Crowd manipulation

Crowd manipulation is the intentional use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology, rhetoric, and related disciplines to control or influence the thoughts and, ultimately, the behavior of a crowd for a specific purpose. This practice is common to politics and business. The ethical use of crowd manipulation is debatable and depends partially on the intention of and the means used by the manipulator.

Terminology

A crowd is defined here as a large, present, and definable group of people gathered together for a purpose. To manipulate means to control or influence.

Manipulative techniques

Verbal techniques

At 22, Winston Churchill documented his conclusions about speaking to crowds. He titled it “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric” and it outlined what he believed to be the essentials of any effective speech. Among these essentials are:

• “Correctness of diction,” or proper word choice to convey the exact meaning of the orator;
• “Rhythm,” or a speech’s sound appeal through “long, rolling and sonorous” sentences;
• “Accumulation of argument,” or the orator’s “rapid succession of waves of sound and vivid pictures” to bring the crowd to a thundering ascent;
• “Analogy,” or the linking of the unknown to the familiar; and
• “Wild extravagance,” or the use of expressions, however extreme, which embody the feelings of the orator and his audience.

Adolf Hitler believed he could apply the lessons of propaganda he learned painfully from the Allies during World War I and apply those lessons to benefit Germany thereafter. The following points offer helpful insight into his thinking behind his on-stage performances:

• Appeal to the masses: “[Propaganda] must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses,” rather than the “scientifically trained intelligentsia.”
• Target the emotions: “[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect.”
• Keep your message simple: “It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided…The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.”
• Prepare your audience for the worst-case scenario: “[Prepare] the individual soldier for the terrors of war, and thus [help] to preserve him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased his rage and hatred against the vile enemy.”
• Make no half statements: “…emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”
• Repeat your message constantly: “[Propagandist technique] must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”

Application

Politics

• Organization & Agitation

Business

• Advertising & Promotion

Recommended Reading

• Bernays, Edward L., and Mark Crispin Miller. Propaganda. Brooklyn, NY: Ig Publishing, 2004.
• Curtis, Adam. "The Century of the Self" (documentary). British Broadcasting Cooperation, UK, 2002.
• Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., 1973.
• Humes, James C. The Sir Winston Method: The Five Secrets of Speaking the Language of Leadership. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
• Johnson, Paul. Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. , 2001.
• Lasswell, Harold. Propaganda Technique in World War I. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1971.
• Smith, Jr., Paul A. On Political War. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989.