Tom Mueller: 0:08

Hey everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. I'm Tom Mueller, and today on this podcast, we talk about things crisis management, and we love to hear stories from experienced crisis leaders. On the show today, we have our returning guest, Phil Foremond, who is an internationally recognized crisis and risk consultant based in Portugal, but who does work all over the world. And if you're interested in more from Phil, he has a terrific newsletter called Wag the Dog that is worth a read every time it comes out. Phil, welcome to the show. Thanks. Thanks for having me again. All right, today we are going to talk about a concept that Phil has been intimately exploring and writing about and talking about, and that is rage farming. It's a fascinating term. I'm not sure if you coined that term, Phil, or if somebody else did, but it um it sort of captures these uh what we see out on social media when an event occurs, where you see these waves of emotional posting that that come at a company if they've had an incident or you know, individuals who may be targeted. So it's just a fascinating concept here. So, Phil, you've written extensively about this. What do you see as sort of the key drivers of this rage farming?

Philippe Borremans: 1:35

Rage farming is is really interesting because it is if you if if I put on my um, how would I say my black hat, right? It it is very well done. It is it is so well done because it it has three big dimensions. So rage farming is a is an organized attack. Let's be very clear about this. This is an organized attack against a brand or a person or a state. I mean, it can be applied in different dimensions, right? Uh but it is organized. And what it does, it actually works on three different dimensions. It's using all the techniques that we know around manipulation with one single purpose. It is provoking outrage. Outrage, one of these very visceral feelings that we can get. So it's it's very much based on psychology and understanding of manipulation techniques, etc. So that's that's already an interesting domain. Combined, of course, we're talking about rage farming um in an online environment. It's also about combined with uh what I call algorithmic exploitation. So it does actually understand that if you can get people enraged online, what is the impact of that and which kind of algorithms on which social media platforms will amplify this rage?

Tom Mueller: 2:58

And that's because they're they're looking for engagement and any kind of engagement.

Philippe Borremans: 3:03

Of course. Anything that is engagement is is very good for the platforms and of course for the rage farm attackers as well. And then it it completely works on this emotional triggering. Uh because when I see that rage farming attack, which is manipulated again and which is amplified by the algorithms, when I see it, I get an emotional trigger. I either don't follow or I'm also getting a bit annoyed and raged and enraged, and then I will, of course, spread that information as well. So it's fascinating to see that it uses psychology, uh, manipulation techniques, technology, algorithms, and then just the human social network as a as an amplifier.

Tom Mueller: 3:54

Right. And that normal human emotions as a profit center for you.

Philippe Borremans: 4:03

Because so there's two big players when you look at there are a couple of really interesting case studies, uh, one from United Airlines, one from Bud Light for people in the US. Uh, there's there's other examples. But um what is interesting to see is that there's either um a real disinformation geopolitics, think about bad actors in the context of geopolitics, that's political. Um, and the other one is simply money, people making a lot of money with those clicks. And they don't care if they attack a brand. Well, they do because you know, if you attack a certain brand with a certain following, and then you are able to trigger outrage, then that implifies because that brand is in there and mentioned as well. Uh, but it's about making money. So, in in the workshops I give around this topic, uh, one example is one of a lady called uh Winta Sezu, uh, and and she's almost a professional rage farmer or rage baiter. Uh, she is um very provocative uh in her postings, she knows how to pick the right moments, the right topics which are in the news feed. She's very controversial about her thinking about that, and that is not her. I mean, I maybe she has a total different idea about a topic, but uh she uses that technique, and in fact, she she's making, and that is you know not verified, but I've I've saw that in several sources online. She's reportedly earning around$150,000 in a single year uh from you know posting rage bait uh posts. And and it's and but she's using exactly the same techniques, right? So uh it is it is a it is a business, it is a business. Um unfortunately, um you so you don't want to be on the end uh as a uh communicator responsible for the reputation of a brand on those kind of attacks. Uh but um I do work in crisis comms but also in emergency comms, which is real emergencies, and it's not about reputation, it's about saving lives. And unfortunately, the same techniques uh used against brands are also used against people. So there are a couple of governments around the world who actually use this exactly the same techniques to trigger genocides. And so you see that it's these techniques can be used against the private sector, uh, and then it's all about making money. The other one is really geopolitics and and very sad uh implications for the people at the other end. Yeah, so but it it is the same technique, yeah.

