De citit: Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

Mi-a luat aproape două luni să termin cartea, dar nu pentru că era plictisitoare, din contră, doar că eram mereu ocupat și nu apucam să citesc decât câteva zeci de pagini pe săptămână. Dacă lucrați în marketing sau orice domeniu ce are tangență cu promovarea pe internet veți aprecia cartea.

Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator e scrisă de Ryan Holiday anul trecut. Tipul, cunoscut ca directorul de marketing pentru American Apparel, prezintă în carte modalitățile prin care presa online și blogurile pot fi și sunt manipulate pentru a genera publicitate gratuită pentru branduri, produse, servicii, companii. În plus cartea trage un semnal de alarmă asupra lipsei de obiectivitate de care dau dovadă o parte din publicațiile consacrate din State, fie că vorbim de bloguri, site-uri de știri, ziare sau televiziuni.

Deși pe alocuri sunt și elemente prezentate exagerat sau realitatea e puțin deformată pentru a întări convingerile autorului (și a atrage atenție asupra cărții sale), cartea poate fi utilă pentru cei care vor să afle mai multe detalii despre cum poate fi influențată mass-media, cum poți atrage atenția asupra brandului tău. De asemenea, cartea ne reamintește că nu tot ce zboară se mănâncă, deci aveți grijă de unde vă informați și în ce publicații aveți încredere, când citiți știri.

Câteva paragrafe care mi-au plăcut găsiți mai jos.

Despre cum se obțin subiectele pentru articole:

Here’s how it works. There are thousands of bloggers scouring the web looking for things to write about. They must write several times each day. They search Twitter, Facebook, comments sections, press releases, rival blogs, and other sources to develop their material.
Above them are hundreds of mid-level online and offline journalists on websites and blogs and in magazines and newspapers who use those bloggers below them as sources and filters. They also have to write constantly—and engage in the same search for buzz, only a little more developed.
Above them are the major national websites, publications, and television stations. They in turn browse the scourers below them for their material, grabbing their leads and turning them into truly national conversations. These are the most influential bunch—the New York Times, the Today Show, and CNN—and dwindling revenues or not, they have massive reach.

Despre surse:

Bloggers are under incredible pressure to produce, leaving little time for research or verification, let alone for speaking to sources. In some cases, the story they are chasing is so crazy that they don’t want to risk doing research, because the whole facade would collapse.
From my experience, bloggers operate by some general rules of thumb: If a source can’t be contacted by e-mail, they probably can’t be a source. I’ve talked to bloggers on the phone only a few times, ever—but thousands of times over e-mail. If background information isn’t publicly or easily available, it probably can’t be included. Writers are at the mercy of official sources, such as press releases, spokesmen, government officials, and media kits. And these are for the instances they even bother to check anything.

De ce avem parte de știri negative:

The media is in the evil position of needing to go negative and play tricks with your psyche in order to drive you to share their material online. For instance, in studies where subjects are shown negative video footage (war, an airplane crash, an execution, a natural disaster), they become more aroused, can better recall what happened, pay more attention, and engage more cognitive resources to consume the media than nonnegative footage.5 That’s the kind of stuff that will make you hit “share this.” They push your buttons so you’ll press theirs.
Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair—these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy—those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter—these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation. Online games and apps operate on the same principles and exploit the same impulses: be consuming without frustrating, manipulative without revealing the strings.

Despre știrile senzaționale:

THE WORLD IS BORING, BUT THE NEWS IS EXCITING. IT’S a paradox of modern life. Journalists and bloggers are not magicians, but if you consider the material they’ve got to work with and the final product they crank out day in and day out, you must give them some credit. Shit becomes sugar.
If there is one special skill that journalists can claim, it is the ability to find the angle on any story. That the news is ever chosen over entertainment in the fight for attention is testament to their skill. High-profile bloggers rightly take great pride in this ability. This pride and this pressure is what we media manipulators use against them. Pride goeth before the fall.
No matter how dull, mundane, or complex a topic may be, a good reporter must find the angle. Bloggers, descended from these journalists, have to take it to an entirely new level. They need to find not only the angle but the click-driving headline, an eye-catching image; generate comments and links; and in some cases, squeeze in some snark. And they have to do it up to a dozen times a day without the help of an editor. They can smell the angle of a story like a shark smells blood in the water. Because the better the angle, the more the blogger gets paid.

Găsiți câteva pagini din carte aici, dacă vreți să vă faceți o idee despre conținut. Eu am citit-o în format electronic, dar poate fi comandată și pe hârtie.

Clipul de promovare al cărții: