It recently occurred to me to search on that just out of curiosity.
Curiously it is the acronym for World Wide Web turned upside down.
So this is what turned up:
http://www.regainyourbrain.org/regain_articles/FINAL REGAIN UNLINKED/bryce mind manipulators.htm
Yeah, I read The Hidden Persuaders way back when.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=291
Mass Mind Control Through Network Television
psik
PS - The firs link is screwed up because they put spaces in it. You have to copy and paste it.
“Heavy television viewers tended to develop a “mean world syndrome”, believing that the world was a nastier place than light television viewers."
One of my local television news programs ran a “special report” the other day about the “dangers” of putting family decals on the rear window of your car. You know the little cutouts you sometimes see that represent dad, mom, the kids, sometimes even the pets. Sometimes they even put each family member’s name on them. Seems harmless enough to me, but apparently the ace reporters had found a law enforcement “expert” to say that these things could be dangerous because they give out too much information about your family, where you work, where you go to church, and so on. But get this… the only shred of evidence they produced that anyone actually does any of this was a segment from the cable television show “Dexter” in which a serial killer uses this information to address a liltle boy by name, thereby convincing him that he knows him!
One problem with the internet is that it enables easy confirmation bias. If you search for a topic in which you already have a strong opinion, you will find plenty of evidence to support your assertions. One way to combat this kind of confirmation bias is to search for the opposite of your original search and compare the validity of the evidence on both sides.
Certainly, mass mind manipulation is attempted by many types of organizations and industries, and I doubt anyone is claiming it dose not exist. How effective it is and is there evidence that it can really be used to accomplish world wide nefarious proposes? Religions, governments, think tanks, industries, political parties, and organization of every type use it. How susceptible to we are as individuals is widely variable however.
News is a form of this as is advertising. Is information that changes opinions on a mass scale always a bad thing? Under the moniker of “mass mind manipulation”, this phenomenon automatically carries a clear bias and plugs nicley into a paranoid world view very effectively. “Influence of opinions” might be a better way to explore this topic, but I think it needs to be more specific concerning what kind of influence is being attempted and by whom to get real cause and effect data. As a search topic, it seems to me to be too broad.