Tom Mueller: 6:48

So let's let's focus it in on the sort of corporate communications realm here. And uh, you know, if you have an incident, um, how likely is it that you know some rage baiter, rage farmer is going to pile on to your incident and try to just leverage it for clicks?

Philippe Borremans: 7:11

Well, the the thing is you don't actually need an incident. So one of the things is that if you have a group who actually wants to make money by attacking your brand, you don't need to be already in an issue or in a crisis situation. So one of the examples, scenarios is imagine that you're a company and you're launching genderal neutral uniform policy in your retail stores. Hey, that's a good idea. Why not? Not a very exciting news story, but not very exciting, and who could be against that? Well, some people can actually be against genderal neutral uniform policies. So, what will happen is that if I'm a um someone behind the rage farming attack, what I will do, I will scan the web and I'll see your little update. Because you will want to do maybe a little press release around that topic, or maybe it's just it's an article leading on your corporate website. Well, I would take that and I would simply distort that information. So I would write things like Company X is forcing employees to wear genderless clothing, no more choice allowed, welcome to woke authoritarianism. Or so so what I'm doing is I'm removing the context. Um I I frame it as a different thing, and I know by framing it in that way who I need to target more conservative people in the population who have certain views that are not in line with, etc. These are not extremists, just people like you and me, with maybe a bit more confirmed, you know, uh another view of how the world should run. I mean, whatever. Right. So it doesn't need to be very extreme all the time, but by manipulating that information, distorting it, I can actually trigger um and and activate uh emotional provocation with that segment of the of the uh of society who is more conservative, and so that will then trigger other reactions, and it will not stay with this one thing. I'll follow it up with uh oh, they're erasing women's identity at work, who's next your kids at school, or this is cultural Marxism at work, fight back, boycott company X, and that's how you then trigger the algorithms, but also by very specifically targeting this to a segment of the audience that you know will react to this, will maybe feel outrage, because it's all about outrage, and then you, of course, then it triggers, and then you have coordinated amplification. So there's money behind that.

Tom Mueller: 9:52

Yeah. Now you've given the example of uh the young woman uh who's earning potentially up to 150,000, is uh that feels like a sole proprietor who's doing her thing there, but there are more organized attacks like this, right? The state actors, um and you know, and there's a whole it's just interesting, depending on who you talk to, how nefarious different nation states are about their online rage baiting and all of that. So what you know, as you've looked at this, what do you see kind of uh as the split there? Or is it does it all just jumble into one big gumbo?

Philippe Borremans: 10:36

And it's no, I mean it's it's very organized. You would be amazed. I mean, there's the we're talking about coordinated amplification, so that means that you have uh a network of bots, fake accounts, uh ideological networks which are already online. Uh they know exactly which um, you know, how do you trick the algorithms in? Uh there's budget behind it, because once you get those outrage reactions, right, not only from your own bots, but from real people who have been influenced by this fake outrage thing, right? Uh you would you would, of course, push those out, uh, you would promote those, you would share them again in your network. So, no, it's very structured and there's a plan to it. Um, so it's not just let's see if this flies. It's it's really built out as an agenda and it's built out as an influence campaign, like like any other, except that again, it uses these very specific techniques.

Tom Mueller: 11:35

All right. Well, that feels like a whole lot of resources arrayed against sort of honest, hardworking people out there. What do we what do we do to prepare? What can a company or an entity do to sort of prepare the organization to deal with something like that?

