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Sekhem posted:I don't think it's necessarily the best approach to doing all this, but I certainly don't think its contributions are trivial. Ok, what's the best approach, in your opinion?
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Jun 28, 2021 07:25
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This will probably be a disappointingly boring answer, but I don't think there is any particular best approach in media analysis, I think the best approach is being cognisant of a broad variety of different perspectives and conceptual models while being aware of their conflicts and shortcomings.
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Jun 28, 2021 07:28
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Sekhem posted:This will probably be a disappointingly boring answer, but I don't think there is any particular best approach in media analysis, I think the best approach is being cognisant of a broad variety of different perspectives and conceptual models while being aware of their conflicts and shortcomings. Can you suggest some alternative conceptual models? I think everyone here would appreciate the opportunity to move on from PM.
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Jun 28, 2021 07:41
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Sure, there's critical discourse analysis and sociology of knowledge that follows people like Foucault, Bourdieu or Habermas.
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Jun 28, 2021 07:48
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Sekhem posted:Sure, there's critical discourse analysis and sociology of knowledge that follows people like Foucault, Bourdieu or Habermas. Okay so could you present some of that? As tedious as I find Discendo Vox's posting, they're actually presenting their stuff at length and in detail. edit: it's immensely frustrating to both try to wade through all of Discendo Vox's OP and all the ensuing argument, then you're basically just sealioning for pages on end. You're defending Chomsky and Herman's Propaganda Model without actually presenting any positive arguments for it (while admitting you're critical of it and haven't read much Herman!) and then when asked for some sort of positive counter-argument you just name drop. That is not helpful for me or other folks who are trying to engage in good faith with this. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 08:05
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Epinephrine posted:Just getting to this now. I think I mostly fall in the third camp. Right now we're trying to use models, not develop them. I want my tools to work. Beyond that point in your post, we're starting to get into philosophy of science (for instance, going back to the post before the one I quote here, I think the ontology of clickbait is less important than what people perceive as clickbait for the purposes of people trying to relate clickbait to other properties, so its enough to get a bunch of people to rate a bunch of articles on, say, a 6 point scale from "definitely clickbait" to "definitely not clickbait" then see whether articles with higher clickbait ratings are more likely to have certain properties than those with lower clickbait raitings). It's fun to talk about but alas it's also a bit off topic for this thread. Yeah, I think you're right. The stats nerd in me can get real interested in matters of rigor. Discendo Vox posted:Sources and attribution: the basics This is great--the only one of those I've heard of is 'on the record' and I didn't know the specifics. Discendo Vox posted:On background. The source name isn't used, but some sort of other conditional information about the source is provided. (The AP, as a wire service, basically never uses sources on background.) Depending in the circumstances, this can be very useful in determining the motivations of the source. With a great deal of experience with individual authors or outlets, it's possible to narrow the likely set of sources or at least identify common sourcing from particular outlets (for example, the new york times has a fat pipe to several law enforcement agencies in NYC). I for one would love to see that illustration.
