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Helsing it is difficult to underscore how bad a way it is to start off the thread by defending this particular set of sources, on these particular issues.
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Dec 19, 2018 22:08
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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.
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Jan 5, 2019 03:44
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twodot posted:For what reason? Is there a difference in outcome between a professional lie teller, and a professional I-can't-bothered-to-figure-out-if-I'm-spreading-lies teller? Yyyyes? one of those issues corrections and can be responsive to criticism, while the other reaches out to undermine, delegitimize and eliminate other sources of information.
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Jan 5, 2019 03:47
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twodot posted:This seems totally made up. Why would you expect liars to never improve, and people who don't care if they are spreading lies to improve? Then you've presented your argument as a tautology, in part by shifting the scope of the latter group you identified.
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Jan 5, 2019 03:53
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twodot posted:I entered this conversation with "lying on purpose is basically identical to be willing to spread lies without investigation", if you want to make a statistical argument about how news that merely spreads lies do retractions more often than news that actively lies, I'll listen, but nakedly asserting that's the case is no real argument. Really, because you entered the conversation by responding to people talking about actual journalistic outlets, and began by comparing between twodot posted:"faulted for lying professionally" and "faulted for being unreasonably credulous professionally" Which doesn't seem to map to the frictionless, amoral void that you've just now indicated you're talking about. In reality, as in law, as in ethics, intent matters, in part because intent effects ongoing and responsive behavior. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:03
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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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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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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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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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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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This is fantastic, because it's totalizing, unfalsifiable, cynically defensive, self-contradictory, and a pretty great example of the preferred endstate of the RT platform I was describing. They've given up on critical engagement with sources and are now just openly rationalizing whatever makes them feel good, with a patina of solipsism. Look at how absurdly circular it is: They're pointing to a media report that discusses the potential viability of the free press and comparing differing forms and practices, to demonstrate the futility of the free press, while asserting that there's no point in selecting or referring to media sources because OwlFancier posted: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?  Note that the entire subsequent rationale is framed in terms of the desired ideology, and doesn't interact with the practices or intentions or policies of information sources at all. It can't, because they've actively refused to engage. Things are true or not depending entirely on whether they agree with their prior political views. They've laced up a boot over their fist and are mashing it into their own face, forever. Absurd Alhazred posted:Now for something completely different, and worth keeping in mind as you're equivocating: turns out that in order to train censors, you have to teach them, at least, the history you're trying to suppress. From the Lying New York Times: Yeah when I mentioned the problems with sustaining a full-scale state propaganda apparatus, this was almost exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Give any comprehensive propaganda system a decade and you're basically turboscrewed its own institutional understanding. The next group of propagandists and censors can't sustain the practice. Even if your people start out knowing that they're lying, and why, and how, the performative act of lying means they very rapidly start drinking their own flavoraid. There's got to be an academic terminology for this set of issues, but I don't know of it. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 01:57
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I wanna hear more about this public journalism funding setup in Germany.
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Jan 6, 2019 02:20
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Yeah that's an overly broad definition of propaganda (comically so, it's synonymous with "message") and an understatement of its effects.
Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 05:50
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OK, fine, I'll get into this a bit. I'd initially not wanted to engage with the thread because its framing makes recovery difficult, but I may as well lay my underlying issues out there. Obviously this isn't a perfect or objective definition, as it's responding in part specifically to the issues I'm now witnessing. I appreciate that a lot of you find Manufacturing Consent appealing, and that its particular emphasis and gloss on media studies has generally framed discussion. However its definition framework and use of terminology is at odds with other fields, scientific and humanistic, that actually look at the effects of these subjects at a more applied, grounded level. These are the fields that actually address and define the content and creation of messages at the scale you are interested in. They're also the practical ones. Like, one of the people viewed as the founding figure of comm sci was a psychologist who came back from WW2 and developed separate theories to describe propaganda practices. Rhetoricians are hired on political campaigns. The state department sends representatives to conferences and quietly recruit people, who sometimes ghost for several years while a new system for determining drone attack targets or interrogation policies gets made. 70% of the rest of the researchers hate those researchers' guts. Communications and media studies scholarship from an external, abstracted level that focuses on and reacts to current political issues doesn't have the same sort of ground-level framework or history (or the incredible angst and internal ethics debates either). One common trend in any of those fields is a scope creep problem with definitions of message types. "Rhetoric" and "propaganda" get thrown around to describe all persuasive messaging, or all persuasive messaging techniques, or all media. Manufacturing Consent's big mindblower that mass media serves a "propaganda purpose" wasn't...particularly new or inventive to people from those fields, because they'd been studying, or doing, it for decades at that point. But it also creates a serious problem for the analysis and response to different forms of messaging, because it broadens and renders largely unfalsifiable the general gloss on all media. Talking about propaganda in terms of its purposes, and speaking largely to the institutional scale, neglects the content and practices of actual propagandists, and as a result, how media is actually constructed, at both a granular and programmatic level. (and yeah, the internet has further diluted the institutional elements of the mass media argument.) This makes fixation on "mainstream" versus "alternative" media especially problematic, because alternative media ecosystems are actually much, much easier to gently caress with for propaganda purposes. Thinking that all media, or all mass media, or all mainstream media, serves a propaganda purpose is a fantastic way to turn yourself into a mark who very cannily discerns and consumes only the messages most directly targeting you. I promise you, it is much easier to manipulate a struggling, fiercely principled independent news source than an apathetic, profit-oriented newswire. Herstory Begins Now has an excellent post giving an example of this in the news thread: Herstory Begins Now posted:Back during the contra revolution the cia recruited director of comms/pr for the contras quit because he was disillusioned with all of the atrocities. In the process he wrote and talked a bunch about how he'd been trained to influence reporting on various pertinent subjects and it's entirely relevant to this conversation. emphasis mine. Propaganda functions best as a term used to describe messages, but it is a definition that is best grounded in the motives and practices of the people making the message, because this influences message composition practices, and their effects. Propaganda is an 1) institutional, programmatic effort composed of messages that are 2) intentionally designed to influence target beliefs or behaviors in a manner or means that 3) intentionally disrupts or limits the message cognitive process of the recipient, either immediately or in the future, in service of the program's 4) institution-scale goals. Mass media is not innately propaganda. Persuasive media is not innately propaganda. Commercial media is not innately propaganda, nor is media that operates within the constraints of a capitalist funding structure. Yes, I know capital is a means of power, and power is the measure of politics. No, that's not sufficient, or every book ever sold is propaganda. Institutional, programmatic deception is different, in content, scale, method and effect, than commercials or scams. There are meaningful distinctions to be made within the propaganda category, but there's a reason why my field is in an endless roiling boil over using most of our methods for even benign campaigns. Systematic manipulation is erosive to civic discourse and democratic republican values, and look, I get that some formulations of these values are viewed as a feature of liberalism, but they're also folded into the necessary flourishing of socialist and communist systems, and they're the site at which attempts at these systems frequently collapse. It's a profound moral hazard, unlike any other. I focus on state propaganda systems because they are the overwhelming source of propaganda, which is resource-intensive to maintain (you will not find a post from me saying AJ is "one of the good ones"). I go especially hard on RT because although, yes, they're