Information Control
Censorship of outside sources, deception of members, insider/outsider information asymmetry, and surveillance. The second BITE category.
How it looks in practice
Information control shows up as bans on watching mainstream television or reading non-approved books, deceptive recruitment that hides the group's identity until weeks of involvement have passed, surveillance of personal correspondence, and 'apostate' framing of ex-member testimony to inoculate members against external accounts.
BITE-model connection
The second BITE axis. The Shincheonji 'harvest worker' deceptive-recruitment pattern, the Scientology 'enemy list' / 'fair game' surveillance, and FLDS internet-and-television bans are textbook examples of information control producing high CLCI scores.
Groups in the dataset that reference Information Control
Auto-derived from body, summary, and red-flag text. Showing top 11 by CLCI score.
- ISIS / 'Islamic State' ideology (recruitment networks)
- Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) / Warren Jeffs
- Grace Road Church / Kwon Shin-chan (Fiji)
- Westboro Baptist Church
- QAnon Movement
- New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) / C Peter Wagner network / 7-Mountain Dominionism
- Brahma Kumaris (BKWSU)
- Focolare Movement / Work of Mary / Chiara Lubich
- Anti-mask / anti-vax online movement (continuing 2026)
- Divine Light Mission / Elan Vital / Words of Peace Global / Prem Rawat
- Oath Keepers (anti-government militia)
Blog posts that discuss this term
Auto-derived from blog post body, title, and description.