Social Networks and Mass Psychology

The Internet as a Terrain and Vehicle for Hatred and Fear

Abstract

The political world was taken aback in the middle of the past decade by the discovery of the influence of advertising companies that would have used voters' digital tracks to manipulate them. With the help of Big Data and the algorithms, groups would have been able to hack elections around the world, creating a new weapon of psychological manipulation that would pose a threat to democracy. This article, however, intends to shed light on another perspective: although technological advances require specific analyzes, mechanisms of subjective social control are not new. Thus, the tactics used today are not the invention of a new way of doing politics, they are updated versions of an old manipulation system. If democracy is at risk because people are being targeted by groups that try to influence them without their knowing it, it has always been, because whenever public opinion was important, there were articulated systems to manipulate it.