This documentary is worth watching for many reasons but there’s a particularly fascinating section in which the presenter goes undercover at a digital activism training course. The facilitator describes how he spends half an hour a day finding liberal books on Amazon and giving one star reviews, before explaining how this practice needs to be extended across other platforms in order to counteract the influence of liberal culture on young people. I knew this occurred but I’d never heard someone advocate the practice, let alone so enthusiastically. It brings me back to a question I’ve thought about a lot recently: how much of ‘trolling’ is self-understood as digital activism of this sort?

Categories: Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Defensive Elites Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Thinking

Mark