not all that sophisticated, they go harder, further, and with worse intentions and methods, than other states do. Here's an OK rule of thumb on this. At some point in message creation, either at a very high level or on the part of the direct message content development, was someone actively designing a message apparatus to gently caress with the recipient in order to do something other than make money? Concrete examples, which this thread could really use more of, help here. Is a fluoridation health messaging campaign that is built around fear appeals propaganda? On most accounts, yes, though it's not of particular interest to our discussion here- we're generally interested in political propaganda. Is a fluoridation health messaging campaign that is built around the inoculation theory of persuasion resistance propaganda? That's debated among communication scientists, because inoculation messages can fully engage active evaluation, but they can also be constructed as misleading. Is FOX News propaganda? That's more complicated, because the motives are simultaneously :tenbucks: and the misleading of intentional misleading of their audience, both for commercial and political reasons. I think it's safe to say on balance, though, from the looks we've had inside the organization, that at the highest institutional level, the motives of FOX News do go beyond money. Is the Washington Post propaganda? Not necessarily. The Post may be a mass media outlet, but it is not generally or categorically propaganda. The Recipes section was not designed to lull you into a false sense of security. Joementum is not layering his trailer updates with carefully designed bait. It is possible that, as Manufacturing describes, the consensus and capital models may cause columnists to become biased or accept poor information or, worse, become a transcriber of propaganda. But this is going to apply to specific cases, authors or articles. It's not programmatic at the Post itself! It's also not intentional on the part of the author- the message is mediated. It's also subject to correction both in the instance or over time. That matters. Is the Washington Post's editorial section propaganda? It varies, but yes, at least some opinion/editorial columnists are propagandists. Editorial is the setting where, overwhelmingly, Chomsky and that other guy's arguments still routinely hold. Media company policies on the separation of editorial sections thus deserve particular scrutiny. Is goop propaganda? No, it's a scam. There's not a larger goal. Is a Trumpscam radio ad for wall lego that uses a fear appeal is not propaganda, unless the people running the ad's goals are actually to manipulate perception of the wall issue and that's why they ran the ads. Is Rense Radio propaganda? That's complicated because although there's programmatic manipulation, conspiracy theorists personality cultists like Rense tend to simultaneously scam their audiences, and believe their own lies. I'd argue that these still don't qualify because they aren't institutional in scale. Is Infowars propaganda? Well, the name suggests it is, but the real answer is that to make a categorical judgement we'd need to know more about the intentions and policies of Jones. He and Infowars have absolutely served as propaganda by serving as a mediated outlet for propaganda by others. The fact that Jones has appeared on RT means that at a minimum, he is comfortable with becoming a part of the message for the very worst sort of people. Is the Intercept propaganda? Well, the name suggests it is, but the real answer is that to make a categorical judgement we'd need to know more about the intentions and policies of Greenwald. He and the Intercept have absolutely served as propaganda by serving as a mediated outlet for propaganda by others. The fact that Jones has appeared on RT means that at a minimum, he is comfortable with becoming a part of message development for the very worst sort of people. Do you think it's unfair to equate Alex Jones and Greenwald like this? They're different in a lot of ways! But both have, following incentives and processes very similar to Manufacturing, served the same system control and perception management purposes as "mainstream" sources. Defenses of Greenwald should not be couched in ideology, but methods, practices, actions, message construction, and things we can use as cues of intent. The fact that they have public editorial policies and appear to tolerate internal dissent is a good sign. The, Winner thing...not so much. Nor the wikileaks stuff, which yeesh. idk, jury's still out, but I read the intercept with a block of salt now. It is vital to resist the temptation to totalize all media, because at that point you begin interpreting sources ideologically, instead of in terms of their practices or content. Take a look at how the OP's link list of sources are described, or (much worse) describe themselves- not in terms of concrete message practices, but in terms of subject or ideology. That's...not great if you want to actually study media! How liberal someone is is not as important as the way they communicate their messages. The method, the construction and the intention is what matters, not the subject, beliefs or funding stream. "independent, verifiable, fact-based journalism" doesn't actually tell you any more about whether a source is trustworthy than "the most honored brand in cable news". You can only get that by looking at the details. This is why I disagree so strongly with making a media thread that is isolated from actual messages for analysis. We're effectively blocking off critical discussion of specific message content in the news channel, and rather than duplicate all the messages here, we're speaking in abstractions or histories. Saying "oh ofc you should scrutinize all sources and be aware of bias" doesn't...actually do anything, aside from reaffirm your blind spots. If we want to be more effective consumers of media, we have to talk about the news. So let's talk about the news. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 18:13
