Smallest Words Have Biggest Impact

Modifiers, conflation, and the mechanics of manipulative media

Headlines: see first & remember.

 A very long time ago, perhaps when I was in junior high, I picked up a newspaper and encountered a headline that triggered an immediate, febrile response …  anger. I do not remember the topic, but I suspect it involved Germany and the Holocaust.   It seemed not merely unfair, but malicious. At least that was what my gut was telling me.

That moment taught me to read headlines more closely. If a headline could make me angry before I had read the first paragraph, was the problem the writer’s bias—or mine? Over time, I came to suspect the answer was often — both. Still, there were patterns, discernible on the page as well as in my reaction. One pattern: attempted manipulation was often performed not within the topic, but by the smallest words we call modifiers.

When people think about “media manipulation,” they typically picture outright falsehood. In practice, a great deal of manipulation is quieter. It often works through (1) modifiers that smuggle evaluation, and (2) conflation that smuggles connection.

1. Two low-friction tools: editorial modifiers and conflation

Framing theory helps clarify how these small words steer interpretation. The concept of “frames” has roots at least as early as Gregory Bateson’s work on the contextual cues that tell us how to understand a message, and it was later systematized by Erving Goffman’s frame analysis, in which frames function as socially shared schemata of interpretation that organize experience and guide meaning-making.

In media studies, a widely used definition is Robert Entman’s: to frame is “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text,” thereby promoting a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation. Headlines are framing instruments par excellence because they are compressed: a single adjective or adverb can do the work of an entire argument, especially when it cues certainty, motive, legitimacy, or scale.

Concretely, two low-friction headline techniques are common. Editorial modifiers add evaluative or epistemic posture without supplying the evidence that would justify it. Conflation collapses distinctions between correlation and causation, between an allegation and an established finding, or between proximity and responsibility, so that the reader supplies a connection the text never properly demonstrates.

Three simple headline examples illustrate the mechanics:

• Example 1 (modifier: moral loading).

Neutral: “Committee releases report on bridge project delays.”

Steering: “Committee releases damning report on bridge project delays.”

The added adjective supplies a moral evaluation while leaving the evidentiary basis implicit.

• Example 2 (modifier: certainty inflation).

Neutral: “Audit reviews procurement process at agency.”

Steering: “Audit proves agency’s procurement failures.”

The verb “proves” upgrades what may be an interpretation or contested inference into settled certainty.

• Example 3 (conflation: association-to-complicity).

Neutral: “Candidate attended event with donor later investigated.”

Steering: “Candidate linked to investigation after donor event.”

The phrase “linked to” invites the reader to treat adjacency as culpability unless the article specifies the nature and strength of the connection.

There may be no better place to see the practical impact of framing than on social media, where headlines and snippets are frequently consumed and shared without the full article context. In that environment, the frame often becomes the takeaway.

However, two clarifications are necessary for intellectual fairness, if not analytic rigor:

(a) Framing is not synonymous with editorial bias. In the scholarly literature, framing can be intentional or routine; ideologically motivated or professionally “standard”; and it can arise from production constraints such as deadlines, source availability, headline character limits, house style, or page count. A frame is best understood as a pattern of selection and emphasis that shapes interpretation, whether or not an individual editor set out to be partisan.

(b) Framing is not, by itself, proof of intent. Identifying a frame in a headline does not establish motive. Frames can be artifacts of conventions (for example, conflict as a default news value), organizational routines, audience expectations, or the practical need to compress nuance into small spaces. Entman’s approach is particularly useful because it focuses on textual effects—selection and salience—without requiring speculation about an author’s internal state.

2. Editorial modifiers: judgment without argument

Consider familiar headline modifiers. They are often removable without changing the literal event, yet they reliably shift the reader’s posture. These words are not always wrong. The problem is that they often supply an additional claim—about certainty, motive, legitimacy, or magnitude—without supplying the evidence needed to justify that claim.

Common modifier patterns:

• Epistemic certainty cues: “clearly,” “obviously,” “undeniably.” (Declares dissent irrational or bad-faith.)

• Motive-implying adverbs: “quietly,” “secretly,” “brazenly,” “desperately.” (Asserts intention without evidence.)