Philippe Borremans: 11:52

I I think it's first understanding the psychology behind it, because it's very much, it's of course we know it's the algorithms and what have you, but I mean, I think most communicators understand already the different algorithms. If they are active on social media, you you would know this. But I think the psychology behind it is very important. It works mainly on three different biases, and that is something that you actually need to understand because you again, we all have these biases, right? Every single human being on the globe. But in this context, the three that are used is the confirmation bias. So people accept information that aligns more with their pre-existing beliefs, even if they are false. Uh, the negativity bias, we know good news doesn't sell, so negative content that mostly evokes stronger reactions and spreads faster. We've seen that, that's been studied, than positive stories. And then the group identity, because outrage is linked to tribal, our tribal belonging. We are all part of different tribes, could be where you live geographically, your nationality, your religion, your education. I mean, we all have tribes and subtribes that we're part of. So understanding those three is very important in the context of this type of communication. And then what you need to do is as an organization, well, it starts with early warning systems, right? You you need to know what is going on, and that is really understanding and knowing how to use your social and media monitoring platform in the context of early warning. Because if I think what I often see is that clients of mine, they all have the usual suspects, you know, the enterprise great social media monitoring platforms and what have you. But they are all very they're they're set up as what I call naval staring systems. They they oh, when is our brand mentioned? You know, when is our brand mentioned? We want to know when we're mentioned, when is my CEO mentioned? That's one way to use those things, and I'm not saying you shouldn't use it like that, but this is about early warning. This is looking further than your brand because you don't know if your brand at all at the first moment will be involved or not, maybe in the next phase of the amplification. So, what you want to do is look at the topics that you that are already present in your communication plan, and then try to understand which ones could be manipulated. Do the exercise yourself. If we go back to the example I gave, you know, the the uniforms in retail stores. Well, try to do a bit of what we call red teaming, think as an opposing force and and say, How can this be you know used against us? Try to develop those scenarios. Um, and then with your early warning systems, it's it's looking at, of course, mentions, volume, sentiments, but also pattern recognition. So there are a couple of platforms out there which actually can see the patterns being built before they're actually activated, which can identify bot networks which are dormant, etc.

Tom Mueller: 15:09

Um, Phil, are these tools are these tools for pattern recognition uh sort of generally available retail tools? Yeah, yeah.

Philippe Borremans: 15:19

So I work with a couple of technological partners, and uh these are uh purpose-built platforms, of course, they do brand monitoring, but they are actually built uh to do uh what we call predictive analytics uh and can take into account uh rage farming attacks and things like that as well. Um, they're different in the way that um they also scan the not-so-public web, um, and they they have techniques uh to track uh what we call narrative evolution. So, how does the story fly and doesn't fly? Where does it come from? How is it all networked? Um, full disclosure, most of those platforms are spin-offs of three letterboard agencies, because that's where the techniques come from, right? I mean, let's be honest. And and they also incorporate uh OSINT open source intelligence gathering techniques, which is interesting. Um, and so yeah, those platforms are available uh today. Yeah.

Tom Mueller: 16:18

Do you want to name drop a couple of those that are the more prominent ones? No. No worries. Um, so but the pattern recognition is um again, and this is is real-time sort of monitoring that pattern recognition thing. And then what are you what are you gonna see if you're monitoring that what what what am I if I'm looking at data and you know what what is gonna be flowing over me that I need to start processing and making decisions around?

Philippe Borremans: 16:52

But you're going to see uh unusual engagement spikes. So um this spike analysis part is very important. So you you're going to look at sudden surges of shares and comments uh or likes, depending, uh, but that are not tied to your major news cycle. So it's out of place, it's out of the ordinary, it's a real anomaly. Um, and that what that often signals is that it's a viral liftoff phase of a rage campaign. And then you want to look at what you know, narrative evolution as well. So, how does the story mutate? How does it go from fringe forums to mainstream platforms? How are the hashtags evolving? And what that tells you is in fact the escalation pattern. It's becoming weaponized, it's becoming not a fringe kind of thing, it's becoming a little bit more weaponized, and you know, it could potentially become mainstream, and then you of course have an issue, right? Then then you're in in reaction mode.

Tom Mueller: 17:55

Um yeah, and those those can have significant impacts on your business, right? I'm thinking back to the Bud Light example where you had a relatively you know nominal incident happened with an influencer, and um uh and yet the rage machine just took it over.

Philippe Borremans: 18:14

I was yeah. If another interesting case is uh cracker barrel, the rebranding. Yeah. I I again um I'm just looking at my notes here. So um there were also uh a huge amount of fake accounts, so there was a bot network jumping on that trend. Um so again, there's there's part of that, not everything, but part of that boycott uh was also supported and sponsored by a rage farming attack. Uh and we see that the data is in now, so I'm just looking at the slides here because I've got the report. So it's it's it's really uh very clear how fake profiles were driving real market impact. And uh we're talking about 4,452,000 potential views, 3,268 engagements, 916 content units. That is rather important because that actually influences that whole narrative, right? Right, and so yeah, uh you can have a huge financial impact on this, uh not only just you know generally reputational, but actually really uh uh a strong direct financial impact. Imagine that you're launching your next top product of the year, and you have a very well-organized rage farming attack, and could be from a competitor, let's be honest. You know, it doesn't always have to be strange three letter word agencies working behind the scenes, you know, it's commercial entities do this as well. So, yeah, it can have a huge impact.