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Jun 28, 2021 08:10
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Fritz the Horse posted:edit: it's immensely frustrating to both try to wade through all of Discendo Vox's OP and all the ensuing argument, then you're basically just sealioning for pages on end. You're defending Chomsky and Herman's Propaganda Model without actually presenting any positive arguments for it (while admitting you're critical of it and haven't read much Herman!) and then when asked for some sort of positive counter-argument you just name drop. That is not helpful for me or other folks who are trying to engage in good faith with this. I never intended to provide a positive argument for the PM's model beyond the basic fact that it's a falsifiable and nontrivial model. People were disputing that, so I thought it was reasonable to contest these claims. Are these arguments just off limits for me to respond to? Am I supposed to just ignore them if I don't have a vociferous defence of MC to pull out? I'm really struggling to understand why you're expecting this of me in particular. Do you understand how it's also immensely frustrating to be expected to suddenly post a detailed and elaborate argument completely different to the one I was making on a completely different subject, without actually engaging with the arguments I'm making? I was simply asked for another example, so I responded with one. If you're expecting more than namedropping, then maybe they'd ask more than a single sentence request? Don't we have a meet effort with effort expectation here? e: To make my perspective more clear, what happened in this thread as I saw it was an immediate and reflexive preemptive dismissal of even engaging with the model on its own terms. This was to the degree that fool of sound had to step in at several times to try and get discussion on the subject along a more productive path. It may appear curious why someone who isn't particularly defensive of the model itself would wade into this discussion, but I'm of the stance that we all benefit from the engaging with serious methods of critical thought on their own terms. Immediate shutting down these considerations, in a way that I saw as basically specious, seemed like a deeply unproductive closure of discussion and disagreement to me. Sekhem fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 08:19
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Sekhem posted:What would sealioning mean in this context? My questions and points of arguments were, as far as I can tell, responsive to relevant and direct arguments people were making. sealion.txt Sekhem posted:Particularly what leads to me being skeptical of this is that MC is, as far as I remember, a very transparent and direct work. It makes its theses and methodology very clear, in a way that's pretty easy to isolate from anything else the authors might have written. If such faults were so endemic I think they would be very identifiable in the text itself, but the critiques and rejections here seem to be doing basically anything but engaging with its model of media analysis directly. Which is what this thread should be for, I think. I quote you, again. You claim that Manufacturing Consent is transparent and direct, with theses and methodologies that are very clear and easy to isolate from the authors' other writings. So can you do that, even briefly? You don't seem to have an issue posting dozens of times at length in this thread. Perhaps you could make a positive argument rather than hem and haw in academic-speak? While I haven't really wrapped my head around all the stuff Discendo Vox has posted, at least they're trying to articulate a positive argument for their media literacy framework. Literally all you are doing is bloviating. In response to being asked to present any positive argument whatsoever you just name-dropped three philosophers. This is lazy hand-waving disguised with academic language and appeals to esoteric continental philosophy with zero substance behind it. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 09:05 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 08:57
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Fritz the Horse posted:sealion.txt Fritz the Horse posted:I quote you, again. You claim that Manufacturing Consent is transparent and direct, with theses and methodologies that are very clear and easy to isolate from the authors' other writings. So can you do that, even briefly? You don't seem to have an issue posting dozens of times at length in this thread. Perhaps you could make a positive argument rather than hem and haw in academic-speak? Also, frankly, I don't think my speech is very academic hemming and hawing at all. And I've never relied on continental thought on any of my posts at any point. Fritz the Horse posted:In response to being asked to present any positive argument whatsover you just name-dropped three philosophers. This is lazy hand-waving disguised with academic language and appeals to esoteric continental philosophy with zero substance behind it. e: I also want to add, aside from Vox, almost every single person on the last 5 pages or so are making exclusively negative arguments. Maybe you disagree with the utility of negative arguments alone in general, but you really only seem to be complaining when it's not someone on "your side" of the argument. Did it ever occur to you to make this same callout to the dozens of posts exclusively dismissing the PM with no positive arguments or alternatives being offered at all? Sekhem fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 09:05
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Sekhem posted:Obviously we can't determine based on singular instances what the "right" amount of reporting of an event should be, so the hypothesis is based on identifying events that are comparable in scale or quality and identifying the disparities of their reporting. It provides quantifiable metrics for addressing this, such as number of articles, inches of columns, amount of front page placement, etc. Those seem like incomplete metrics to me, though, because "comparable in scale or quality" is necessarily going to be subjective. Is the Salvadoran Civil War more or less important to Americans than the Angolan Civil War? Like I said, it's been a while since I've read the book, but when I did, it seemed very "I'm mad at US foreign policy and mad that other people aren't as mad about it as I am" to me, and that if you already believed that the US was terrible and the press was complicit in it, you'd like it, but otherwise, it wouldn't convince you.
