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Seminar slides for MAC201 Week 4
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Hidden Agendas / Propaganda#mac201
YouTube playlist
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Propaganda
Propaganda is mainly perceived in the West as an aspect of Communist, Fascist or totalitarian regimes where the media is controlled by the state. It is assumed that in the West, where much of the media is in the hands of private enterprise, that formal propaganda is absent. Saeed and Laverty (2006)
On Sunspace
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Gaza Flotilla, 2010
The War You Don’t See (2010)
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Consequences?
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Tony Benn fights back
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Social media
Israel government recruited 1,000 volunteers with the objective of flooding news websites and blogs that the ministry term as anti-Israeli with pro-Israeli opinions.
Israel government held a World Citizens Press Conference via Twitter only 4 days after the initial onslaught (Chomsky, 2009).
Silverstein suggests that there has been a concerted effort on Israel’s part to flood the web and news media with crafted materials in an attempt to turn public opinion toward Israel (Silverstein, 2009: 1).
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How to make sense of this?
Factual media, despite claims to truth, are a battleground for ideological warfare
Documentary film-makers and news outlets are implicitly involved in shaping and re-shaping public understanding of events
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3 paradigms
1. Manufacturing consent • (Herman & Chomsky, 1988)
2. Media of contest• (Wolfsfeld, 1997)
3. Media culture • (Kellner, 2003)
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Media of contest
Media cultureManufacturing
consent
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1 - Manufacturing Consent
Five news “filters”:
1. Ownership and profit orientation
2. Funding via advertising
3. Over-reliance on ‘official’ sources
4. “Flak” targeting the media
5. The need to engage a ‘common enemy’ (via anti-ideologies)
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2 - Media of contest
1. Political protest more influential than media but there is give-and-take
2. Political voices do not always maintain dominance
3. The power of the media/politics fluctuates
4. News is framed in cultural contexts and ‘read’ differently
5. Dissidents can combat unequal resources and use news media as a tool for political influence
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3 - Media culture
Media permeates all aspects of popular culture and impacts upon identity formation
Local engagement/reception of media spectacles ‘Social and political conflicts are increasingly played out
upon the screens of media cultures’ (Kellner, 2003:1)
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Media of Contest
Politicalcontext &
fields ofcontention
Media culture
Popular culture & everyday life
Manufacturing
Consent
Media markets &
corporate
competition
Mainstream media
Public sphere(s)
Minority and Alt. media
‘public spheracules’
New media
‘counter public spheres’
Public Screens
Media as cultural industriesmanufacturing consent in supportof dominant interests
Media as multi-purpose arenasin which strategic and symbolic conflicts are waged
Media culture as pervasive, meaningful and contested, and constitutive of identities
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Questions to consider: Does documentary have a special claim to truth and to what extent
can it capture the 'truth' of a situation?
What kind of documentary forms or genres exist?
How might the different genres within the umbrella term of documentary inform the kind of content that is presented to the public?
What limitations do documentary film-makers face in attempting to convey complex material to the public?
To what extent are documentaries able (or unable) to go beyond the limitations of mainstream news? (consider the pressures of: funding; time; scale; risk; scheduling)
How might documentary be described as ideological? Are all formats as culpable as each other in offering specific versions of 'reality'?
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Panorama Primark: On The Rack (2008, BBC)
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