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General1_KEY CONCEPTS Close reading Contextualization Critique
1.1_#social engineering
1.2_#disorder geopolitical, economic, political
1.3_#climate war
1_KEY CONCEPTS Narratives Frameworks Contexts
1_KEY CONCEPTS Nature and culture Storytelling and language Continuities and shifts
WEEK 1; Emergence of Masspersonal Social Engineering
Emerging trends in manipulative communication (all made possible by data collection efforts):
- Email account hack-and-leak operations
- Military investment in social media manipulation capabilities
- Russia (and Chinese) interference on US (and EU) domestic affairs
- Weaponization of memes on Facebook/ Instagram to elicit specific emotional responses
Gehl and Lawson call these strategies Masspersonal social engineering (= an emerging form of
manipulative communication made possible by the unique affordances (the quality or property of an
object that defines its possible uses or makes clear how it can or should be used. ex.: We sit or stand on a chair
because those affordances are fairly obvious) of the internet and social media platforms).
- It brings together the tools of hackers and propagandists, interpersonal (one-to-one) and
mass communication (one-to-many).
- It uses deception to infiltrate and influence communications systems in order to:
1. Change actions and beliefs
2. Discourage action (e.g. voting) amplifying pre-existing biases and beliefs (e.g. racism,
sexism, social divisions) when such goals are in the perceived interests of the
masspersonal social engineers of their clients
- It started in mid 2010s and has intensified since -> 2016 was the point of no return
(continues unabated)
1. Used predominantly by conservative and far right organizations, although the Left is
also using these resources.
2. After Cambridge Analytica: Phunware, Rally Forge
Social Engineering -> Synonyms: fake news, lie machines, propaganda, cognitive hacking, cyberwar
The act of shaping social interactions through systematized techniques. Has a long history, however
today the phenomenon is growing at an exponential rate.
World’s Most Famous hacker = Kevin Mitnick
Involves convincing people to perform actions they would not normally do. Hackers started to use
this expression in the mid-1970s. E.g. giving out passwords, personal data, letting people roam
around restricted parts of corporate campus, providing acces to financial information, or visiting a
,malicious website via phishing -> targets: indivuals (e.g. secretary, IT employee, CEO, political
campaign staffer.
Case: Phishing: 2016 DNC Email hack March 19 2016; John Podesta -> Wikileaks (mass media, pro-
Trump meme warriors, Russian trolls and disinfo agents); interpersonal con job with massive
consequences.
History of social engingeering (1920s-1950s)
- Political engineering and social engineering at a strategic level; doesn’t simply target
individuals, but entire populations (massive scale). A new form of ‘Engineering of consent’ as
originally conceived by husband and wife team Edward Bernays and Doris Fleischman. ->
however, what really is new here is that this kind of social engineering attempts the targeting
of indivduals via social media with the ambition of having societal-scale effects.
➔ From propaganda to public relations – the management of collective attitudes by the
manipulation of significant symbols. The goal is to master crowds of people, influencing them
to buy more products, respect their corporates better, or support a war effort.
o First and foremost a political weapon; via an army of professional trolls who engage
in highly personalized communication, micro-targeting ‘psychographics’.
▪ The Internet Research Agency trolls were personally controlling social media
accounts that “were spontaneous and responsive, engaging with real users (famous
influencers and media as well as regular people), participating in real- time
conversations, creating polls, and playing hashtag games.
Gehl and Lawson argue that we see the rise of two converging phenomena:
1. Masspersonal communication; ‘Channel’- one-to many model, cinema, newspapers, television, radio,
impersonal, asynchronous, mediated (opposite of interpersonal communication; one-to-one, people
talking to eachother, either face to face, over the phone, through digital media such as email/texting,
direct, synchronous).
1. With the emergence of computer-mediated technologies between the 1990s and early 2000s
this distinction became ingreasingly blurred, but it persisted mostly between scholars kept
insisting on the notion of channel instead of effects of such communication. (e.g. phones are
interpersonal, television is impersonal/mass).
2. However, what really matters is the accessibility and personalization (tailoring and
narrowcasting at a mass scale) of such messages rather than the channel (e.g. a tweet
directed at a specific person could be seen by millions) -> social media influencers, meme
viral diffusion, A/B testing, personal relationships with mass-produced brands etc. (hence
mass communication); Social media is the paradagmatic form of masspersonal
communication.
2. Masspersonal social engineering; one of several communicative practices of masspersonal
communication, aimed at influencing people’s behavior -> brings together (newer) individualized
hacker con artistry and (older) mass consent engingeering, although they developed independently of
eachother.
