From print to prompt. The seduction of mass media and algorithmic manipulation
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In the era of traditional mass media, of print, radio, and television, political communication was criticized for functioning in the logic of collective seduction. Charismatic leaders addressed a heterogeneous, mass audience. Political and journalistic elites had access to the microphone, in a public square or in a radio or TV studio. Those who controlled the communication channel debated topics of general interest, while the national audience, seduced by rhetoric and charisma, consumed media content – print, radio, TV – as a major collective experience.
In liberal and democratic regimes, media seduction involved rivalry, exposure, repetition, oratory, presence, visibility, media coverage. In the era of printed press, newspaper readers could accept, circulate, reject the message, comment on the headlines in "the public square" together with others, having time for distancing and slow thinking, in the sense of Daniel Kahneman. Propaganda and manipulation functioned through total control of mass communication means by the state power, through editorial censorship, only when the media were controlled by authoritarian, communist, or Nazi political power. Goebbels proved that whoever controls the media controls the political narratives: he brought the radio into the homes of Germans, turning it into an instrument of daily propaganda and uniformization of the public imaginary.
The spectacle state of R.-G. Schwartzenberg, in the sense established by the theory of the mediatized society, does not eliminate freedom of choice, but rather, the star system turns elections into a show and puts it on stage. The general public was seduced by political actors through words, sound, and image, but not completely captured. Even within the spectacle of media electoral debates, there remained a space for critical distance, a margin for interpretation, a time for processing and understanding the message. In the famous case of John F. Kennedy vs. Richard Nixon, those who watched the debate on television saw Kennedy as a charismatic winner, while radio listeners perceived Nixon as more convincing. The medium influences perception, but the choice remained with the viewer or listener.
In political science, influence is a form of non-coercive political power. Pierre Clastres describes it as a soft version of power, as opposed to the coercive Weberian power that can resort to force if you do not submit to it. In social psychology, from Robert Cialdini we know that people can be convinced not only through arguments but influenced by sympathy, attractiveness, compliments, or emotional resonance. Seduction thus has a positive dimension: you can be attracted by honesty, enchanted and seduced by compatibility of values, pleasures, concerns. But this mechanism of influence can also be negatively charged: through calculated use of charm to gain a benefit. However, ultimately, seduction remains a form of play that seeks emotional captivation, not total control of the other’s decision; seduction allows a certain degree of freedom of choice, while manipulation nullifies it without the influenced person even realizing it.
A corrupt form of influence, in political communication manipulation is exercised to the detriment of the manipulated, often using distortion, lies, falsification of information to gain total psychological control. The victim of manipulation is unaware of the stratagem: they do not feel that they are being manipulated, but believe that they have chosen on their own. When controlling radio and cinema, Nazi propagandists were perfectly aware that they were spewing lies when they promised Germans what people wanted to hear.
In the era of information abundance of digital platforms, algorithms build narcissistic environments in which users are attracted, validated, and enamored with their own agendas and "truths." Unlike newspaper readers, radio listeners, or television viewers who consumed media and experienced almost simultaneously public, common, verifiable truths, on social networks – in echo chambers or in epistemic filter bubbles – the user consumes personalized, tailored, and filtered information by biases and algorithms, in accordance with their predispositions and interests. Algorithmically manipulated, the user is delivered interpretations compatible with their psychological profile. In bubbles, content creators are seduced by the "truth" of their own theories, enclosed in an environment that constantly confirms their beliefs and perceptions, building "multiple realities," often parallel.
On new social media, the common space of public interest debate is fragmented, but the illusion of the agora is preserved through the multiplication of parallel discussion spaces. The most skeptical observers warn about the risks of isolation, ideological enclaving, through epistemic bubbles. A polarized and disintegrated digital society in "isolated online islands," where individuals using TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube reduce debate to the themes that concern their personal agenda, has the effect of radicalizing the ideological communities online, with a tendency to exclude, caricature, discredit, and antagonize different parties in civil society, sometimes unconsciously promoting hate speech and intolerance. In social media, the algorithmization of information and ideological segregation in increasingly radicalized communities, ultra-progressive or ultra-conservative, structuring frustrations, disappointments, and the desire for revenge, pose major risks to the republic and liberal democracy.
