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Discendo Vox posted:Really, because you entered the conversation by responding to people talking about actual journalistic outlets, and began by comparing between
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Jan 5, 2019 04:06
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The New York Times, for all its many faults, is not the same as the Telegraph, or as RT. The distinctions in policy, in practice, in response to the demonstration of error, to other sources of information, and most of all, in intent, are important to know and use when evaluating messages from them, the degree of trust that can be applied to them, and whether or not they should be treated as "news". The New York Times sells candied apples. The Telegraph sells deep-fried Heath bars. RT sells apples with razor blades in them. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:13
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Discendo Vox posted:Totalizing cynicism about all sources of information is one of the desired endstates that the Russian foreign-facing propaganda program specifically attempts to encourage. It makes the message viewer easier to manipulate, rather than less, because they begin selecting passively and ideologically. I would disagree given that this presumes the existence of a non ideological view of the world as an alternative. And anyone who believes that is obviously already the world's biggest mark. I would much prefer conscious selection of information based on ideology to unconscious selection. And those are your choices. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:17
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OwlFancier posted:I would disagree given that this presumes the existence of a non ideological view of the world as an alternative. And anyone who believes that is obviously already the world's biggest mark. Ah, yes, the stable genius stalwart against propaganda that is the solipsist. 
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Jan 5, 2019 04:19
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Ah, yes, the stable genius stalwart against propaganda that is the solipsist. Do point me to this presumed golden age of rational thought and objective truth that we are moving away from?
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Jan 5, 2019 04:20
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OwlFancier posted:Do point me to this presumed golden age of rational thought and objective truth that we are moving away from? Your rejection of the very idea of "facts" makes you the best mark for disinformation campaigns. If there is no non-ideological truth, there is nothing to strive for, all that matters is whether the source appeals to you ideologically, and all it has to do is tell you what you want to hear.
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Jan 5, 2019 04:22
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OwlFancier posted:I would disagree given that this presumes the existence of a non ideological view of the world as an alternative. And anyone who believes that is obviously already the world's biggest mark. You can apply active, critical thought to sources of information without treating all of them cynically. Popper ain't a positivist, but he still thinks something like progress can be made! It's possible to pursue more accurate information without believing you're going to obtain something completely without bias- and that is, in no small part, a process of public error and correction. However, sources of information from bad faith actors are qualitatively different from other sources in a number of incredibly important ways - and, crucially, bad faith actors who seek to induce specific, self-serving factual beliefs are qualitatively different from actors who seek to disrupt general systems of sense-making. The Russian program specifically seeks that outcome. If you eat apples from RT because you're confident that you can pick out the blades (and because you love the taste), you're going to miss when they start injecting them with Novichok. edit: AA makes an excellent point above; the selection criteria that I'm seeing applied here often aren't about the practices or accuracy track record of the sources, but principally their ideological commitments. You're choosing your information diet on what you like to taste, not what's going into it. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:26
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Your rejection of the very idea of "facts" makes you the best mark for disinformation campaigns. If there is no non-ideological truth, there is nothing to strive for, all that matters is whether the source appeals to you ideologically, and all it has to do is tell you what you want to hear. Facts may or may not exist, but I generally operate on the assumption that they do. However this has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they are a major motivator in the world we live in. Especially not in large, political matters. I do not think it is possible to look at history and think that there has ever been a point where ideology has not been the ruling force in the world, to extents consciously cultivated and elsewhere simply emergent. So when talking about large scale information dissemination such as the media, I don't see it as useful to pretend that it is not also entirely ideological? Even if you believe in facts as I have previously said, you can construct an ideology entirely out of selective facts. Ideology is not even opposed to the notion of facts, it can simply be the selection of facts that you have been given access to by your environment, along with many other people. And that selection can be consciously or emergently curated. Which you might describe as propaganda and culture respectively. You can't escape that, nobody ever has, no society ever has, so why pretend that you can just pile up lots of facts and create an objective truth that everyone can believe in? Especially why do that in the face of overwhelming ideology everywhere you look? Just pick one you like and run with it. You've already been raised into it, so you're going to do that either consciously or unconsciously.
