https://www.thepropreport.com/the-engineering-of-consent-an-essay-by-edward-bernays-audio-reading/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/america-used-to-promote-photojournalism-now-it-bans-it C.I.A. Computer Engineer Who Leaked Secrets Is Sentenced to 40 Years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/02/joshua-schulte-cia-wikileaks-sentence/ Chinese Communist Party views civil society — the life of the Chinese apart from the dominance of the party — as a threat to its rule and moves to repress it. Many observers were proved wrong in predicting that Xi would become a reformer like his father, who oversaw the creation of the country’s first special economic zone in Shenzhen, a key step in China’s opening. Instead, Xi is the most conservative leader in generations, overseeing the reimposition of the party’s role in education, media and the economy. Aust and Geiges suggest that Xi took his father’s travails as a warning for himself. As the writer Yu Jie explains: “He does not want to suffer the same fate as his father.” Wishing to be a good communist, Xi has tacked in the other direction. “When his father is sentenced as a counter-revolutionary, he must present himself as even more communist and even more revolutionary than the others if he wants to survive,” says Chinese journalist Li Datong. https://www.dw.com/en/rsf-amnesty-ask-pakistan-to-find-pro-khan-anchor-imran-riaz/a-65709589 https://www.voanews.com/a/media-watchdogs-fear-for-life-of-missing-pakistani-journalist/7106182.html https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27089646 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/31/well-known-pakistani-tv-news-journalist-taken-off https://www.dw.com/en/pakistani-journalist-matiullah-jan-found-after-brief-suspected-abduction/a-54253769 https://www.dw.com/en/pakistan-journalist-critical-of-military-attacked-at-home/a-57665723 https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/pakistani-journalist-matiullah-jan-goes-missing-wife-claims-abduction/story-MjIIMdWl4jFWfidQkfS57M.html https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa33/4992/2021/en/ https://www.voanews.com/a/journalists-arrested-in-iran-warned-about-protest-coverage/6760774.html https://southarkansassun.com/news/73738/two-us-journalist-detainment-by-russia-shakes-press-freedom/ https://themedialine.org/people/yemeni-women-archive-highlights-womens-struggles-during-yemens-civil-war/
A Thousand Cuts (2020) directed by Ramona Diaz All That Breathes (2022) directed by Shaunak Sen Endangered (2022) directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/14/world/europe/galina-timchenko-meduza-pegagus-spyware-russia.html "In wartime, truth is so precious she should always be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies." Sir Winston Leonard-Spencer Churchill. The dark internal logic of propaganda is to rub out all distinctions between truth and lies; and this shape-shifting propaganda makes just enough of a lasting impression to leave people feeling distrustful and victimized. But before any one line of thinking can be pursued for too long, the narrative jumps to something else. People are left distracted and angry, but unsure of why or at whom. What is dangerous that political propaganda is leveraging the tech industry who now relies on behavioral manipulation to maximize profits on what might be called “personality-disorder marketing” in recognition of the fact that all pleasures are more or less equal to the human brain, whether they originate with a win at the blackjack table, a line of cocaine, or “likes” on social media. Stoking division in other nations isn't just common, it's an obvious tool to make it tear itself apart. For example, the Kurds were used by CIA to tear Syria. Russian intelligence certainly seems to have a good understanding of how to push the US's buttons. The assault on democracy is avoidable, yet it's embraced by millions. Both foreign propaganda and marketing (Rufus Mile's Law of Management) over mass media venues are disguised to look and sound like news. Rufus Miles Law of Management states: Where you stand depends on where you sit. He codified that which we should know intuitively. We see things and form judgments of things from our own perspective. We need to discipline ourselves to see things from other’s vantage point. Marketing can make up for a bad product as long as you develop a few "true believers". It's the same play-book, that well-financed groups use to convince a substantial share of the public that lies are true. History repeats itself not as farce, but as click-bait. To believe in a lie, it must be terrifying. When lies repeatedly affect the same segments of the population (and no group is immune), those absorbing this toxicity become distrustful of facts from reputable sources while latching onto even the most far-fetched conspiracy theories that because we all want it to be true. Romans understood propaganda and spin. "In 1957, the BBC ran a story about how spaghetti was growing on trees in Switzerland. So many people believed the hoax that the BBC was flooded with calls from people asking how to plant their own spaghetti tree."
'Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.' George Orwell When lies repeatedly affect the same segments of the population (and no group is immune), those absorbing this toxicity become distrustful of facts from reputable sources while latching onto even the most far-fetched conspiracy theories that conform to their world-views. To believe in a lie, it must be terrifying. Gaslighting (a form of psychological warfare wherein you manipulate a person into questioning their own sanity): The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. I call it truthful hyperbole... — a very effective form of promotion. Ronald Reagan is another example. He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there's anything beneath that smile. One thing I’ve learned about the press is they’re always hungry for a good story. It’s in the nature of the job, and I understand that. Most reporters, I find, have very little interest in exploring the substance of a detailed proposal for a development. They look instead for the sensational angle. That may have worked to my advantage. Donald J Trump (1987) The Trump administration has discovered that lying to reporters and publicly attacking critics are like tossing grenades into the media eco-system. The press is constantly scrambling to respond to a never-ending river of slime, and the system is gradually overwhelmed. By clogging the news with mini-scandals, bald-faced lies, and provocative tweets, the White House sends journalists and media outlets into haphazard frenzy. You can deal with one danger, but meanwhile the rest of them are eating the flesh of your back. "the right understands very well that undermining the credibility of the institutions, that people look to for help defining and making sense of reality, is the key to bending reality to your will. It’s a wonderful rhetorical trick." "The media’s job is to deconstruct the manipulation, not to just call it a lie. It’s about informing on how something works so that you understand the lie’s purpose. What are the structural issues underneath the lie? The media shouldn’t take the political system personally, or allow its own narcissism to rise" Jon Stewart
"Each small candle lights a corner of the dark" Roger Waters Mass Communication Edward Louis Bernays Ivy Ledbetter Lee "If that's the story line that is being put out there by whatever party is out of power, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument, with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they are going to believe it." Obama said at the annual end-of-the-year press conference in the White House. "The word “media” comes from “intermediate” between newsmakers and the public." Exhaustively researched journalism – presented by legitimate news outlets; fact-checked until it was true in the face, and in the heart; run through legal, after attempts made to reach all sides for comment, all at great cost – drew far less attention than hastily hoisted screeds of pure fright and fancy typed up, often enough, by some entrepreneurial teens in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. There's an old saying about newspapers: They aren't delivering news to readers, but readers to advertisers. BuzzFeed and The Guardian reported that the Macedonian town of Veles, boasting a population of 45,000, is the cradle of at least 140 American-politics websites. Working overwhelmingly for click-earned ad money, not love of Donald Trump, the youth of Veles offered up thousands of invented, mostly anti-Hillary Clinton stories (there just wasn’t much of a market for anti-Trump stories, they found) under eye-catching headlines. There is a bias built into the way journalists pick and cover stories. Certain subjects are routinely covered or ignored. The job of journalists is not to stamp out bias. Rather, the journalist should learn how to manage it. A competent journalist is conscious of the biases at play in a given story and is able to decide what maybe appropriate or inappropriate. Reporting bias: the tendency to systematically under- or over-report certain types of events — shapes our understanding of war. While the media in democracies typically are relatively independent from government influence, they have their own institutional biases — such as “newsworthiness” criteria that emphasize novelty, conflict, proximity, and drama. The implication is that living in a democratic state with a free press does not ensure that a media consumer will receive unfiltered information about who is doing what to whom, even during high-visibility events. Market-oriented bias: This can be a pressure to produce stories that target market segments with desirable demographics for advertisers. Irresponsible journalism: Each news outlet has its own approach to reporting on what’s happening in the world. While no media outlet is completely objective, some don’t even try to be. For example, Fox News tailor their news to right-leaning audiences. Cable TV, so important to Trump’s rise, seems torn between two personalities: one driven by ratings and profit, the other by its responsibility to inform the public. Trusted news outlets sometimes spread false information. Sources may lie to reporters. Journalists can fall victim to pranks or hackers. Laziness and deadline pressures can cause mistakes. Unethical scribes have exaggerated or concocted news on many occasions. Advertisements about products and services may be disguised to look and sound like a news story. E.g. The Washington Post once won a Pulitzer Prize for a story that was later exposed as fabricated. As long as Facebook optimises for engagement, legitimate news websites have little reason to be balanced. If Facebook abandons its stance as a 'neutral technology platform' it risks reinforcing the very conspiracy theories it is attempting to dismantle. If Facebook were to appoint themselves as official arbiters of the truth, the move would act as proof for many that big business and the media go hand in hand, legitimising a further retreat into partisan ideological bubbles as paranoia about the ‘mainstream