The transformation is not only technological but structural. The recommendation and amplification algorithms of digital platforms do not merely (re)distribute content but configure the framework in which the media flow becomes accessible. Biases decide what appears (or does not appear) in the feed, the debate topic is not always of general interest, and information circulates in a preconfigured and filtered environment by algorithms that push the user to endless scrolling. Online manipulation operates not only through the content of the message but also through the invisible selection of what becomes visible.
Traditional mass media produced a common space for debate and collective informational experience, a res publica, in the sense of Cass Sunstein, in which topics of general interest were shared, lived in real-time, by a national audience. Digital platforms no longer aggregate but segment: each user receives their own version of the public agenda. Stimulated by notifications and systems trained to trigger emotional reactions, in the logic of Daniel Kahneman, our fast thinking system is activated and systematically exploited: platforms do not seek reflection but impulsive reflex. We no longer encounter the plurality of voices that meet on the same topic of general interest, but paradoxically, on the Internet, we become captives of informational selections made by intelligent machines.
Online communities coagulate users with identical passions who react emotionally to exciting content, often unverified and amplified by biases. If in classic journalism at least some journalists are honest and responsible in the process of selection, documentation, and verification of news, algorithms and biases do not operate with ethical criteria but with performance criteria: they maximize engagement and profit, regardless of the veracity of the information.
The audience of newspapers, radio, and television could bend to the message or, on the contrary, the receiver could let themselves be seduced by the sender. In the era of digital platforms, the user is more often confirmed by the content delivered to them and which mobilizes them ideologically. The political center and moderation took place in traditional mass media. Extremists and populists succeed in the era of personalized information because the algorithm privileges radical voices. Sovereignist messages do not circulate as general public discourse in mainstream media but as micro-narratives adapted to different online communities, and voters resonate with myths and conspiracy stories, activating in parallel streams of "reality."
Moderation is uninteresting for social media algorithms that cultivate hysteria and panic. On TikTok, short clips with simplified and revengeful political messages are algorithmically favored, transforming visibility into political capital. Radicalized in their epistemic bubbles, the digital native youth do not question their beliefs but seek to culturally cancel the socially conditioned person in different informational bubbles. Sensationalism and exaggeration, regardless of whether the information is false or verified, ensure a faster and wider dissemination of content in the online environment (Vosoughi et al., 2018).
Attention is manipulated in an informational universe that confirms one’s own beliefs and accentuates prejudices, and the user is enchanted by the echo of their own voice. Algorithmic manipulation operates by recycling what the individual has already chewed on in the network. In this model, the voter is no longer treated as a citizen but as a data profile, calibrated in real-time and fed with their consumption history. They are no longer invited to take time to think, to question their own perceptions or prior judgments, but react automatically. In Nicholas Carr's terms, the digital ecosystem reshapes the way we think, impairs the ability to concentrate, and makes traditional linear reading and deep reflection difficult.
If seduction in traditional media involved a slower process of persuasion, generative Artificial Intelligence compresses this process into an instant response: it personalizes, anticipates, and produces the right content before the question is even formulated. It not only shapes and individualizes the message but validates the human author of the prompt by generating desirable content in real-time. In recent campaigns, the use of AI for generating political images or videos has made the difference between authentic and fabricated increasingly difficult to discern.
In this invisible architecture, freedom is not suppressed but mimicked. The social media user does not feel manipulated, constrained, but valued, a hero of the network around which followers gravitate like planets around a star. What they see, consume, distribute, or comment on is already filtered according to their previous search profile, and what they distribute is already optimized for visibility.
In the republic 2.0, seduction, in its classical sense, recalls the playful rituals of a bygone era. In its place, emotions, frustration, indignation are amplified, exhibitionism and egocentrism are cultivated, and reactions – converted into engagement – are monetized by Big Tech companies. A subtle form of manipulation, almost impossible to distinguish from our own will, and for that reason, so effective.
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