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Jan 5, 2019 04:30
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Discendo Vox posted:You can apply active, critical thought to sources of information without treating all of them cynically. Popper ain't a positivist, but he still thinks something like progress can be made! It's possible to pursue more accurate information without believing you're going to obtain something completely without bias- and that is, in no small part, a process of public error and correction. Again this continues to act under the assumption that there is a towering corpus of publicly accepted fact which RT is trying to knock over. There isn't. There's the ideological positions put out by many different groups from which the populace selects according to their preference. This is already the world we live in, it's the world we have always lived in. What difference does it make when factual, sensible, honest reporting produces the world that nearly obliterated itself during the cold war? Or the atrocities of the world wars? When was this loving age of truth that was not drowning in the blood of wasted lives every loving second? How do you look at the 20th century and come to the conclusion that the way the media works, or has worked for its entire existence, is a good and stabilizing force that threatens to be undermined by wild cynicism and distrust of pricks who make money selling people whatever people want to hear or printing whatever their governments tell them to? What great truth was served by the press support for all our wars and empires and suppressions of rights and endless loving exploitation of everyone in the world to feed the wealthiest? What wonderful edifice did all of that erect when all those sensible and reasoned articles were written by people trying to present "self serving factual beliefs" and what is lost by saying gently caress all of it? In what world is that preferable to simply recognizing the ideological forces that drive the world and working overwhelmingly to push the ones that the press as it exists can not represent, because gently caress knows the ones they can have had more than enough time to run things and I am tired of it. And the planet itself is rapidly growing weary of it too. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:44
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OwlFancier posted:Again this continues to act under the assumption that there is a towering corpus of publicly accepted fact which RT is trying to knock over. There isn't. There's the ideological positions put out by many different groups from which the populace selects according to their preference. This is already the world we live in, it's the world we have always lived in. What difference does it make when factual, sensible, honest reporting produces the world that nearly obliterated itself during the cold war? Or the atrocities of the world wars? When was this loving age of truth that was not drowning in the blood of wasted lives every loving second? How do you look at the 20th century and come to the conclusion that the way the media works, or has worked for its entire existence, is a good and stabilizing force that threatens to be undermined by wild cynicism and distrust of pricks who make money selling people whatever people want to hear or printing whatever their governments tell them to? Yeah, people talk about "facts" and stuff, but generally speaking their opposition to RT is based on them having a very clear bias and acting as a propaganda outlet, which doesn't actually require explicitly lying. Even RT doesn't frequently directly lie; they just have a clear agenda. I would also argue that propaganda of the more blatant nature you see from certain foreign media isn't actually worse than the far more sophisticated propaganda you see from mainstream US sources (like WaPo, NYT, etc). The latter creates the illusion of being unbiased and providing alternative points of view, while still making it clear what the "correct" conclusion is supposed to be, and it succeeds in convincing people (like some posting in this thread!) that it's fundamentally more "serious" and trustworthy as a result. Or it just ignores certain facts or opinions, instead of lying about them. It's basically propaganda intended for an audience that knows to be suspicious of more blatant propaganda. And these value judgements also ignore the actual material impacts of the media in question (because if you take that into account, you'll find that US media is considerably more guilty of cheerleading harmful actions). Regardless, the important point regarding this whole thing is that there shouldn't be any substantive difference to the way people approach media both from mainstream US sources and from sources like RT. In both cases you shouldn't just trust that they're telling the truth, and in neither case should you blindly disregard information they provide as long as sources are also provided. If a particular piece of news is bad/unsupported, it should be possible to explain why, and I'm certainly not denying that you'll find more bad things from media like, say, FOX News than you will media like the Washington Post. But there's never a good excuse for just saying "oh, this is from (insert source), so it should be entirely disregarded." It's not hard to just explain why a particular story/report isn't credible/supported (assuming that's the case).
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Jan 5, 2019 05:01
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What definition of propaganda are you working with, because it appears to be so broad as to encompass all information passed through human hands.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 05:07
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Discendo Vox posted:Totalizing cynicism about all sources of information is one of the desired endstates that the Russian foreign-facing propaganda program specifically attempts to encourage. It makes the message viewer easier to manipulate, rather than less, because they begin selecting passively and ideologically. This. See some people lose it when they realize: All media narratives are constructions. That's fine, poo poo still happened in the world and some of the narratives are much, much, better than others and closer to the poo poo that happened. Cynicism leads to inaction, it itself is a way of manipulating populations by the rich and powerful. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 05:08
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At some point you need to come to terms with the fact that some outlets give you negative information utility, as in you spend more time filtering their output for any type of facts than you do gaining anything out of them. Especially when they're explicit propaganda outlets, like RT. Al Jazeera English at least has interesting coverage as long as you don't expect to get anything good about Qatar or things that matter a lot to the Qatari regime, they had some interesting coverage of various Arab-Israeli conflicts that benefited from their unique ability to interview and/or use materials from all sides of the conflicts in ways that, say, an Israeli source wouldn't, but RT has only one purpose, and that is to make English speakers question reality and in the process not be able to be able to address Russian actions. They take up fringe actors from all sides of the English speaking spectrum for that purpose. They don't belong in the same paragraph as sources like the New York Times, where in most cases, if they are reporting a statement of fact, you can be reasonably sure that it's accurate, or that it will be retracted if it's not accurate, and which employs people who are actually looking for facts.
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Jan 5, 2019 05:13
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Discendo Vox posted:Totalizing cynicism about all sources of information is one of the desired endstates that the Russian foreign-facing propaganda program specifically attempts to encourage. It makes the message viewer easier to manipulate, rather than less, because they begin selecting passively and ideologically. how does making people look into the origins of stories make them more passive? everyone in the us selected news sources ideologically since the foundation of the us, the idea of a "non-partisan" press is a very recent one. "you provide the pictures, and i'll provide the war" was over 100 years ago. van helsing covered this quite well in his op. i would argue that one of the goals of russian foreign propaganda isn't to make viewers passive, but to discredit the us media establishment, especially their incredibly close relations with the us foreign policy apparatus. their other main goal imo is the promotion of views favorable to russian foreign policy, which leads to a schizophrenic quality as one program contradicts what the previous one said. i tend to listen to sputnik in the car, as i still haven't found a decent music station. a month ago, they spent a good fifteen minutes talking about how bad the war in yemen was, and how wrong the us was to be partnering with the saudis and the uae. the next twenty minutes were a paen to the way that putin shook hands with mohammed bin salman, and how that handshake showed that russia was now "the diplomat of the middle east" by negotiating with saudi arabia. their black lives matter program is often directly followed by british pro-ukip pieces. some of their content seems to be translated pieces for internal consumption, like a travelogue for suzdal' (a town without an airport) or an invitation to invest in eastern siberian mines (sold with "all investments are risky. what do you have to lose?") there was a very inexplicable piece about how great the new all-cossak army divisions are. us media people seem to interpret this contradictory mass of information as some sort of poison pill that is carefully designed to erode the boundaries of truth, but i think there is a simpler explanation: russia just isn't putting much effort into their us propaganda efforts. coverage in europe is much more uniform, they have a single nationalist, anti-"globalist" message that they follow. all of the british content on sputnik is in this vein, and instead of presenting contradictory information they push a common narrative the same way as standard propaganda outlets like fox. if they truly had a devious method to destroy the meaning of facts with contradictory information, wouldn't they use this across europe as well? the complete disorganization of so much of the us content suggests to me that they aren't generating enough content to fill their airtime, and are just throwing random poo poo in to pad out time.
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Jan 5, 2019 06:07
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So twitter is still verifying white supremacist accounts, I see: https://twitter.com/bluelivesmtr
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Jan 5, 2019 06:29
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GoluboiOgon posted:if they truly had a devious method to destroy the meaning of facts with contradictory information, wouldn't they use this across europe as well? the complete disorganization of so much of the us content suggests to me that they aren't generating enough content to fill their airtime, and are just throwing random poo poo in to pad out time. They do use it across Europe, to include inside Russia itself, and this isn't something we need to speculate and theorize about. Vladislav Surkov was the architect of the current breed of Russian propaganda, and there's a bunch of detailed profiles on him explaining where his head was at as he was building it. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/ https://medium.com/@wmilam/the-theater-director-who-is-vladislav-surkov-9dd8a15e0efb Volkerball fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 07:13
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GoluboiOgon posted:how does making people look into the origins of stories make them more passive? My argument is that the effect of the program is to encourage noncritical, ideologically oriented media selection, as well as generally disrupt civic discourse. The means by which individuals expose themselves to RT is, specifically, that they embrace the false selectivity that it provides with its "schizophrenic quality." They believe that they can pick out the razors- select the stuff that is newsworthy ( which, in practice, is material that plays to their interests), and filter out the lies. This does not work with propaganda. Sputnik was split off in the 2010s because a) they wanted a separate media development unit group and b) RT was having trouble hiring American journalism students- people were starting to publish exposes about the internal operations at RT. The brand was damaged. There's heavy cross-pollination, but Sputnik generally hews closer to the conventional outward-targeted propaganda model used by other countries facing the US. In both cases, however, the additional goal of the program is to discredit civic engagement generally. Remember, the same apparatus that funded RT also astroturfed fringe left and right wing groups and promotes pure conspiracy theories, even ones completely separate from specific Russian foreign policy goals. This is a goal unto itself. It's deployed domestically in Russia as a form of control. It's true that the Russian foreign-facing propaganda apparatus has organizational problems (though more in terms of inter-agency coordination than within-agency), but the difference in coverage between their targets is generally an opportunistic and strategic one. Additionally, while it is true that delegitimizing other sources of information is a part of that process, it is a means to the broader end of causing the recipient to disengage from reflective or comparative analysis, and ultimately from civic participation. GoluboiOgon posted:everyone in the us selected news sources ideologically since the foundation of the us, the idea of a "non-partisan" press is a very recent one. "you provide the pictures, and i'll provide the war" was over 100 years ago. van helsing covered this quite well in his op. The selection of information is not absolutely or purely ideological- rather, the degree to which information selection is subject to ideological as opposed to other means is variable. Not all messages are propaganda, and not all selection criteria are ideological, unless the definitions being applied are so broad as to be unfalsifiably tautological (great, the problem of induction exists. this is not news). Similarly, sources of information can be more or less honest, more or less ideologically biased, and more or less accurate. You do not, in fact, have to throw up your hands and accept what you are given. There are standards and criteria of conduct that you can use to as heuristics to evaluate sources of information, on their message formulation, on their motivations, and on their accuracy. Do these combine to give you a perfect, objective view of the world? Of course not, but it's infinitely better than selecting something based on its shared ideological opposition. The comparison of sources, the comparison of policies and message formulation, the comparison of motives the comparison of known facts, provides an opportunity to argue the content and qualities of different sources, and evaluate their contextual use. Of these, whether or not the message supports your ideology is the least helpful tool of evaluation- if anything an agreeable message is a reason to apply more scrutiny, to correct for your own ideological bias! I'm happy to pull some sources for specific evaluation criteria and practice examples when I have more time. It'd be like I'm teaching again; I'll dig up my old source eval exercises and assign homework! But here's the important part for this part of the conversation: In this context, the single strongest reason to discount, to reject an information source, is if you know that the source's motive is is to degrade your ability to process of source comparison and evaluation I describe above. If a message source's goal is ultimately to gently caress up your ability to evaluate information, it's radioactive and it lacks utility as a source of information. It's media, but it is not news, no matter what it calls itself. There is no merit in engaging with it in terms of its content. Think of it as Sartre's antisemite, for whom words are playthings. You're coming in for an argument, and you're getting abuse. If you think someone appearing on Russian state media means that story is "a good one", and that you can just pick those stories out, well that's the point, and that's bait (and that says something about, at a minimum, the credulity of someone willing to use RT et al as a platform). You're evaluating it as ideologically agreeable, and discounting the method, formulation, policies and motives of the source. You are not immune to the effects of that practice. No one is. In my time spent looking at US-facing state media systems, the Russian state apparatus is unique right now in its focus on this mode of activity. Other countries do it, but usually while they're at war with someone, or they do it to their own people (for a bunch of reasons the practice isn't very sustainable). The groups that normally engage in this set of practices are fringe cults or scams, as a means to controlling followers. The only major corporate media structure that does this as a general order of business is Fox, and it's not on the same playing field or order of magnitude (and ofc, Fox doesn't have hit squads or nukes). I can spend plenty of time talking about the many (many, many, many) deficits of corporate and mainstream media, and specific elements of media systems that can be used to identify issues therein. We can engage in actual media criticism. But we're not going to ever get there if we're starting off with the fixed notion that all information is propaganda, or that the most important distinction is between "mainstream" and "alternative" sources, or that RT is a valid source. I'd sooner eat the whole apple. PS how is there not a "that's bait" smilie
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Jan 5, 2019 07:58
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Discendo Vox posted:Additionally, while it is true that delegitimizing other sources of information is a part of that process, it is a means to the broader end of causing the recipient to disengage from reflective or comparative analysis, and ultimately from civic participation. how does pointing out alternative narratives encourage disengagement from reflective analysis? the other option for when i'm driving is right-wing talk radio, but i prefer not to listen to them, mostly because they have ads. i bring this up because i heard the most extra-ordinary sales pitch (in the radio show, not a paid advertisement) for "build the wall" trump legos. it was a monologue that went something like this: quote:alexandria ocasio-cortez is a socialist! causing the recipient to disengage from reflective or comparative analysis, and buy cheap knockoff legos, seems to be the exact purpose of this kind of programming. there is no need for competing narratives; it is just a mantra that connects spiting the other with buying lovely toys. i think us right wing media is far better at turning people's minds off than russian propaganda. simple narratives repeated ad nauseum in the echo chamber of right-wing media are quite effective.
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Jan 5, 2019 09:26
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If I had to choose between Sputnik, RW talk radio, I'd just sit in silence with my thoughts or play a podcast on my phone speaker ffs.
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Jan 5, 2019 14:38
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Discendo Vox posted:What definition of propaganda are you working with, because it appears to be so broad as to encompass all information passed through human hands. When you set out to present information with the intent of changing someone's mind about something, generally as part of a coherent set of information designed to elicit buy in to a particular worldview. i.e yes, everything that a media outlet puts out, because there's an editor in charge and they set the ideological limits of the outlet according to their preferences. It doesn't include all information because it's possible to convey information more unthinkingly or not significantly as part of a coherent effort to build a worldview but that form of information transmission would be more on an individual level or possibly scientific, again not within the space occupied by media outlets. Signfiicantly this definition of propaganda does not discriminate between things you made up and things you think are true, because that's irrelevant. The point is that you are in both cases simply giving people information intended to occupy their need for a coherent understanding of the world, with the intent of assuring their loyalty to your publication or cause. Sometimes things with a factual basis are the most effective method of doing that, sometimes outright lies are, sometimes a mixture of both, with the facts giving cover to the lies. Sometimes if you're really lucky you can end up in a situation where the facts and the lies are produced by different institutions but which all contribute to the same media environment and general cultural tone, allowing a sort of superficial ideological divergence without compromising the fundamentals. The US is very good at this whereby its political environment is very effectively restricted to two flavours of liberalism with varying levels of racism and bible thumping mixed in. Note that I do not specify that this is intentional, I'd probably describe it as being more like an emergent class interest created by the nature of the US media than a conscious effort set out by a particular individual. In either case I would suggest the answer is cynicism. Some are lying to you, some are selectively feeding you useful truths. None are actually good for the world at large. This is probably informed specifically by my being from the UK where the entire press is either rabidly right wing or wet fart liberal, while the primary political opposition is further left than any of the media. This necessitates media cynicism because you cannot simultaneously believe the press is good and be politically active on the left, because they are all hostile to you. Having more people like the media and their output would be flat out a bad thing for me and where I live. I would suggest the same is true for most places on the earth. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 16:21
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OwlFancier posted:Facts may or may not exist, but I generally operate on the assumption that they do. I'm far from an ardent defender of the press but you seem to be taking this set of arguments well past their breaking point here. You correctly point out that journalism can't really fulfill its own self stated objectives very well because ideology is to at least some degree inescapable and merely "piling up" more factual data doesn't bring us closer to a true picture of the world because inevitably these "piles" of facts have to be shaped into an ordered narrative by some ideological assumptions. That's all fine as far as it goes but I think you can still construct a case for the utility of journalism. I also think there's more overlap in the average person's incoherent ideological worldview than you really grant here. To use a fairly pedestrian and local example, the area where I live had a tainted water scandal a while back that lead to several deaths. Subsequent reporting showed how deep government cuts to water safety and inspections had helped create the conditions that lead to the deaths, and the government lost a lot of support in the polls and went on to lose the next election. There was enough of a common worldview that "clean drinking water is good" and "deaths from tainted water are unacceptable" to give the story an impact. Journalism can't fix the basic problems of liberalism like the existence of different economic classes or the basic injustices and irrationality that class society creates. That doesn't mean it doesn't play a pedestrian but crucial role in making liberal democracy somewhat more livable than it otherwise would be.
