook posts.
All three pages encouraged followers to vote for
Trump.
Citizens for Trump and Eagle Rising, however, also
asked followers to share and spread messages,
which might account for the higher percentage
rate of shares on their posts.
Depending on your own filter bubble, the size of
pro-Trump networks might come as a surprise.
To some media pundits, Trump rode to the White
House on a wave of fringe support 113 – but that
would be a mistake, as analysis of the pro-Trump
Facebook Page Like networks shows.
Each of the pro-Trump pages Facebook Page Like
networks were added to one visualisation using
Gephi, which amounted to a total of 5,416 nodes
“Community”, but also “Public Figure”, “Politician”
and some form of “News/Media”.
The pro-Trump network was then analysed using
Gephi. This included running the ForceAtlas2, a
force-directed layout to transform the network
into a map. Additional statistical analysis was
conducted, using Modularity, which helps identify
the various communities within a network, marked
in the data visualisation on page 57 by colours.
fact does not constitute proof on its own. To
investigate further, Netvizz was used to pull all
posts made by each page from 7 October to 7
November 2016, a month before the election.
These posts where analysed using Excel to
count the mentions of specific terms (such as
Clinton, Trump, and Wikileaks), how many posts
were shared from other accounts, and what web
domains were shared to the page, for example.

54
Citizens for Trump
Facebook Network Page Categories
Eagle Rising
Facebook Network Page Categories
55
Community
News/Media Website
Public Figure
Media/News Company
Politician
Non-Profit Organisation
News/Media Website
Public Figure
Political Organisation
Politician
Meda/News Organisation
Community
Non-Profit Organisation
Government Official
Cause
Website
Community Organisation
Comedia
News Personality
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Percentage
News Personality
0 5 10 15 20
Percentage

56
Wake Up & Reclaim America
Facebook Network Page Categories
Pro-Trump Facebook Page Network
Visit http://bit.ly/2pt9Iwi for full graph
Community
Non-Profit Organisation
Political Organisation
Media/News Company
News/Media Website
Organisation
Public Figure
Cause
Community Organisation
Website
0 10 20 30 40 50
Percentage

58
Pro-Trump Facebook Page Network
The same investigative process was then applied
to analysing the two media page groups.
Around one third of the posts made by Wake
Up & Reclaim America (34.1%) and Citizens for
Trump (28.7%) were shares from other Facebook
accounts or pages, indicating community-like
behaviour on these two pages.
Some pages such as Occupy Libtards 5 114 enjoyed
repeated shares to Wake Up & Reclaim America,
including The Deplorables. 115 This Facebook group
has 472,297 Members (as of 18 April 2017)
and takes its name from a comment made by
Hillary Clinton during the election about Trump
supporters.
More recent posts to pages and groups such as
Wake Up & Reclaim America and The Deplorables,
also suggests that these communities are already
primed to support Trump, not to mention willing
A magnified section of the pro-Trump
Facebook Page Like Network as shown
on Page 57. Visit http://bit.ly/2pt9Iwi for
full graph.
to take action. In fact, mobilising them would take
very little if this post is any example.
These pro-Trump pages are not operating in
isolation. Of note as bigger nodes in the pro-
Trump Facebook Page Like network visualisation
are Fox News, Sean Hannity, The Blaze, and
Glenn Beck (see the darker orange community
in the upper left of the network) – not to mention
the NRA Institute for Legislative Action and The
Heritage Foundation.
Beyond the official political campaign Facebook
pages, hundreds if not thousands of other
pages pumped content supporting Trump to
sympathetic users of that social network. Indeed,

