Mad about the Media: The Media and Media Criticism Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Mad about the Media: The Media and Media Criticism Megathread

SurgicalOntologist: Jun 17, 2004

Discendo Vox posted:

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.

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.

So, what is the "message cognitive process" and what does it mean to disrupt it?

To get specific, what about something like Rewire News (formerly RH Reality Check if you've heard of it). They clearly have goals that shape their messages. Maybe it is propaganda, but if so should I care? I mean, beyond taking their perspective into account when reading it, which is something we should always do, right? If I believe that reproductive health is under attack and stories relating to it are under-covered or ignored entirely, maybe I should welcome the propaganda and support it?

I'm not an expert in this field, clearly, but I'm skeptical of the possibility of judging media without reference to ideology. Why should I care more about my message cognitive process than the ideology of the media I consume?

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SurgicalOntologist: Jun 17, 2004

Discendo Vox posted:

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"?

OK, that makes sense to me, at least as far as a definition goes.

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.

Presumably, I believe that the message I agree with respects the autonomy of its audience, even if RT doesn't.

Discendo Vox posted:

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.

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.

Discendo Vox posted:

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?

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.

So, having written that, I understand how that makes me more susceptible to propaganda. Yeah, I don't want to be lied to, so I will still parse messages with scrutiny, and promote them selectively. It nevertheless seems to me that sources with a dangerous ideology, that are technically not propaganda, can be more dangerous than propaganda from a shared ideology.

I found your discussion of The Intercept earlier to be interesting and I'm generally curious about a couple things.

Discendo Vox posted:

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 [sic: I assume you meant Greenwald here] 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.

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.

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?

SurgicalOntologist fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jan 7, 2019

# ¿ Jan 7, 2019 17:27

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