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Jun 28, 2021 12:59
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Epicurius posted:Those seem like incomplete metrics to me, though, because "comparable in scale or quality" is necessarily going to be subjective. Is the Salvadoran Civil War more or less important to Americans than the Angolan Civil War? Like I said, it's been a while since I've read the book, but when I did, it seemed very "I'm mad at US foreign policy and mad that other people aren't as mad about it as I am" to me, and that if you already believed that the US was terrible and the press was complicit in it, you'd like it, but otherwise, it wouldn't convince you. But I think this is effectively an issue with all media analysis frameworks. This isn't a hard science where we can isolate some variable in a laboratory setting, and it's impossible to make judgements based on isolated cases when most of our concepts are going to be relative ones. The best we can do to make provable claims is to isolate cases we determine to be similar in scope, and test predictions based on differences of media representation between them. Imperfectly isolating test cases from a complicated dynamic whole is always going to be a danger.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:16
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Sekhem posted:[RE: sealioning] I don't think this a good faith objection. I would say your approach and stance are extremely confusing and also odd. You said you don't particularly like Chomsky and are not familiar with Herman's other works, then followed up with a platitude of "there is no best framework in media analysis, they all have shortcomings" — yet you have dozens of posts in this thread defending the Propaganda Model, more than anyone else, including the poster who originally brought it up. Furthermore, you didn't post anything until after they did so on page 5 (the thread had been going on for two months by then), and perhaps most confusingly, your posts in this thread also constitute the vast majority of posts you have made since becoming an active poster again last year, and they are also your first and only posts in D&D to boot! Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being passionate about a particular subject, but the reason some of us are frustrated by your latest revelations and hand-waving is that they strongly indicate that you been breathlessly defending a model merely on the basis that you don't think it is as bad as the rest of us are making it out to be. The vehemency of your posts is something one would expect from a dissertation defense, yet you have also somewhat distanced yourself from PM. This, combined with language such as "there is no argument being made here" and "I think you're just fundamentally misinterpreting me" and "I'm not quite sure what you're specifically trying to say here", really does evoke the image of the sealion from that one comic. So, to respond to the quoted bit above: I think it's a good faith objection. Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 16:04
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Instead of debating one anothers motivations for posting in this thread, lets try to please have a productive debate. Sekhem, can you lay out what you believe the specific utility of PM is, compared to other frameworks?
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Jun 28, 2021 16:11
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Slow News Day posted:but the reason some of us are frustrated by your latest revelations and hand-waving What do the examples of my language you quoted have to do with the sealion comic? I honestly don't know what tactic you're saying I'm using or for what purpose, and since you used me asking for clarification as an example of me doing it, I'm not sure how you expect me to respond. If you'd like to know my motivations, I think I pretty clearly stated them upthread: I'm largely a lurker, but I saw an instinctual and reflexive dismissal to even begin seriously discussing a model on its own terms, in spite of the fact that it is (as a number of posters here repeatedly showed) taken seriously in academia. I think this looked like a hyperpartisan closure of debate which seemed deeply unproductive. Is defending the broadening of scope of discussion to credible opposing views, even if I'm not completely sold on them, really so alien a stance? I'm far more passionate about that than I am about any particular individual model or school of thought. fool of sound posted:Sekhem, can you lay out what you believe the specific utility of PM is, compared to other frameworks? I just find it a credible explanation in that particular use-case that I haven't seen better explained elsewhere, and the arguments offered here generally refuse to actually address it on its own terms, which I don't find particularly convincing. And in particular, I think it also has value in explaining these through a view on how incentive and organisational structure coalesce to result in a particular outcome, rather than just identifying some nefarious intention of agents directing everything. I'm pretty sure this is all things I've said in my previous posts, but I'm happy to provide them for clarity here. Sekhem fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 16:46