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Sorry, I should've been clearer in all of that. fwiw, bear in mind the prior conversation I just came out of. My critique is not of Manufacturing, but of the general use of broad assessment of media in terms of its cultural or ideological place, here, in this thread. It's also a critique of shunting media criticism away from news discussion - so a critique of Lightning Knight's decision to do so. I used Manufacturing as a shorthand for that because it was a major source of this general frame. I've not read the book in like 20 years, I admit - but the orientation the thread provides is more in line with it than with any of the people I studied or worked with who were actually involved in studying or developing these areas. It's explicitly a definition of propaganda I'm proposing from my time studying it. I'm open to critiques of it (the institutional component is probably its weakest part). Certainly, individual assessments of whether or not something is propaganda is often not going to be proveable! Most propaganda depends on this! That doesn't mean it's indeterminate, or not worth considering, any more than identifying bias is. Sometimes we do know someone was sitting around a meeting table planning to gently caress people up with a propaganda campaign. We know that RT is a propaganda agency. We also know that At the Movies is not, even if was ad-supported and on broadcast TV. We can use message content, message design, comparison with other sources, and context cues to attempt to identify motives, intent, and ethos. We can make an educated, informed, discussed guess about whether or not that meeting, whether or not that process of designed deception occurred. This, in turn, can inform discussion of how, and whether, we should engage with different sources of information. We can also render ourselves more resistant (though never immune) to rhetorics and propagandas targeting us. The act of doing this, and in particular, of doing this with others, and doing it with respect to specific messages, is more productive than isolating it to a thread kept separate from the things we're doing it to. Interrogation of the method of message composition, the message contents, and the material context of specific messages and sources, is more productive in forming heuristics for message evaluation than talking about "the media". Look, here's an example. This article, by Elizabeth Goiten, appears to be having a significant influence in public and press discussions over what Trump might do if he declares a state of emergency. We dismissed it as fanfiction here in the news thread, because, yeah, it goes off in a bizzare direction compared with the current political context, but it's also the headliner in the Atlantic, and was written by a big figure at the Brennan Center who used to work for Feingold. It also appears to have been in advance of the current situation, and released in anticipation of it. We can read this article, and research its origins, and debate and discuss it together, to gain a better understanding of its author, its design, its manufacturing, release and promotion process, and, in particular, evaluate messages that pass through Brennan or the Atlantic. It doesn't have to be that article - I just want us to start actually critiquing media. Though for a number of reasons I'd highlight here that the Atlantic is an absolutely perfect subject for detailed analysis of its content - it's a clearinghouse for ideas marketed by and to the powerful, with a really just incredible range of skill and methods. It's also specifically an influential tastemaker in other journalists...I'm astounded how many times VoA got directly published there. They're not normally allowed to do that. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 21:01
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Squalid posted:I thought VOA was barred by statute from publishing within the United States? Or are they merely barred from broadcast journalism? I have no clue as to the how, but there was crossover into the Atlantic (about Russia and Crimea, ofc) during the 2016 runup. I'll see if I can track down some examples. edit: lol, can't find it, found this instead Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 21:18
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SurgicalOntologist posted:So it seems that (3) is doing all the work here. Because 1,2, and 4 are totalizing, right? Or are there media institutions without institution-scale goals that shape their messages to influence reader's beliefs? That sounds like something all media organizations do, and is only nefarious if you find the specific goals to be nefarious. This definition is intended to apply to specific messages as a part of larger programs, not just entire outlets. I'm staking out the claim that all four elements are necessary ones. 3 is...difficult, because there's not an academic consensus in the field of rhetoric, and there are libraries worth of literature on the debate. It's also the only thing the evaluator always has access to, because it can be directly evaluated from message content (aside from ephemeral messages, but that's an edge case). You can use it to