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Jan 5, 2019 17:54
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Helsing posted:I'm far from an ardent defender of the press but you seem to be taking this set of arguments well past their breaking point here. You correctly point out that journalism can't really fulfill its own self stated objectives very well because ideology is to at least some degree inescapable and merely "piling up" more factual data doesn't bring us closer to a true picture of the world because inevitably these "piles" of facts have to be shaped into an ordered narrative by some ideological assumptions. That's all fine as far as it goes but I think you can still construct a case for the utility of journalism. The problem with that line of thinking is that it takes the existence of a hosed up water supply as the natural state. Rather than a state that arises because of the politics of the country in which you live, and those politics are massively decided by the media environment. The media makes the world better by pointing out some of the most egregious problems of the world it created without daring to go so far as, and in the majority of cases actively opposing, the formation of them into a systemtic critique of that enviornment? I do not think you can draw the starting line at "we live in a hosed up political environment and the press pushes back against that". If you do do that then sure, I guess it might look appealing, if you very selectively pick the bits of the press you like. But I think it's incorrect to do so because the political environment is created by the media environment. They are two halves of the same thing. How much of that same media tradition supported the tax cuts and antigovernmental sentiment that led to the election of the people responsible for loving up the water supply? What's that good tweet? "I do not like the problems but the causes, the causes are very very good?" Your press is your politics, and vice versa. They are not separable. If you want them to be, then media cynicism is your only option. You necessarily have to cultivate some form of deciding what you believe outside of the press. An ideology, consciously adopted and spread. You could, if you wanted, create your own outlets to spread it, but you should do so with the understanding that this is what you're doing. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 18:03
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Totalizing cynicism, easy mark.Herstory Begins Now posted:If I had to choose between Sputnik, RW talk radio, I'd just sit in silence with my thoughts or play a podcast on my phone speaker ffs. Yeah the talk radio setup is basically passive Ludovico. Many podcasts can generally have the same issue, and see also the "talk into the camera for 15 minutes, why even bother with visuals" youtuber. If it's a media format where you are "letting it occupy your mind" while you do something else, you're unlikely to critically engage in it. That gets into the different cognitive processing theories, particularly the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM). ELM is a dual process model, which is a problem for talking about it- you have to spend as much time discussing the problems and limitations of the theory as you do its (genuine, extant) utility to explain different media processing forms. Picking between Sputnik and right wing talk radio, though, is easy. Right wing talk radio isn't aimed at goons, and we're heavily inoculated against most of the methods and arguments used (inoculation theory of persuasion is another good thing to look into for this thread). The frustration we feel when we listen to right wing radio is our perception of the structure of its arguments, our awareness of the disingenuousness of it, and our cognitive dissonance at (on a low level) trying to iniitally process its claims as valid. It's arguing with, and thus actively processing, the message. Sputnik is more appealing and more tolerable in that setting specifically because we are closer to the target audience- we're less able to see or manage its arguments because we're not counterarguing every line, and its messaging is intended to appeal to us when we initially process its claims. But we still know it's disingenuous, and the intentions of the source are even worse. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 18:11
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Repeating something doesn't make it true, bud.
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Jan 5, 2019 18:13
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You might find this academic report that was done on the press's attitudes towards Jeremy Corbin and the Labour party helpful in understanding why British people might view the press cynically. http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn
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Jan 5, 2019 18:48
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OwlFancier posted:When you set out to present information with the intent of changing someone's mind about something, generally as part of a coherent set of information designed to elicit buy in to a particular worldview. You are completely missing the point (and concept) of propaganda Meliarion posted:You might find this academic report that was done on the press's attitudes towards Jeremy Corbin and the Labour party helpful in understanding why British people might view the press cynically. I don't think anyone anywhere on these forums has said 'don't be cynical about the press.' People are emphasizing that the press having a bias is significantly different from outlets whose raison-d'etre is entirely propaganda dissemination. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 19:46
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OwlFancier posted:The problem with that line of thinking is that it takes the existence of a hosed up water supply as the natural state. Rather than a state that arises because of the politics of the country in which you live, and those politics are massively decided by the media environment. The media didn't create the world though. It didn't create capitalism. It didn't even create neoliberalism. You write as though our entire social structure is just a byproduct of media ownership, which seems to be putting the cart in front of the horse. While the media legitimizes the status quo and places boundaries on what is considered reasonable debate it doesn't actually create reality. There are some basic problems with liberal capitalism that clearly cannot be sufficiently addressed within the system itself, but that doesn't mean there are literally no differences in the quality of life between one capitalist society and another. Competitive elections and a free press have historically provided a degree of protection and bargaining space for labour and social movements that more absolute and dictatorial societies have not. Whether that is enough to actually justify the continuance of liberal government is a different question but it seems foolish to outright dismiss the fact that the organization of actually existing capitalist institutions varies across societies and that obviously the exact way these institutions are designed can have implications for the quality of life of the people living those societies.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:21
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Like if you're at the point where you're questioning if there are objective facts you need to step back for a moment and regain some perspective.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:23