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Sekhem posted:Absolutely, I think it offers an empirically tractable explanation for the disparity of reporting in various geopolitical events that there is a specific state-corporate interest in. Sekhem posted:Identifying this is hugely important in correcting for absences and shortcomings in our media consumption. Sekhem posted:I think it has a specific utility in offering very clear testable claims about such, in spite of claims of unfalsifiability being forwarded here, I think it's actually pretty unique in its directness of providing testable hypotheses. Sekhem posted:I just find it a credible explanation in that particular use-case that I haven't seen better explained elsewhere, Sekhem posted:and the arguments offered here generally refuse to actually address it on its own terms, which I don't find particularly convincing.  Sekhem posted:And in particular, I think it also has value in explaining these through a view on how incentive and organisational structure coalesce to result in a particular outcome, rather than just identifying some nefarious intention of agents directing everything. Sekhem posted:I'm pretty sure this is all things I've said in my previous posts, but I'm happy to provide them for clarity here. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 17:31
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Discendo Vox posted:The boundary conditions of "specific state-corporate interest" are not well-defined and result in no clear scope. I have already discussed and explained this. Discendo Vox posted:No, it doesn't. The propaganda model offers no useful information about media consumption because its scope of criticism is all American mass media, or any media that exists in a world where capitalism exists. This is both underinclusive of the mechanisms of bias that the model claims, and massively overinclusive to inform media consumption. I have already discussed and explained this. Discendo Vox posted:It does not. Where "tests" of the model are proposed, they are not connected to the model structure, which is why the model structure itself is unfalsifiable. Individual "tests" from both the authors of the model and the article you've googled are exercises in motivated reasoning. In addition, the all-consuming flexibility of the model encourages this selective reasoning about sources. People have explained this multiple times. You're asserting that any such attempts are just motivated reasoning, but if they can offer test cases and a consistent set of metrics we can evaluate, I don't see how this is the case. Discendo Vox posted:The problem of the model is that it can be used to explain or justify virtually anything by reference to any set of facts, in any way that the user wants. This has been explained to you multiple times, at length, with examples and citations, including to a reanalysis of an example provided in the authors' book. Other books by the authors have been provided as examples of how this tendency leads to absurd applications. If we identified the material interest of the various agents which have a determinant role in media production, and we used a set of consistent metrics to determine measures of attention and emphasis, and these ran contrary to each other? The PM could absolutely not explain this, and it would be a blow to its predictions. I really just don't see how this isn't providing specific testable claims. Your argument, I assume, would be that we can't carry out such a test because of the nebulous category of defining interests, so we can't leave that first task in the order of operations. But I just don't buy the claim that these can't be specified within the model - it specifically ties agents to broader political-economic interests in a model of private and state institutional interrelationships. I disagree entirely with the allegation that it was the PM in particular which led to the absurd conclusions pointed out in this thread, but this isn't something we should relitigate, as that line of argument has been pretty soundly deemed unproductive by everyone involved. Discendo Vox posted:Individual concepts of incentive, structure and media practice that the authors co-opt into the model have independent, specific, explanatory value. Flak and access journalism are not inventions of the PM, nor are the idea of systemic, structural incentives or bias. They not original and are not improved by inclusion in an unfalsifiable model. A model combining these elements with no consistent structure of relationships between them has no specific explanatory value. I have already discussed and explained this. Sekhem fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 18:21
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The problem with the PM is that the specific claim it makes - that the media is biased in a specific way, for a specific reason, and that this exists only in the West - is wrong. I've posted several examples of why this specific claim is wrong. If you instead want to argue that the PM doesn't make a specific claim, but rather points out the media is biased, and this bias frequently operates to further the agenda of the government and powerful interests, then I would say that this claim is so obvious and universally true to be tautological, and you don't need a model to tell you that. If the "value" of the PM is to tell me the media is biased then I don't need the PM, because I already know that. Pointing out that how the media covers events is often motivated and influenced by factors other than "objectively reporting what occurred" is not meaningful in 2021, because all of us, on the internet, have lived that truth for over an decade at this point.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:47
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Discendo Vox posted:The boundary conditions of "specific state-corporate interest" are not well-defined and result in no clear scope. I have already discussed and explained this. Is there a peer-reviewed article or book chapter you could name that would show us directly the position of media studies or communication studies or whatever relevant field regarding Manufacturing Consent so that we can review criticism of it without this personal back-and-forth? Like, for whatever field we're talking about here, what's maybe like an intro grad-level critique or something with a specialist showing us what's wrong?
