Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
... It is difficult to say one thing and think another; common mechanisms typically weed out those who do not comply. Writers joining the system will only succeed if they agree to these ideological conditions, usually by accepting the values (Chomsky, 1995). ...
... Over time, the states seek practices that reflect the goals of those who control them by the righteousness of their domestic power. These truisms are barely expressible in the mainstream; however surprising this fact may be, we must adopt fundamentally different standards from what is generally accepted (Chomsky, 1995). ...
... Anthony Lewis of the New York Times notes that the media used to be as independent, defiant, and vigilant of authority as they are today. Still, in the Vietnam and Watergate periods, they learned to employ "the power to root about in our national life, exposing what they consider right for exposure," regardless of external pressures, governmental or private power demands, or both; this is also a widely held opinion (Chomsky, 1995). However, the news media keeps us informed about what is happening worldwide, which is crucial in today's society. ...
The news media's function in contemporary political philosophy is restricted to acting as a go-between for the public and their representatives rather than as a rival source of political power. However, even while politicians continue to make official decisions, the media controls their space. Over the past few decades, political campaigns have evolved in character. In the early 1900s, newspapers were the only media with political influence; they were modified to reflect the impact of radio media on politics. Social media now affects us; later, television influenced society's politics. In addition to elections and political campaigns, social media significantly influences how society thinks about politics. Many researchers' opinions that examined the connection between politics and the media are the main subject of this narrative review and concluded that the leading media, whether they are referred to as "liberal" or "conservative," are vast corporations that are linked to and owned by even more giant conglomerates. They offer a commodity for sale to a market, just like other businesses. Social media has revolutionized politics by providing channels for involvement, mobilization, and interaction that were impossible decades ago. The media significantly impacts politics, elections, and campaigns by determining the critical topics, which candidates will receive the most attention, and what standards they should apply when assessing candidates.
... Yet, given the difficulty of a theory providing a comprehensive full explanation for a non-completely measurable entity, although many theories have been suggested within the current epistemological-mathematically measurableapproach, the question (e.g., of a full explaining definition of consciousness) remains (Baars, 1993;Gallagher, 2006). Consequently, with the plentyness of entities not subject to direct mathematical measurement remaining a puzzle for the current science, the modern epistemological approach is being put in more and more dispute (Chomsky, 2013;Phillips, 2012;Smart, 2009;Trafimow, 2013;Wójcik, 2015). ...
... The oxymoron of modern epistemology leads to a science beyond and far from the human it is being called to serve (Chomsky, 2013;Popper, 2002;Rogers, 1961). Even terms-concepts prominent in everyday communication, such as the term "mind", are only scientifically accepted as a possible research object exclusively in the extent that they are subject to mathematical measurement (Gallagher, 2006;Robinson, 2019). ...
... Since the use frequency of terms-concepts in human communication, promote their evolution as a living part of human activity (Morton, 1979;Pagel et al., 2007), modern science promotes its materialistically-mathematically measurable-one-sidedness to the people whom it's called to serve-no longer as a servant, but as a formal ruler (Chomsky, 2013;Fowler et al., 1979;Neiva, 2002). ...
Although William of Occam’s early epistemological quote “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” attempted to put an end to the uncontrollable ontological confusion of his time, Occam’s Razor as its modern epistemological version considers as unscientific any non- measurable entity. However, words such as “immaterial”, “spirit” and “free will” have never ceased to exist in everyday human communication. According to Linguistics every word that has not historically ceased to be used by the total of people (or most of their societies) corresponds to a commonly accepted entity for which its users generally recognize the same distinguishable characteristics. A new, revised and complete–in the standards of the universal human communication–epistemological criterion is required fully now adapted in the linguistic criterion–the language people commonly communicate and use.
... Zionism may have become the dominant Jewish ideology, but it remains highly controversial, with the increased violence (at the time of writing, in 2024) providing a new flashpoint for rehearsing the debates over Zionism. Chomsky (1989) shows how Zionists have endeavoured 'to identify criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitism-or in the case of Jews, as "self-hatred" ' (1989, 433), a point echoed by Butler (2012). Grabelsky terms this calling of non/anti-Zionist Jews self-hating an 'intra-group testimonial injustice ' (2023, 818) in which this marginalised group is silenced and othered by this slur, yet their 'very existence [as] anti-Zionist Jews contest[s] the notion that criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic (2023, 820)'. ...
... To do this, the author coded the initial statement and then each responding post in turn, post by post. First, particular attention was paid to whether or not the posts were supportive or critical of the initial statement, and while the earlier posts mainly fell into one of these, a more substantive debate between three different people was found to have more detailed discussion of Jewish identity and included some recognisable arguments that have been found elsewhere (and discussed in the introduction here), such as Finlay (2010), Chomsky (1989) and Grabelsky (2023), which provided the opportunity for more detailed coding of identity use as well as support and opposition. In keeping with the discursive approach, the coding focused on the action orientation of the comments, so rather than making any claims about what the Facebook users (including Na'amod) really think, posts were coded for what they were accomplishing in the interaction, with a focus on how identities are invoked, challenged, and used to forward arguments (see, for example, Antaki, Condor, and Levine 1996). ...
... It is clear that the wider debate here is about the actions of Israel and Palestine rather than about Na'amod itself, so the whole discussion is a proxy for the wider topical discussion of the Israel/ Palestine conflict. Accusations of antisemitism, which in this discussion are solely directed towards Jewish people, therefore need to be understood as a strategy for supporting Israel's actions rather than as a concern about racism towards Jews (see Chomsky 1989); this is why a rabbi can be presented as antisemitic. Antisemitism, in this thread, is a way for challenging Jews for thinking the 'wrong' things. ...
