PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT INC.
Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:54 am
Perception management is a term originated by the US military.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) gives this definition:Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator's objectives.
In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.
[1] "Perception" is defined as the “process by which individuals select, organize, and interpret the input from their senses to give meaning and order to the world around them”
[2] Components of perception include the perceiver, target of perception, and the situation.
Factors that influence the perceiver:
Schema: organization and interpretation of information based on past experiences and knowledge.
Motivational state: needs, values, and desires of a perceiver at the time of perception.
Mood: emotions of the perceiver at the time of perception.
Factors that influence the target:
Ambiguity: a lack of clarity. If ambiguity increasing, the perceiver may find it harder to form an accurate perception
Social status: a person’s real or perceived position in society or in an organization
Impression management: an attempt to control the perceptions or impressions of others.
Targets are likely to use impression management tactics when interacting with perceivers who have power over them. Several impression management tactics include behavioral matching between the target of perception and the perceiver, self-promotion (presenting one’s self in a positive light), conforming to situational norms, appreciating others, or being consistent.
[3] The phrase "perception management" has often functioned as a euphemism for "an aspect of information warfare." A scholar in the field notes a distinction between "perception management" and public diplomacy, which "does not, as a rule, involve falsehood and deception, whereas these are important ingredients of perception management; the purpose is to get the other side to believe what one wishes it to believe, whatever the truth may be."
[4] The phrase "perception management" is filtering into common use as a synonym for "persuasion."
Public relations firms now offer "perception management" as one of their services.
Similarly, public officials who are being accused of shading the truth are now frequently charged with engaging in "perception management" when disseminating information to media or to the general public.
Although perception management operations are typically carried out within the international arena between governments, and between governments and citizens, use of perception management techniques have become part of mainstream information management systems in many ways that do not concern military campaigns or government relations with citizenry.
Businesses may even contract with other businesses to conduct perception management for them, or they may conduct it in-house with their public relations staff.
As Stan Moore has written, "Just because truth has been omitted, does not mean that truth is not true.
Just because reality has not been perceived, does not mean that it is not real."[citation needed]
There are nine strategies for perception management.
These include:
Preparation — Having clear goals and knowing the ideal position you want people to hold.
Credibility — Make sure all of your information is consistent, often using prejudices or expectations to increase credibility.
Multichannel support — Have multiple arguments and fabricated facts to reinforce your information.
Centralized control — Employing entities such as propaganda ministries or bureaus.Security — The nature of the deception campaign is known by few.
Flexibility — The deception campaign adapts and changes over time as needs change.
Coordination — The organization or propaganda ministry is organized in a hierarchical pattern in order to maintain consistent and synchronized distribution of information.
Concealment — Contradicting information is destroyed.
Untruthful statements — Fabricate the truth.
The US government already has checks in place to dissuade perception management conducted by the state towards domestic populations, such as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which "forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. Government authored or developed propaganda... deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy".
[10] Beginning in the 1950s, news media and public information organizations and individuals carried out assignments to manage the public's perception of the CIA, according to the New York Times.
Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977 that "The CIA in the 1950's, '60's, and even early 70's had concentrated its relationships with journalists in the most prominent sectors of the American press corps, including four or five of the largest newspaper in the country, the broadcast networks, and the two major weekly news magazines."
David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA station chief in Mexico City, described the method of recruitment years later to Bernstein: "Somebody from the Agency says, 'I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it's about.' I didn't hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn't hesitate over the next twenty years."
[11] Perception management can be used as a propaganda strategy for controlling how people view political events. This practice was refined by US intelligence services as they tried to manipulate foreign populations, but it eventually made its way into domestic US politics as a tool to manipulate post-Vietnam-War-era public opinion. For example, in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration saw the "Vietnam Syndrome"-a reluctance to commit military forces abroad-as a strategic threat to its Cold War policies. This caused the administration to launch an extraordinary effort to change people's perception of foreign events, essentially by exaggerating threats from abroad and demonizing selected foreign leaders. The strategy proved to be very successful.