Tom Mueller: 19:53

Yeah, that is um you know, one of the the challenges and kind of again the frustrating things here as I look at. This is I have legitimate stakeholders who I'm talking to, and I really want to make sure they're okay and that I'm reaching them. But I've got to sort through all of this noise now that's suddenly coming at us through this. And uh it's so how how much of a challenge is that, Phil, for somebody who's looking at the data and then figuring out, well, what do we do here? Should we just step back and let this wave roll past us? Or do we need to engage here online? And of course, engaging online versus engaging, you know, face to face or directly with stakeholders, two very different approaches here.

Philippe Borremans: 20:44

Yeah. Well, one of the things is first of all, already, you know, be aware that this could be fully organized, et cetera, et cetera. Don't, you know, you you could see a spike and think, oh, it's a glitch. No, no, it could be something that is already, you know, signaling something worse. So it's already recognizing the fact that this exists, how it works, understanding the psychology. Then the question that you said, like, you know, should we engage or not engage? That is a question that we actually ask ourselves with every single crisis or potential issue, like already making the difference between an issue and a crisis. You know, issue is still manageable, crisis, it's out there. Should we react, not react? How serious is it? What is the impact? So that is your your your risk matrix that would probably you know give you a couple of answers. Um and then it's also a fact in rage farming attacks. What is very important is that you, when you decide to react, is that you reach out to your stakeholders and audiences, not to the attackers, right? It doesn't it doesn't do anything at all if you want to react uh against someone who's spreading that information because that someone could simply be a bot and then it's totally ignored, and in some cases, those people, because it is based on psychology and biases, uh, will not change their mind, right? Because it is completely in line with their worldview sometimes. We've seen that with, and this is a totally different context, but anti-vax movement in the context of vaccination of the pandemic, you will not change the mind of people who actually are anti-vaxxers. Why would you then you know put resources in trying to convince people who have been convinced already since the 70s that vaccines don't work and are even dangerous? Right even if we know that is not true, etc. etc. I'm not talking about that, it's just sometimes you really need to be very careful on where do you put your limited resources, and in this case as well, in rage farming, no use at all against going against the attackers or the people disseminating that information, but to your own stakeholders and your own audiences, and then you come up with what I call the truth foundation, which is the best defense, I think.

Tom Mueller: 23:07

So keep it local as much as you can, focus on your key stakeholders. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, but uh yeah. Well Phil, it's always fascinating chatting to you just um because you've got such a big brain and deep thoughts and are really proactively engaged in a lot of these cutting-edge issues that many of us in the crisis communications realm are thinking about and focusing on. Um, and the the atmosphere just gets scarier and scarier every year that comes by. So let me just say it's good to know we've got people like Phil out there keeping an eye on things and keeping it real, giving us advice for how to do it well and uh and do it in a very uh fun and enlightening way.

Philippe Borremans: 23:58

So it doesn't make it all easier, right? It doesn't make it all easier, but at least I think there's a lot to be said of taking a taking a step back, uh breathing in, breathing out, as I do in you know in emergency rooms, and say, okay, what do we have? What do we know? What don't we know? And that's what you actually have to work with. And of course, you know, being interested in in these new kind of threats um is is is good to know. Uh but it comes down to really looking at, you know, what do you know, what you don't know. Do we have protocols in place? If we don't have them, let's create them. That's that's what I'm pushing here around rage farming is you need that truth foundation, that truth bank I call it, which is documented core narratives about your organization, the evidence that supports that narrative, and and a framework which gives it context because that is what you're going to use to respond to those stakeholders and audience that you can still influence and inform. So, yeah, it's um and it's it's it's not an easy thing, but I think again, uh already being aware that this exists and that you tweak your uh monitoring platforms to recognize the first instances of a potential rage farming attack, that's already a very important step to take.

Tom Mueller: 25:20

All right. Well, Phil, thank you again for joining us. Um and by the way, Phil does offer seminars, webinars on rage farming and other subjects. So if you're interested in that, look him up at wagthedog.io. Um I've participated in some of Phil's um webinars and uh really enjoyed them. So I'm appreciate that. Phil, thank you very much.

Philippe Borremans: 25:43

Thank you, Tom, for the invitation.

Tom Mueller: 25:46

And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. We're really happy you're here with us. We'll see you again soon on another episode. Take care.