Category talk:Media manipulation

inapt cats

A large number of categories are in the Category:Media manipulation which are not appropriate. For instance, while "activism" might sometimes involve media manipulation, it is not correct to say that "activism" is a type of "media manipulation" (nor, for that matter, that media manipulation is necessarily a type of activism). Categories that need to have this category removed include almost all of the broad categories that are not specific to media manipulation:

• Activism‎ (12 C, 162 P)
• Election campaigning
• Hoaxes
• Sales

Possibly for these, "media manipulation" might be a subcategory of these supercategories -- if there's a lot of relevant content about. But it shouldn't be the other way around.

I'm also worried about categories like "Advertising" and "Marketing" and "Propaganda". These are more closely related to "media manipulation", insofar as they involved media oriented towards particular purposes and persuasion, but they don't necessarily involved "manipulation" of media, as I understand it.

What I think I'm seeing in this category is an effort to perhaps write a comprehensive article about "media manipulation" and its uses in various other fields. And that's great for an article, but the category system is not a system to gather up all the topics that might be covered in an article -- it's a hierarchical system for organizing subsets and supersets of concepts. See WP:CAT generally, and WP:DEFINING for discussion of categories as "defining" .

--Lquilter (talk) 17:17, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not seeing here, why you consider media manipulation to be WP:NOTDEFINING of these categories. It may be confusion over the word "manipulation." In this context manipulation includes what would normally be termed persuasion. So while activists may not engage in underhanded manipulation, they are (by defintion) attempting some form of social change by media. This persuasive attempt is termed media manipulation.

The other occasion where some confusion arises in the terminology, is what is being manipulated. This is not manipulation of media, but manipulation by media. The public is the subject of the persuasion attempt. (Yes, this sounds a little conspiratorial. This is a difficult area to write in without sounding a little bit paranoid.) This is distinct from, say, photo manipulation which is manipulation of photos. (There is, unfortunately, a slight ambiguity in how the term is used. Some authors also use it to include manipulation of media, media bias and the like. But most of the time this usage tends to be included in the above. This is, I think, the main reason why all hoaxes are considered media manipulation, even though only some hoaxes include a persuasive element. I could see the argument that hoaxes should be moved down to a subcat of Category:Media manipulation techniques‎.)

Does that make things clearer? --Andrewaskew (talk) 05:10, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

There are two problems. One is the misunderstanding of the category system, to apply categories to topics that are not subtopics of the category. For instance, "arms" and "legs" are both types of "limbs". So, on category:Arms, it would be appropriate to add category:Limbs, because "arms" are a type of "limbs". But it would not be appropriate to categorize "Limbs" in the category:Arms.

The second problem is extending categories to bring in "related" and not hierarchical topics. For instance, one might think, "Chairs are a type of furniture. I will put "furniture" in "chairs", and I will also put "sitting", "human activities", "furniture movers", and "retail operations" all in the "chairs" category, because they all relate to "chairs" -- retail operations sell chairs, furniture movers move chairs, and sitting and other human activities happen in chairs." That violates the hierarchical nature of the category system -- in which things are supposed to be categorized as subtypes of other things -- by not just reversing the order and including bigger things within smaller things, but also by bringing in related concepts that are neither bigger nor smaller. Think of it as a parent-child relationship; children should be in the parents categories, but parents should not be in the children categories. Uncles/Aunts, siblings, and so forth, should not be in a child's category, but in their own parents' categories. Grandparent > parent > child.

Here, "election campaigning", "hoaxes", "sales", and "activism", are all activities that are not related to "media manipulation" in a parent-child relationship. To construe a parent-child relationship, you might do something like this: "election campaigning" > "election media techniques" > "election media manipulation"; and "media manipulation" > "election media manipulation". So "election media manipulation" is in two category trees -- one for elections, one for media manipulation. But you can't just take categories out of the middle of those two hierarchies and put them in the middle of "media manipulation", because there is no necessary and essential relationship between them. There are lots of "election media techniques" and "election campaigning" that don't involve "media manipulation".

As to hoaxes particularly, hoax just means deception. Hoaxes do not necessarily involve any media whatsoever -- they could be and are face-to-face as well. Why do you say that "all hoaxes are considered media manipulation"? --Lquilter (talk) 13:11, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure if you have understood. There is no misunderstanding or misuse of the category system. Activism, advertising, marketing, political campaigning, propagandising, psychological warfare, public relations, and so forth are types of media manipulation. They do occupy a parent-child relationship. There is an attempt at influence via media. The main calls them media manipulation contexts, situations in which media manipulation occurs.

As to hoax, it does not just mean deception. It is a very specific type of deception, a fabrication is the closest meaning, but a hoax is a little more complex than that. A hoax is a deliberate attempt to manipulate others into believing in an untruth, the page explores the definition. It usually involves the use of mass media at inception, but yes a hoax could be created face-to-face and merely spread by mass media. (This is slightly complicated by the issue of pre-technological hoaxes, that is, hoaxes that arose before any communication besides word of mouth. But this is an outlying case, we have no records at all of such hoaxes, & this is the same terminological problem that arises every time we attempt to trace the prehistory of mass media.)

If your argument is that we Wikipedians need to redifine "media manipulation," to limit it to discussions of mass media, news media, or cases of outright manipulation, then I must respectfully disagree. Wikipedia is an online encyclopædia, it is not our role to ensure that terminology fits the definition we might like. Instead we simply follow the way words are used in existing sources.