The Israel/Palestine conflict has led to intragroup conflict amongst diaspora Jews that do and do not support Israel's actions. This paper addresses that conflict, which is shown to not just be one of differing opinions but of exactly what it means to be Jewish; it is therefore a social psychological study of contested and conflicting identities. Context to intra‐Jewish conflict and the concept of the ‘self‐hating Jew’ is discussed alongside the discursive approach to identity. The research question is: How is British Jewish identity managed and policed in a debate about Jewish support for Palestine? A critical discursive analysis is conducted on a Facebook discussion initiated by the British Jewish pro‐Palestinian organisation ‘Na'amod’, which contains over 300 interactions. The analysis shows that there is both support and criticism of Na'amod, with a major feature being the construction, by Jews, of what it means to be a Jew, including (1) supporting Israel and (2) attending a controversial march against antisemitism; together these actions constitute appropriate ‘Jewish ethics’ so that not doing these places a Jew as deficient because of self‐hate and/or stupidity. The analysis therefore shows how Jewish identity is constructed in such a way as to police Jewish people's behaviour and ensure support for Israel.
... According to the prevailing opinion, police misconduct is mostly to blame for unfair stop-and-search procedures [9,18,25,31,66,51,52]. This is due to concerns about potential discrimination, excessive targeting and civil rights violations. ...
... Other factors that influence bias are public views, political debate and media narratives about crime and public safety which can all affect the prioritising and magnitude of stop-and-search approaches [18,38]. Borooah [6] suggests that governments should embrace proactive enforcement techniques such as increased monitoring of stop-and-search powers to prevent public anxiety and politicisation of these operations. ...
... Some research acknowledges the impact of public attitudes and expectations on these actions. It recognises the intricacies inherent in stop-and-search operations and balances public safety and individual freedoms [18,38]. The research showed that for the police to achieve fair and impartial stop-and-search procedures, it is important to involve communities, eliminate hidden biases and encourage communication between the public and the police [22,48,66]. ...
The literature on police stop-and-search events over the last two decades has heavily criticised the police for being racially disproportionate towards young black men compared to their white counterparts, resulting in the police being labelled as institutionally racist. However, none of the literature considers the fact that the public reporting of incidents may have had a major and direct influence on police stop-and-search outcomes. This significant issue remains a hidden and under-researched area, even though the disproportionality of police stop-and-search incidents is the leading cause of the negative relationship between the police and black and minority ethnic groups. This study addresses this gap by examining public bias in reporting incidents that result in police stopping and searching an individual. This study addresses this gap by examining public bias in reporting incidents that result in police stopping and searching an individual. A mixed method approach has been taken and primary data has been collected through freedom of information requests from the four borough command units (BCU) of the Metropolitan Police with densely populated areas with Black and Asian minority groups to investigate the link between public calls or reports of incidents and the initiation of police stop-and-search events. This data has been measured against national stop and search statistics in line with demographic data gathered from National Census data for the areas. The research concludes that there is discrimination against black and minority ethnic groups in members of the public reporting concerns. Freedom of information request for quantitative data from the Metropolitan Police reveals that public calls for reported incidents are on average 8.4 times more likely to describe the perpetrator as black European rather than white and 23.9 times more likely in the Central East borough when describing Asian ethnicity.
... Little by little, the latter is being achieved in those countries where voting is not compulsory. It is enough to read the figures of the participation statistics at the time of electing their political representatives, in many EU countries, for example (Chomsky, 1989;Chomsky, 2002b;Han & Steur, 2022). In short, in early childhood education, new technologies are used to undermine the foundations of democracy, based on false premises such as that the early childhood stage offers teachers the opportunity to lay the foundations for a "comprehensive quality education." ...
... A virus that has caused more than 6,500,000 deaths on the planet (from the start of the pandemic until mid-2022), and whose exact figures (worldwide) will never be known. No one of those who have indexed these works has been interested in solving the problem of having access to the exact data of the pandemic, especially in these times when "datacracy", "infocracy", "infodemic", "garducracy" (gardunia + autocracy), and the rest of denominations that refer to this new phenomenon that threatens the democratic system of all societies (Chomsky, 1989;Cipolla-Ficarra, 2021a;Han & Steur, 2022). ...
In this research work, the true and fictitious components are presented that underlie the metamorphosis between opportunities and challenges related to the context of new technologies. A guide and an effective heuristic evaluation mechanism are also developed based on communicability to quickly detect the degree of veracity of information on the internet related to university education. In this first investigation, the examination is carried out in the "human capital" of educational entities. In the field of challenges, a first set of challenges is established that derive from the experiences of global and local crisis situations. Finally, the consequences of concentrating the power of action and digital transformation in few and small groups are presented.
... The government policy documents conform to the claims of sociocultural theorists. Chomsky's (1989b) notion is somewhat supported because in the modern secular age, a nationalist social arrangement with related "emotionally potent oversimplifications" (p. 33) and propaganda that does not allow reason but is based on emotions, allows the masses to stay obedient and be kept under control. ...
... This power can be exercised by any kind of institution, such as the multitude of government institutions, using its defined tools and rational goals that have been accepted by society (Foucault et al., 2017). Chomsky (1989b) explained that the interests of governments, corporations, and their elites need to be served. Chomsky further noted that, regardless of the facts, the role of academic historians and politicians was to "deceive the public, for their good" and, as such, engage in "historical engineering" and "explaining the issues of the war that we might the better win it" (Chomsky, 1989b, p. 8). ...
It could be argued that the current adult education paradigm aligns with a liberal knowledge economy. A more critical perspective is Paulo Freire’s banking education concept that removes criticality from a learner’s repertoire and facilitates alignment with the prevalent liberal education and its hegemonic objectives. Drawing from Paulo Freire’s (1990) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Flores (2017) suggested that banking education teaches the oppressed to accept the oppressor’s social framework. In this paper, and through the analysis of news media articles and policy documents, the author examines the phenomenon of terrorism and how a Western worldview constructs and engages in meaning-making for the reader. As a result, the author proposes a more critical cognizant adult learning model. Drawing from Habermasian theory, the need to cultivate humanity, and criticality as practiced by Critical Discourse Analysis, the author proposes a learning model construct of evolving criticality, emancipatory in intent, complex in its components and their relationships, with the intent of giving back agency to citizens.
