Crowd manipulation
Application of crowd psychology / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Crowd manipulation is the intentional or unwitting use of techniques based on the principles of crowd psychology to engage, control, or influence the desires of a crowd in order to direct its behavior toward a specific action.[1] This practice is common to religion, politics and business and can facilitate the approval or disapproval or indifference to a person, policy, or product. The ethicality of crowd manipulation is commonly questioned.
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Crowd manipulation differs from propaganda—although they may reinforce one another to produce a desired result. If propaganda is "the consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group",[2] crowd manipulation is the relatively brief call to action once the seeds of propaganda (i.e. more specifically "pre-propaganda"[3]) are sown and the public is organized into a crowd. The propagandist appeals to the masses, even if compartmentalized, whereas the crowd-manipulator appeals to a segment of the masses assembled into a crowd (such as a political demonstration or a congregation or a camp meeting) in real time.[4] In situations such as a national emergency, however, a crowd manipulator may leverage mass media to address the masses in real time as if speaking to a crowd.[5][need quotation to verify]
Crowd manipulation differs from crowd control, which serves a security function. Local authorities use crowd-control methods to contain and disperse crowds and to prevent and respond to unruly and unlawful acts such as rioting and looting.[6]