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Jun 28, 2021 18:50
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To elaborate, here are my specific issues with PM: 1. There are many examples of events where media coverage in aggregate do not align with the interests of Western imperialism, or fail to reach a consensus. The PM acknowledges that this may happen but says its not meaningful because this disagreement functions on the margins and does not effectively change the effect of the coverage - I disagree. There are many events where media disagreement, or disagreement between what the Western world ostensibly wants, are front and center. Or, to put it pithily, consent is not manufactured. 2. I do not believe the relationship between media, government, and profit centers is unique to the West, and you can find ready examples of it in non-capitalist countries. This is a problem because the PM argues that one of the specific frames that drives how events are covered and consensus is reached is anti-communism (later "the War on Terror"). When asked where the PM is applicable, Chomsky has only spoken about countries in the West. 3. I believe that is an inherent tendency with the type of thinking promoted by the PM to question not only how an event is covered, but the facts of an event itself. I've posted about this previously, but it is not a coincidence that Herman and Chomsky have not only questioned the presentation of genocide in the media, but the facts of genocides themselves.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:54
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Spoiler posted:The problem with the PM is that the specific claim it makes - that the media is biased in a specific way, for a specific reason, and that this exists only in the West - is wrong. But to address the specific arguments you raised in the past: Spoiler posted:I have offered three specific criticisms of the model: 1. it assumes a level of intention and homogeneity in American media which I do not think exists; 2. it argues that the PM is specific to the US/the West, which I do not agree with; and most importantly, 3. that in practice and use the PM leads to people conflating the coverage of an event with validity in doubting the facts being reported, which unfortunately in several notable instances have led its author's to denying genocides. e: Oops, saw you just restated your points of objection before I posted this, hopefully my response to them is still applicable enough to what you're saying Sekhem fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 19:00
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Sekhem posted:If Vox's arguments were accurate, the model wouldn't be able to directly fail to explain events in the way you're describing, it would simply fail to commit to a stance which could be tested in this way. This isn't what being falsifiable means. It's unfalsifiable because the assessment criteria are utterly subjective and structured in such a way as to almost guarantee confirmation bias. "failing to explain something" as you're using it is completely based on your subjective opinion of what constitutes an adequate explanation of an event, and your subjective opinion of what the "truth" of that event is. Jarmak fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 20:04
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Sekhem posted:Sure, but you understand that your argument that it's wrong is actually pretty distinct from the one that Vox is making? As far as I can tell, you're discrediting it because its predictions and empirical applications fail to justify its hypotheses. Which is very distinct from the idea that it fails because it's unfalsifiable and its terms are too vaguely defined. If Vox's arguments were accurate, the model wouldn't be able to directly fail to explain events in the way you're describing, it would simply fail to commit to a stance which could be tested in this way. In my eyes people who are talking about falsifiability interpret the PM to be a fairly general model which simply argues that there is a level of government influence on media sources, and this influence can be seen on how events are framed and what events are covered, which I think is incorrect. I think the PM makes a specific claim that not only is there bias in the media, but that bias operates in a specific way, towards a specific outcome, and there is a level of homogeneity and consensus in media coverage that can be expected in line with this outcome. I think that this can be empirically tested, and I think you can easily demonstrate that this model is false. I don't know why you think PM isn't presented as specific to the West - it's very clear in the type of framing described, and the purpose that the media serves that this is specifically presented as a Western phenomenon. (And, to that point, for the PM to be meaningful and "testable" it has to make a specific claim. Not only do the "the elites" wield influence over the media, it has to be a specific, observable influence in a single direction. Otherwise it's not testable because everything can be dismissed as a product of the elites: or, a model that explains everything, explains nothing.) And that isn't even surprising. Manufacturing Consent was written against the backdrop of a bipolar world that was, to a large extent, simpler. There was much more consensus found in the media, and the connection between media framing and messaging and Western imperialism and goals was much clearer because foreign policy was really a conflict between two competing ideologies. That just simply isn't the world we live in in 2021. Look at how Western (and even just American) media has covered recent stories: from controversy over the election, to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. The type of consensus and direction of that consensus that PM would argue would be apparent just isn't there: there are significant disagreements between large media conglomerates in how events are framed, and this framing is often at odds with ostensible goals fo Western imperialism. And that's not to say there isn't bias in the media, or the media can't serve as a propaganda tool, or that the government doesn't influence media coverage. All of those things are true. They're just not true in the way the PM argues they are, and the PM isn't useful in understanding how these biases work. Spoiler fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 20:22