[12] By the mid-80s, CIA Director William Casey had taken the practice to the next level: an organized, covert "public diplomacy" apparatus designed to sell a "new product"-Central America-while stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, and anyone else considered an adversary during the Ronald Reagan presidential administration. Sometimes it involved so-called "white propaganda", stories and op-eds secretly financed by the government. But they also went "black", pushing false story lines, such as how the Sandinistas were actually anti-Semitic drug dealers. That campaign included altered photos and blatant disinformation dispersed by public officials as high as the president himself.
[13] In 1984, the DEA became upset with the White House, alleging the White House blew the smuggling investigation against the Sandinistas to embarrass them before a contra aid vote. The White House felt it was better to sacrifice a probe to catch the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel and gain a propaganda edge.
[14] The term "perception management" is not new to the lexicon of government language. For years the FBI has listed foreign perception management as one of eight "key issue threats" to national security, including it with terrorism, attacks on critical US infrastructure, and weapons proliferation among others. The FBI clearly recognizes perception management as a threat when it is directed at the US by foreign governments.Deception and sleight of hand are important in gaining advantages in war, both to gain domestic support of the operations and for the military against the enemy.
Although perception management is specifically defined as being limited to foreign audiences, critics of the DOD charge that it also engages in domestic perception management. An example cited is the prohibition of viewing or photographing the flag draped caskets of dead military as they are unloaded in bulk upon arrival in the U.S. for further distribution, a policy only recently implemented.
The DOD also describes perception management as an intent to provoke the behavior you want out of a given individual.[citation needed]
During the Cold War, the Pentagon sent undercover US journalists to Russia and Eastern Europe to write pro-American articles for local media outlets.
A similar situation occurred in Iraq in 2005 when the US military covertly paid Iraqi newspapers to print stories written by US soldiers; these stories were geared towards enhancing the appearance of the US mission in Iraq.
[16] The US Air Force has used perception management with UFO/ET events by dropping flares and claiming it was a "misperception of their training activity".
Years ago in Gulf Breeze, Florida similar techniques were used where a fake UFO model was planted in a house.
[17] Domestically, during the Vietnam War, critics allege the Pentagon exaggerated communist threats to the United States in order to gain more public support for an increasingly bloody war. This was similarly seen in 2003 with accusations that the government embellished the threat and existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
[18] Perception management includes all actions used to influence the attitudes and objective reasoning of foreign audiences and consists of Public Diplomacy, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), Public Information, Deception and Covert Action.
[19] The Department of Defense describes "perception management" as a type of psychological operation. It is supposed to be directed at foreign audiences, and involves providing or discarding information to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning in a way that is favorable to the originator of the information. The main goal is to influence friends and enemies, provoking them to engage in the behavior that you want. DOD sums it up: "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations."
[13] The US military has demonstrated using perception management multiple times in modern warfare, even though it has proven to take a hit to its credibility among the American people. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence. This office had been organized to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad. The Pentagon was criticized to create and to use a perception management office to influence foreign states at the time.
[20] More recently, the DOD has continued to pursue actively a course of perception management about the Iraq War. "The Department of Defense is conscious that there is an increasingly widespread public perception that the U.S. military is becoming brutalized by the campaign in Iraq. Recognizing its vulnerability to information and media flows, the DoD has identified the information domain as its new 'asymmetric flank.' "
[21] The level of use of perception management is continuing to grow throughout the Army. Until recently specialists, known as psychological operations officers and civil affairs officers, whose only purpose is to decide how to present information to the media and to the people of the current country that they are in only held positions in high division levels of command.
The Army has decided that it is now necessary that these specialists be included in the transformed brigades and deal with "everything from analyzing the enemy's propaganda leaflets to talking with natives to see what the Army can do to make them their friends," said 3rd Brigade's Civil Affairs Officer Maj. Glenn Tolle.