... The propaganda model offers a sturdy framework for comprehending the workings of the news media. As per Chomsky (1989), the media operates as a tool of prevailing power structures, relying heavily on elite sources of information in an uncritical manner to serve elite interests, maintain the elite's internal cohesion, and guide the trajectory of its favored policies. Broadly speaking, "the propaganda model implies that the media's societal role is to indoctrinate and defend the economic, social, and political agendas of privileged groups dominating domestic society and the state" (Herman and Chomsky, 1988). ...
... Recognizing corporate propaganda and its effectiveness in advancing the interests of a company is an important research topic, given the considerable resources dedicated to it and its often-covert nature. Chomsky (1989) described corporate propaganda as a topic of incredible significance that has not received the attention it merits. Financial reports can be considered a form of corporate propaganda, used to naturalize the values implicitly embedded in the company. ...
This study explores the intricate relationship between politics, economy, and social communication within the oil sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a specific focus on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It scrutinizes how the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) handled the complexities of staff-related disclosures in their operations. Through the lens of political economy theory, the investigation unpacks the strategies AIOC employed to sustain societal approval and present their operations in a positive manner. Furthermore, the study probes into political-influenced narrative disclosures from AIOC's chairman and various political diplomats. It analyzes the potential usage of these disclosures as a strategic tool to safeguard and augment AIOC's political and economic dominance, particularly in relation to their competitive standing in Iran. Utilizing a theoretical framework rooted in political economy theory, it highlights disclosure patterns aligning with AIOC's policy and strategy to sustain shareholder trust. The research aims to cast light on employee-related press disclosures and the AIOC chairman’s statement. It seeks to discern whether these disclosures provide fact-based data that align with the critical realism viewpoint, or if they are components of a strategic "game" designed to preserve shareholder confidence.
... Interpreting studies has an opportunity to resist portraying digitalization as a totally new phenomenon, and instead, to contextualize it within broader historical, socioeconomic contexts and trends. If we portray digital technologies as an entirely novel phenomenon, we run the risk of disconnecting our current predicaments, or the possibilities we currently have, from history, and as Noam Chomsky (1989) and Aviva Chomsky (2021) argue, historical amnesia will only facilitate oppression, a risk we are currently facing. This risk actually shows how powerful technology is in influencing what societies remember and forgetas seen in Zerubavel's (1997) concept of mindscapes. ...
... However, exercising such restraint substantially depends on the individual's ability to insulate themselves from a top-heavy marketing environment that is driven by concerns of private profit above public health. The challenge of infobesity is substantially more insidious because individuals in free societies are often unaware of how their opinions are being "manufactured" 177 and because individuals do not always have conscious access to the workings of their mind/brain 178 . Just as simulating food scarcity is a simple but effective strategy for dealing with food abundance, simulating information scarcity may also enhance biological defenses against the incessant novelty of information. ...
Human regulatory systems largely evolved under conditions of food and information scarcity but are now being forced to deal with abundance. The impact of abundance and the inability of human regulatory systems to adapt to it have fed a surge in dual health challenges: (1) a rise in obesity related to food abundance and (2) a rise in stress and anxiety related to information abundance. No single framework has been developed to describe why and how the transition from scarcity to abundance has been so challenging. Here, we provide a speculative model based on predictive processing. We suggest that whereas scarcity (above destructive lower bounds like famine or information voids) preserves the fidelity of the relationship between prediction errors and predictions, abundance distorts this relationship. Furthermore, prediction error minimization is enhanced under scarcity (as the number of competing states in the niche is restricted), whereas the opposite is true under abundance. We also discuss how abundance warps the fundamental drive for seeking novelty by fueling the brain's exploration (as opposed to exploitation) mode. Ameliorative strategies for regulating food and information abundance may largely depend on simulating scarcity, that environmental condition to which human regulatory systems have adapted over millennia.
... The poster presents critique of Israel as being based on fake news, which works to undermine it. P1 then refers to Israel as the only Jewish state which presents opposition to Israel as being anti-Jewish (see e.g., Chomsky [1989] and Finlay [2005] on the linking of opposition to Israel with antisemitism). This is followed up by a criticism of a pro-peace position which is presented as naïve (fawning) and through the use of scare quotes (e.g., Edwards and Potter 2013) not really about peace at all. ...
Since its inception, peace has eluded the modern state of Israel and while peace can be presented as an ideal aim, talk about peace has been shown to justify further conflict and harm in and beyond Israel and Palestine. The current analysis focuses specifically on online activity, where the aim of peace is shunned as it is deemed to be not wanted. A discursive analysis of interaction on the social media website Twitter (now X) shows that (1) opponents are presented as not wanting peace, often on the grounds that (2) Palestinians, or Muslims/Arab people more generally are too hateful to want peace, which means that Palestinians can be blamed for this lack of peace. Occasionally Israelis are also presented in this way. This argument (3) presents peace as something for Israel to offer and for Palestinians to accept or not, where they are deemed responsible if they do not accept terms that are presented to them. Together, these findings show that there is a move away from the interactional requirement to be in favour of peace, where not wanting peace can be used to support ongoing violence and conflict and, in this case, justify the status‐quo of ongoing violence and oppression of Palestinian people.
