Thoughts on propaganda September 9, 2010

Although Taria already posted something about propaganda, I decided to discuss it in terms of active versus passive consumers of media.

Some theorists believe that average people are passive consumers of media; others, active. Often the cases of effective propganda use are cited as proof that we are passive consumers. But is this truly legitimate?

I would argue that propaganda is merely an exaggeration and excaberation of existing beliefs. The source of these original beliefs are to be discussed briefly later. If the message of a negative propaganda campaign was truly radical and new, it would need time to be weaved into the host culture and society to such an extent that it dictactes or affects action.  Thus in scenarios where negative propaganda is effective in inciting violent behavior, the negative behavior is more deeply rooted than a cruel telecast or radio broadcast.

This mistrust or negative perception must have existed prior to the media’s message being released to some extent or another, perhaps as a result of other family or cultural factors or perhaps as a result of a long-term, progressive, gradually intensifying propaganda campaign.

While we absorb some items from a message, the situation on the ground of some civilians resisting violence and hate in an otherwise chaotic environment is also proof that background influences what we absorb, how we interpret it, and how we behave in relation to the messages. Those civilians who complied with the message absorbed and INTERPRETED differently because of existing factors.

In sum, using propaganda’s effectiveness as proof of docility and passivity of media consumption overlooks people who don’t act in accordance with the message, overlooks pre-existing conditions, and simplifies the cases they are part of.

Media’s captives? September 3, 2010

In class yesterday, we discussed the idea that in the past, people were “captive” to media outlets because the variety and sources were limited. In the days of the telegraph, you had limited companies and countries with access and the means to distribute the information. This led to the telegraph news agencies and eventually to the rise of the penny press, Pulitzer and Hurst and the like.

So if we were captive to media then because of the limited amount of sources (and also limited variety), the assumption is that with an almost infinite amount of sources (like the internet), people are no longer captive to it. I am not sure I agree entirely with this assumption – obviously you can only include countries which have free access to the internet, so most of the globe is still captive to more “traditional” forms of media. Those of us that are left are then bombarded with media messages; it saturates our daily life until we are overloaded with it. In such a society, it seems as if we become a new type of captive. Because there are more than 100 newspapers, we just pull up the NY Times or the Washington Post. Or not at all. Because there are so many opinions about issue x, we look at some talking head’s blog that presents issue x in the way we appreciate.

As I reason this out, I begin to think we are still captives because we chose to be. We are accustomed to biased media outlets, though some don’t even realize they’re biased, and we continue that trend with the internet.

I think the key issue to releasing ourselves from media captivity is not having variety of sources and options alone, though that is clearly a factor. The most important aspects are media literacy and activism. We have to know how to “read” media properly, interpret it accordingly, and motivate ourselves to search for broader, more complete information. Media literacy and activism are the only ways to open the door of the cage.