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I am not missing the point, I'm rejecting it, I do not think there is a useful line between your concepts of "is a propaganda outlet" and "is an outlet that functions to create a hegemonic media environment which serves the interests of the wealthiest classes while causing major harm to everyone else but definitely isn't propaganda." They achieve the same thing. When you're defending the latter from the former, what of value are you defending? If you were going to set up a propaganda factory for economic liberalism how could you create a more perfect one than the press as a whole as it stands? With incredible effectivness it works to delegitimize all outside viewpoints while restricting the range of debate between various options which cannot address the fundamental injustices and harms in the world. And in addition to that, what is any political faction outside of the ones represented by the press at present, supposed to do about it? Because my suggestion is that you should be looking to set up your own propaganda outlets. What other choice do you have? Propaganda as lies as opposed to the truth of journalism is a useless distinction, because the end result doesn't really matter whether you're running lies, truth, or a mix of the two. All of those can have the same effect on our society. All of them do because they're all just part of the same big environment. The problem with the media environment isn't the existence of RT or other outright bullshit mills. If you waved a wand and got rid of all of them you'd still be left with a bunch of more factually based but still functionally bullshit discourse. It's arguing about the state of the silverware on the titanic, and it will never be more than that. And I would also suggest that the fact that the press is limited to that is part of why bullshit mills have appeal. People are right to believe that the press is full of idiots who don't actually want to present a useful view of the world to them. Because it's true for most people. In that environment people are gonna look for alternatives that are more believable, even if they're not true. So if you dislike the existence of RT and tabloids but still like the press, then you gotta look at why they're so appealing? What's the bit of your environment that you seemingly support doing that complete lies can so easily compete with it? The distinction between the NYT and RT makes sense as a dislike of one of their respective political positions and a like of the other, but not really in other ways. If you like the society that the NYT advocates for, then sure, great, go with it. If you don't, and I trust you don't, then you should dislike both of them. You should recognize both as hostile to you. Helsing posted:The media didn't create the world though. It didn't create capitalism. It didn't even create neoliberalism. You write as though our entire social structure is just a byproduct of media ownership, which seems to be putting the cart in front of the horse. While the media legitimizes the status quo and places boundaries on what is considered reasonable debate it doesn't actually create reality. No it didn't create the world but it has existed in the capitalist world for long enough that it is a fundamental part of how it is maintained. Again I do not assert that this is a conscious plan by some big fucker with a bag of cash sitting at the top and directing the entire press to do things. I am suggesting that the press, at this time, is a fundamental pillar by which the status quo is maintained. This relationship is emergent. And how it came about is not relevant to one's reaction to it. I also would not suggest that the existence of the "free press" means that it is responsible for improvements in rights. The press is overwhelmingly reactionary in that respect, it argues for the status quo, collectively. It is a lead weight on societal change. When things change it's through outside forms of organization, the press does not and can not lead the way other than the parts of it owned by people who use those companies as propaganda outlets, and you might have noticed that the efficacy of these outlets increases with the amount of money behind them, and the more money behind them, the more lovely their politics? That's a losing battle. The media can lead you to worse places, it cannot lead you somewhere better. So you have to acknowledge that relationship, you have to say "the press is bullshit and lies, this is what we believe" and go from there. You have to be telling people that what they read in the paper and see on TV is bullshit, you have to promote media cynicism. Because otherwise you cannot advance any other position than what they do. You have to reject the status quo to advocate for an alternative. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 20:23
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Volkerball posted:They do use it across Europe, to include inside Russia itself, and this isn't something we need to speculate and theorize about. Vladislav Surkov was the architect of the current breed of Russian propaganda, and there's a bunch of detailed profiles on him explaining where his head was at as he was building it. the heart of the atlantic article (which contains many basic errors, but i don't want to nitpick) seems to be: quote:When I asked how they married their professional and personal lives, they looked at me as if I were a fool and answered: “Over the last 20 years we’ve lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we’ve realized they are illusions, that everything is PR.” the author of this article wants to cast this attitude as some sort of vestigal remnant of the soviet era, but this is wrong. "everything is PR" is a very apt description of contemporary western society. young children are told to "create their own personal brand" in order to craft a resume that will get them a good job. companies chase "social media influencers," in order to get them to wear their products and turn them into living advertisements. advertising campaigns supersede actual events, like the way that the superbowl has become more about the ads than about the football game, and viral marketing strategies create fake events that are actually advertisements. this extends to the news as well. politicians have fully adapted to marketing methods of using focus groups to adjust their messaging to specific target audiences, and spend prodigious amounts of money on advertising. they also craft events that have no measurable purpose other than pr (think of trump's missile attacks on syrian airbases, which had no military purpose but generated a huge amount of positive press). the media is just as obsessed with marketing, and will devote entire pages of newsprint to making themselves look good. after all, their profits come mostly from advertising money, and anything that hurts their branding will hurt their profits. unlike people in the west, who are born into this environment and slowly absorb it, russians of that generation were thrust into the western world of marketing suddenly, and have a much better grasp of what it actually entails than the author of that piece. the author seems to think that surkov is the first person to write this down, but his book seems to be very strongly linked to victor pelevin's book "generation P", which was heavily influenced by marshall mcluhan (and buddhism).