... Y éste es el caso, cada vez más numeroso, gracias a un cuadro de terroristas domésticos que muestran poco interés en la educación médica en todos los aspectos referidos a los cuidados de la mujer. (NYT, editorial, 12 de mayo de 1993) En el ejemplo (1) "terroristas" está, como algo habitual en el Oriente Medio, asociado a los árabes o el fundamentalismo musulmán, igual ocurre con las palabras "extremista" y "fanático", y se aplican en particular a la gente que utiliza la violencia en resistencia a la ocupación israelí de Palestina (Chomsky, 1984(Chomsky, , 1986(Chomsky, , 1989Herman, 1992;Herman y Chomsky, 1988;Said, 1981). Si nos fijamos en el léxico utilizado en esta opinión sobre los palestinos u otros árabes, no hay ningún tipo de duda sobre la posición ideológica del hablante. ...
En este artículo se presenta una introducción, desde la perspectiva del análisis crítico del discurso, de una nueva teoría sobre ideología multidisciplinar y sus relaciones con el discurso. Las ideologías se definen como sistemas básicos de cognición social, como elementos organizadores de actitudes y de otros tipos de representaciones sociales compartidas por los miembros pertenecientes a un grupo. Las ideologías controlan, de manera indirecta, las representaciones mentales (modelos) que están en la base y que conforman el contexto introducido en el discurso y en sus estructuras. En este marco de trabajo, se examina cómo se expresan las estructuras semánticas del discurso (tema, focalización, estructura de las proposiciones, coherencia local, nivel de descripción, implicaciones y macroestructuras) a través de ideologías subyacentes, como las transmitidas en los artículos de opinión del New York Times y el Washington Post.
... This underscores the media's role in monitoring governmental power, exerting social control, and exposing instances of government misuse of authority (Esenov, 2012). Numerous scholars, including Chomsky (2013), Fenton (2019), Mill (1977), and Wyatt (2014), have stressed the critical significance of a free and impartial media in democratic societies. ...
A significant body of literature exists examining the coverage of the first Nagorno-Karabakh war by Western media. However, there is a lack of comparative studies analyzing the coverage of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war by both Eastern and Western media. We examined 245 news reports from two prominent Eastern channels (TRT World and Al-Jazeera) and two prominent Western channels (BBC World News and DW) through content and frequency analyses. This study aims to investigate the magnitude of Air Time dedicated to the second Karabakh war by both Eastern and Western media, examining the disparities between the two. Additionally, it seeks to analyze the lexico-semantic linguistic manipulation techniques employed and the use of euphemisms and dysphemisms during the coverage. Our research reveals a pronounced bias favoring Armenia in the coverage provided by both Western television channels. Conversely, among Eastern television stations, TRT World exhibited a distinct pro-Azerbaijani leaning, while Al-Jazeera maintained a relatively neutral standpoint. This clearly shows that media outlets and journalists are not free from bias. They predominantly mix their reporting with their ideological beliefs or faith, state interests, and their country’s foreign policy directions.
... Court politicized and problematized education as a state jurisdiction issue and upheld barriers to free and appropriate education for low-income children. As a result, the Court destroys the bridge that leads to knowledge, resulting in a poorly informed population misinformed by the media and politicians who seek to maintain their personal and political interests [74][75][76] . ...
An outstanding group of leaders left evidence that a richer and more sustainable democracy could be achieved with American independence and democratic principles integrated into a new republican form of government. They were moved by principles that are the very spirit of democracy. These principles are needed to enhance democracy and improve well-being. Using the constructivist tradition of grounded theory and Aristotle’s conception of abstraction, the article proposes a theory of the first principles of democracy based on substantive data: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. Knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security are the first principles of democracy and are regarded as the bedrock of democracy and a government framework for the people. This theory contributed to a formal model of democratic social change. It also contributes a conceptual framework that supports Solum’s semantic originalism, a theory of constitutional interpretation. The principles of democracy can revitalize democracy and provide new possibilities by protecting education as an innate human right, abolishing capital punishment, criminalizing private prisons on the stock market, and reevaluating the proportionality of prison sentences.
... Indeed, usually the mainstream media's "view from the ground [has] value only if… reinforced [from that] on high" (Pilger, 2007, p. 1). Noam Chomsky (1989) buttresses Pilger's claims, asserting that while the mainstream media purports to be in service to the public good, it protects the privileged "from the threat of public understanding and participation" (p, 26). Mainstream news reporting "in the West" tends to parrot the line of the economically powerful and "conform to the stream of disinformation from Washington and London" (Pilger, 2007, p. 2). ...
... Consequently, the Cairo Agreement was signed in 1969 between Lebanon and the PLO, aiming at empowering Palestinians economically, socially, and politically in Lebanon in return of restricting the presence of the PLO to inside the camps (Siklawi, 2010). In addition to Palestinian militant presence, foreign regional intervention played a key role in destabilizing the Palestinian-Lebanese relationship, especially with Jordan's expansion of PLO operations in Lebanon (Chomsky, 1989;Besson, 1997;Harris, 2006;Siklawi, 2010). ...
This article explores the intersectional fields of displacement and architecture by examining the interrelationship between youth development and spatial configurations in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, more specifically in Ein El Hilweh Camp, South of the country. It aims at understanding how spatial configurations can alter human behavior, and the ways in which societal reform can take place in an urban context. Through taking Ein El Hilweh Camp as a case study and field interviews with experts working and residing in the Ein El-Hilweh Camp, this article asserts that youth development in Palestinian Camps in Lebanon is hindered by the dire conditions of spatial configurations in the camps and their geopolitics. It also asserts that in the presence of fostered youth protection and capacity and skills building, youth engagement and participation in the modification of their spaces act as essential drivers of change which contribute to the reduction of urban poverty and to the development of urban strategies that can sustain their development and provide an incubating environment for them to grow during the stages of their youth and beyond. Moreover, this article suggests that the primary factor contributing to the hindered situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is the condition of permanent temporariness imposed by the state. The reduction of socio-spatial inequalities is temporary unless the integration of Palestinian refugees is fostered and their accessibility to social, economic, and civil rights, as well as the right to the city is granted.
