From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Feb 13 2003 - 14:57:28 MST
On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 02:50:14PM -0500, EvMick@aol.com wrote:
>
> That is......the "news" media care nothing about informing the
> public.....their goal is "re-forming" the public....their apparent purpose
> is to mold public opinion.
Welcome to the field of media studies. As far as I understand it, much
of the entire academic field is based on the above, with heavy theories
about how it happens, who is behind it and why they are. The analysis
ranges from cheap conspiracy theories to quite elegant combinations of
memetics, economics and social psychology, with an IMHO center of mass
on the conspiracyish side.
When I read my first media study Ph.D. thesis I was shocked - how could
the author have gained a Ph.D. from *that*?! Then I slowly came to
realise that by the standards of its subject (at least in Sweden) it was
a typical thesis, and even had a few good points in the midst of what my
natural sciences reading first took as garbage.
> I acquired this notion decades ago during the Viet Nam thing when what I was
> seeing first hand in South East Asia didn't match what I was seeing second
> hand on the tube......
It happens all the time everywhere, and has done so since mass media
began. The fun is to figure out the different biases and how to get
around them.
The real issue should be what forms of bias are really necessary to
remove through laws, other forms of coercion or the setup of alternative
institutions, and efficient ways of getting less biased information from
biased sources.
> HOWEVER.........war protestors? I hear lots and lots of war
> protestors.....a whole hour was devoted to an "interview" for example....
Does the Clinton protestors fit into the narrative of the TV news? They
have a narrative of how war protestors work, a kind of ready-made story,
with a tone, images and message that reporters, producers and even
protestors tend to conform to. There is also the presidential protest
narrative, but it is different. These two narratives cannot be combined;
the result would feel strange to the reporters and producers, and the
story would not be sent since it seemed to be less good than the other
stories of the day.
The same is true for other issues. Transhumanism can currently be shown
in the "excentric people and inventions" narrative, the "wonders of
science" narrative and the frankenscience narrative". The first one
trivializes us and our ideas - look how cute they are, believing in
crazy stuff like cloning and nanotech! The second deals with a gadget or
idea, reporting about its discovery, nifty features and glorious future
(for fairness a naysayer is always included). The third shows how we are
making a faustian pact with technology that will cost us (and everybody
else) our souls.
We need to get out of these narratives and create our own narratives.
Even ending up in the "two sides debates a boring issue" narrative would
be great.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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