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Jarmak posted:This isn't what being falsifiable means. It's unfalsifiable because the assessment criteria are utterly subjective and structured in such a way as to almost guarantee confirmation bias. Something being subjective does not necessarily make something unfalsifiable. Most of the time, being incapable of being directly observed could render something unfalsifiable. For this reason, much of psychology is unfalsifiable as the human mind cannot be directly measured and human observation of it is unreliable at best. Meanwhile, dark matter, dark energy, and string theory in general are completely incapable of being observed. Please note that despite these things being unfalsifiable they are still widely studied fields of science because a single metric is not a coherent framework for disqualification. Edit: not predicting measurable outcomes could also render something unfalsifiable. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 21:03
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Something being subjective does not necessarily make something unfalsifiable. For example, if I tell you I see a unicorn standing in front of me, that is a subjective and falsifiable statement. Most of the time, being incapable of being directly observed could render something unfalsifiable. For this reason, much of psychology is unfalsifiable as the human mind cannot be directly measured and human observation of it is unreliable at best. Meanwhile, dark matter, dark energy, and sting theory in general are completely incapable of being observed. How is the statement "I see a unicorn standing in front of me" subjective? The argument that the PM is unfalsifiable is that, according to some posters, how the PM explains things means that there's an explanation for everything. One of the key components of the PM is that it argues that elite interest shape media coverage to serve their own goals, so however the media covers something is inline with the interests of the elite. If that coverage seems at odds with what the government wants, or changes over time, or disagrees with itself, that isn't proof the model is wrong, it's just proof that the interests of the elites are inscrutable. Its like I said that weather is caused by alien space lasers, and those lasers want every Wednesday to be sunny. Except when they don't want ti to be sunny. You can't disprove that because the model has room for every outcome: Wednesday is sunny or isn't sunny because of space lasers.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:06
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I realized that was a bad example and removed it before you finished posting. More to the point, that is a question of measurable predictions not subjectivity. And, again, there are widely studied scientific properties and fields that are not falsifiable so I don't understand why this irrelevant metric is being applied in the first place
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Jun 28, 2021 21:17
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I realized that was a bad example and removed it before you finished posting. Falsifiability is important here because some posters have presented the PM as useful for understanding media while other posters have disagreed. One way to show that the PM isn't useful is to show that it reaches incorrect conclusions, because then it's not very useful (or at least much less useful) because there are things it either fails to explain, or explains incorrectly. The other, more important piece of this discussion, is the falsifiability question also shows what different posters believe the model says. For some the PM makes several very specific claims about how media coverage works and you can show those claims are wrong. For other posters, the claims are seen as less specific (mostly resting on the fact that the model argues that coverage is in line with the desires of a nebulous group of elites) to the point that the model can't be falsified, because it has an explanation for everything. What's important is if this is true, then the model also isn't useful because it doesn't tell us anything - if everything can be ascribed to the desires of the elites, then, so what? How is that functionally useful? It's not a useful tool for helping you discriminate between media sources. Edit: I'm not sure what fields are not falsifiable, maybe theoretical physics? But other than that I'm not sure of a discipline in which a model doesn't involve some sort of testing and empirical evidence. Falsifiability, or proof, is generally what distinguishes science from faith. Spoiler fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 21:26
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Spoiler posted:- if everything can be ascribed to the desires of the elites, then, so what? How is that functionally useful? "Functionality" has no impact on validity especially in the world of criticism. It is a largely "useless" field after all.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:32
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Spoiler posted:Edit: I'm not sure what fields are not falsifiable, maybe theoretical physics? But other than that I'm not sure of a discipline in which a model doesn't involve some sort of testing and empirical evidence. Falsifiability, or proof, is generally what distinguishes science from faith. I listed 4 examples in the post you quoted: The field of psychology, dark matter, dark energy, and String Theory.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:33
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Cpt_Obvious posted:"Functionality" has no impact on validity especially in the world of criticism. It is a largely "useless" field after all. Functionality is what this thread is about, though. The purpose of this thread is to give posters tools to help them discriminate between different media sources and to have a better understanding of biases amongst sources they rely on. The PM is being discussed because some posters believe its a useful model that posters should use. This isn't a theoretical conversation, its a practical conversation. Cpt_Obvious posted:I listed 4 examples in the post you quoted: The field of psychology, dark matter, dark energy, and String Theory. I don't know anything about theoretical physics but I'm not sure why you would say the field of psychology is unfalsifiable...
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Jun 28, 2021 21:34
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I promise you that reading comprehension is not quantum physics.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:41
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Sekhem posted:I think this looked like a hyperpartisan closure of debate which seemed deeply unproductive. Is defending the broadening of scope of discussion to credible opposing views, even if I'm not completely sold on them, really so alien a stance? I'm far more passionate about that than I am about any particular individual model or school of thought. I can't speak to what the conversation looks like to someone who is normally a lurker and is participating in a D&D thread for the first time. If you perceive hyperpartisanship, that may be due to the various contexts in which the Propaganda Model is used to minimize or outright deny horrific crimes against humanity, both in the past and in the present, both by the authors and other users of the model, simply on the basis that Western media shined or is currently shining a spotlight on those crimes. We have moved past genocide denial since the moderator requested it, but the enmity might still exist since it is a topic that triggers strong feelings in people. The explanations provided by the model all suck. For example, the model would "explain" the coverage of China's genocide of Uyghur people and culture as "the US government is starting to manufacture consent for an eventual war with China, which is why they are signal-boosting the horrific stuff in what are simply re-education camps, like forced birth control, while ignoring the good stuff like teaching the Uyghurs important labor skills!" If you think about it, you'll notice that line of reasoning to be along the exact same vein as the one provided by Kevin Young in his 2008 essay (linked earlier as a "test" of PM) in which he said NYT and WaPo described Venezuelan protestors as freedom fighters, while not reporting on their violent acts. It is all incredibly lazy, the purported motives and explanations absolutely unprovable, and designed to fit one's existing notions and biases and assumptions about the US government, its goals and its motives. And it has no explanations for conflicting interests of and disagreement between different groups of "elites". For example, the Propaganda Model cannot reconcile the assertion that the US government is trying to shape public opinion by building support for a war with China, with the fact that a war with China would be the very last thing US corporations would want, since the two economies are so tightly integrated to the point of co-dependence. Sekhem posted:You've stated that the "elite interests" are broadly and nebulously defined, leaving the only process to determine such as a reasoning backward from conclusions. I disagree with this, I think MC identifies very specific actors with very specific relations to each other, which make interests determinable independent of subjective readings of pieces of media. When MC directly points out the intertwined relationships of specific state institutions and specific media companies, is this not clearly defined? If specific actors and their relationships are identified, surely that opens the possibility of identifying material-economic incentives independent of media scrying? It's not just using some vague identifier of "elites," it uses specific examples, categorises them and defines their relationships with each other. MC does not identify specific actors. It only identifies advertisers (corporations) and state actors generally, and broadly. It glosses over or completely ignores the fact that different corporations have different, often competing and conflicting interests, and those interests may or may not fit the goals of the government and its own plethora of different groups and even individuals, not to mention those of thousands of NGOs. I seriously don't understand how you can read the Propaganda Model and come to the conclusion that "elites" as a category is not nebulously defined. From the preface: quote:We use the term 'special interests' in its commonsense meaning, not in the Orwellian usage of the Reagan era, where it designates workers, farmers, women, youth, blacks, the aged and infirm, the unemployed- in short, the population at large. Only one group did not merit this apellation: corporations, their owners and managers. They are not 'special interests', they represent the "national interest." This terminology represents the reality of domination and the operational usage of "national interest" for the two major political parties. It's actually worse than that though. Not only is "elites" broadly and nebulously defined, conflict and disagreement between them is one of the boundary conditions of the model. If something does not fit the model, one possible explanation is that it's because there's conflict between the elites! Who are those elites? What is the exact nature of the conflict, and which elites are on which side? The model cannot say, and does not care. An actual analysis of media that both specifically defines the elites, and can be falsified, would be something like this: "event happened in country A. Outlet B covered it as such and such, while minimizing or ignoring opposing viewpoints. Corporations C, D and