Perception management has long been a key issue in the United States government.
Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA contracted out several hundred different public information and news agencies for different "assignments." This practice grew, and currently operates with several thousand initiatives helping to privately shape public opinion of the government.
Indeed, the Department of Defense views perception management as a psychological operation aimed at eliciting the behavior you want by manipulating the opinions of both enemies and friends. Best put by the DOD directly, "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations."
[49] Since the U.S. engaged in the War on Terror, perception management tactics have become vital to military success and relations with other countries....It is absolutely vital that the Perception Management campaign of the United States and its allies be coordinated at the highest possible level, that it be resourced adequately, and executed effectively. Properly coordinated, such a campaign could be a war-winning capability. When left uncoordinated, such operations will achieve only modest success, at best, and at worst, could seriously backfire. Even a poorly chosen word, used in the heat of the moment (e.g. ‘crusade’), can have significant negative consequences.
[50] Typical counter-terrorism (CT) thinking focuses on the violence, or its associated threat, to identify and exploit associated avenues for meaningful response and reaction.
[51] In the years of the Reagan/Bush administration the government saw a lot of reluctance to commit military forces abroad. They used many tactics to change the outlook of peoples' thoughts about oversea issues.
Warfare experts from the CIA and the Army Special Forces were included in this plan. They accomplished this by pushing issues about the events in South America and Leftist right issues in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Perception management in politics is referred to as "political marketing strategy," or "strategic political marketing." It originated from traditional business marketing strategies applied to politics, largely for the purpose of winning elections.
Political parties and actors can choose between two fundamental methods: leading the market or following the market. Leading the market involves fulfilling underlying demands of principle, and a political actor would essentially assume the position of one who leads on their own ideas and principles. Following the market entails the political actor's reliance on research such as public opinion surveys and adoption of those principles and ideas held by the majority of the people who the political actor wishes to influence.
Central to political marketing is the concept of strategic political postures--positions organizations assume to prompt the desired perceptions in a target group. Each strategic political posture relies on a different mix of leading and following, and includes four general types of postures:the political lightweight: neither leads nor follows very well; does not represent a posture easily sustained; is not confident in own ideals or particularly concerned with adapting to the needs and wants of constituents.the convinced ideologist: leads exceedingly well, holding its own opinions and endeavoring to convince others of their merit.the tactical populist: emphasizes following to achieve power; focuses on adopting political policies that appeal to a majority in order to attain the political power necessary to implement a party’s goals.the relationship builder: both leads and follows; has confidence in own ideas but able to adapt to the needs and wants of constituents.
Political market orientation (PMO) originated from commercial market orientation strategies applied to a political environment. Developed by Robert Ormrod, the comprehensive PMO model involves four attitudinal constructs and four behavioral methods:Organizational attitudes include:Internal orientation: focuses on including and acknowledging the importance of other party members and their opinionsVoter orientation: focuses on the importance of current and future voters and the awareness of their needs.
Competitor orientation: focuses on awareness of competitors’ positions and strengths, and acknowledges that cooperation with competing parties can advance the party’s long-term goals.
External Orientation: focuses on the importance of parties that are neither voters nor competitors, including media, interest groups, and lobbyists.
Organizational behaviors include:
Information generation: focuses on gathering information about every party involved in a given issue.
Information dissemination: focuses on receiving and communicating information, both formally and informally.
Member participation: focuses on involving all party members, through vigorous discussion and debate, to create a consistent party strategy.
Consistent Strategy Implementation: focuses on implementing consistent, established strategies through formal and informal channels.Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party controls all the paper and media in China. The internet is also under strict control and censorship. The Propaganda and Information Leading Group is generally responsible for all the information controlling and censorship. The unit is also one of the largest in the CCP leadership organ.
[70] The manipulation of information is specifically common in China. The perception management is frequently applied. During the Beijing Olympic, facing the criticisms about its questionable domestic human right policy, Chinese government successfully altered international media's attention to the apolitical Olympic ideals by creating intensive coverage of the positive feedback of Olympic on paper, TV, and internet, despite the governmental officers made promise in 2001, when Beijing was still competing for the right to host the game, to improve its poor human right practicing.