60
within the Wake Up & Reclaim America Facebook
Page Like network, 207 page names contain the
word “Trump” – many more that are pro-Trump do
not, making them more difficult to track. Together
these Facebook pages support each other with
reciprocal Page Likes and sharing of posts,
while also mobilising users to not just spread the
message but also support Trump. In so doing,
these online communities are also tapping into
bigger organisations, such as media outlets, lobby
groups, and think tanks – hinting at a much more
systemic participatory propaganda effort.
This interaction with established organisations, in
particular media, brings us to the next step. With an
identified and co-opted target audience, bolstered
by botnets and a network of websites boosting
manipulative content in major online feeds and
search returns, the next step is to translate this into
traditional media coverage:

62
6. Win Media Coverage.
63
Media play a critical role in furthering populist
into news. Given that some 46% of journalists
agendas; 116 117 118 after all, “the media are a
use social media to either source a story or verify
key element in the construction of public
information, it is possible to use the momentum
understanding.” 119 Rates of populist politician
of online engagement to win coverage. 122 Indeed,
media coverage correlate to popular support levels.
some news stories are simply about what topics
120
And Trump was consistently mentioned more
are trending on Twitter. A Google news search for
on television, online, and social media. 121
the exact terms “Trending on Twitter” on 27 April
2017 returned 371,000 results – with 14,000
While distorting the information space is
important, traditional media still plays a critical role
in informing and swaying the masses. Fortunately
for most propagandists, it isn’t too challenging to
win media coverage.
BE A TREND
One opportunity is to translate online activity
published within that past week.
STAGE A SCANDAL
A scandal will also attract media attention. Media
savvy populist politicians are particularly adept at
this. Through a “right-wing populist perpetuum
mobile”, explains academic Ruth Wodak, populists
stage scandals to gain media attention, causing
the opposition to attack, then distort the ensuing
debate to position themselves as victims of a
system rigged against them where freedom of
speech is no longer tolerated. Such scandals tend
to be around a situation that can be interpreted in
multiple ways. 123
Drawing from the Trump experience, an example
of his campaign using the “right-wing populist
perpetuum mobile”, could include when the
presidential candidate shared an image on Twitter
created by a campaign supporter. In the picture,
adapted from Clinton’s own campaign material,
the Trump supporter had added a symbol very
similar to the Star of David. There were public
outcries that the usage of this particular symbol

64
Liberal-Leaning Media Facebook Page Network
Visit http://bit.ly/2pt9Iwi for full graph
carried anti-Semitic undertones. The Trump
campaign’s response was that the media and
others had it all wrong, that this symbol was, in
fact, a Sheriff’s star. The entire episode becomes
yet another example to Trump supporters that the
liberal media is biased against him. This event also
demonstrates the participatory propaganda model
in action – drawing from supposed user-generated
content, thus indicating grassroots support.
Such scandals helped keep Trump in the media.
Trump enjoyed more media mentions, both on TV
and online than the other candidates. 124 Indeed, by
the start of the primary election campaign in early
2016, Trump had been enjoying “more nightly
news coverage than the entire Democratic field
combined.” 125
COMMUNE WITH THE NEWS
It would appear that the relationship between
media, politicians, and online communities,
however, is also very symbiotic.
The Colombia Journalism Review identified a “right
wing media network anchored around Breitbart”
in analysing more than 1.25 million stories posted
online from 1 April 2015 to 8 November 2016. This
“distinct and insulated media system” used social
media to spread a “hyper-partisan perspective”,
but also “strongly influenced the broader media
agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.” 126
Likewise, similar results were found in analysing
the liberal- and conservative-leaning media outlets.
The liberal-leaning media group, visualised
here below, consists of seven almost entirely
independent communities. This visualisation uses
Gephi’s stronger gravity function to keep the
communities closer together for ease of viewing;
however, they are not linked so closely in reality.
What’s more, the Facebook pages tend to be
grouped into ‘ego networks’, meaning any given

