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social engineering

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Also known as societal engineering, engineering of society

top-down effort to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale by government, media, academia or other groups

~3 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Social engineering is a term that has been used to refer to efforts in influencing particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale. This is often undertaken by governments, but may also be carried out by mass media, academia or private groups in order to produce desired characteristics in a target population.

Origin of concept

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “social engineering” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.