Social manipulation and influence over populations, via mass media, has a long established and global history (Bernays, 1928). However, more recent technological developments, regarding television and social media, have focused attention on the possible societal effects of videos that intend to deceive, manipulate, or influence the individual into specific beliefs and/or behaviours as a result of consumption of disinformation.
The questions raised by these observations led to research surrounding the publics ability to identify deception by social/traditional media outlets. Particularly, when provided video information by prominent individuals, or individuals of interest appearing on outlets in a messaging context.
This research seeks to investigate whether Emotional Intelligence training (EI) has a role in making individuals aware of their own vulnerabilities and providing resilience during future media encounters. This research was both quantitative and qualitative in its approach. In this incidence, it utilised an inductive multidisciplinary approach. 32 participants were
gathered in a face-to-face, group training and asked to view 5 videos of found data and asked to complete Likert questionnaires and make comments relating to the veracity of the speaker.
After a 4-hr training based upon the SCAnS (Archer & Lansley, 2017), and including mass formation, framing and propaganda, participants were asked to review 5 subsequent found data videos and asked to again complete questionnaires and comment on the integrity of the individual featured in the video. The data produced was then analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods (Clarke et al., 2015).
Results show a difference in rating allocations and perception of behaviours with the participants. As well as a statistical reduction in extreme scoring events post–training.
Themes identified in this research included ‘alertness’, ‘critical thinking, ‘truth identification’, and ‘self- development’ (pros and cons).
The discussion focused on possible reasons for these results and suggests that EI training significantly affects an individual’s ability to detect mis/disinformation and identified further areas of research.