... Information about the SCS is usually not directly delivered from the sender to the receiver, but largely through the news media. In this process, according to Chomsky (1995) propaganda model, information is filtered by the news media for different purposes. Therefore, the mass media that usually holds strong opinions towards the SCS may affect information disclosure for the SCS (Chen and Grossklags, 2022). ...
In recent years, credit reporting agencies are under pressure to reform themselves to reach higher levels of transparency. In this context, the critically considered digitally-implemented credit reporting system in China—the Chinese Social Credit System (SCS)—is of particular interest. Compared to traditional credit reporting systems, the SCS has a wider range of goals, including enhancing social control, establishing a state-defined notion of trustworthiness and increasing market efficiency. It covers not only Chinese citizens, companies, and organizations but also foreign ones which have activities in or with China. This paper studies the transparency of the SCS from the perspective of foreign organizations. We conducted interviews with employees from German organizations that are engaged in commercial activities in or with China to understand how transparent the SCS is to them and to gather their perceptions about the role of the system in increasing the transparency of the Chinese business landscape. Our analysis of the interviews showcased an interesting contrast between reservations with respect to the system’s transparency and the belief that the SCS would enhance the transparency of the Chinese business landscape. Drawing on our analysis of the interviews, we discuss factors affecting SCS transparency and the role of the SCS in increasing corporate transparency. We further highlight that there are inherent limits when credit rating systems (such as the SCS) aim to provide transparency about market participants, while pursuing other objectives at the same time.
... La réplica de la información apoyada en fuentes falsas paradójicamente puede potenciar el propio alcance de la misma hasta sectores a los que no había alcanzado por sus propios medios (Tsfati et al. 2020). Además, el contexto asimétrico de información, cuya intensificación a finales del siglo XX era ya analizada por Chomsky (1989), se ha visto potenciado por la interacción entre el impacto del medio digital y los medios "tradicionales" de comunicación, lo que consolida la segunda dinámica analizada en nuestro estudio sobre la desinformación. ...
El presente artículo realiza una exploración sociológica de la desinformación a partir del análisis de bulos de carácter islamófobo en España durante los primeros meses de la irrupción de la COVID-19. Nuestra hipótesis sitúa el foco de la investigación en las dinámicas sociológicas surgidas a partir de la interacción entre las networked connections, el entorno informativo asimétrico y la irrupción de la derecha radical. Tras la explicación de la metodología escogida -de carácter cualitativo- y a la luz de la hipótesis planteada, el artículo identifica y expone tres narrativas principales extraídas del análisis de 17 noticias falsas de carácter islamófobo, que corroboran los resultados de estudios previos y posibilitan el análisis tanto del contenido islamófobo de la muestra escogida de bulos como de las dinámicas sociológicas que explican la génesis y expansión del fenómeno desinformativo a partir del estudio de caso seleccionado.
... As part of "a global media market . . . closely linked to the rise of a signi‹cantly more integrated 'neo-liberal' global capitalist economy" (McChesney 1999, 78), such newspapers construct news frames for a number of reasons, including newsgathering routines and values, economic factors, government regulation, the physical structure of the medium, the political and economic interests of the country constructing the news, deference to government of‹cials, and journalists' personal biases (Innis 1951;Gitlin 1980;Chomsky 1989;Keshishian 1997). Perhaps most important, they make decisions to frame news coverage in ways that bene‹t the interests of the elite-the wealthy and powerful few who have the most to gain and lose from interactions with China (Lee 2002;McChesney 1999). ...
"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
... It includes the following components: Form of media ownership, financing schemes, sources of information, editorial policy, and ideology. These trends resulted in the formation of the so-called "alternative journalism" (Chomsky, 1989). It is viewed as a complex of media content that deviates from the standards accepted in the mainstream media. ...
News development is currently affected by digitalization. Therefore, media scholars using digital means to cover the news must develop the so-called "multimedia mindset" among professional journalists and media students. It is not enough to teach the technology-the scholars have to embrace new journalism tools to incorporate them with story planning activities. This article aims to look into how the aforementioned planning activities are used in the curriculum for Russian media students and professionals in the field of international journalism. The paper is qualitative and descriptive based on secondary data reported in hybrid written media. Also, this research uses a case study dealing with a proposed new program "International News Production" a track within the Contemporary Journalism Master program including alternative media at the High School of Economics Media Institute in Moscow. The findings of this study shed light on the skills needed in new alternative media. Students undergoing the proposed new program in alternative and international media enhance their professional skills and qualifications while experiencing Russian culture. Graduates from the program shall have ample opportunities to pursue careers in various areas of the media industry, including visual journalism, data journalism, storytelling, production, and newsroom management at various international newsrooms. Teaching new alternative media methods can be easily projected to the work with practicing journalists in news channels and information agencies.
... It is a striking and lamentable fact of contemporary life that so few people appear to notice, or maybe even care to see, that the mediated world with which they engage so religiously is largely populated by such bad actors. [5] If the actors and the script writers haven't made these facts abundantly clear in their own words, they have signaled as much in their actions -the key ID features of the performance embodied in their patterns of behavior. ...
This article offers textual and semiotic analysis of key signs of deception appearing in campaigns of warfare waged against populations. Covered in the scope of this article is critical analysis of the historical and contemporary deployment of clandestine chemical, biological, nuclear, legislative, psychological, and medical weapons testing on unsuspecting population centers. The principal aim of the article is to broaden awareness of discourse patterns signifying official programs of testing which are ongoing and yet remain partly camouflaged by deceptive language practices.
... Akerlof & Shiller (2015) describe how much dominant economic interests manipulate and distort information. Already Chomsky (1989) has explained how thought control is organized in democratic societies. Chomsky & Herman (1994) demonstrate how the media create an apparently objective mass consensus to assert the interests of influential circles of economic and political elites. ...
