Peter Ayolov
Bio
Peter Ayolov’s key contribution to media theory is the development of the "Propaganda 2.0" or the "manufacture of dissent" model, which he details in his 2024 book, The Economic Policy of Online Media: Manufacture of Dissent.
Stories (4)
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Angry People Click More: The Economics of Manufactured Dissent
(Ideas from the book The Economic Policy of Online Media: Manufacture of Dissent, Routledge, 2024) Abstract This article examines the formula ‘angry people click more’ as a core logic of contemporary online media and as a structural transformation of propaganda in the digital age. It argues that the defining feature of the current attention economy is not only the circulation of misinformation, but the systematic deployment of openly implausible claims designed to provoke moral outrage and sustain profitable engagement cycles. The analysis links Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year ‘rage bait’ to earlier lexical markers of epistemic crisis such as ‘truthiness’ and ‘post-truth’, and situates this trajectory against the older ‘manufacture of consent’ model of Herman and Chomsky. While classical propaganda in totalitarian and mass-media systems sought ideological unity through censorship and the Big Lie, the emerging Propaganda 2.0 model, articulated by Peter Ayolov, monetises anger by manufacturing dissent and deliberately populating the public sphere with absurd, polarising narratives. The article interprets this dynamic through the allegories of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and Václav Havel’s greengrocer, showing how the move from fearful silence to permanent online rage changes both the psychology and political economy of propaganda. Drawing on Evgeny Morozov’s critique of fake-news moral panics, Frances Haugen’s disclosures about Facebook, and the documentary The Social Dilemma, it concludes that anger has become a tradable asset and that blatant lying has shifted from an authoritarian instrument of control to a market mechanism in a global ‘free trade in slogans’.
By Peter Ayolovabout 20 hours ago in Critique
Propaganda 2.1 Model, Manufacture of Dissent and Monetisation of Outrage
Abstract This article introduces the Propaganda 2.1 model as a theoretical extension of the author’s earlier Propaganda 2.0 framework, arguing that contemporary online media ecosystems are no longer governed primarily by political, ideological or cultural objectives but by a dominant economic policy of platform capitalism. In this regime, revenue optimisation trumps belief formation, identity construction and persuasive coherence, transforming propaganda from a project of ideological influence into an infrastructure for affect extraction. The model identifies three core mechanisms structuring this new phase. First, rage-baiting or the monetisation of outrage becomes the central commodity form of public discourse, replacing persuasion with the algorithmic optimisation of irritation, humiliation and moral injury. Second, the proliferation of AI ‘slop’ produces a regime of semantic banalisation in which meaning is not distorted but dissolved through excess, flooding the public sphere with syntactically fluent yet cognitively weightless content that exhausts attention rather than informing it. Third, parasociality functions as simulated intimacy, substituting civic belonging and social reciprocity with managed emotional attachment to influencers, automated agents and personalised feeds. Together these mechanisms describe a propaganda system that no longer requires belief, truth or ideological consistency. Outrage replaces conviction, automation replaces meaning, and artificial intimacy replaces sociality, marking the transition from the manufacture of dissent to the liquidation of public opinion itself. Does a media system that no longer seeks to persuade but to provoke still qualify as propaganda, or has it become a different technology of power altogether? If outrage is now more profitable than truth, what remains of public opinion as a democratic force? Can meaning survive in a communicative environment flooded by automated, semantically empty content? And when artificial intimacy replaces social relations, is the public sphere still a space for politics, or only a marketplace for emotions?
By Peter Ayolova day ago in Education
Banal Globalism vs. Electronic Nationalism, National Culture and Internet
Abstract Following the introduction of the term "banal nationalism" by Michael Billig in 1995, scholars began to speak of other banal ideologies such as globalism, Americanism, and Europeanism. These formations operate on a symbolic level within the mass media and articulate a performative ideal and a superficial sense of identity within certain groups. Banal nationalism functions as a form of soft propaganda, censoring inconvenient truths about a nation’s past by repeatedly circulating the same national myths through national mass media. With the development of Internet-based media, this system has been disrupted: the full range of facts concerning a nation’s shared history has become accessible, and many of these myths have been challenged or dismantled. The ideology of globalism has gradually taken the place of nationalism, generating discourses on the decline of the nation-state and the emergence of a new global order. Yet this shift, together with the imposition of banal globalism in official mass media, has produced the opposite effect within online platforms and social networks, contributing to the revival of nationalism in a new electronic form. This article examines the role of Internet media and social networks in sustaining national systems and in facilitating the rise of electronic nationalism as a contemporary mode of constructing and maintaining national identity.
By Peter Ayolov2 days ago in Education
THE END OF TRUTH AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ONLINE MEDIA
THE END OF TRUTH AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF ONLINE MEDIA Peter Ayolov Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", 2019 Abstract: This article is a part of a larger study focused on the topic of the fictional media content opinions presented and perceived as truth. It will explore the abstract nature of truth in online media and its different forms. These media truths are types of fictional stories with certain effects on the public rather than a truthful presentation of the facts. Thus, the end goal of mass media today is not to tell the truth, but to create moral communities based on common experience and beliefs. Articles, opinions and news in media are seen as a narrative strategy that can be understood only through storytelling analysis. Here the focus is on the understanding of Truth and Untruth in online media as well as the connection of Internet media technology with the increase of disinformation online. The new media model creates hostile groups instead of generating consent for the nation-state, the new online media model within, Pseudo-communication, manipulation, delusion, lies, propaganda and deliberate causing of moral anger. "The end of the truth" means that the truth on the Internet is lost among the vast amount of information and the lack of regulation regarding the correctness of the published data. Instead of truth, media researchers formally talk about "post-truth," "fake news," and "alternative facts." Truth on the Internet is more like "Truthiness" or a belief that a statement is true based on the intuition or understanding of individuals, regardless of evidence, logic or facts. The subject of research is the connection between every new technology in mass media and the truth of the information and the effects on the consensus in society. Since the beginning of the 21st century, misinformation on the Internet has increased with the development of online media and social networks, and it is a problem of social peace and consent in every country.
By Peter Ayolov7 days ago in Critique