Key ideas: Disinformation/ misinformation, Bot, Troll, Meme (weaponization of), Social engineering,
Masspersonal communication, Masspersonal social engineering
,WEEK 2; Engineering the social
Mass social engineers: society itself can be engineered, like a building, bridge or canal (society is a
machine, an infrastructure). This idea emerged in the US at the turn of the 20th century and lasted
until the mid-1950s it was abandoned in the 1970s
Engineering society (Golden Age of Engineering 1850-1950): engineers see themselves as
benefactors- they regard their actions as rational, scientific, ‘neutral’ (i.e. apolotical); their main goal
is to improve society at all levels.
Early 1900s: ‘Social engineering; a new kind of engineer whose goal was to improve social relations,
spread American values, and make everything more ‘efficient’. The key idea is to apply the scientific
method to society as a whole to influence it in a non-coercitive way.
1. Social reformers: wanted to improve society and avoid ‘moral decline’. Looked at mass
immigration in 20th century with anxiety. Fear of the ‘crowd’ (mob rule). Solve that with
science (sociology, economics, psychology) which explain the drivers of human action (=social
engineering) and religion. -> At the beginning of the 20th century in America the social
reformers wanted to help immigrants to quickly integrate within society. “affluent young
men and women would settle among the urban poor, share their lot, and help them improve
their lives. These social reformers ran English classes, kindergartens, arts, crafts, music
classes, and discussions, all with the intention of ‘Americanizing’ immigrants. Moral
imperative = make men moral. Settlement houses census (data gathering). -> process
expands in the 1910s and 1920s and eventually merges with governmental programs and
larger bureaucracies. They need the help of: (P30 Social Change in the Digital
Age_2_2022.pdf)
2. Management theorists; philosophy of Fredrick Winslow Taylor, a trained engineer who
wanted to optimize and maximize workers’ productivity in factories -> workers should not
simply work with machines, they should become machines themselves (workers must be
trained and disciplined through rigorous scientific models); the ‘one best way’ to get the job
done. Adhere to Morris Cooke, a devout Christian who believed that the principles
underlying material forces and physical forces were also regulating human beings. Factories
must be run by highly educated scientific managers who ‘manage’ workers that are basically
‘cogs in the machine.
, Likewise, homes must be run like efficient
factories, so everything must be maximized
and optimized.
- Management theorists were more
succesful than social reformes because:
1. They were backed by corporate
America
2. Their goal was not moral
improvement (which could not be easily
monetized or exploited), but to tame the
working class.
3. PR specialists (1920s):
Mass social engineers drew on the ideas of Social reformers, but served Corporate America
like Management theorists. Electronic mass media that emerged in the late 1800s and early
1900s; telegraphy, radio, cinema, television. Of the three factions, the PR specialists were the
first to recognize the power of mass (media) to influence, massage, and control the masses in
a non coercitive way.
- PR was born out of a necessity; to protect corporations from the attack and criticism by
journalists; the muckcrackers- who denounced the continue abuse of public interest by
ruthless businessman.
- Replaced press agents and publicicsts and introduced a ‘scientific method’ to provide
industry friendly, pro-business stories to newspapers and magazines, and shift public opinion
in their favor.
- ‘Scienfitic method’ consists of data gathering, data analysis, targeting via polls, surveys,
interviews, and statistics -> propaganda must become a science (hence public relations; less
than a sciencetheory and more like a praxis/practice.
- See public relations as a ‘broad-social engineering process’. PR professionals work on behalf
of the nation’s social, industrial, and political elites -> goal is to master/ tame/ manage the
unruly crowds -> Bernays and Fleischman call this process the engineering of consent.
- Fleischman clarified the engineering approach of PR (still valid up tot his day):
1. Research
2. Plan
3. Evaluate
- Prescribed method for mass social engineers: get the facts -> study the public -> discern
psychological ways to influence them -> communicate with them, ideally by creating
newsworthy events.
- They form the 'invisible government’ that truly influence and shape a nation on behalf of the
elites. Presented themselves as apolitical in order to be effective and believable.
1920s-1950s; heyday of social engineering 1970s; social engineering becomes a pejorative
Starting in the early 1970s, social engineering as well as other forms of engineering came under
attack and considered ‘mass-scale failures’. Engineering was seen as hubristic, naive, foolish. It was
exposed as deceptive manipulative practice in service of self-interested elites rther than the common
good. Attack came from the Right aswell as from the Left (but especially from the Right, which
wanted to limit government intervention.
As a result, in the late 1970s, even the PR professionals abanadoned the label ‘social engineering’
because, like propaganda in the 1930s was now irremediably tainted. -> New terms are constantly
introduced, e.g. strategic communication, political communication and the likes, but the goal remain
the same to build consent, influence and manipulate.
P58; Cases about modus operandi of the ‘PR Specialists’
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