Institutional Gaslighting: Exposing Disinformation in the Addiction Economy

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - we have decided to use Dr Roger Miles fantastic construct 'Institutionalised Gaslighting' as the umbrella term for Disinformation in our book.

"Gaslighting means to "manipulate (someone) using psychological methods into questioning their own sanity or powers of reasoning". Joe Woof and I think this applies to The Addiction Economy, where companies use many forms of disinformation to have us think that mass harm of your own customers is a normal thing which shouldn't be regulated or constrained in anyway and we are being utterly unreasonable in thinking it is a problem.

We will also be highlighting Grant Ennis fantastic 9 Frames of Disinformation which are like a form of 'bullshit bingo' you can tick them off whenever you see communications from companies explaining why they shouldn't be regulated and trying to wriggle out of accountability.

Below he has kindly pulled out a snip of when we used it for social media in a presentation on Addiction and Cyberspace recently at Tony Curzon Price's great Humanity and Cyberspace seminars.

Roger was there too - do you think the term can be stretched enough for all disinformation Roger? What were the examples you were thinking of when you initially coined the term? What do you think of it Grant?