66
Conservative-Leaning Media Facebook Page Network
Visit http://bit.ly/2pt9Iwi for full graph
media outlet tends to only like pages related to that
network, such as its own TV shows or journalists.
The conservative-leaning media group is quite
different. The massive Infowars community
dominates the visualisation, represented here
below by the large yellow section, running into
the Alex Jones network in blue, which comes with
it. While nodes connect the Infowars monolith
to Fox, the key connector page is Judge Andrew
Napolitano. This is interesting in itself, as in past
analysis of media Facebook Page Like networks,
Fox stood out from outlets such as BBC for its
connecting to personalities, including their own
journalists as well as U.S. politicians, suggesting
that some media outlets aren’t just covering the
news, but engaging directly with the subjects
making the news. This form engagement could be
considered alarming, if the notion of impartial news
is accepted as crucial to a functioning democracy.
When these two media groups are combined
with the pro-Trump network (see the map below),
the liberal-leaning outlets become islands unto
themselves almost entirely disconnected (the
blue communities at the bottom left), while the
conservative-leaning media are absorbed into the
overall community, and as noted above, in some
cases becoming influential nodes.
Another key difference between the networks is
the breakdown of page categories. In the liberalleaning
media network, the liked pages tend to
be related to news media, such as “Media/News
Company” or “Journalist”.
In the conservative-leaning media network,
however, there is no clearly dominant category for
pages appearing within it. “Journalist” garners a
mere 2.74% to the left’s 14.08%. “Public figure”
and “Movie” each represent around 12% of the

Pro-Trump & Media Facebook Page Network
The blue islands at the bottom left are left-leaning media pages.
Visit http://bit.ly/2pt9Iwi for full graph
69
page categories within the conservative-leaning
media network. Similar to the pro-Trump page
network, though, 9.88% of the conservativeleaning
media network pages are labelled
“Community.” And therein might lie the key
difference in how liberal- and conservative-leaning
media operate.
Only half of the Facebook pages in the liberalleaning
media network allow users to post to
them, whereas 77% of the conservative-leaning
media network and 70% of those in the pro-Trump
network enable followers to engage this way.
Arguably pages such as InfoWars and Breitbart
are community builders, meaning they don’t just
push content to their audiences in a one-sided
affair as, say, CNN or Anderson Cooper 360 who
do not allow users to post to their pages.
Indeed, the conservative-leaning media network
contains 2.53 times as many nodes than the liberalleaning
group, with 4.22 times the number of edges
and 3.26 times the number of strong connections.
Likewise, the conservative-leaning network enjoys
a higher average weighted degree (9.01) than the
liberal-leaning one (5.40) meaning it has a greater
average number of edges that touch nodes in the
network. In short, the conservative-leaning media
network is more of an ecosystem that stretches
beyond news outlet borders, blending into each
other and pages beyond just media and journalists,
into communities.
The media landscape is changing in a Digital Age.
While traditional coverage continues to play an
important role in terms of exposure for a politician,
there is clearly more happening between some
newer outlets and their audiences than simple
media consumption, whether it be in tracking
audiences through cookies, supporting echo
chamber development, spreading inflammatory
content, or mobilising followers to action.

70
Right-Leaning Media Pages
Facebook Network Page Categories
Left-Leaning Media Pages
Facebook Network Page Categories
71
Public Figure
Movie
Community
Non-Profit Organisation
TV Show
Media/News Company
News/Media Website
Website
Journalist
Book
0 3 6 9 12 15
Percentage
Media/News Company
Journalist
TV Show
News/Media Website
Non-Profit Organisation
Public Figure
Author
Broadcasting & Media
Production Company
News Personality
Company
0 5 10 15 20 25
Percentage

DO IT
7. Rinse & Repeat.
AGAIN!
73
In feeding back into the media, be it through
coverage or engagement, the participatory
propaganda model has come to its final step.
It is important to note that participatory
propaganda is a cyclical model – once steps 1-6
are complete, the next and final step is to start all
over again, feeding the machine, tweaking with
every new audience insight gained.
The digital environment enables real-time
monitoring that propagandists of the past never
enjoyed. Platforms such as Cision, Crimson
Hexagon, Bottlenose, and other custom
solutions help brands monitor and assess online
conversations. Such ongoing monitoring is crucial
in tracking the effectiveness of outreach efforts
over time, whereas the findings from hypertargeted
audience analysis provides much needed
baselines and parameters for continued listening.
Constant media monitoring and evaluation
becomes the basis for a feedback loop. Based
on regular review, strategies and messaging are
tweaked to increased effectiveness, and encourage
audience participation in propaganda efforts.