[71] The images and video captured that night by Chinese media would display only the packed, patriotic crowds and nothing of the rest of the celebrants, who were largely occupied with taking photos of themselves with friends, family, and even security personnel.Hosting the World: Perception Management and the Beijing Olympics JIM LORD Bob Jones UniversityChinese military scholars argue that their nation has a long history of conducting “psychological operations,” a phrase that connotes important aspects of strategic deception and, to a certain degree, what the US Department of Defense portrays as perception management. Several articles published by the PLA’s Academy of Military Science (AMS) journal Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, for example, examine psychological warfare and psychological operations mainly as a deception-oriented function of military strategy.
[72] An example of Perception Management occurred at the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. The officials decided to replace the originally chosen singer with Lin Mioke, who lip synched during the Olympic opening ceremony. The reason the officials made the decision is because in their opinion the original singer wasn't attractive enough to represent China. It wanted to show only its attractive parts and people to other countries.
[73] The Beijing games were an opportunity for China to show its rapid development. The presence of a large contingent of foreign businessmen, media, and politicians necessitated a strict system of perception management before and during the Olympic Games. Lord, J. (2009). Hosting the world: perception management and the Beijing olympics.
[74] The Chinese government had been controlling media to exercise "mind control" and manipulate public opinion on its citizens. All Chinese media, including newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, TV stations, broadcasting, the movie industry and art performances, are categorized and managed as "mouthpieces" of the ruling Communist Party.
[75] "Mind control" includes "indoctrination from kindergarten to college through officially compiled textbooks, as all teachers are categorized as 'educators of CCP' (The Chinese Communist Party)". According to Qinglian He, a former Chinese government propagandist and now a senior researcher at Human Rights in China, by exercising "mind control", the Chinese government has misled the Chinese population from the values of human rights and democracy, and also from the truth.
[76] The Chinese government has also used strategies to manage the perception of their country to the rest of the world. One example of this was the various perception management techniques the Chinese Communist Party used before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The government wanted to ensure that it could use this opportunity to portray China as positively as possible by showcasing its development and modernity rather than some of its more internationally disliked features such as its domestic human rights policies and frequent government protests. China looked at its opportunity to host the Olympic Games as "a definitive demonstration of its status as a world partner comparable to any power in the Western world".
[77] The Chinese Communist Party manipulated the world’s perception of China in many ways. They made certain that those who would be directly talking to the media had the “right” talking points; mostly these focused on promoting the stability and dominance of China’s economy.
Also, the government restructured the landscape of Beijing to portray a sense of modernity to foreigners. Three new buildings called the “bird buildings” were constructed at a high cost, including the forcing of a large number of residents to relocate. A couple of new subway lines are also built to increase the convenience for foreigners to reach the Olympic village. The government also did whatever it could to make the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics more impressive and extravagant than any before.
An example of how they managed perceptions in this realm was the intentional substitution of a more attractive girl to lip-sync “Ode to the Motherland” instead of using the original singer, whose image was considered less preferable. Beijing’s security forces were also greatly increased before and during the Olympic Games to ensure that no large protests could be started and possibly caught on camera by the media. Not only the security forces, reeducation camps, and imprisonment are also made possible for Chinese citizens who made known a desire to protest around the Games.
The government also announced a few days prior to the opening ceremonies that three "demonstration parks" would be opened for protests, requiring a written request form five days in advance, although at the end none of the requests were granted.
Promotional materials are also made as ideal as possible, for example the slogan "One World, One Dream" referring to a unifying ideal of "love for all mankind".
There was even the creation of a slogan, (“Beijing Welcomes You”) and five stuffed animal mascots used to portray Beijing and China as harmonious and cordial.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) gives this definition:Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator's objectives.
In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.