• Legitimacy labels: “controversial,” “extreme,” “mainstream,” “common-sense,” “so-called.” (Brands social standing rather than describing.)

• Scale cues without denominators: “massive,” “sweeping,” “tiny,” “mere,” “only,” “unprecedented.” (Asserts magnitude without baselines or numbers.)

3. Conflation: connection without proof

Even when adjectives are stripped away, headlines can still mislead by blending separable issues. Conflation is frequently accomplished with words that do not state causation explicitly, yet reliably invite it.

Common conflation triggers:

• Adjacency presented as meaning: “amid,” “as,” “after,” “in the wake of.” (Temporal proximity nudges the reader toward causal interpretation.)

• Association presented as complicity: “linked to,” “tied to,” “connected with,” “associated with.” (The nature and strength of the “link” is often left unspecified.)

• Single instance presented as pattern: “again,” “still,” “yet another.” (Narrativizes recurrence, even when the instances are not comparable.)

Conflation works well because repeated pairings can create durable associations over time—especially when a target term is consistently placed near negative evaluative language. The headline need not assert guilt; it can cue association and let the reader complete the moral inference.

4. A simple discipline: remove, rewrite, and demand the missing premise

To reduce the risk of being steered, I attempt to use a method that takes about ten seconds: (I might have underlined or bolded the word ‘attempt’)

1. Mentally circle the smallest loaded or linking word (often an adjective/adverb; sometimes “amid,” “linked,” or “again”).

2. Remove it and rewrite the headline neutrally.

3. Name what the removed word was supplying: judgment, motive, magnitude, connection, or pattern.

4. Ask what evidence would be required to justify that extra claim.

5. Only then decide what you think—and what you are willing to share.

Conclusion

Manipulative media often succeeds without lying outright. It succeeds by compressing judgment and linkage into words too small to notice, yet strong enough to steer a reader’s posture toward certainty, contempt, or panic. Once you learn to treat those words as hypotheses—rather than as mere stylistic decoration—you regain intellectual agency. In a culture where attention is monetized, that agency is not a luxury; it is a civic necessity.

A significant amount of communication is shaped by purposeful, agenda-driven bias. The difference often appears not in the core facts reported, but in the epistemic posture the outlet adopts. One source will carefully preserve uncertainty with terms such as “alleged” or “according to,” while another will write as though the accused has already been adjudicated, using verbs and adjectives that imply settled guilt, established motive, or inevitable culpability.

This is where repetition becomes decisive. Misleading modifiers and conflation techniques do not merely distort a single story; when used persistently, they manufacture familiarity and convert suggestion into seeming fact. A loaded adjective repeated across days or weeks can harden into a label; a tenuous association repeated often enough can feel like a demonstrated connection. Readers may not remember each article, but they remember the recurring frame—and the accumulated impression becomes difficult to dislodge. In this sense, deception is amplified not only by what is said, but by how consistently it is said: repetition is the accelerant that turns subtle linguistic steering into durable belief.

Select References (for further reading)

Bateson, Gregory. “A Theory of Play and Fantasy.” In Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 177–193. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.

Bednarek, Monika. “Semantic Preference and Semantic Prosody Re-examined.” Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 4, no. 2 (2008): 119–139. https://doi.org/10.1515/CLLT.2008.006.

Brady, William J., et al. “How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks.” Science Advances 7, no. 33 (2021): eabe5641. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe5641.

Chuey, Aaron, Yiwei Luo, and Ellen M. Markman. “Epistemic Language in News Headlines Shapes Readers’ Perceptions of Objectivity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 20 (2024): e2314091121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2314091121.

Entman, Robert M. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43, no. 4 (1993): 51–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1993.tb01304.x.

Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

McLoughlin, Killian L., William J. Brady, Aden Goolsbee, Ben Kaiser, Kate Klonick, and M. J. Crockett. “Misinformation Exploits Outrage to Spread Online.” Science (2024). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2829.

Rathje, Steve, Jay J. Van Bavel, and Sander van der Linden. “Out-group Animosity Drives Engagement on Social Media.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 26 (2021): e2024292118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2024292118.

Robertson, Cameron E., et al. “Negativity Drives Online News Consumption.” Nature Human Behaviour 7 (2023): 812–822. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4.