Propaganda Blitz: How the Corporate Media Distort Reality
... In fact the IPCC's position is open to criticism in the opposite sense because of the conservatism that inevitably arises in any large institutional assessment [62], the fact that some signatory countries exert influence to weaken or omit some findings, and the consequent pressure on individual scientists not to stick their heads above the parapet [63]. According to the eminent scientist Bill McGuire, 'there is not a cat in hell's chance' of keeping warming below 2 • C, cited in [64], let alone below 1.5 • C. ...
Continuing growth, insofar as it increases human environmental impact, is in conflict with the environment. ‘Green growth’, if it increases the absolute size of the economy, is an oxymoron. Environmental limits are discountenanced, a pretence made possible because they are difficult to specify in advance. The consequent weakness in public discourse, both moral and intellectual, has worsened into contradiction as it has become ever more studiously unadmitted. It is obscured with language that is misleading or self-contradictory, and even issues from institutions that exist (and are relied upon) to respect correctness. At its most conforming it gives rise to overshoot, by which statements meant to sound authoritative are in fact open to ridicule. Such untruthfulness perpetuates climate change inaction, and in a kind of direct action those using such language, contrary to their public or professional duty, could be asked to justify themselves in plain English.
... Ten years ago, it was increasingly likely that warming will continue to 4 • C or beyond, and that the consequent impacts would probably be incompatible with an organized global community [70]. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, one of the world's leading climate scientists, is quoted as saying that the difference between 2 • C and 4 • C of warming 'is human civilization' [71], and at 5 • C warming the human population would decrease to fewer than 1bn [72]. ...
The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.
... To understand the causes of MGSV's memory politics of war and colonialism I apply the 'propaganda model ' by Edward Herman andNoam Chomsky (2002 [1988]). They originally made several cases for how US news media is more about selling a product conforming to dominant narratives than about informing their readers about world affairs-something still apparent today (Edwards/Cromwell 2018), and something which applies to video games like MGSV. While theirs is not a theoretically exhaustive model, it is nonetheless instructive in determining some of the factors that motivate media to serve the interests of the ruling elites. ...
In this article I argue that the structural conditions of global capitalism and postcolonialism encourage game developers to rearticulate hegemonic memory politics and suppress subaltern identities. This claim is corroborated via an application of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Japanese-developed video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This case study highlights that the hegemonic articulations of colonial histories are not exclusive to Western entertainment products where instead modes of production matter in the ‘manufacturing of mnemonic hegemony’. I also propose that the propaganda model, while instructive, can be improved further by acknowledging a technological filter and the role of the subaltern. Thus, the article furthers the understanding of the relation between production and form in contemporary technological phenomena like video games and how this relation motivates hegemonic articulations of the past in contemporary mass culture.
... From Elizabeth Catte (2018) who viciously and eloquently opposes the simplifying demonization of Appalachia and its residents in US-American mainstream liberal discourse, via Cherian George's (2016) analyses of how religious offence is instrumentalized to both vilify others and frame oneself as victim of oppression and harassment to Alan MacLeod's (2019) attempt to address the biases of 'Western' media reporting on Venezuela, many scholars have engaged with such politically inflected instances of othering and demonization from critical vantage points. In addition, Butler's (2009) distinction between 'grievable lives' and 'ungrievable lives' (see also Mehr 2009), as well as Herman andChomsky's (2002 [1988]: 37-86) differentiation between 'worthy victims' and 'unworthy victims' (see also Edwards/Cromwell 2018), point to the importance of mediated images for the framing of the other in the name of wars and violent interventionism. As Barry Buzan, Jaap de Wilde andOle Waever (1998 [1997]), Michael Merlingen (2008) and Sybille Reinke de Buitrago (2012) among others have shown, this has relevance for international relations and processes of securitization. ...
We believe that the representation, construction, manufacture, and exclusion of monsters across genres and media is an increasingly pressing issue for individuals and civil societies on a global scale. The widespread use of exaggerated frames presenting a variety of others as mere threats has deadly consequences for many people—worldwide. And, ‘Western’ liberal democratic elites urgently need to acknowledge their own role in such processes as the current construction of ‘Monster Assad’ as a Hitler-esque tyrant intending to ‘gas his own people’ or the continuing framing of Iran as ‘a nuclear threat to world peace’ lead by ‘nuke-building, apocalyptic mullahs’ are equally irresponsible and dangerous acts as the presentation of ‘non-normative’ persons as a menace to cultural and societal stability or the assumption that certain people are simply born as terrorists. We believe that as researchers, students, employees, workers, pupils, retirees, and others—in sum: as citizens—, we must be aware of such discursive moves of othering and exclusion and learn to identify these, connect them to underlying interests, and then resist and subvert them to avoid more killings in our or others’ names. This is our responsibility especially as contemporary global crises intensify bringing with them the need for ever new scapegoats to explain away the real contradictions underlying these relentless challenges.
