Forensic Research Archive of Manipulation and Exploitation
Illustration: a Cold War intelligence-dossier collage centred on an annotated world map with red grease-pencil lines connecting distant points and a magnifying glass over a marked coordinate.

Techniques

Which techniques travel together

Each brief in the archive is tagged with the techniques it documents. A line joins two techniques every time they are tagged in the same brief, and the more briefs they share, the thicker the line. Circles grow with how many briefs use a technique. Select a technique to see what it most often appears with, or pick a family to see where its links run.

Illustration, not an archive object

    Show pairs seen together in

    together once together in dozens of briefs Coloured lines stay inside a family; grey lines cross families.

    FRAME technique map 28 propaganda techniques arranged in a ring by family (classical, rhetorical, operational, computational). 204 lines join techniques tagged together in the same brief, across 181 briefs; thicker lines mean more briefs. classical rhetorical operational computational Card stacking (135 briefs): Select, omit, or order facts so the remaining pile can only be read one way.Card stacking Bandwagon (3 briefs): Treat popularity, momentum, or 'everyone knows' as proof.Bandwagon Plain folks (26 briefs): The speaker performs ordinary-person identity to make the message feel homegrown.Plain folks Transfer (63 briefs): Borrow prestige or stigma from a respected or hated symbol and paste it onto the message.Transfer Testimonial (11 briefs): A named person or institution vouches; the vouch is meant to end checking.Testimonial Name-calling (25 briefs): Attach a loaded label so the audience rejects the target without checking the claim.Name-calling Fear appeal (25 briefs): Imminent harm is staged so the audience accepts the offered protection without comparing base rates or alternatives.Fear appeal Scapegoating (11 briefs): Park blame for a complex harm on a bounded out-group so the in-group stays clean.Scapegoating Glittering generalities (20 briefs): Virtue words (freedom, security, the people, science) used as substitutes for a testable claim.Glittering generalities Identity fusion (9 briefs): Collapse checking the claim into betraying the tribe, so method-critique feels like treason.Identity fusion Euphemism / doublespeak (13 briefs): Replace a concrete harm or act with a sanitizing or inflating phrase so evaluation never meets the thing.Euphemism / doublespeak Semantic hijacking (27 briefs): Capture a high-prestige or high-stigma word and stretch it until it covers the speaker's preferred set.Semantic hijacking Motte and bailey (0 briefs): Advance a bold claim; when pressed, retreat to a modest claim; then reoccupy the bold one.Motte and bailey Bothsidesism (2 briefs): Force symmetry between unequal evidence piles so the audience treats the question as a tie.Bothsidesism Whataboutism (3 briefs): Answer an accusation with a different accusation so the original claim is never tried.Whataboutism Accusation in a mirror (15 briefs): Accuse the target of the method or crime you are preparing or running, so their warning sounds like a confession.Accusation in a mirror Overton window shifting (12 briefs): Move a previously unsayable position into the window of the discussable by repetition, extremes, or institutional blessing.Overton window shifting Limited hangout (2 briefs): Release a partial, survivable truth to block a larger one.Limited hangout Disclosure theater (56 briefs): A technically present disclosure that does not travel with the content the audience actually sees.Disclosure theater Narrative laundering (97 briefs): Pass a state or factional message through a more legitimate-looking surface so origin is hard to see.Narrative laundering Manufactured consensus (85 briefs): Create the appearance that independent voices independently arrived at the same conclusion.Manufactured consensus Flooding the zone (25 briefs): Saturate the available attention so a preferred frame, or chaos itself, crowds out slower checking.Flooding the zone Corpus poisoning (9 briefs): Seed search indices, encyclopedias, or model-facing text so downstream systems repeat the frame as if it were independent research.Corpus poisoning Astroturfing (82 briefs): Fake or rented grassroots: personas, pages, or crowds that are not what they claim.Astroturfing Synthetic media (102 briefs): Machine-made or machine-rewritten content presented as human witness, journalism, or research.Synthetic media Firehosing (11 briefs): High-volume, high-velocity, multi-channel output that does not care about internal consistency; the goal is exhaustion, not persuasion of one claim.Firehosing Sleeper effect (2 briefs): A discounted source is forgotten faster than the claim, so the claim later feels ownerless and true.Sleeper effect Outrage bait (14 briefs): Craft the item so the profitable reaction is fury, which then does the distribution.Outrage bait
    Browse all 28 techniques as a list

    Generated from 181 briefs and the archive's technique taxonomy (204 pairs). Every technique opens its explainer.