In 2002, the French writer Sylvain Timsit published a decalogue of the strategies most frequently used by the media and political elites to manipulate the masses .

It is a list that has been attributed by a press error to Noam Chomsky, philosopher, linguist and politician who has also described how through entertainment the mass media achieve the reproduction of certain relations of domination.

Sylvain Timsit’s strategies of public manipulation

Timsit’s list has become very popular because it describes in a concrete way ten situations in which we could surely all identify. We will now describe Sylvain Timsit’s strategies for manipulating public opinion and society .

1. Encourage distraction

Distraction is a cognitive process that consists of paying attention to some stimuli and not to others in an involuntary way and for different reasons, among which we find the interest generated by these stimuli and the intensity or attractiveness of these .

It is a process that can easily be used as a strategy to divert attention from political or economic conflicts. It is usually done by encouraging information overload, or when such information contains a strong emotional charge .

For example, when news organizations spend entire days reporting on tragic events and minimize the time spent reporting on problematic political events. This type of distraction encourages disinterest in gaining in-depth knowledge and discussing the long-term implications of political decisions.

2. Creating the problems and also the solutions

The author explains this method by means of the formula: problem-reaction-solution, and explains that a situation can be explained with the full intention of causing a specific reaction to a specific audience , so that this audience demands measures and decision making that solve the situation.

For example, when the political powers remain indifferent to the increase in violence in a city, and then deploy police laws that affect freedom and not just decrease violence. The same is true when an economic crisis is defined as a necessary evil that can only be countered by cuts in public services.

3. Appealing to gradualness

It refers to implementing changes that are important in a gradual way, so that public and political reactions are equally gradual and easier to contain.

Sylvain Timsit gives as an example the neoliberal socioeconomic policies that began in the 80s, and that have had a gradual impact without their negative consequences being able to open the way to a really massive revolution.

4. Defer and leave for tomorrow

Many of the measures taken by governments are not popular among the population, so one of the most used and effective strategies is to make people think that this measure is painful but necessary , and that it is necessary to agree on it now although its effects will be perceived years later.

In this way we get used to the process of change and even to its negative consequences, and since it is not an issue that affects us immediately we can associate ourselves more easily with the possible risks.

As an example, Sylvain Timsit mentions the passage to the euro that was proposed in 1994-1995, but applied until 2001, or the international agreements that the United States imposed since 2001 in Latin America, but that would be in force by 2005.

4. Infantile the interlocutor

Another strategy that is very frequently used is to position the public as a group of naive people or people who are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves , or of making critical and responsible decisions.

By positioning viewers in this way, the media and political powers make it easier for the public to effectively identify with that position and end up accepting the measures imposed and even supporting them with conviction.

5. Appeal to emotions rather than reflection

It refers to sending messages that impact directly on the emotional and sensitive register of the audience, so that through fear, compassion, hope, illusion, among other emotions or sensations, it is easier to implement ideals of success, or norms of behavior and of how interpersonal relationships should be .

6. Recognize the other as ignorant and mediocre

This strategy is reflected, for example, in the significant differences between the quality of education and the resources allocated to it according to the socio-economic and political class to which it is directed.

This means that the use of technologies is reserved for a few, which in turn makes large-scale social organization difficult. Likewise, makes some populations recognize themselves as simply victims , without possibilities of being active.

7. Promoting complacency in mediocrity

It is about reinforcing the feeling of success and satisfaction for the situation in which we find ourselves, even if it is a precarious or unfair situation , which makes us not develop critical thinking about that situation or even justify it.

8. Reinforce self-blame

At the other extreme, we make people think that the situation we are in is our fault, that is, we make people think that they are responsible for their own misfortune (that they think they are unintelligent or that they make little effort; instead of recognizing that there is a social system that tends towards injustice).

Thus organization and the exercise of resistance or revolt are avoided ; and people tend to self-evaluate and blame themselves, which in turn generates passivity and favours the appearance of other complications such as depressive or anxious states.

10. Knowing people better than they know themselves

Timsit proposes that the advances that science has had in the understanding of human beings, both in the area of psychology, biology and neuroscience, have achieved a greater knowledge of our functioning; however, they have not generated a process of self-knowledge at the individual level, with which the elites continue as the holders of wisdom and control of others.

Bibliographic references:

  • Timsit, S. (2002). Stratégies de manipulation. Les stratégies et les techniques des Maîtres du Monde pour la manipulation de l’opinion publique et de la société. Retrieved 9 April 2018. Available at http://www.syti.net/Manipulations.html
  • Timsit, S. (2002). Strategies of manipulation. The strategies and techniques of the Masters of the World for the manipulation of public opinion and society. Retrieved April 9, 2018. Available at http://www.syti.net/ES/Manipulations.html