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Jan 5, 2019 20:30
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GoluboiOgon posted:unlike people in the west, who are born into this environment and slowly absorb it, russians of that generation were thrust into the western world of marketing suddenly, and have a much better grasp of what it actually entails than the author of that piece. the author seems to think that surkov is the first person to write this down, but his book seems to be very strongly linked to victor pelevin's book "generation P", which was heavily influenced by marshall mcluhan (and buddhism). There's another component to this specifically for those who grew up in Soviet times in the Eastern Bloc countries where the public perception of state media was so critical that reading between the lines was essentially an entire art form that people had systematized. Glowing praise meant something didn't fail, silence on a subject meant it was a disaster, results presented as neutral were a failure, etc. Often the details that were missing told the real story. It's striking to talk to older Russians about how they habitually read the news and it's basically the same thing as the information nihilism that Owlfancier is rambling towards, except much more succintly. In an environment where there was largely a monopoly on information and news, that level of skepticism made a lot of sense
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Jan 5, 2019 20:40
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It makes just as much sense in an an environment where there is an ideological monopoly. That's the thing, you don't need to actively suppress views to effectively censor them, you can simply flood the environment with superficial differences of opinion which all share the same fundamental acceptances of the key things you want. It is also possible for this to happen without conscious direction though I would suggest that the US's, and other countries' political histories in the 20th century have had a major effect with the active censorship of socialist ideas creating a media culture hostile to them, though the existence of the media as profit driven and directed by a wealthy class is also a factor. This is the key thing. Totalitarian suppression of views is not necessary. And neither is a top down direction of propaganda. You can end up maintaining a critical mass of ideological support by simply drowning out the alternatives under weight of information availability. And this can occur organically and be self sustaining too.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:47
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Meliarion posted:You might find this academic report that was done on the press's attitudes towards Jeremy Corbin and the Labour party helpful in understanding why British people might view the press cynically. The way the British press has handled the rise of Corbyn and the left-ward swing of the Labour Party is totally mind-blowing to me, iirc they even went after him for having been in an interracial relationship with Abbot lmao.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:52
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OwlFancier posted:It makes just as much sense in an an environment where there is an ideological monopoly. You completely miss the part that investigative journalism is a huge thing that massively impacts the world. You seem to expect journalism to be all things to all people and to be the instrument of change. It influences change and public opinion, but by nature it isn't going to be an effective actor, particularly not while maintaining any relative independence. I think you also have a specifically wrong belief about how journalism interacts historically with economics. Publicizing labor abuses is one of the absolute core subjects in investigative journalism and that is where journalists as individuals have by far the most profound impact on the world. From the Foxconn scandals to the early shitstorm around Nike's labor practices to more recently outing the SEAsian shrimp production using slave labor to a century of condemnation of meat packing plants, garment manufacturing conditions, miner safety, etc. journalism has been profoundly at odds with economic forces. Similarly with the other pole of investigative, journalism govt corruption and misuse of power, access journalism is a thing, but the great majority of journalists would burn almost any potential source for a solid, on-the-record career making story. The idea that journalism exists only to suckoff the rich and powerful is just at odds with basically the entire history of journalism. Piers Morgans and Maggie Habermans will always exist, but there's a reason why they're treated with disdain by rest of their profession.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:57
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And has it gotten us very far, do you think? I already said that yes, they will report on the worst excesses of the system they propgate, but they will equally turn vehemently against any attempt to usurp that system. This is part of the problem. This is why they are so effective an obstacle. They say on the one hand that terrible things are happening, but on the other work hard to obfuscate any systemic, left wing critique of why they happen. Do you not think this contradiction is a problem? Do you not think that perhaps the contradiction is fuel for all the far right stuff I assume you dislike? When you have a press that tells you terrible things are happening but cannot offer you a coherent explanation for why, and equally can have a section of itself, by virtue of private ownership, more than willing to voice the extreme right answer to why the world is hosed, do you not think this represents a systemic problem with the press and how it affects society? It is terrible that people die hungry or sick, but UBI or medicare for all or a 15 dollar minimum wage are unworkable programs, and also theyr'e socialism and socialism is worse than hitler and it's actually the fault of the drat immigrants and that's why we need to invade syria. These are your three flavours of content produced by the US media and most media in the west. They at best identify problems, in the middle rail against the left solution, and on the right they promote the vilest solutions. But it's all part of the system. It is a holistic thing. They're all organized the same way, and they cannot deviate from that because what wealthy and powerful institution is going to advocate for things that threaten itself? It doesn't matter what individual journalists might want, they can't change the way their industry operates. They won't change the way the media as a whole affects society. It doesn't matter how many reports on bad things they put out because they will be followed up with a stifling of the left and a fostering of the right, ever and always. It's a three hit combo. You say society is rotten, you paint the good solutions as wrong in some way, morally or practically, and you offer people the far right line that acknowledges the rot in society and gives the wrong solution. You may not do it consciously but that is the effect. It is not all done by the same company, but it is all done by the same mode of organization. Which is wealthy private or state owned media with a remit to seek profit and readership. This can cover all positions but the left wing one quite effectively, because the democratic left wing position is opposed to the wealthy privately owned model, and the state ownership model is similarly oligarchic due to the nature of it being controlled by representative democracies which themselves are generally steeped in the wealth and privilege of the political class which makes it makes it inherently hard for a left wing government to maintain control of, and it becomes a very effective instrument in the hands of a right wing one. I don't know how a collectively owned media might work out because it'd have to be a massive structural break from the normal hierarchical organization I think. It's unknown enough that I couldn't venture a view on it. With the british labour party's ideas about transferring some things to collective or municipal ownership though it might possibly be an option we could see in the future. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 21:53
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I'm not sure Russian media is significantly more supportive of socialism than American media, or at least not in a constructive way. They'll have socialist on but the scope of tolerated narratives is just as constrained as in private American media.
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Jan 5, 2019 23:28
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OwlFancier posted:And has it gotten us very far, do you think? So this is just an emotional feeling that you have about journalism and not something actually grounded in reality, thanks for clarifying.
