Chapter 16: Exercises

Digital Media, Social Networks, and Viral Spread Propaganda, Power, and Persuasion: A Critical Study of Influence, Disinformation, and Resistance

Exercise 16.1 — News Feed Audit (Individual, Medium)

Objective: Apply the five-part propaganda anatomy to naturally occurring social media content.

Instructions:

Open whichever social media platform you use most frequently for following news or political content. Scroll through your feed and record the first twenty consecutive items — posts, shares, videos, articles, or advertisements — without filtering or skipping anything.

For each of the twenty items, record the following in a structured log:

  1. Type of content (original post, share, video, article link, advertisement, meme)
  2. Platform of origin if different from where you encountered it
  3. Apparent source (person, organization, page) — and your assessment of whether that is the actual source
  4. Subject matter and core claim (one sentence)
  5. Dominant emotional register (informational/low-arousal, positive high-arousal, negative high-arousal — specify which: fear, outrage, disgust, humor, righteous indignation, etc.)
  6. Engagement metrics visible: like/reaction count, share/retweet count, comment count
  7. Provisional classification: news/information, opinion/commentary, advertising, entertainment, potential propaganda — with one sentence of reasoning

After completing the log for all twenty items, answer the following analysis questions:

Analysis Questions:

a) What proportion of your twenty items were high-arousal emotional content? What proportion were informational/low-arousal? Does this distribution surprise you? Why or why not?

b) Of the items you provisionally classified as potential propaganda, apply the full five-part anatomy to each one. What was the most difficult part of the anatomy to assess, and why?

c) What does your twenty-item sample suggest about the emotional environment your feed creates? How does this relate to the engagement optimization principles discussed in Chapter 16?

d) Select the single item you found most persuasive — the one you felt most inclined to share or engage with. Analyze why. Which STEPPS elements did it deploy? Does your analysis change how you feel about sharing it?

Submission: Written log (twenty entries) plus analysis responses (minimum 800 words total for analysis).

Exercise 16.2 — One-Week Trigger Mapping (Individual, Ongoing)

Objective: Identify your own emotional response patterns to social media content and connect them to propaganda dynamics.

Instructions:

For one full week, maintain a daily log of social media content that generates a strong emotional response in you. "Strong" means content that made you want to share it, comment on it, or return to it — or that created a lingering feeling of anger, fear, disgust, sadness, or elation.

You are not asked to log everything you see — only the content that triggered a notable response. Aim for three to five entries per day.

For each entry, record:

  1. Platform, date, time of encounter
  2. Brief content description (do not reproduce the content in full)
  3. Your emotional response: what exactly did you feel, and how intense was it (1–5 scale)?
  4. Did you share, like, comment, or engage? If you did not, why not?
  5. In retrospect, do you believe the content was accurate?

At the end of the week, review all entries and answer:

Pattern Analysis:

a) What are the three content types or subject areas that most reliably triggered strong responses in you? Be specific: was it content about a particular political issue? Content about your own identity group? Health information? Content about people you consider adversaries?

b) What is the relationship between emotional intensity and sharing behavior in your log? Does higher emotional intensity correlate with higher likelihood to share? Did you share anything that you later doubted was accurate?

c) Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral (2018) found that false news was more novel and more emotionally intense than true news. Looking at your log: was there any correlation between the content that generated the strongest responses and the content you are least certain was accurate?

d) Given what you now know about the STEPPS framework and engagement optimization, how would you describe your own vulnerability profile as a social media user? What kinds of content are you systematically more likely to share without adequate accuracy-checking?

Note on honesty: This exercise is most valuable when you are honest with yourself. You will not be judged for the content that triggered you — everyone has emotional responses to social media, and having them does not make you propagandized. The goal is self-knowledge as the foundation for critical practice.

Submission: Daily log plus pattern analysis (minimum 600 words for analysis section).

Exercise 16.3 — The Blacktivist Investigation (Individual, Research)

Objective: Analyze a documented piece of coordinated inauthentic behavior using primary sources.

Instructions:

Using the materials listed in Further Reading for this chapter, research the Internet Research Agency's "Blacktivist" account in sufficient depth to write a full primary source analysis.

Your primary sources should include at minimum:

  • Senate Intelligence Committee Report, Volume 2 (2019) — the sections specifically addressing Black-targeted operations
  • Any preserved examples of Blacktivist content reproduced in the Committee report or in journalistic coverage
  • Twitter-released IRA data (available through Harvard Dataverse) for any Blacktivist-associated Twitter accounts

Secondary sources you may use:

  • Academic analyses of the IRA's targeting of Black communities
  • Journalistic investigations from publications with documented access to platform data (New York Times, ProPublica, The Atlantic)

Research Questions to Address:

  1. What was the documented follower count of the Blacktivist Facebook page at its peak, and how does this compare to the authentic Black Lives Matter official page?

  2. What categories of content did Blacktivist post, and in what approximate proportions (based on available evidence)?

  3. The Senate Intelligence Committee describes the account's goals in specific language. What language did the Committee use, and what does it tell you about the strategic intent of the operation?