In this essay, we discuss some urgent challenges for democracy and education in the Deweyan sense in connection with current developments of technologies and questions of sustainability. We proceed in four major parts, following the systematic distinction of four mutually interrelated levels of technologies in culture found in the late work of Michel Foucault. In part 1, we focus on the technologies of production. We connect Foucault’s perspective with more recent research on questions of social inequality and the production and distribution of wealth. In part 2, we address the level of technologies of sign systems, connecting Foucault’s perspective with critical approaches like Chomsky and Zuboff. In part 3, we turn to the level of technologies of power and domination. We use Crouch’s approach to post-democracy in order to examine some crucial dangers for democracy. In part 4, we look at the level of technologies of the self. We consider connections with contemporary constructivist as well as Deweyan perspectives in education that emphasize the role of relationships and processes of social self-creation. The essay closes with a summary of the most important conclusions of our discussion.
... C распадом индустриальной эпохи и переход в информационное/цифровое общество возросло число акторов мировой политики, что снизило роль пропаганды как формы государственной информационной политики. Модели пропаганды начала ХХ века Г. Лассуэла -тотального влияния на общественное мнение через постоянное повторение однотипных сообщений, а также более современная, конца ХХ века, «концептуальная модель политической экономии», основанная на применении идеологических «пяти фильтров» Эдварда С. Хермана и Ноама Хомски [12] и более поздние аналогичные модели [21], основанные лишь на определение идеологической ориентации масс-медиа теряют свою эффективность в связи с повышающейся дискретностью общества и множества разнонаправленных источников масс-медиа, а также возможностью не только пассивно воспринимать, но и осознавать, трансформировать и активно распространять информацию и др. ...
Architektura cyfrowa warunkuje zmieniające się formy zarządzania gospodarką i społeczeństwem. Sprzężenie pomiędzy nowoczesnymi technologiami a zmianami społecznymi otwiera przed człowiekiem nieznaną dotąd perspektywę.
प्रस्तुत लेखमा संरचनावादी भाषावैज्ञानिक लियोनार्ड ब्लुमफिल्ड र अब्राहम नोम चम्स्कीका भाषिक दर्शनको तुलना गरिएको छ । यिनका भाषिक दर्शनमा पाइने समानता र भिन्नताको तुलनात्मक अध्ययन गरी भाषाशिक्षणमा पारेको प्रभावको चर्चा गर्ने उद्देश्यले गरिएको यस अध्ययनका लागि पुस्तकालयीय कार्य र अनलाइनबाट सामग्री सङ्कलन गरिएको छ । गुणात्मक ढाँचाको यस अध्ययनमा शीर्षकसम्बद्ध सैद्धान्तिक पुस्तक, शोधपत्र, शोधप्रबन्ध र अनुसन्धनात्मक लेखरचनाहरू जस्ता द्वितीयक स्रोतका सामग्री मात्र प्रयोग गरिएको छ । सङ्कलित सामग्रीलाई तुलनात्मक वा व्यतिरेकी विश्लेषण पद्धतिको उपयोग गरी व्याख्या विश्लेषण गरिएको छ । अमेरिकाली संरचनावादी भाषावैज्ञानिक ब्लुमफिल्डले सन् १९३० मा भाषा नामक पुस्तक प्रकाशित गरेपछि भाषाको अध्ययन परम्परामा संरचनावादी दृष्टिकोणको विकास भएको देखिन्छ । चम्स्कीले सन् १९५९ मा भाषासिकाइसम्बन्धी उक्त अवधारणाको खण्डन गरेपछि भाषाशिक्षणका क्षेत्रमा नयाँ हलचल पैदा भएको देखिन्छ । ब्लुमफिल्ड र चम्स्की दुवैले भाषाकै क्षेत्रमा अध्ययन गरेको देखिन्छ । ब्लुमफिल्डले भाषिक आर्जनका सन्दर्भमा उत्तेजना–प्रतिक्रिया र पुनर्बलीकरणका प्रक्रियालाई मानेका अनि आत्मा, मन तथा चेतनाजस्ता अमूर्त कुरालाई नमानेका तर चम्स्कीले तिनै बुद्धिवादीरूको समर्थन गरेर मान्छेले जन्मजात रूपमा ल्याएर आएको भाषा प्राप्ति संयन्त्रका सहयोगले वातावरणको भाषा सिक्छ भन्ने मान्यताको विकास गरेको निष्कर्ष अध्ययनबाट निकालिएको छ ।
In this paper, I explore the critical role of social studies educators in challenging conventional notions of democracy within the curriculum. By encouraging students to question familiar concepts, I aim to reveal the underlying assumptions that can hinder democratic growth and perpetuate inequalities.
In Resilience Restoration: Decolonizing Mental Health Through Language Reclamation, Isha Sarah Snow argues that Western mental health models, rooted in colonial language structures and individualist ideologies, pathologize natural human responses to trauma while erasing the cultural and relational contexts that foster resilience. Drawing on insights from linguistic anthropology, psychological theory, and decolonial ethics, Snow critiques the Subject-Verb-Object grammar of English and its Proto-Indo-European roots for reinforcing binary thinking, shame-based control, and hierarchical social structures. In contrast, non-Western and Indigenous languages such as Lakota, Tagalog, and Hawaiian encode relationality, reciprocity, and fluid identity—allowing for healthier emotional regulation and social cohesion. Snow shows how these linguistic systems foster resilience not by denying suffering, but by integrating it into communal narratives of growth and interdependence. The paper explores how colonization severs people from ancestral meaning systems, using language as a tool to fragment identity and control thought. Through examples such as the Hope Vale Pelican Project in Australia and Indigenous approaches to mental health that frame psychosis as spiritual emergence, Snow advocates for a return to relational worldviews grounded in inclusive, non-binary language. Ultimately, she redefines resilience not as personal toughness or conformity to dysfunctional systems, but as the capacity to heal collectively through restored relationships, cultural memory, and narrative sovereignty.
Isha Sarah Snow's paper, “Linguistic Exclusion and the Broken Social Contract: A Trauma-Informed Critique of English Pragmatics and Performance in Face-to-Face and Online Interactions,” presents a compelling interdisciplinary analysis of how the structure and use of the English language reinforce systems of exclusion, control, and trauma—particularly for neurodivergent individuals.
The essay synthesizes linguistics, disability justice, trauma theory, and anthropology to argue that the Western social contract is fear- and shame-based, and that its enforcement is embedded in the very grammar of English. Using the concept of illocutionary acts from pragmatics, the author explores how implicit expectations of speech and social behavior exclude autistic individuals and those with alternative cognitive styles, who may struggle with masking, impression management, and adapting to unspoken social scripts.
Drawing on personal experience and scholarly research, the paper critiques SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) grammar for perpetuating binary moral logic, assigning blame and agency in ways that mirror coercive control models like the Duluth Power and Control Wheel. The argument is extended to online communication, where the breakdown of physical social cues heightens the exclusion of people with low cultural or platform competency.
Historically, the paper traces the origins of English grammar to Proto-Germanic and Indo-European roots, showing how linguistic binaries—such as active/passive, sacred/profane, male/female—were tools of imperial, patriarchal, and colonial systems. These systems, the author argues, have created a cognitive environment that normalizes judgment, dehumanization, and hierarchical control.
The final sections position SVO grammar as a mechanism of authoritarianism, showing how its simplicity supports propaganda, linear cause-and-effect thinking, and the moral flattening necessary for fascist ideologies. By contrast, the paper highlights Indigenous and non-Western languages (like Navajo, Tagalog, and Hawaiian) that promote relationality, mutual responsibility, and cognitive flexibility.
The piece ultimately calls for a trauma-informed, relational reimagining of language itself, arguing that without revising our linguistic foundations, efforts toward inclusion, justice, and social transformation will remain incomplete.
The ideals behind creative freedom often come into conflict with the stark realities of financial interest. Commercial image-making is subject to numerous compromises based on the general practicalities of a project and the financial obligations that sponsorship imposes on the autonomy of the content producer. Comparing the studio-based and state-sponsored models of production with the relative accessibility of today’s creative environment, this article will argue that whilst visual media production has invariably changed for the better in terms of representation, parallels still exist in how democratised media is subject to different levels of creative control. By examining John Grierson’s cinema of social purpose in conjunction with non-specialist digital media, the theory and formal significance of Britain’s Documentary Film Movement will be shown to harbour a contemporary resonance for the digital image-maker. In essence, the argument will examine the importance of immediacy and rapid expansion in film practice and intellectual spectatorship, and will further reveal the structural boundaries that explicitly and implicitly limit a creative’s medium of communication. The conflicted way in which we consider a concept like freedom within the democratic state is exposed by the means by which we can distribute our images of said state. By broadly examining the formal, philosophical, and political analysis of the idealised state, democratised media will be defined as an imaginative practice inherently stimulated by the misrepresentative forces of idealism.
Rad analizira mogućnosti razvoja javnosti u (trans)nacionalnim i digitalnim okvirima. Polazeći od Habermasove konceptualizacije, javna sfera se razume kao prostor između države i tržišta, gde se odigrava politički obračun
autoriteta i publiciteta, rezultirajući javnim mnjenjem kao izrazom narodnog
suvereniteta. Ustrojstvo Evropske unije problematizuje prvobitne nacionalne
okvire javnosti. U kontekstu „etatizma bez države“ i jedinstvenog tržišta,
kao i prioriteta evropske medijske politike, uspostavljanje kontinentalnog
javnog mnjenja umnogome je osujećeno. Prateći teoriju medijskih sistema,
rad pokazuje da je dominantna tendencija stvaranje hibridnih modela koji
uključuju komercijalizaciju i političku instrumentalizaciju medija, zadržavajući nedostatke mediteranskog i preuzimajući mane liberalnog modela,
što ometa formiranje javnosti. Država u krizi pokušava kompenzovati narodnim komunikacionim suverenitetom, usled čega pribegava autoritarnom etatizmu, čiji su pojavni oblici strukturno i tehnološko razdvajanje sfere
mejnstrim i novih medija, „flak”, te mediokratske formacije arkanskog dela
državnog aparata. Navedeni aspekti čine kontekst u kojem deluje tvitersfera. Usled slabe transnacionalne regulative, javnosferski potencijal platforme pod upravom je same Tviter korporacije, koja vrši profitno orijentisanu koordinaciju i kontrolu korisnika, dok pojedinačnim državama preostaje da nađu meru između zaštite i ograničavanja slobode govora. Međutim, države sa autokratskim tendencijama svesno pogoršavaju kvalitet diskursa: kompjuterizovanom propagandom, astroturfingom, strateškim spamovanjem, botovskim simulacijama građanskog delovanja s ciljem polarizacije i urušavanja tvitersfere. Razlika u odnosu na mejnstrim medije je što nema restrikcije cirkulacije sadržaja, već pre – njegovog zagađenja hiperprodukcijom. Tvitersfera time nasleđuje strukturna ograničenja sopstvenog medijskog sistema, ali ne uspeva da reši ni problem reprezentacije, niti interakcije, jer se diskursi strateški kontaminiraju onda kada se ne mogu kontrolisati.