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Jan 6, 2019 00:25
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Squalid posted:I'm not sure Russian media is significantly more supportive of socialism than American media, or at least not in a constructive way. They'll have socialist on but the scope of tolerated narratives is just as constrained as in private American media. Well, yeah Russia is a turbocapitalist hellhole why would they be? I don't recall suggesting that? The analysis that RT is primarily a tool aimed at disrupting the political landscape of other countries is entirely correct and to that end they can of course use anything, including socialists to do that. They'll give air to anything if they think it'll cause political ruckus somewhere else. Herstory Begins Now posted:So this is just an emotional feeling that you have about journalism and not something actually grounded in reality, thanks for clarifying. Look if you're not even going to bother to engage with what I'm saying what's the point in responding? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 00:39
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OwlFancier posted:No it didn't create the world but it has existed in the capitalist world for long enough that it is a fundamental part of how it is maintained. Again I do not assert that this is a conscious plan by some big fucker with a bag of cash sitting at the top and directing the entire press to do things. I am suggesting that the press, at this time, is a fundamental pillar by which the status quo is maintained. This relationship is emergent. And how it came about is not relevant to one's reaction to it. Unlike previous modes of social organization capitalism has an inherently dynamic element that relies on some degree of free competition between decentralized actors. How this competition plays out is structured by the institutions of a liberal society, and obviously those institutions can function in ways that have better or worse outcomes for the people living in the system. The structure of those institutions also help create the domestic conditions on which classwar plays out and in which hegemonic and counter hegemonic narratives emerge. Most of the points you're making aren't wrong per se but they are so abstract that they're almost meaningless. Yes the press is a central pillar of the status quo, it doesn't follow from that that there's no difference between living in a society with strong norms for freedom of speech vs. living in a society where the government openly criminalizes dissent. quote:I also would not suggest that the existence of the "free press" means that it is responsible for improvements in rights. The press is overwhelmingly reactionary in that respect, it argues for the status quo, collectively. It is a lead weight on societal change. When things change it's through outside forms of organization, the press does not and can not lead the way other than the parts of it owned by people who use those companies as propaganda outlets, and you might have noticed that the efficacy of these outlets increases with the amount of money behind them, and the more money behind them, the more lovely their politics? That's a losing battle. The media can lead you to worse places, it cannot lead you somewhere better. I wouldn't say that the free press is automatically responsible for improvements in rights. Instead I would refer to specific historical examples and try to critically analyze the role of the media within a specific context. It's very clear that the differences in the press between, say, early 20th century America and early 20th century Russia, had important implications for how social movements and political parties organized themselves and what their goals were. So I would try to understand how the political economy of the American vs. Russian media of that period is implicated in the strategies of actually existing people in that time period. It would be meaningless to speak of "the free press" absent that kind of specific setting. Instead we might speak about how the liberal political culture of the United States allowed populists and later socialists to organize more or less openly and agitate for reforms whereas in Russia all political movement was forced underground by virtue of Czarist absolutism. Obviously as we expand the discussion it gets more complicated. American liberalism was under-girded by the private terrorism of the Klan, the emergence of the populists spurred the creation of Jim Crow laws to halt organizing across racial lines, etc. American political liberty was thus partially made possible by the extra-legal terrorism of certain non state actors. Freedom of the press was made acceptable by the fact that serious threats to the status quo were simply murdered, which of course makes it relatively easier to tolerate free speech. But that's exactly why those discussions are valuable: to have a warts-and-all appraisal of actually existing free speech regimes instead of just blandly praising or attacking a meaningless abstraction. I'm not interested in writing a glowing one sided triumphalist narrative about the glory of the free press and it's unique ability to heal social ills. It could even be that after examining things closely we conclude the free press is a more reactionary and pernicious institution than censorship (this is not my personal belief but my point here is that it's up for debate). But first the actual discussion has to be had, the particular evidence needs to be examined, the context has to be provided. And that's kind of the point of this thread. To critically analyze the specific role of the media in various times and places, both contemporary and historical. But that requires a degree of precision that isn't present in your posts right now, which seem to treat the press across all periods as basically the same. quote:So you have to acknowledge that relationship, you have to say "the press is bullshit and lies, this is what we believe" and go from there. You have to be telling people that what they read in the paper and see on TV is bullshit, you have to promote media cynicism. Because otherwise you cannot advance any other position than what they do. You have to reject the status quo to advocate for an alternative. Going off what I said above, all of this seems pretty much meaningless when it's so devoid of context.
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Jan 6, 2019 01:03
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OwlFancier posted:Well, yeah Russia is a turbocapitalist hellhole why would they be? I don't recall suggesting that? The analysis that RT is primarily a tool aimed at disrupting the political landscape of other countries is entirely correct and to that end they can of course use anything, including socialists to do that. They'll give air to anything if they think it'll cause political ruckus somewhere else. You're not even making any provable claims in either direction, you're just expounding your pet theory of how journalism works without grounding it in literally any examples of actual journalism, much less any of the actual discussion of this stuff that goes on inside of journalism as a field. Moreover you're neglecting that any leftist journalism exists whatsoever so you can make some (frankly absurd) point that 100% of journalism serves a far-right purpose. If you want to propose a theoretical and novel interpretation back it up with real world examples, especially for your most extreme claims. Besides, you're just saying it's all bad and irredeemable and nothing matters.
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Jan 6, 2019 01:17
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