identify issues and gaps in reasoning, both in yourself and in the information source, and infer places that require scrutiny or context. The social sciences and humanities have concepts, theories and practices for persuasion (I can give you some book citations, but it will take time as it's all in boxes). Some of these methods are intended to make messages clearer or more impactful, and others are intended to influence beliefs in a matter that specifically prevents the reader from realizing how they are being persuaded. The ethics of this is approached from a lot of different angles, but a common framing is to say that messages whose mechanism of persuasion favors or intentional, conscious processing of the persuasive message content, are more likely to be ethical, in that they engage with and respect the autonomy of the recipient. Basically, if I design a message to persuade you, the things that should do the work of persuading you should be the things you are aware of and pay attention to. They should also be true and not misleading (I should have been clear that I was including "lie to you" in element 3-my bad). This stands in contrast to methods of persuasion and message composition practices that intentionally disrupt or bypass that conscious processing. The example that was burning up the field when I was getting my degree was fear appeals. That may sound ridiculously facile, but bear in mind this was millions of dollars of research going into things like public health campaigns- and also getting hoovered up by political consultancies and defense departments. The details mattered. Was it ethical to use vivid fear appeals to, for example, get people to stop smoking? What if we knew, in advance, that it caused message recipients to misunderstand what the risks were in a way that we could've corrected, but it ? What if we knew (as turned out to be the case) that fear appeals in that context had a substantial marginal boomerang effect that caused some recipients to double down? If fear appeals worked perfectly every time, could we use them to get people to vote the "right way"? The details and permutations of this become complex very fast; there are degrees of autonomy, measurement is complex, it's difficult to escape lousy dual process model assumptions from the 60s, and there are extenuating circumstance arguments, etc. There are two reasons, though, that evaluating the methods of composition is important that are relatively straightforward. First, it communicates the intentions and practices of the message creator. For example I immediately hated reading Conor Feidersdorf's writing as soon as I was first exposed to it. It's not that he's a libertarian- when I first read him he was writing on stuff that I tended to agree with. It was that, reading the text, he was trying to sell me a used car in the process. I could tell, from his merger of objective citation and narrative and strong...I think it was filth metaphors specifically, that he was seeking to appeal to his targets with layered ideological parity and pseudoobjectivity. A journalist referring to...well, let's pull from his recent work on "campus censorship" as a "rot" at the core of American democracy. This combination of elements this told me I needed to engage more critically with his coverage scope specifically, and look at his background generally. It's what led me to finding out about the various interests backing FIRE, and his tendency to uncritically promote their positions, and his penchant for selective citation, which was enough to no longer waste time reading him. The second reason why doing this close reading and analysis is important is that close attendance is also an important practice. Critical reading and critical thought require maintenance, and ideology is an incredibly, incredibly powerful blind spot. The terrifying Dan Kahan at Stanford has a great research program going on this, the "Cultural Cognition of Risk in Science Communication". And, of course, message producers know this- it's something they lean on a lot. Understanding how messages are written to target others, and to target ourselves, makes us resistant (though never immune) to the methods of rhetorical abuse. Greater literacy and attention to these methods makes you a better consumer of information, and a better discourse participant. The reason the other elements are important are probably clearer in that context, and why I think the propaganda distinction matters. Anyone can sell you a car, or sell you news. Someone programmatically, intentionally disrupting people's ability to process messages on an institutional scale, with institutional goals, is disrupting the res publica. My earlier posts single out RT because unlike other, merely persuasive propoaganda systems, the disruption of civic discourse is the institutional goal. Of course, I'm not suggesting that we can somehow free ourselves of ideology and see the world objectively, just that message/messenger ideology is a poor signifier of quality, and a poor heuristic for trust evaluation. It's not as if I don't agree with the ideas behind the messages I like. But try to come to like the messages in order to be able to like the ideas. If someone comes along with a different view, and their message and argument are better constructed, that's a reason to prefer their view. The alternative seems like epistemic closure. let me toss this back to you. What makes either a) message ideology or b) source ideology a good basis for message evaluation? And how do you identify message or source ideology? edit: did you add the rewire news example, or did I just miss it while writing way too many