This paper studies the ways linguistics choices are utilized in the press to achieve particular conceptualizations in the mind of the reader. It aims to explore how The Times represents Muslims in its news reports. The data is analysed qualitatively by adopting Hart's model of proximization (2014) as conceptual parameter through which ideology and legitimacy are enacted in in the reports. The findings show that as a strategy of interventionist discourse, proximization is exploited to present Muslims as a threat to the self by emphasizing Us vs Them Polarization. A major finding is that as a rightwing organization, The Times represents Muslims in a way that reflects extreme-nationalist debate that is interdiscursively associated with discourses of "the war on terror" by relying on proximization strategy. Journal of College of Education (55)(1) : جريدة في المسلمين لتمثيالت اكي ادر لغوي تحليل The Times برمنكهام احتجاجات ، 2019 و ، باتي مقتل 2020 غانم حسن ا صبر الباحثة: عبد قدوري احمد أ.د. اآلداب كلية / المستنصرية الجامعة المستخلص وتسعى القارئ. ذهن في معينة ات تصور لتحقيق الصحافة في اللغوية ات الخيار استخدام بطرق اسة الدر هذه تعنى الستكشاف يدة جر في ية اإلخبار ير التقار في المسلمين تمثيل كيفية The Times باعتماد ا ً نوعي البيانات تحليل يتم. Hart's model of proximization (2014) اتيجية كاستر اكية ادر ير. التقار تلك في الشرعية و األيديولوجية تفعيل تخدم بان النتائج تظهر proximization ، عبر وذلك للذات كتهديد المسلمين تقديم في تسهم التدخلي، للخطاب اتيجية كاستر لالستقطاب كمنهجية ضدهم" "نحن على التأكيد. يدة جر بان اسة الدر افادت و The Times منظمة بصفتها و تمثل ، يمينية خالل من اإلرهاب" على "الحرب بخطابات متبادل بشكل تبط المر المتطرف القومي الجدل تعكس يقة بطر المسلمين اتيجية استر على االعتماد proximization. المفتاحية الكلمات يدة جر ، المسلمين تمثيل ، األيديولوجيا ، اكي االدر التحليل : The Times
تعنى هذه الدراسة بطرق استخدام الخيارات اللغوية في الصحافة لتحقيق تصورات معينة في ذهن القارئ. وتسعى لاستكشاف كيفية تمثيل المسلمين في التقارير الإخبارية في جريدة The Times. يتم تحليل البيانات نوعيًا باعتماد Hart's model of proximization (2014) كاستراتيجية ادراكية تخدم تفعيل الأيديولوجية والشرعية في تلك التقارير. تظهر النتائج بان proximization ،كاستراتيجية للخطاب التدخلي، تسهم في تقديم المسلمين كتهديد للذات وذلك عبر التأكيد على "نحن ضدهم" كمنهجية للاستقطاب .وافادت الدراسة بان جريدة The Times و بصفتها منظمة يمينية ، تمثل المسلمين بطريقة تعكس الجدل القومي المتطرف المرتبط بشكل متبادل بخطابات "الحرب على الإرهاب" من خلال الاعتماد على استراتيجية proximization .
This chapter focuses on libertarian social democracy in the political realm. Specifically, the chapter discusses the limits of liberal democracy as a vehicle for advancing freedom and equality (or equal liberty) and anarchism’s potential as an alternative paradigm. However, it also presents a critique of traditional prefigurative anarchism, and argues for a more comprehensive vision of anarchist strategy spanning from prefigurative (non-state) to gradualist (statist), which more effectively addresses public concerns about “bad anarchy” and helps to clarify the relationship between anarchism and mainstream political participation. The elements of gradualist anarchism – just law, consensus, and decentralization – are also introduced and analyzed.
The term 'fake news' became a buzzword during Donald Trump's presidency, yet it is a term that means very different things to different people. This pioneering book provides a comprehensive examination of what Americans mean when they talk about fake news in contemporary politics, mass media, and societal discourse, and explores the various factors that contribute to this, such as the power of language, political parties, ideology, media, and socialization. By analysing a range of case studies across war, political corruption, climate change, conspiracy theories, electoral politics, and the Covid-19 pandemic, it demonstrates how fake news is a fundamentally contested phenomenon, and how its meaning varies depending on the person using the term, and the political context. It provides readers with tools to identify, talk about, and resist fake news, and emphasizes a need for education reform with an eye toward promoting critical thinking and information literacy.
This book is about the possibilities that cyberdemocracy can offer in expanding both the political landscape and suffrage to citizens. Towards the end of this chapter, there is a section titled ‘Making a Path for Cyberdemocracy’, hence adding ‘E’ to the title. But before we get there, it is necessary to briefly dip into history, particularly of the emergence of a form of democracy in Ancient Athens before examining modern democracy and some of the issues therein.
Religion plays an important role in both individual and collective lives of people. However, religious people can be divided into two major categories, i.e. people who practice a religion for making their lives as well as those of others peaceful; and those who use religion to materialize their vested interests. This article will briefly discuss the role of religious identities and the way religious identity has been portrayed in the contemporary Pakistani fiction. Omar Shahid Hamid's novel titled as "The Spinner's Tale" (2015) has been selected as a representative text of Pakistani fiction. It portrays different religious identities and the way they affect the society at large when a religious individual or group uses religious identity not to make peace with the inner-self or the universe, but to bring chaos (either knowingly or otherwise) by trying to gain benefits of trivial nature. With an aim of bringing one of the reasons behind the failure of an already falling apart world, this article is an effort to point out the way religious identity has been [mis-]represented in the selected contemporary work of fiction and to offer a practically possible solution to bring a halt to the way a religious identity is misused or misrepresented.
Only in the second half of the twentieth century, Linguistics started adopting a functionalist paradigm. Halliday is a crucial figure of this time. By the 1970s, scholars felt the need to analyse language not just in terms of its structure, but also the underlying ideology that each utterance carries. Form here, the ‘critical’ perspective to language analysis got introduced. A critical study assumes that nothing said is neutral; it is always said from a particular point of view along with some aims. This claim is in line with Halliday’s argument that language is socially anchored. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) got formalized in 1991. Since language is an indispensable part of society and represents as well as constructs the society, it is only essential that language is critically studied. People using language should be well aware of the ways it can be (mis)used and its speakers be mentally influenced. With this aim of creating awareness, that is, demythlogising society, CDA seeks to read between the lines of a discourse and search for the representative attitudes and the underlying ideologies.
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