(Incidentally, I know we disagree for the moment in this matter, but if you are interested in this area, I am looking to reactivate Wikipedia:WikiProject Media. I am always looking for diligent editors who would like to be involved.) --Andrewaskew (talk) 04:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Hoax seems like a good example for us to work with. Here's the basic definition from google, which accords with other definitions. "define:hoax: noun 1. a humorous or malicious deception. "they recognized the plan as a hoax"; synonyms: practical joke, joke, jest, prank, trick. verb: hoax; 3rd person present: hoaxes; past tense: hoaxed; past participle: hoaxed; gerund or present participle: hoaxing 1. deceive with a hoax. synonyms: practical joke, joke, jest, prank, trick;" Nothing in this requires "media manipulation". That would mean that some hoaxes could be perpetuated through media manipulation, but media manipulation is neither necessary nor sufficient for defining a hoax. And with all due respect, hoaxes have existed long before "media"; it's just semantically not correct to classify "hoaxes", generically, as "media manipulation" when the definition of hoax does not require media, much less "manipulation" of media. Categorizing A by everything to which some examples of A apply becomes so broad that the category system is not useful.

I think that's my problem with your general scheme. You are including concepts that have no necessary relationship with media -- much less media manipulation -- in your category, simply because some forms of that concepts might have a relationship with media.

Another example is activism. It is simply not the case that "activism", per se, is a form of "media manipulation". Some activism and activists uses media as a method, but not all; and I would argue that not all uses of media constitute "manipulation". The YesMen and the Billboard Liberation Front, for example, are clearly activist organizations whose central technique is media manipulation. Awesome. Include them in the category, or create category:Media manipulation activist organizations. But to include, for instance, direct action groups, lobbyists, research organizations, homeless shelters, and all the other broad array of things that qualify as category:Activism under "media manipulation" is just categorically wrong.

If you understand what I'm getting at in the "activism" category -- and I invite you to browse through the various items contained in category:Activism to understand the breadth of what you're proposing constitute "children" of "media manipulation" -- then I want to discuss "defining". Items are not supposed to be categorized according to non-defining attributes. This means, for example, that we don't have categories for every aspect of an item; just for the ones that "define" them. If a person works at, say, a particular university for her whole career, Wikipedia policy considers that a "defining" association, and she gets a Category:Faculty of the University of California, Berkeley category. On the other hand, if a person occasionally or even routinely visits UC Berkeley to give talks and have meetings and attend conferences, then the person's association with Category:University of California, Berkeley is not "defining" of that person, and so the person should not be categorized into any of the various Category:University_of_California,_Berkeley_people subcategories. This would be true even if, for instance, the person happened to give a talk that was itself independently notable, because the association -- even if frequent -- does not "define" that individual. ... That also applies to "media manipulation". Just because the Red Cross advertises for blood, and "advertisement" constitutes a form of media manipulation (I'm not conceding this point, but I'm assuming it for the purposes of argument here), does not mean that the Red Cross is "defined" by "media manipulation". It's "defined" as a health & human services organization, along its various major types of activism, like collecting blood & delivering aid to refugees. It's not "defined" by media manipulation, or lobbying, or any of the other activities that it might do incidentally; it's defined by the activities that it does primarily.

Feel free to find other folks in "media" to bring them in; I think it would also be useful to get other folks who routinely work with the category system to comment. --Lquilter (talk) 17:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I should note that I posted a general comment for discussion on Wikipedia talk:Categorization. --Lquilter (talk) 10:42, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

• Category:Media regulation is another example of a category that was inappropriately categorized as a form of Category:Media manipulation. I take it that the argument is that "media manipulation" might be addressed by "media regulation", in which case it's a violation of the parent-child ordering and the categories should go the other way around. Media manipulation might belong inside "media regulation", as a subtopic of media regulation; but it shouldn't go the other way. (If the argument is that "media regulation" is a type of "media manipulation", then we have a whole different discussion; because then the definition of media manipulation is too broad to be useful.) --Lquilter (talk) 13:28, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Please wait until discussion on this matter is resolved before making further edits along these lines. --Andrewaskew (talk) 04:25, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Okay. --Lquilter (talk) 17:13, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

• comment I haven't read the while discussion above, just a note that per WP:eponcat, eponymous categories should not always be put in the same categories the head articles would be placed in. Thus, even if media manipulation is defining for a particular eponymous article, it doesn't mean the ctegory should be parented accordingly. Another thing to note is that this is a topic categoriy, not a set category, so inclusion rules are slightly more flexible. My suspicion is many of the subcats should be removed - there are all sorts of hoaxes and many of them have little to do with manipulation of media. Same goes for advertising, which is better under media than media manipulation.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:36, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Lquilter, something has come up and I have to take an unexpected Wikibreak (at least a week, maybe longer), please feel free to consider my objections withdrawn and edit the category & main as you feel appropriate. I may chime in again when I return. Probably along the following lines:

Media manipulation is a series of related techniques in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests.

— Coxall, Malcolm (2 Mar 2013). Caswell, Guy (ed.). Human Manipulation - A Handbook. Cornelio Books. ISBN 978-8-4940-8532-1.

But edit as you see fit. Thank you. --Andrewaskew (talk) 08:52, 18 May 2014 (UTC)