[1] "Perception" is defined as the “process by which individuals select, organize, and interpret the input from their senses to give meaning and order to the world around them”
[2] Components of perception include the perceiver, target of perception, and the situation.
Factors that influence the perceiver:
Schema: organization and interpretation of information based on past experiences and knowledge.
Motivational state: needs, values, and desires of a perceiver at the time of perception.
Mood: emotions of the perceiver at the time of perception.
Factors that influence the target:
Ambiguity: a lack of clarity. If ambiguity increasing, the perceiver may find it harder to form an accurate perception
Social status: a person’s real or perceived position in society or in an organization
Impression management: an attempt to control the perceptions or impressions of others.
Targets are likely to use impression management tactics when interacting with perceivers who have power over them. Several impression management tactics include behavioral matching between the target of perception and the perceiver, self-promotion (presenting one’s self in a positive light), conforming to situational norms, appreciating others, or being consistent.
[3] The phrase "perception management" has often functioned as a euphemism for "an aspect of information warfare." A scholar in the field notes a distinction between "perception management" and public diplomacy, which "does not, as a rule, involve falsehood and deception, whereas these are important ingredients of perception management; the purpose is to get the other side to believe what one wishes it to believe, whatever the truth may be."
[4] The phrase "perception management" is filtering into common use as a synonym for "persuasion."
Public relations firms now offer "perception management" as one of their services.
Similarly, public officials who are being accused of shading the truth are now frequently charged with engaging in "perception management" when disseminating information to media or to the general public.
Although perception management operations are typically carried out within the international arena between governments, and between governments and citizens, use of perception management techniques have become part of mainstream information management systems in many ways that do not concern military campaigns or government relations with citizenry.
Businesses may even contract with other businesses to conduct perception management for them, or they may conduct it in-house with their public relations staff.
As Stan Moore has written, "Just because truth has been omitted, does not mean that truth is not true.
Just because reality has not been perceived, does not mean that it is not real."[citation needed]
There are nine strategies for perception management.
These include:
Preparation — Having clear goals and knowing the ideal position you want people to hold.
Credibility — Make sure all of your information is consistent, often using prejudices or expectations to increase credibility.
Multichannel support — Have multiple arguments and fabricated facts to reinforce your information.
Centralized control — Employing entities such as propaganda ministries or bureaus.Security — The nature of the deception campaign is known by few.
Flexibility — The deception campaign adapts and changes over time as needs change.
Coordination — The organization or propaganda ministry is organized in a hierarchical pattern in order to maintain consistent and synchronized distribution of information.
Concealment — Contradicting information is destroyed.
Untruthful statements — Fabricate the truth.
The US government already has checks in place to dissuade perception management conducted by the state towards domestic populations, such as the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which "forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. Government authored or developed propaganda... deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy".
[10] Beginning in the 1950s, news media and public information organizations and individuals carried out assignments to manage the public's perception of the CIA, according to the New York Times.
Carl Bernstein wrote in 1977 that "The CIA in the 1950's, '60's, and even early 70's had concentrated its relationships with journalists in the most prominent sectors of the American press corps, including four or five of the largest newspaper in the country, the broadcast networks, and the two major weekly news magazines."
David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA station chief in Mexico City, described the method of recruitment years later to Bernstein: "Somebody from the Agency says, 'I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it's about.' I didn't hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn't hesitate over the next twenty years."
[11] Perception management can be used as a propaganda strategy for controlling how people view political events. This practice was refined by US intelligence services as they tried to manipulate foreign populations, but it eventually made its way into domestic US politics as a tool to manipulate post-Vietnam-War-era public opinion. For example, in the early 1980s, the Reagan administration saw the "Vietnam Syndrome"-a reluctance to commit military forces abroad-as a strategic threat to its Cold War policies. This caused the administration to launch an extraordinary effort to change people's perception of foreign events, essentially by exaggerating threats from abroad and demonizing selected foreign leaders. The strategy proved to be very successful.
