Forensic Research Archive of Manipulation and Exploitation
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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.

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    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 47 propaganda techniques arranged in a ring by family (classical, rhetorical, operational, computational). 204 lines join techniques tagged together in the same brief, across 182 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 Testimonial (12 briefs): A named person or institution vouches; the vouch is meant to end checking.Testimonial Transfer (63 briefs): Borrow prestige or stigma from a respected or hated symbol and paste it onto the message.Transfer Name-calling (25 briefs): Attach a loaded label so the audience rejects the target without checking the claim.Name-calling Glittering generalities (20 briefs): Virtue words (freedom, security, the people, science) used as substitutes for a testable claim.Glittering generalities 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 Dehumanization (0 briefs): Portray a group as vermin, disease, beasts or objects so harm against them stops feeling like harm against people.Dehumanization Loaded language (0 briefs): Choose words for their emotional charge rather than their descriptive content, so the wording delivers the verdict.Loaded language Appeal to emotion (0 briefs): Use pity, pride, anger, guilt or hope to win assent that the evidence alone would not.Appeal to emotion Repetition and the illusory truth effect (0 briefs): Repeat a claim until familiarity is mistaken for truth.Repetition and the illusory truth effect Demonization (0 briefs): Cast an enemy as evil, satanic or morally monstrous, so that talking to it seems like collusion and defeating it seems like a duty.Demonization Whataboutism (3 briefs): Answer an accusation with a different accusation so the original claim is never tried.Whataboutism 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 Gaslighting (0 briefs): Deny or rewrite what the audience saw, heard or lived through, so they come to distrust their own perception and memory and defer to the speaker's account.Gaslighting Ad hominem (0 briefs): Attack the character, motives or circumstances of the person making a claim in place of the claim itself.Ad hominem Dog whistle (0 briefs): A phrase that reads as innocuous to a general audience but carries a second, targeted meaning to an in-group.Dog whistle Red herring (0 briefs): Introduce an attractive side topic so attention leaves the question that was actually asked.Red herring Straw man (0 briefs): Restate an opponent's position in a weaker or more extreme form, then refute the restatement.Straw man False dilemma (0 briefs): Present two options as the only ones, so rejecting one forces acceptance of the other.False dilemma Slippery slope (0 briefs): Claim that one modest step will set off a chain of further steps ending in catastrophe, without showing that each link in the chain is likely.Slippery slope Guilt by association (0 briefs): Discredit a person, group or idea by linking it to something already hated or feared, so the audience judges the link and not the evidence.Guilt by association Thought-terminating cliché (0 briefs): A short, familiar, definitive-sounding phrase offered in place of an answer, so that a question or objection ends instead of being examined.Thought-terminating cliché Bothsidesism (2 briefs): Force symmetry between unequal evidence piles so the audience treats the question as a tie.Bothsidesism Cult of personality (0 briefs): State or movement apparatus builds a leader into an infallible, omnipresent figure, so loyalty to the person stands in for judgment of policy.Cult of personality False flag (0 briefs): Stage or attribute an act so it appears to come from someone else, usually to justify a response against them.False flag Demagoguery (0 briefs): Political leadership that wins support by turning a public's fears and resentments against an out-group or the leader's critics, and casts policy questions as loyalty tests.Demagoguery Big lie (0 briefs): A falsehood so large that audiences assume no one would dare invent it, sustained by repetition and by attacking anyone who disputes it.Big lie Atrocity propaganda (0 briefs): Use reports of massacre, torture, rape or mutilation, real, exaggerated or invented, to mobilise a public against a named enemy.Atrocity propaganda Limited hangout (2 briefs): Release a partial, survivable truth to block a larger one.Limited hangout Manufactured consensus (86 briefs): Create the appearance that independent voices independently arrived at the same conclusion.Manufactured consensus Narrative laundering (98 briefs): Pass a state or factional message through a more legitimate-looking surface so origin is hard to see.Narrative laundering Disclosure theater (56 briefs): A technically present disclosure that does not travel with the content the audience actually sees.Disclosure theater Flooding the zone (25 briefs): Saturate the available attention so a preferred frame, or chaos itself, crowds out slower checking.Flooding the zone 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 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 (83 briefs): Fake or rented grassroots: personas, pages, or crowds that are not what they claim.Astroturfing Synthetic media (103 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 47 techniques as a list

    Generated from 182 briefs and the archive's technique taxonomy (204 pairs). Every technique opens its explainer.