The arms industry and trade are central to the world economy and the economics of and between nation-states; also, to corruption, the mining industry, the way science is defined and evolves, to climate change and ongoing assaults on the environment. But are economics students asked to analyse this situation? Do climate and environmental activists make it a central target of critique? Or is it almost taboo to write and talk about it too much, like the emperor’s new clothes? Is corporate media’s near-silence on it due to a complicity of vested interests? J. P. S. Uberoi repeatedly spoke and wrote about it. Speaking at the launch of my co-authored book ‘Ecology, Economy’ (2013), he wanted the subject further emphasised. Specifically, he emphasised the ‘accelerated development of armaments [as] the most potent single evil… that faces the world today’; estimating that about a third of professional scientists and engineers are complicit in the industry. Focusing on this topic as a tribute to Uberoi’s thinking therefore puts the spotlight on the place of science in society—one of his favourite subjects—as well as the place of war, and how a modern self defines itself in relation to war and to the nation-state that sells or buys arms and wages or becomes complicit in armed conflicts .
Social justice education is the most explicitly activism-oriented discipline in higher education. However, critical media literacy is noticeably absent from the curricula at the leading universities offering graduate degrees in social justice in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This is a perplexing omission, given the corporate media's leading and comprehensive role in sustaining an oppressive status quo, spreading ruling-class ideologies, and maintaining the inherently unjust hegemony of capitalist economic and political elites. This chapter explains why the inclusion of critical media literacy is indispensable to social justice education. It provides educators with multifold ways to incorporate critical media literacy into their courses and curriculum to empower students to advance social justice causes and struggle more effectively for an equitable world.
This chapter calls for a radical pedagogical intervention, encouraging educators to fuse alternative news media content with a critical media literacy framework in their classrooms. This intervention will facilitate an introduction of alternative news into the curriculum as a transformative and revolutionary pedagogy that allows for students to become familiar with and embrace oppositional, counter-hegemonic news sources that will encourage them to think critically and engage robustly as informed citizens against neoliberalism, austerity, and a host of other oppressions. More specifically, the chapter will propose a course module that uses a critical media literacy framework to analyze corporate news media and directly contrast it with counter-hegemonic, oppositional, dissenting alternative news sources. Because of the rich interdisciplin-ary background of critical media literacy, the proposed course module contains topics from across these disciplines and others, including: political economy of media; ideology and hegemony; critical discourse analysis; democracy; the public sphere; active citizenship; news framing; class, gender and race; media production; critical thinking; the impact of the public relations industry and news agencies; public broadcasting; and the history of news media.
Consensus regarding what becomes mainstream, popular, and commonplace within academia is subtly managed in accord with conformity of thought, contemporary popular ideas, and major assumptions/paradigms predominating fields, which in turn are comprised of hegemonic, ideological ideas, frameworks and arguments that are informed and bound by power. Power, professionalisation, and dominant ideological currents inform and legitimise paradigmatic ideas, which in turn influence perceptions and reception. This paper explores how Communication Studies have been impacted by dominant configurations of power and encourages debate on the extent to which ideological bias and ideological marginalisation are normative dimensions of Communication Studies.
This chapter explores the role of propaganda, framing and agenda setting on the media, in general, and the reporting of the ‘conflict’, specifically. The current media role in forming and shaping our world view and in forming a nation’s view of the ‘other’ is discussed. This is followed by an exploration of how othering is used to justify Israeli violence towards the Palestinians. I examine the use of sources in the newspapers and whether there is a difference in which side’s sources are used or how they are represented and how this can lead to bias. The chapter ends with a discussion of the patterns and trends evinced in the reporting of the ‘conflict’ across the newspapers.
In the late eighties, Manufacturing Consent (1988) provided Media Studies with a framework for understanding the ideological filtering that Herman and Chomsky saw as fake news by another name. The question now is, given that in the thirty years since that publication, the news industry has been transformed almost beyond recognition, can its way of seeing news media still apply? There are less employed journalists and the number will continue to decline as advertising revenue decreases. Readers sharing stories online have, arguably, more power than editors in all respects, in effect making clickbait a ‘necessary evil’ and the middle ground less viable. In this chapter, the question of trust in journalism today will be the focus, through the lens of ‘old school’ Media Studies.
Introduction with free access https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rcye20/31/2
The role of digital literacy in strengthening citizens’ resilience to misinformation and ‘fake news’ has been the subject of research projects and networking and academic and policy discourses in recent years, given prominence by an escalation of the perceived crisis following election and referendum results in the US and UK respectively. This special issue sets out to take forward critical dialogue in the field of media and digital literacy education by publishing rigorous research on the subject. The research disseminated in this collection speaks to the political and economic contexts for ‘fake news’, the complex issue of trust and the risks of educational solutionism; questions of definition and policy implementation; teaching about specific subgenres such as YouTube and clickbait; international comparisons of pedagogic approaches and challenges for teachers in this changing ecosystem.
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