Routledge Handbook of the Influence Industry

The influence industry — the commercial ecosystem of political consultancies, data brokers, ad-tech firms, and PR operations that produce and deploy persuasive content for political clients — has received sustained public attention since the Cambridge Analytica revelations, but relatively little systematic academic treatment. Briant and Bakir's handbook is the first comprehensive examination of how this industry operates globally across political, commercial, and security domains. The editors bring together scholars and practitioners to map the actors, techniques, and regulatory gaps that define a largely opaque sector.

The book's central insight is one that matters operationally: much of what gets labelled 'disinformation' is not the product of state intelligence services or organic online radicalization, but of a professionalised, data-driven commercial industry operating at the intersection of political communication and information warfare. Understanding that industry — its business models, its methods, its clients, and its accountability gaps — is a prerequisite for effective counter-strategy. Briant's earlier work on the US military-information complex and Bakir's research on propaganda and surveillance make this a genuinely expert-led volume rather than a collection of peripheral contributions.