E, which all have business interests in A, are major advertisers of outlet B and their ads collectively make up X percent of B's ad revenue, which would be jeopardized if B covered those events by taking the opposing stance (and here's a list of how exactly they would be jeopardized). And we have interviewed insiders from those corporations and/or the media outlet to corroborate and confirm this theory in this particular instance of media coverage — provided here is an outline of the interactions as they occurred between the parties and how those interactions influenced coverage... you'll note that shortly after Corporation D used 'flak' because they didn't like a particular framing of the issue, the framing was changed..." A model that can be applied to media coverage of events to produce something like the above would be more useful as a media analysis tool, because it would allow the user of the model or the consumer of its outputs to actually understand the underlying mechanisms in a way that is verifiable. The Propaganda Model not only falls far short of that, but is frequently harmful because it gives the audience the illusion of insight and helps them reinforce their biases, rather than understand and counter them. Slow News Day fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 21:41
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Psychology is unfalsifiable because the human mind is unobservable. For example, the "unconscious" which by definition cannot be observed. The idea that every human mind includes a portion which even the thinker cannot access is inherently unobservable. How would you even begin to disprove it? At best, you could create alternative explanations for the very things that the unconscious is assumed to be responsible for, but even then that doesn't disprove that the unconscious exists.
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Jun 28, 2021 21:45
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This is not a productive avenue capt obvious
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Jun 28, 2021 21:46
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fool of sound posted:This is not a productive avenue capt obvious On some level you're the audience for this thread, where are you falling right now in terms of how useful the PM is?
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Jun 28, 2021 21:50
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Psychology is unfalsifiable because the human mind is unobservable. Ironically, Cpt_Obvious, you have stumbled upon an argument that vaguely resembles the arguments the behavioral psychologists (e.g. B.F. Skinner) made back in the first half and middle of the 20th century. This is incredibly funny to me for two reasons: 1) Behavioral psychology is a branch of psychology, and is the scientific study of behavior. 2) In the 1950s and 60s psychology started to agree that human cognition was something that you could study in a testable and falsifiable way. Do you know who is most often credited for kicking off this "cognitive revolution?" Noam Chomsky.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:03
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Epinephrine posted:Sorry and fos I know you want to move on, but this can't go unanswered. I'm sorry but Noam Chomsky does not have a degree in psychology and therefore his input into the field is irrelevant. That is how this discussion started, right?
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Jun 28, 2021 22:08
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So when falsifiability comes up in this thread, what is the field of study? What discipline are we using and discussing when we're talking about media analysis here? We should all be on the same page about method, and I don't think it's productive to view whatever field that is through someone else's posting. Can we get some titles or some scholars down? Would you call it communication studies? Media studies? What's the discipline here? What would students read in a grad-level methods course?
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Jun 28, 2021 22:11
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm sorry but Noam Chomsky does not have a degree in psychology and therefore his input into the field is irrelevant.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:20
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Epinephrine posted:Chomsky got is PhD in linguistics in 1955. Linguistics is a branch of cognitive science and many modern linguists just straight up consider themselves psychologists (and psychologists would agree). Lol gg. I guess I should not have generalized psychology as unfalsifiable and should have just stuck with the unconscious. Thus ends my derail.
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Jun 28, 2021 22:29
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Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm sorry but Noam Chomsky does not have a degree in psychology and therefore his input into the field is irrelevant. Perhaps we should consult a psychologist to better understand why someone who self-banned from D&D might come back later and immediately start making GBS threads up an important thread like this. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 28, 2021 22:33
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