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Manipulation in Marketing, Advertising, Propaganda, and Public Relations

• First Online: 15 June 2022

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• Victoria L. Rubin 2  

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Many practices in marketing, advertising, and public relations, presented in Chapter 6 , have the intent to persuade and manipulate the public opinion from the onset of their endeavors. I lay out marketing communications strategies and dissect the anatomy of the ad revenue model. I review key ideas in advertising standards and self-regulation policies that do not allow misleading ads. Advertising techniques in marketing campaigns and political propaganda abound in truth-bending, but regulatory bodies such as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission distinguish between puffery and materially harmful misleading ads. Digital media users may be constantly bombarded with ads—puffed-up, borderline deceptive, emotionally suggestive, or plainly misleading— and they may grow weary, distrustful, and resistant to ads. Advertisers get more creative with variants of covert advertising exemplified in Chap. 6 with native ads, sponsored links, or branded content. I discuss the elusive concept of virality, and explore what makes us vulnerable to viral conspiracy theories. Masters of persuasion may exploit human biases and logical fallacies including the bandwagon appeal, glittering generalities, and bait and switch, to name a few. Propagandists, advertisers, and public relations experts know when and how to appeal to emotions or individuality, use wit and humor, or finetune who delivers the message as a relatable credible source. More AI countermeasures and stricter regulation are needed to curb the existing ad revenue model and unscrupulous financing that instigates the spread of mis- and disinformation. AI-based technologies such as spambots, paybots, autolikers, and other inauthentic accounts are farmed out to create hype and social engagement by propagating falsehoods, clickbait, provocations, misleading, or otherwise inaccurate messages. Policymakers and legislators are broadly encouraged to focus on regulating algorithmic transparency, platform accountability, digital advertising, and data privacy, while avoiding crude measures of controlling and criminalizing digital content or stifling free speech. The ultimate goal is to reestablish trust in the basic institutions of a democratic society by bolstering facts and combatting the systematic efforts at devaluing truth. Professional manipulators, propagandists, and their unscrupulous technologies— at the service of few "deep pockets— require more public oversight of their unscrupulous disinformation campaigns that misuse commerical and public discousre to manipulate the general public.  Establishing a global regulatory framework and venues for enforcement may be key to addressing the problem across nations, cultures, and language boundaries. Nation-wide educational efforts in digital literacy should meanwhile instruct digital media users in recognizing manipulative techniques to resist the powers of propaganda and advertising.

Propaganda “regiment[s] the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.” (Bernays, 1928 , p. 25). Virality has become the holy grail of digital marketing (Akpinar & Berger, 2017 , p. 318) * Cui bono?

* This phrase in Classical Latin translates into English as “Who benefits?” or “To whom is it a benefit?”

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Consumers is a common term referring to people as targets of marketing and advertising in the digital media, or potential customers with purchasing powers. Terminologically, my personal preference lies with terms digital media users , news readers , or simply us , people who engage with digital technologies. For the sake of simplicity, I will continue using of the term consumers when reviewing the specialized literature, and especially for direct quotes, but will replace it with less consumeristic equivalents, whenever possible.

Internet advertising is also referred to as online advertising or digital advertising , used interchangeably here.

Digital marketing and e-marketing are used interchangeably in marketing communications, emphasizing the electronic nature of the tools and activities.

Search results are considered organic, or natural, if they are primarily based on or relevant to the user’s search query.

HTML refers to the HyperText Markup Language, the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser.

XML refers to the eXtensible Markup Language, which is another markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.

RDFa is short for Resource Description Framework-in-attributes, a structure indented as a description of online data (i.e., metadata) for the Semantic Web, or Web 3.0. At its inception metadata was seen as a form of lightweight e-commerce vocabulary that would tag content with attributes, enriching HTML or XML documents. It is done practically “behind the scenes” or unbeknown to the casual user. Schema.org offers a unified standard of such set of vocabulary tags (also known as metadata or microdata) in RDF formats, that can further be added to online data describe its content (primarily to machines). The library and database management community is seeing a resurgence in the use of such metadata.

See this misleading ad example with unsubstantiated claims evoking the non-existing journal’s name at the FTC’s Business Blog post: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2020/04/no-pain-relief-no-gain-ftc-challenges-claims-aimed-older . (Accessed on 28 May 28, 2021).

Persuasion knowledge can be roughly equated to our remembered life experiences in encountering and recognizing a situation as persuasive such as someone intention to sell you something. See further clarifications on the original Persuasion Knowledge Model by Friestad and Wright’s ( 1994 ) a few pages below.

CTR, or clickthrough rate, is a ratio showing how often people who see an ad click on it. CTR can be used to gauge the performance of certain keywords, ads, or free listings. CTR is calculated with the number of clicks that an ad receives divided by the number of times it is shown: clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. For example, with 5 clicks out of 100 impressions, the CTR is 5% (Google Ads Help, 2021 ).

IAB, or the Interactive Advertising Bureau, is another prominent advertising media coalition that develops industry standards for Europe and USA, headquartered in New York.

See the visuals at https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IAB-Native-Advertising-Playbook2.pdf (Accessed on May 28, 2021) (Interactive Advertising Bureau, 2013 ).

You can see a more up-to-date tally of views of this viral video entitled “Funniest Airport Prank” at https://youtu.be/es2krnRZ2Ko

See details on advised strategies at https://www.facebook.com/business/goals (Accessed on May 28, 2021).

See https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1962159924052051 (Accessed on May 28, 2021).

The Turing Test is an AI inquiry to determine whether or not a computer is capable of “thinking” like a human being, or at least can pass for one. It is named after Alan Turing, a mathematician and computer scientist, considered by some the father of modern computer science, and the founder of the Test.

“The [U.S.] Supreme Court has repeatedly held that false speech enjoys full First Amendment protection. See, e.g., United States v. Alvarez, 567U.S. ___ (2012).” (Baron & Crootof, 2017 , p. 7).

“47U.S.C. § 230 (1996). Sect. 230 provides: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” (Baron & Crootof, 2017 , p. 8).

Storyzy is a French start-up that scans the web for disinformation sources and reported this information (Accessed at https://storyzy.com/ on 1 September 2021).

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Victoria L. Rubin

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Rubin, V.L. (2022). Manipulation in Marketing, Advertising, Propaganda, and Public Relations. In: Misinformation and Disinformation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95656-1_6

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95656-1_6

Published : 15 June 2022

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