74
Hyper Targeted
Audience Analysis
Engage
the Media
Develop
Inflammatory
Content
Mobilise Followers
to Action
Inject Content into
Echo Chambers
Manipulate
Algorithms

76
Why Participatory
Propaganda Matters?
77
Americans are at the vanguard of these changes
the first quarter in 2016, the average American
– and as such are among the most vulnerable
was consuming 10:39 hours 135 of media across
populations to information warfare, be it in the form
of participatory propaganda, social engineering or
devices each day. These rates are only expected to
soar. The situation in most other nations with high
cyber-attacks.
internet-penetration rates is either similar already
In 2014, the World Economic Forum listed “the
spread of misinformation online” as one of the top
10 trends facing the world. 127 By 2016, Reporters
Without Borders declared that we “have reached
the age of post-truth, propaganda, and suppression
of freedoms – especially in democracies.” 128
what happens online doesn’t just stay online, it is
interwoven into our daily experience, and we will
become increasingly dependent on ICTs as we
move into a new era of, what Floridi has outlined
as, “hyperhistory”.
The problem is, we aren’t really prepared for this
Americans have long been heavy consumers of
mass media. By 1940 most households had a
radio and listened to it on average between four to
five hours each day. 131 Television enjoyed similar
rates of adoption, with the average viewer tuning
in five hours per day in 1960, 132 and a little more
or will become so in the very near future.
Unlike radio and television before it, the internet
has people constantly connected to information.
And if people are choosing what they want to
consume, not based on fact or reality, it makes
them highly susceptible to manipulation.
Unfortunately, general understanding of the
always-on life. For example, in Canada, the U.K.,
than six hours daily by 1975. 133
changes brought by the internet and related
technologies is still rather weak. Simply put,
thinking has not caught up to our current reality.
The digital space – or the “infosphere” as Oxford
professor Luciano Floridi describes it – is rapidly
becoming far more integral to our daily lives than
something we log on and off of at will. As Floridi
and U.S., where internet penetration is 84% or
higher, 130 nearly half of those populations finished
high school before the web was even invented.
Unless someone works with online algorithms,
social networks, or behavioural psychology, what
could the average person possibly understand
about how being plugged in constantly can affect
The internet has only increased American
consumption of media. As of 2015, 21% of
American survey respondents indicated they
were online “almost constantly”. 134 By the end of
explains, we are living “onlife”. 129 In other words,
their perception?

Propaganda
From Within.
79
We are often warned of the threat that is
external enemy propaganda: how Daesh is using
it to recruit; 136 or how Russians are influencing
popular opinions via disinformation 137 – to name
a few. Yet, propaganda targeting an audience
abroad is the most challenging form of systemic
persuasion. Given cognitive biases and entrenched
beliefs, to name just a few impediments, swaying
the minds of opponents is extremely difficult. 138 The
more likely chance of being mislead or swayed by
propaganda is at home – in the relaxed environment
of your own backyard where the worldviews you
adopt or shape seem natural, familiar and, thus,
less threatening. Never is this misconception more
dangerous than in highly politicised environments
when these viewpoints diverge into extreme
partisanship, breaking society down into groups,
which can no longer understand one another. Such
divisions make a society a much easier mark where
enemy propaganda is concerned.
This, unfortunately, appears to be the case in
the United States today. While some might call
the battle between Republicans and Democrats
simply politics, or even a form of democracy, the
party-based divisions are leading to competing
narratives among followers that are perilously
pitting American against American. Engaging in
aggressive and provocative behaviour online only
discourages rational discourse, intimidating people
from participating in politics online. 139 No amount
of enemy propaganda could have hoped to achieve