words? ugh, anyway, rewire news. I would want to spend way more time looking at it , but I would not immediately classify rewire news as propaganda. It's accurate that they fit 1, 2 and 4, but their actual material is remarkably free of abusive taint, element 3. Their motives and goals are stated and expressed in terms of information transfer, their funding sources appear pristine, they have good association links, they aren't using metaphorical language or leading statements, there's no sign of order effects, their citations are excellent oh wait this is an analysis article they also have editorials. I'd need a lot more time to evaluate everything at Rewire News and come to an opinion-and we don't have to agree on it. It appears there's some sort of staff passthrough or farm process going on at Rewire, given the merger with what seems to be an unrelated outlet, overlap with Dem campaign staff, and cyclic, relatively low-circulation opinion material. That aside, it seems like a great source. But here's the thing; because I find the ideology promoted appealing, I'm applying much, much more scrutiny, because it means I'm more susceptible to abuse where it occurs. If you select for ideology first, then apply content scrutiny, you're both narrowing your sources and you're We can also learn way more about media construction, even from agreeable, well-made, non-propaganda sources, by closer scrutiny on their methods. Additionally, it's a decent rule of thumb to pay greater ongoing attention to smaller outlets, because their policies and approach can be less stable. I mentioned it before: they're usually much easier to flip because they have fewer resources. I can go into a bit of what that process entails if people are interested, but I only know the details of those methods in regulatory lobbying. fake second edit: They seem to have started as a US-facing UN Foundation outlet? I don't know the lay of the land in that particular maze well enough to tell what was going on there, or what their larger goal is now. Absurd Alhazred posted:I finally broke the 1000-page mark on The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, meaning I'm getting close to finishing it, and while there is a lot going on in that book, one aspect of it has to do with why a lot of the atrocities Robert Moses committed against the people of New York were unreported and/or misreported, and what happened to change his coverage from almost universally favorable (papers were often commissioning him to write articles about his efforts) to hostile, which I think might be relevant to this thread. I am going to need a break from that book after I'm done with it, but would there be an interest in a summary from a layman such as myself about what I got out of that book sometime in the future? Holy poo poo, yes please. I've got two volumes of the lyndon johnson bio sitting somewhere unread because I want to read it all at once. Also how thick is it, wikipedia says 1300 pages edit 3: also I'm going to dial it down from here on, I apologize for these massive textblocks. I was teaching undergraduates communication theory and research (including source evaluation) during the 2016 election, the election occurred just before the final day of class, and it's clearly messed with me. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 01:23
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That's a good response, and it's the institutional weakness I'd mentioned with my definition. I'm going to try to be briefer with my responses from now on, so apologies if I miss stuff. I don't think this response is fully satisfactory, but I do think it reflects a meaningful difference. First, please note that I don't refer to those outlets as gold standard. Those outlets are gold standard in the eyes of the communications person Herstory Begins Now cites, based on that speaker's evaluation of a scale of reader perception of credibility (and most appealing targets), which doesn't mean they are necessarily the best outlets from my perspective. I generally don't find those to be the best outlets, because there are other groups (Propublica's the typical example) that are able to evade the capital conundrum you identify. I think it's important to distinguish between outlets that are directly advancing the institutional goals of leadership as their purpose (the Hearst or Murdoch scenario), which I would classify as propaganda, and those who are partially beholden to a source of funding or advertisement. Their goal is to sell ads, not promote a specific agenda. I do not think advertisements are inherently propaganda. Ads can be disingenuous, ofc, and (depending on form, design, backing, and platform), can be propaganda (see: the full pagers the Post ran years ago for CND), but are not categorically propaganda. Their goal is more limited in scope. [fake edit: I'm not satisfied by this either. Aha- institution refers to the intentions of the propagandist, not the propagandist themselves- it shouldn't be in element 1, I left it there while drafting. I need to think about how I can clarify what I mean when I distinguish the direct goal of money from the indirect goal of means, qua the scope of deception, and its moral threat. This will mean revising point 4, or adding another element. Perhaps something citing theory of publics to clarify that the goals of the propagandist target a public. I think that will resolve this set of issues- the notion of an intentional threat to the agency of publics.] Similarly, their economic influence on the message creator is indirect. The perverse incentive of this situation can and does produce bad reporting, and it