“Manipulation in social media” reached its second edition – Mehr news agency Iran and world’s news
According to Mehr reporter, the book “Manipulation in social media; Rayanshi Propaganda” written by Samuel C. Woolley and Philip N. Howard, translated by Abbas Rezaei Samrin and Rasul Safar, has recently been published in the second edition by Hamshahri publishing house.
The contents of this book are the results of the researches of its two authors and have an interdisciplinary nature that were conducted at the intersection of the fields of communication, political science, social science, and computer science. An important topic discussed in this book is “Computer Propaganda”. This term refers to the recent phenomenon of disinformation and digital manipulation. Computer propaganda, as a communication method, refers to the use of algorithms, automatic processes and human supervision with the aim of managing the overall space of social media or distributing misleading information through these networks.
The author of the book “Manipulation in Social Media” says that computer propaganda is technically defined as a set of variables, models, codes and algorithms that are at the disposal of creators, service platforms and companies that benefit from them. This “technical” or mechanical description may make us consider computer propaganda as unbiased and inevitable, and such a perception can lead to the creation of dangerous situations; Situations that convince us to look for “social data science” to understand complex socio-technical trends and to understand the pervasive impact of computer propaganda in politics.
The upcoming book has 9 chapters, which are respectively: “Russia; The origin of digital misinformation”, “Ukraine; External Threats and Internal Challenges”, “Canada; Making all kinds of robots”, “Poland; The prevalence of manipulative ecosystems in social networks”, “Taiwan; Confronting Digital Democracy with Automated Autocracy”, “Brazil; Intervention of political robots in basic events”, “Germany; A cautionary tale”, “United States; Online Consensus Building” and “China; Alternative model of a common practice”.
In a part of this book we read:
In this regard, Twitter notes that this information occasionally circulates in the mainstream press and is compiled by major Polish news organizations. For example, TVP reported the false story of the sale of Russian warships to Egypt, which was initially shared by a dubious Russian news site. In addition, the report claims that “Russian trolls are very active in Poland” and, relying on fake tools (such as poor Polish grammar and the use of Russian idioms), claim to have promoted fake Russian accounts on the largest Polish news portals. . However, since it is usually impossible to clearly attribute some narratives directly to Russian agents, the reports are unable to provide conclusive evidence for their claims. Therefore, in a strange twist that shows the complexities of the non-online information ecosystem, the Polish branch of the controversial Russian news agency Sputnik published a satirical article in Polish entitled “How to spot a Russian troll” and criticized the reporting methods of these media outlets.
The second edition of this book has been published with 366 pages, number of 300 copies and price of 150 thousand Tomans.