80
the hostile divisions that are growing today in the
U.S.
Indeed, in its recent report on information
operations, Facebook noted:
“We have observed many actions by fake
account operators that could only be performed
by people with language skills and a basic
knowledge of the political situation in the
target countries, suggesting a higher level of
coordination and forethought.” 140
And while the example used to illustrate the
model of participatory propaganda stems from an
arguably far-right campaign, this does not preclude
its adoption on the left. Granted, populist views,
which can occur on both the left and right side
of the political spectrum, are likely to be the best
suited to this format – but it will not stop others
from trying.
There is a major caveat that needs to be
considered before implementing participatory
propaganda, however. If the campaign using
these techniques claims a moral high ground
over the opposition, then any proof that might be
revealed about audience manipulation can easily
be used to discredit the campaign. For example,
any documentation that shows they used botnets,
fake news, or astroturfing, can all be used to attack
the legitimacy of the campaign. So, if you stand on
the side of liberty, and transparency, these sorts of
“dark arts tricks” put that messaging and work at
risk – which is one of the reasons why Clinton was
so easy to attack.

82
Coping with
Participatory
Propaganda.
83
important role in liberal democracies and the
While your following might be easily persuaded,
participatory propaganda model, as a result. The
they are not slaves. If at any point they find that
business of “news” has changed considerably in
you are not continuing to address their needs, they
a Digital Age. 141 The need to be first to break a
can just as easily turn on you. As organised online
story or increase circulation via online views has
communities, the effect of such a turn should not
As participatory propaganda can threaten the
stability of liberal democracies something must be
done to counter its effects. As noted above, simply
applying the participatory propaganda model is not
likely to work if the aim of the campaign is to uphold
an established order that is liberal democracy.
Moreover, efforts from several segments of
society will be required to effectively address
the challenges posed by the use of participatory
propaganda. Below are some suggestions broken
out by sector:
GOVERNMENTS
Governments concerned about participatory
propaganda must invest in protecting citizens. This
includes funding education on digital literacy, not
just at the lower school levels, but for adults too.
Adults and youth alike are simply not prepared to
cope with the onslaught of persuasive information
enabled in a Digital Age. Such education will
also contribute a great deal to raising an overall
understanding of cyberspace, with its benefits and
perils, and prepare the population for the advent of
the Internet of Things, participation in the digital
economy and new opportunities associated with
the 4 th Industrial Revolution.
At the same time, a review of policies and laws
around the use of persuasive communications in
campaigning should be conducted and updated
for this changing reality.
MEDIA
As noted above, traditional media plays an
made traditional media much more vulnerable
to becoming a channel for laundering fake news
and clickbait. 142 Given the speed with which
information now spreads thanks to the internet, it
might be time to re-imagine what reliable media
is – and that might very well not be “news” at
all, but deeper, more insightful, and trustworthy
content. Indeed, the Digital Age might demand a
sort of reliability score ranking media outlets on
credibility. 143
POLITICAL PARTIES
As it is expected that the pursuit of power will be
more important to politicians than the dangers
to society of using a participatory propaganda
model in a campaign, I offer but this warning:
participatory propaganda actively engages people.
be underestimated. Like it or not, participatory
propaganda also has a way of democratising
persuasive communications.
ORGANISATIONS & BUSINESSES
As integral units of every modern society, nonprofits,
charities and businesses, employ many
people, and likely affect through their actions even
greater numbers. In all organisations, without
exceptions, staff or personnel constitute the most
valuable asset due to their skills and corporate
knowledge. As a result, it is in the direct benefit to
these organisations to consider information security
not only from the point of view of the physical
network or IT security but also from the point of
view of the psychological and cognitive wellbeing
of their personnel. From this point of view,

