The US has been honing its psychological warfare skills since the 19th century, when it started sending anthropologists onto battlefields, says Annalee Newitz

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15789794

Then things got weirder. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, worked with US intelligence to combine his uncle’s work with public relations. Ultimately, he used his marketing acumen to help the CIA foment a coup in Guatemala in the 1950s. His work is partly why so many propaganda campaigns resemble ads – both use psychology in an attempt to change audiences’ behaviour.

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed in 2018, US political operatives continue to use this toolkit. Instead of sending anthropologists into war zones, they build “psychographic profiles” of people by harvesting their data from social media sites, then targeting them with ads.

  • OptionalOP
    5•6 months ago

    Then things got weirder. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, worked with US intelligence to combine his uncle’s work with public relations. Ultimately, he used his marketing acumen to help the CIA foment a coup in Guatemala in the 1950s. His work is partly why so many propaganda campaigns resemble ads – both use psychology in an attempt to change audiences’ behaviour.

    As the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed in 2018, US political operatives continue to use this toolkit. Instead of sending anthropologists into war zones, they build “psychographic profiles” of people by harvesting their data from social media sites, then targeting them with ads.