  4. What evidence, if any, exists about the Blacktivist account's role in organizing real-world events?

  5. Apply the full five-part anatomy framework to the Blacktivist account as a whole (treating the account itself as the propaganda unit). Be rigorous about what can be established from sources versus what is inference.

  6. The Blacktivist account mixed accurate civil rights content with misleading electoral demobilization content. What does this mixing strategy tell you about the role of credibility-building in propaganda operations? Connect this to the Big Tobacco "Doubt Is Our Product" case and to the Nazi information control studied earlier in this course.

Submission: Analytical essay, 1,200–1,500 words, with citations. Include a brief bibliography of sources consulted.

Exercise 16.4 — Dark Social Provenance Trace (Individual, Investigative)

Objective: Understand the origin characteristics and forwarding dynamics of content received through dark social channels.

Instructions:

Identify a claim, video, audio message, or image that you have received through a private messaging app — WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, or a similar platform — within the past month. Choose something about which you are genuinely uncertain of the origin.

If you have not recently received such content personally, ask a family member, friend, or community contact if they have received and would share (with appropriate privacy considerations) a recently circulated message about health, politics, or community affairs.

Your Investigation:

Step 1: Document the content in full (or describe it if documentation raises privacy concerns). What claim does it make? What emotional register does it use? What apparent credibility markers does it carry (professional appearance, cited sources, institutional names)?

Step 2: Attempt to trace the content back to its earliest identifiable source. Methods may include: reverse image search (for images); verbatim text search in public social media and news databases (Google, Twitter search); searching for distinctive phrases from the content; searching the name of any apparent source (organization, individual) the content cites.

Step 3: Document your trace: how far back were you able to trace it? Where does the trail end? What is the earliest identifiable publication of this content you can find?

Step 4: Compare what the content presents as its source with what your trace reveals. If you were unable to trace it: what does that inability tell you about dark social's origin-obscuring function?

Analysis:

a) How long did your provenance trace take? What tools and methods did you use? What were the limits of those tools for content that originated in or primarily circulated through messaging apps?

b) If you were a professional fact-checker, what resources would you need to conduct this trace more effectively? What resources are structurally unavailable to any external party because of encryption?

c) What does the journey of this piece of content through multiple forwards tell you about how social proof accumulates in dark social environments? At what point in the forwarding chain did you receive it, and how does that position affect its perceived credibility?

d) Connect your findings to the WhatsApp mob violence cases in India discussed in Case Study 2 of this chapter. What structural features of your investigated content's journey parallel those documented cases?

Submission: Investigation log plus analysis responses (minimum 700 words for analysis).

Exercise 16.5 — Group Exercise: Designing the Response (Group, Seminar)

Objective: Apply chapter concepts to a realistic intervention design challenge.

Background:

Return to the scenario described in the chapter's opening. Tariq is in a family WhatsApp group — his parents, aunts, and uncles across three countries. A video claiming that COVID vaccines are designed to sterilize Muslims has been circulating in the group for three weeks. The video has professional production values, a narrator presenting himself as a physician, and 4.7 million views on the public platform where it is hosted. Multiple family members have endorsed it. No one has challenged it. Tariq knows it is false but does not know how to respond.

Group Task:

Working in groups of four to five, design an intervention strategy for Tariq. Your strategy should be realistic, specific, and grounded in what the chapter's research reveals about dark social, accuracy nudges, and persuasion in trusted social networks.

Your strategy should address:

The What: What specific content would you send into the family group? Design or describe the actual message(s) Tariq should send — not just principles but specific text or materials. Consider: should Tariq engage publicly in the group, or privately one-on-one with individual family members? Should he send a fact-check link? A video response? A personal statement? Something else?

The How: Given what you know about dark social dynamics and the social proof of trusted relationships, how should Tariq frame his intervention? What credibility cues would be most effective — his own personal credibility, expert authority, institutional fact-checks, or something else? Why?

The Who: Are there family members who would be most receptive to Tariq's intervention, and should he prioritize them? What does research on persuasion networks suggest about the most efficient targets for intervention within a social group?

The Why It's Hard: What structural features of the WhatsApp environment work against Tariq's intervention? Be specific: consider the social proof the video has already accumulated, the emotional register it activated (Muslim protective anxiety), the trusted-source social proof of the family members who endorsed it, and the production quality advantage the original video has over a text message correction.

The Limits: What can Tariq realistically hope to achieve, and what is beyond his reach regardless of how well he executes? What would need to change at the platform level or the societal level to address this problem more systematically?

Presentation: Each group should present their strategy to the full seminar, followed by discussion. Groups should be prepared to defend their choices against questions about: what the research evidence supports, what is realistic given Tariq's relationships and position, and what trade-offs they made.

Written Deliverable: Group report summarizing the strategy, with citations to supporting research, 800–1,000 words.

Chapter 16 | Propaganda, Power, and Persuasion