84
especially in critical industries, such organisations
would do well to elevate the understanding of
senior leadership on issues related to participatory
propaganda and related topics, such as social
engineering. Regular penetration tests and staff
exercises can help build resiliency to these types of
information attacks.
MILITARIES
In a Digital Age, war is no longer confined by time
and space. Through information warfare, and
techniques such as participatory propaganda,
adversaries can constantly attack – not just
opposing militaries, but the hearts and minds of
citizens, at home and abroad. The use of persuasive
communications is thus used to dissuade people
from supporting things such as armed intervention
abroad, membership in broader collectives such as
NATO, or even militaries, in general. More must be
done to understand the changing nature of warfare
as a result. In particular, a shift in perception must
occur from one of viewing cyber or information
operations as separate, less important aspects
of conflict, to one that understands that societies
dependent on ICTs are particularly and constantly
vulnerable to a new threat of information warfare.
To that end, militaries should:
• Ensure their doctrines, manuals and operational
orders address issues related to information
security, warfare and behaviour, whether in
times of peace or open conflict, regarding
domestic and foreign audiences.
• Engage in high-level information sessions
aimed at bringing the upper echelons of
leadership up to speed on the changing nature
of this threat;
• Adapt basic training to include fostering a
deeper understanding for how information
warfare is changing the nature of conflict, and
how every service member’s actions can and
will be used against them in a Digital Age; and
• Run exercises aimed at developing effective
counter participatory propaganda models.

86
A Populist Secret?
87
Voices that are not widely heard on mainstream
through the “moralisation of politics” making
media are amplified online, 158 making such groups
consensus and coalitions impossible, are some of
easily identifiable through audience analysis.
the ways populists degrade democracy. 161 162 Far-
Once identified, savvy politicians can pick up on
right populism tends to incorporate nationalism
messages spread by such disenfranchised groups,
and xenophobia, 163 164 165 166 using identity politics to
One type of political communication seems to be
particularly well suited to participatory propaganda
- populism. 144 In positioning a political leader
on the side of the “people” in a struggle against
a corrupt elite, populists use the participatory
propaganda model effectively to erode faith in the
established order. 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 Many of the
steps outlined in this piece help to sow doubt and
fuel dissatisfaction with the way things are.
Populism occurs naturally in a democracy, 153 due
to the inherent contradiction in liberal democracy
that at once derives its legitimacy from ‘the people’,
but at the same time governs them through
“complicated institutions, laws and practices
aimed at safeguards, checks and balances” 154 thus
containing the very power of ‘the people’. When
these complex systems fail to meet the needs of
the electorate populism arises. 155
The dissatisfaction with the status quo in a
democratic society, such as feelings of being
unheard or under-represented, may lead to finding
the existing political order wanting. American
voters have been expressing such sentiments
about their government for some time. Only 19%
of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey
in 2014 said they “can trust the government
always or most of the time” and 74% said, “most
elected officials put [their] own interests first”.
156
In a similar survey in 2015, 64% of American
respondents said they felt “their side loses more
often than it wins” in politics. 157
playing to them to encourage not just votes of
support, but active participation in propaganda
efforts to encourage others.
As populist rhetoric often simplifies complex issues
and finds a scapegoat to blame, 159 it is particularly
well suited to the online environment, where
messaging is short, easy to digest, and there is a
culture of outrage. 160 Conversely, many average
voters struggle to understand the complicated
procedures that comprise a liberal democracy.
Populists understand this, which is why they
reduce the political debate to simplified terms.
Populism is dangerous for democracy, particularly
if such leaders take power. Eroding checks and
balances and minority rights in the name of popular
support, causing irrevocable political divisions
break society into groups of a homogeneous ‘us’,
and a dangerous foreign ‘them’. 167
Digital technologies are facilitating the spread
of right-wing populism. The fast rise of far-right
populism in Europe was “mirrored online”. 168 Farright
populists have proven to be adept at using
digital technologies to propagate, recruit and
coordinate activities, often with online followings
169 170
far outstripping actual offline membership.
This use and keen understanding of digital media
has led some commentators to dub the trend “the
rise of an interactive and participatory populism: a
populism 2.0.” 171 Trump’s rise to the oval office is
no exception.