[12] By the mid-80s, CIA Director William Casey had taken the practice to the next level: an organized, covert "public diplomacy" apparatus designed to sell a "new product"-Central America-while stoking fear of communism, the Sandinistas, Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, and anyone else considered an adversary during the Ronald Reagan presidential administration. Sometimes it involved so-called "white propaganda", stories and op-eds secretly financed by the government. But they also went "black", pushing false story lines, such as how the Sandinistas were actually anti-Semitic drug dealers. That campaign included altered photos and blatant disinformation dispersed by public officials as high as the president himself.
[13] In 1984, the DEA became upset with the White House, alleging the White House blew the smuggling investigation against the Sandinistas to embarrass them before a contra aid vote. The White House felt it was better to sacrifice a probe to catch the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel and gain a propaganda edge.
[14] The term "perception management" is not new to the lexicon of government language. For years the FBI has listed foreign perception management as one of eight "key issue threats" to national security, including it with terrorism, attacks on critical US infrastructure, and weapons proliferation among others. The FBI clearly recognizes perception management as a threat when it is directed at the US by foreign governments.Deception and sleight of hand are important in gaining advantages in war, both to gain domestic support of the operations and for the military against the enemy.
Although perception management is specifically defined as being limited to foreign audiences, critics of the DOD charge that it also engages in domestic perception management. An example cited is the prohibition of viewing or photographing the flag draped caskets of dead military as they are unloaded in bulk upon arrival in the U.S. for further distribution, a policy only recently implemented.
The DOD also describes perception management as an intent to provoke the behavior you want out of a given individual.[citation needed]
During the Cold War, the Pentagon sent undercover US journalists to Russia and Eastern Europe to write pro-American articles for local media outlets.
A similar situation occurred in Iraq in 2005 when the US military covertly paid Iraqi newspapers to print stories written by US soldiers; these stories were geared towards enhancing the appearance of the US mission in Iraq.
[16] The US Air Force has used perception management with UFO/ET events by dropping flares and claiming it was a "misperception of their training activity".
Years ago in Gulf Breeze, Florida similar techniques were used where a fake UFO model was planted in a house.
[17] Domestically, during the Vietnam War, critics allege the Pentagon exaggerated communist threats to the United States in order to gain more public support for an increasingly bloody war. This was similarly seen in 2003 with accusations that the government embellished the threat and existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
[18] Perception management includes all actions used to influence the attitudes and objective reasoning of foreign audiences and consists of Public Diplomacy, Psychological Operations (PSYOPS), Public Information, Deception and Covert Action.
[19] The Department of Defense describes "perception management" as a type of psychological operation. It is supposed to be directed at foreign audiences, and involves providing or discarding information to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning in a way that is favorable to the originator of the information. The main goal is to influence friends and enemies, provoking them to engage in the behavior that you want. DOD sums it up: "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations."
[13] The US military has demonstrated using perception management multiple times in modern warfare, even though it has proven to take a hit to its credibility among the American people. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence. This office had been organized to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad. The Pentagon was criticized to create and to use a perception management office to influence foreign states at the time.
[20] More recently, the DOD has continued to pursue actively a course of perception management about the Iraq War. "The Department of Defense is conscious that there is an increasingly widespread public perception that the U.S. military is becoming brutalized by the campaign in Iraq. Recognizing its vulnerability to information and media flows, the DoD has identified the information domain as its new 'asymmetric flank.' "
[21] The level of use of perception management is continuing to grow throughout the Army. Until recently specialists, known as psychological operations officers and civil affairs officers, whose only purpose is to decide how to present information to the media and to the people of the current country that they are in only held positions in high division levels of command.
The Army has decided that it is now necessary that these specialists be included in the transformed brigades and deal with "everything from analyzing the enemy's propaganda leaflets to talking with natives to see what the Army can do to make them their friends," said 3rd Brigade's Civil Affairs Officer Maj. Glenn Tolle.