should be scrutinized and criticized as such, and it belongs in this thread, but even then the form and outcomes are different because the people designing the messages doing so for the programmatic, deceptive institutional purpose. Because it lacks that coherence (indeed, because the waters are muddied, because the intent and form is mediated), it does not directly pose the same discursive threat. The messaging of commercial media is not categorically programmatic in its attempt to deceive or manipulate- at worst the pressure of capital is a potential route to propagandistic control. Regarding the Post story, a small correction: Bezos owns the Post, Amazon does not (which doesn't make things better, of course). I'm not seeing a strong case for any sort of organized persuasive effort toward an institutional end here, versus conflict of interest- the Post runs stories critical of Amazon pretty often. My opinion might change depending on the earlier, breathless truck job opening stories, if you could find links to them. I'm certainly open to the idea that the Post has slipped into that state of affairs (sole ownership is a bad situation), but I'm just not seeing evidence of it from the content of their articles or policy shifts (though the departure of the ombud is not a healthy move long-term). The Post continues to have a good reputation among journalists and watchdogs for its internal practices; my read is Bezos thinks he has more to gain by establishing the Post as genuinely independent, at least for the time being. But you can absolutely disagree about whether or not it counts- the point is it's not the commercial aspect that does it. Now, if a lobbying group that's a proxy for industry starts a messaging campaign, is that propaganda? I believe so. And I think a great target for scrutiny is Bloomberg, specifically, who does all kinds of messaging stuff through a range of proxies. But that's because he's starting groups that run campaigns specifically to influence public behavior, as well as directly owning the media reporting on them. And even then, while his public health nonprofits have definitely used propaganda, I'd need to study the content and form of messaging from his media holdings, separately. I've heard of Brass Check, but never read it. I'll do so asap. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jan 7, 2019 |
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Jan 7, 2019 05:10
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BrandorKP posted:Well Discendo do you know about the Bloomberg terminals? yyyes?
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Jan 7, 2019 07:30
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Josef bugman posted:Is all propaganda state run though? Some definitions say yes, but it gets hard to tell what counts as "state run" at times. Fox News feels like propaganda, but it's controlling Trump rather than vice versa. The thing about propaganda is it takes a lot of resources to sustain-a building full of trolls working shifts, etc. States are more likely to have the resources and the drive/goals that make propaganda seem worthwhile.
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Jan 7, 2019 15:43
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Darth Walrus posted:I guess there is also stuff like cult 'propaganda', which at least feels similar, so it might be worth talking about how that fits in. Yeah good point. I definitely don't endorse state operation as a necessary element, it's just a common one.
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Jan 7, 2019 16:01
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SurgicalOntologist posted:I'm still not convinced as to the import of this classification. By this definition RT is propaganda (at least in general... maybe the granularity of the classification is at issue). But say there is some activist I have been following, who has been blackballed from traditional media, who gets an interview with RT. Why should I not tune in? Why should I not promote the message? Maybe in doing so, I am just doing good propaganda. But is it relevant that my intentions in promoting the message are different from RT's? And if the reason to say I shouldn't is, because they might click another link and therefore get disrupted or whatever, I'm skeptical that that's a big enough risk to warrant not promoting the message. You can possibly disagree, but that is definitely the reason that RT likes having those people on- they are confident it legitimizes them as a source of information, that a sufficient portion of recipients will consume more from them and be driven to the fringes, and that they are ultimately getting what they want. Also, y'know, the interviewer and media source controls a lot more about the message than the interviewee. Medium is the message, etc. I think that the relative incompetence of Russian propaganda might be a decent counterargument here - they mostly succeed through volume and persistence. But I'd personally rather not test that proposition via message I can be confident was targeted at people like me. SurgicalOntologist posted:And if I share that goal? If I believe the civic discourse is problematic, not because of its lack of respect for autonomy, but for its self-imposed limits and scope, I should want to disrupt it. Maybe this is just a different sense of "disrupt" though. Although I could probably argue that an artificially limited discourse is already disrupted, and I am un-disrupting it. Sorry, let me clarify that. Propaganda harms the public's capacity for civic discourse itself. Propaganda produces a society that is less free, and less capable