How can you distinguish between persuasion and manipulation in media?

Persuasion is still positive if it is not mingled with juicy narratives to convince whereas manipulation is outright negative. However, each term is operating under specific Media Theory. In fact, media, if broken into, Me and dia deconstruct the meaning as Me is the self and dia means expanded! I am enlarged or expanded!

Persuasion means looking at your key messages and listing the known objections, then designing your campaign based on addressing those objections. Manipulation involves trying to make people feel guilty or inadequate if they don't agree with your message. Psychologically, they will agree with your message to assuage their bad feelings of guilt or inadequacy. At the end of the day, you bring people over by informing that your offer meets any objections that are likely to arise in their mind; manipulation is needed because the offer really isn't very good (is not able to meet expectations/assuage objections). Those who need to manipulate do not offer a value-for-value exchange: they are 'stingey' and despise their customers.

Emotional appeal is primarily about associating with memory: if you make them laugh, almost bring a tear, or get a heartbeat to change rhythm then the message you are trying to deliver has an effective and memorable container in the mind. Emotion is a deeper level beyond vision, sound and language (text). But it's about connecting the emotion you arouse and your message: people always remember emotional responses, but messages can be lost if not skilfully inter-connected. The line crossed into manipulation is when the aroused emotion is threatening or arousing in such a way as to confuse. Confusion generates many thoughts rapidly, and the receiver then needs to grab at messages most pressing, rather than assimilate them in an orderly way.

The trouble with logic is that for many people it is repugnant: they don't trust it simply because it is so 'logical'. Persuasive media with logic as its backbone will always have a limited appeal to a broad audience. Rational thinking and approach - on the other hand - takes into account that some people do not trust logic. Even better is 'rationale': a logic which makes sense to the college-educated while at the same time maintains the attention of the less rigid thinking of those educated in the 'School of Life'. Put simply, computers are logical, and logic is the backbone (or first principle) of their every function. People are not like that. They have emotions, moods, biases, and the pure logic needs to be appealing as well.

The trouble with 'sources' is their 'brand' often suffices: who has time to check them? In a world of information overload, the word 'Oxford' is more credible than "some say", but who's checking?? Manipulative media kicks in here: it replaces the term "some say" with "the Oxford study" and then no one has time to question it! By the time someone asks, "Hey wait a minute, what Oxford study was that?" there are 10 million new posts responding to the original false claim. Almost-instant verification systems for this type of source credibility checking would be a far more useful application of AI than essay writing programs. On the other hand, I could allocate 5 mins each morning for verification, maybe 2 minutes? Let me check my schedule!

Two opposing people with a gripe: you have a story. It's a fact of journalism! Balancing in itself can be useful creating the appearance of credibility. Create a balanced argument, omit pertinent facts and deliberately deceive. The most insidious form of manipulation is when I am given a report - which omits a pertinent piece of information - and so I draw a conclusion that is inaccurate. Of course, one only realises when the pertinent piece of the puzzle reveals itself later... and it's my fault because i drew the conclusion! Yet it was the deliberate intention of the storyteller for me to draw that wrong conclusion. It is the diffraction and algorithmic nature of digital platforms which creates the impossibility of comprehensive balance.