Develop a Firewall for
Your Mind.
89
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

90
91
wildfire among the liberals. If you are not absolutely
certain about a news story, Snopes 174 it – if it can’t
be verified as fact, don’t share it, lest you become
an unwitting propagandist too.
Memes might give you a good laugh, but sharing
yourself sharing the information pumped through
these channels, you might be a propagandist too.
Consider removing some of the filters that channel
content to you or read news and conduct searches
while logged out of all online accounts – start
reading some alternative sources from the other
to apply a list of thinking distortions, assessed
through a series of questions that people ask
themselves in a given situation to help retrain one’s
mind to perceive things differently. In the context
of engaging with the information space, this might
be applied every time you encounter a post or
The information space is a lot like the physical
environment. While individuals might not be
behind a lot of the pollution, it will come down to
average citizens to push for and work towards
cleaning it up.
them has wider implications for democracies.
Before sharing memes online, give some thought
to where they might have come from, and whether
or not you want to participate in the spread of
possible propaganda.
When faced with news of a hack or leak, take
pause to consider the wider situation behind it
before jumping on the sharing bandwagon. After
all, every time you engage, you risk becoming part
of a participatory propaganda model.
Take a look at your network and information
sources. If everyone seems to be sharing your
perspective, with little dissent or variety in sources,
you might be in an echo chamber. If you find
side. If nothing else, it might help foster empathy
with which you might engage with the opposition
later.
Just because a topic trends, doesn’t make it truly
talked about by real people. You will need to dig
deeper to find more accurate information online,
particularly during an election cycle.
Developing your own internal cognitive security
measure, a sort of firewall for your mind, can
help. One approach might be taken from the field
of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a branch
of psychotherapy that aims to change patterns
of behaviour and thinking. One tactic in CBT is
article that provokes you into wanting to share.
Instead, stop and ask yourself:
• What is my motive for sharing this?
• Who produced this content? Can the author
be clearly identified?
• What do I know about the source where I
found this content? What is their motive?
• Is this content factual? How do I know?
What have I done to fact check it?
If your answers indicate that you are sharing
to persuade others, and the content cannot be
verified, don’t share it. Quite quickly we can help
control the quality of content spreading online.
In a Digital Age, perhaps ironically, when
technology has made so many things that much
easier, it will come down to a much older tool
– our minds – to ensure we are not manipulated
by propaganda, or much worse, co-opted into
becoming propagandists for a cause or politician
through this participatory model.
Be mindful and remember, you are what you read.

92
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102
About the Author.
Contact Information.
103
Alicia Wanless researches how we shape — and
are shaped — by a changing information space. As
the Director of Strategic Communications at The
SecDev Foundation, Alicia develops campaigns
and strategies for engaging beneficiaries in
outreach and behavioural change. Her work
includes developing a training program that deals
with verifying information and the spread of
content online, and has supported projects in the
Middle East, Vietnam and the post-Soviet space.
Alicia has trained journalists, social activists, and
military personnel.
Alicia has spoken publicly on the Age of
(Dis)information and Participatory Propaganda,
and has participated in events at Wilton Park, the
Hedayah Centre, Ryerson University, Whitehall,
and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human
Rights Studies, among others.
Beyond understanding how information influences
human behaviour – Alicia knows how to implement
campaigns that motivate people into action.
This short research piece represents the beginning
of her work on the participatory propaganda model.
To that end, Alicia has aims to turn this into a full
book, adding field interviews, additional network
analysis, and possibly another case study.
More of Alicia’s writing can be found at
www.lageneralista.com.
alicia@lageneralista.ca
@lageneralista
alyawanless
/lageneralista