of growth or self-correction. It's fraught. It does this by influencing beliefs or behaviors at a public scale in a manner that harms the autonomy of that public. That said, there is definitely an argument to be had here- you can imagine a ticking time bomb scenario, or argue that (like vivid warnings on cigarette packaging), the harm is massively outweighed by the good. This is generally the scale of the arguments among rhetoricians and comm scientists. The usual final argument is that if society is headed down a bad path, or even if it's subject to the crippling effects of propaganda, it's not a situation where it's counterbalanced with different propaganda. Rather, if you think the current form or scope of discourse is harmful, you should attempt persuasion by means that respects the autonomy of the message recipients. RT gets special mention and ire from me because its programmatic goal unto itself is routinely straight up harming the target public's civic discourse. That's much harder to defend or justify. SurgicalOntologist posted:Maybe this isn't what you're asking. But I have an ideology. Naturally, I believe the world would be a better place if more people shared my ideology. I believe it to be a matter of life and death. How could I not use ideology as a basis for message evaluation? It seems to be a moral imperative. The thing that distinguishes propaganda from other lies is that its effect includes messing with how a public is able to understand or discuss an issue. Non-autocratic societies (of pretty much any modern ideological stripe) depend on some form of civic discourse to function (even autocratic societies depend on a healthy information diet among whomever has power). There needs to be some consensual public good-faith discussion of information that permits the identification of problems and the creation of solutions- including the correction, revision, or rejection of ideologies. The idea, then, is that a dangerous ideology will be self-corrected for in a civil society that protects its good faith discourse. A terrible ideology communicated in good faith fails. A terrible ideology communicated by abusive means can succeed. I want to be really clear here: this isn't a free market argument, it's a regulated market argument. The problem is that in the US, it's largely a self-regulated market - and that it's subject to epistemic fragmentation. The challenges of how to protect civic discourse without destroying it are infamous, and I'm hoping to learn how other countries approach them in this thread. And again, it's not that you don't use ideology as an evaluation heuristic or framework (because that's impossible), but that it not be your primary method. Say, here's a different way to think about it: You think your ideology is so hot? Expose it to contrary views. Find the best, most good-faith argument for a terrible idea and acid-test your beliefs. SurgicalOntologist posted:First of all, "a mediated outlet for propaganda by others". Surely this also applies to mainstream media. As far as appearing on RT (or Fox), I may disagree with his calculation but I don't see it as anything more than that. Plenty of people I respect more than Greenwald (e.g. Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff) have appeared on RT and I struggle to care. By going on RT, these folks are attempting to add their specific contributions to civic discourse through creating messages for a propaganda program that exists to damage public discourse. It's past "I'm going to appear on Fox News and totally shut Tucker Carlson down on the air" bad move, and closer to "performing at Gaddaffi's birthday party will give me a lot of exposure". This was significantly more understandable in the early years where it wasn't widely known what RT was, but it becomes harder to justify after 2012 or so. It's a propaganda entity operating on behalf of a state apparatus that kills dissidents and journalists. That's a, uh, really significant miscalculation. One other reason to care is that if RT has a bunch of people on that you respect and find appealing, that means you are the person being targeted. RT is a bad faith actor. It tells truth only in service to lies, in the same way Charles Murray has some accurate claims in the Bell Curve. None of us are ever immune to an ideological appeal concealing a bad actor, and if we know that that's what is happening, and we're the target, then, well, that's a really strong reason to not engage with a message. SurgicalOntologist posted:But really I'm wondering about the Winner thing, and the WikiLeaks stuff. The Winner thing: they burned their source, seemingly due to carelessness, which obviously they shouldn't have done. But why does this push you toward seeing them as propaganda? And what's the wikileaks stuff? I thought WikiLeaks and the Intercept were at odds? I could be misremembering, but my recollection was Greenwald stanned for wikileaks/assange before their relationship shifted (if I'm wrong about that, please let me know- it's been too long in the three thousand years since 2016 for me to keep track). I'm not accusing the intercept of being another wikileaks, I'm saying their record is spotty (and Greenwald continues to be his own worst enemy in that regard on social media). Independent media organizations that revolve around a single leadership figure (as opposed to a set of institutional policies) are usually way more permeable. As the Intercept has become less the Glenn Greenwald show, it's risen in my estimation as a source.
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Jan 7, 2019 19:23
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