Perception management has long been a key issue in the United States government.
Beginning in the 1950s, the CIA contracted out several hundred different public information and news agencies for different "assignments." This practice grew, and currently operates with several thousand initiatives helping to privately shape public opinion of the government.
Indeed, the Department of Defense views perception management as a psychological operation aimed at eliciting the behavior you want by manipulating the opinions of both enemies and friends. Best put by the DOD directly, "Perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations."
[49] Since the U.S. engaged in the War on Terror, perception management tactics have become vital to military success and relations with other countries....It is absolutely vital that the Perception Management campaign of the United States and its allies be coordinated at the highest possible level, that it be resourced adequately, and executed effectively. Properly coordinated, such a campaign could be a war-winning capability. When left uncoordinated, such operations will achieve only modest success, at best, and at worst, could seriously backfire. Even a poorly chosen word, used in the heat of the moment (e.g. ‘crusade’), can have significant negative consequences.
[50] Typical counter-terrorism (CT) thinking focuses on the violence, or its associated threat, to identify and exploit associated avenues for meaningful response and reaction.
[51] In the years of the Reagan/Bush administration the government saw a lot of reluctance to commit military forces abroad. They used many tactics to change the outlook of peoples' thoughts about oversea issues.
Warfare experts from the CIA and the Army Special Forces were included in this plan. They accomplished this by pushing issues about the events in South America and Leftist right issues in Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Perception management in politics is referred to as "political marketing strategy," or "strategic political marketing." It originated from traditional business marketing strategies applied to politics, largely for the purpose of winning elections.
Political parties and actors can choose between two fundamental methods: leading the market or following the market. Leading the market involves fulfilling underlying demands of principle, and a political actor would essentially assume the position of one who leads on their own ideas and principles. Following the market entails the political actor's reliance on research such as public opinion surveys and adoption of those principles and ideas held by the majority of the people who the political actor wishes to influence.
Central to political marketing is the concept of strategic political postures--positions organizations assume to prompt the desired perceptions in a target group. Each strategic political posture relies on a different mix of leading and following, and includes four general types of postures:the political lightweight: neither leads nor follows very well; does not represent a posture easily sustained; is not confident in own ideals or particularly concerned with adapting to the needs and wants of constituents.the convinced ideologist: leads exceedingly well, holding its own opinions and endeavoring to convince others of their merit.the tactical populist: emphasizes following to achieve power; focuses on adopting political policies that appeal to a majority in order to attain the political power necessary to implement a party’s goals.the relationship builder: both leads and follows; has confidence in own ideas but able to adapt to the needs and wants of constituents.
Political market orientation (PMO) originated from commercial market orientation strategies applied to a political environment. Developed by Robert Ormrod, the comprehensive PMO model involves four attitudinal constructs and four behavioral methods:Organizational attitudes include:Internal orientation: focuses on including and acknowledging the importance of other party members and their opinionsVoter orientation: focuses on the importance of current and future voters and the awareness of their needs.
Competitor orientation: focuses on awareness of competitors’ positions and strengths, and acknowledges that cooperation with competing parties can advance the party’s long-term goals.
External Orientation: focuses on the importance of parties that are neither voters nor competitors, including media, interest groups, and lobbyists.
Organizational behaviors include:
Information generation: focuses on gathering information about every party involved in a given issue.
Information dissemination: focuses on receiving and communicating information, both formally and informally.
Member participation: focuses on involving all party members, through vigorous discussion and debate, to create a consistent party strategy.
Consistent Strategy Implementation: focuses on implementing consistent, established strategies through formal and informal channels.Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party controls all the paper and media in China. The internet is also under strict control and censorship. The Propaganda and Information Leading Group is generally responsible for all the information controlling and censorship. The unit is also one of the largest in the CCP leadership organ.
[70] The manipulation of information is specifically common in China. The perception management is frequently applied. During the Beijing Olympic, facing the criticisms about its questionable domestic human right policy, Chinese government successfully altered international media's attention to the apolitical Olympic ideals by creating intensive coverage of the positive feedback of Olympic on paper, TV, and internet, despite the governmental officers made promise in 2001, when Beijing was still competing for the right to host the game, to improve its poor human right practicing.
[71] The images and video captured that night by Chinese media would display only the packed, patriotic crowds and nothing of the rest of the celebrants, who were largely occupied with taking photos of themselves with friends, family, and even security personnel.Hosting the World: Perception Management and the Beijing Olympics JIM LORD Bob Jones UniversityChinese military scholars argue that their nation has a long history of conducting “psychological operations,” a phrase that connotes important aspects of strategic deception and, to a certain degree, what the US Department of Defense portrays as perception management. Several articles published by the PLA’s Academy of Military Science (AMS) journal Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, for example, examine psychological warfare and psychological operations mainly as a deception-oriented function of military strategy.
[72] An example of Perception Management occurred at the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing. The officials decided to replace the originally chosen singer with Lin Mioke, who lip synched during the Olympic opening ceremony. The reason the officials made the decision is because in their opinion the original singer wasn't attractive enough to represent China. It wanted to show only its attractive parts and people to other countries.
[73] The Beijing games were an opportunity for China to show its rapid development. The presence of a large contingent of foreign businessmen, media, and politicians necessitated a strict system of perception management before and during the Olympic Games. Lord, J. (2009). Hosting the world: perception management and the Beijing olympics.
[74] The Chinese government had been controlling media to exercise "mind control" and manipulate public opinion on its citizens. All Chinese media, including newspapers, periodicals, news agencies, TV stations, broadcasting, the movie industry and art performances, are categorized and managed as "mouthpieces" of the ruling Communist Party.
[75] "Mind control" includes "indoctrination from kindergarten to college through officially compiled textbooks, as all teachers are categorized as 'educators of CCP' (The Chinese Communist Party)". According to Qinglian He, a former Chinese government propagandist and now a senior researcher at Human Rights in China, by exercising "mind control", the Chinese government has misled the Chinese population from the values of human rights and democracy, and also from the truth.
[76] The Chinese government has also used strategies to manage the perception of their country to the rest of the world. One example of this was the various perception management techniques the Chinese Communist Party used before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The government wanted to ensure that it could use this opportunity to portray China as positively as possible by showcasing its development and modernity rather than some of its more internationally disliked features such as its domestic human rights policies and frequent government protests. China looked at its opportunity to host the Olympic Games as "a definitive demonstration of its status as a world partner comparable to any power in the Western world".
[77] The Chinese Communist Party manipulated the world’s perception of China in many ways. They made certain that those who would be directly talking to the media had the “right” talking points; mostly these focused on promoting the stability and dominance of China’s economy.
Also, the government restructured the landscape of Beijing to portray a sense of modernity to foreigners. Three new buildings called the “bird buildings” were constructed at a high cost, including the forcing of a large number of residents to relocate. A couple of new subway lines are also built to increase the convenience for foreigners to reach the Olympic village. The government also did whatever it could to make the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics more impressive and extravagant than any before.
An example of how they managed perceptions in this realm was the intentional substitution of a more attractive girl to lip-sync “Ode to the Motherland” instead of using the original singer, whose image was considered less preferable. Beijing’s security forces were also greatly increased before and during the Olympic Games to ensure that no large protests could be started and possibly caught on camera by the media. Not only the security forces, reeducation camps, and imprisonment are also made possible for Chinese citizens who made known a desire to protest around the Games.
The government also announced a few days prior to the opening ceremonies that three "demonstration parks" would be opened for protests, requiring a written request form five days in advance, although at the end none of the requests were granted.
Promotional materials are also made as ideal as possible, for example the slogan "One World, One Dream" referring to a unifying ideal of "love for all mankind".
There was even the creation of a slogan, (“Beijing Welcomes You”) and five stuffed animal mascots used to portray Beijing and China as harmonious and cordial.