media’ grows even stronger. “The system is geared as much to amuse and divert as it is to inform, and it responds inadequately when suddenly called upon to explain something…complex and menacing.” News often has a dual identity, an external facade and an internal reality, much like the Japanese duality of tatemae (appearance) and honne (reality). The two stories, or realities, are often wildly at odds with each other. Whether in developed, developing or underdeveloped countries, it is a known fact that broadcast news channels playing high drama (complete with protagonists and antagonists) and sensational content, rather than what is important, in order to grab eyeballs which makes them look like tabloid channels. The media often portray non-issues as real issues, while the real issues are sidelined. Perhaps the most serious consequence of journalists’ focus on crises and conflicts is that both they and the public become blind to systemic issues. When competition increases and survival becomes an issue, editorial and ethical standards take a beating. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do. The rise of television has increased the demand for drama in news, and the explosion in lobbyists and special-interest groups has expanded the number of actors and the range of conflicts. Most news channels are still bleeding at the bottom line, no matter their top line. Other sub-genres which get importance include sports, crime/law and order, entertainment, social and mishap/failure of machinery. Personalities are more compelling than institutions, facts are often uncertain, attention spans (and television sound bites) are brief, and simplification—often oversimplification—is the norm. Todays Pulitzer’s journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public. Officials oblige the media’s need for drama by fabricating crises and stage-managing their responses, thereby enhancing their own prestige and power. What has emerged is a culture of lying. In such an environment, the actors who most skillfully create and manipulate crises determine the direction of change. The rapid advance of information age technology—hundreds of cable television channels, the growth of specialized media, the spread of computer information resources—is certain to give citizens access to far more diverse sources of information and is likely to force the media to reinvent the ways in which they present news and other information. But none of those changes are likely to alter the persistent conundrum. A press driven by drama and crises creates a government driven by response to crises. Peter Vanderwicken Saying “all journalists are lazy” or that they violate people's rights to dignity may sound sexy but it is like looking at a pin up of your favourite sex icon – titillating but broadly pointless and probably offensive. Such statements are often used to support equally poor ideas like “we cannot ever limit media freedom” or ”let's licence journalists” as if somehow either of these will solve the problem. Neither of these options are sustainable and in fact all they do is deflect from the bigger issues. In a democracy we should first try the first method to rectify the defects through the democratic method. The architect of the transformation was not a political leader or a constitutional convention but Joseph Pulitzer, who in 1883 bought the sleepy New York World and in 20 years made it the country’s largest newspaper. Pulitzer accomplished that by bringing drama to news—by turning news articles into stories with a plot, actors in conflict, and colorful details. Pulitzer made stories dramatic by adding blaring headlines, big pictures, and eye-catching graphics. His journalism took events out of their dry, institutional contexts and made them emotional rather than rational, immediate rather than considered, and sensational rather than informative. The press became a stage on which the actions of government were a series of dramas. Business has become a prominent player in the manipulation of perception and in the corruption of the public policy process. Every story about research should identify the sponsor and describe its interest in the outcome or impact of the research. And the media should stop producing information that serves only to feed their own interests. The press should cover crises and disasters less and political, social, and economic events more: less politics, more substance; less on personalities, more on institutions. That is quixotic and will never happen. It would be a return to pre-Pulitzer journalism. The media’s desire to attract an audience and the audience’s inability to concentrate for long would make such a format impossible. In May of 1918, Wilson was successful in getting the Sedition Act passed as an amendment to the Espionage Act. It became a crime to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane...or abusive language" about the United States government or to disagree with its actions abroad. The act was repealed in 1921.
"Information Warfare": The Power Of Misdirection And Confusion Ancient leaders understood propaganda and spin. Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great controlled what version of events was distributed as official, or even unofficial, news. And in Ancient Egypt, where a permanent record of government achievements was painted or carved into the walls of government structures, archaeologists have only recently discovered that many of those official records were subject to a lot of spin. Many of those ancient records, it turned out, were lies, told in order to influence public opinion. Humans have always had an insatiable hunger for bullshit and fairy tales, from folk tales told around the fire to small-town gossip, to Bigfoot-bedecked tabloids in the checkout line. It reflects and reinforce our prejudices, and they give us sweet dreams. In an epic battle sparked by the U.S. election and fought on the vast planes of social media, news stories – stories powered in the main by researched truth – were pitted against fake stories, and fact and truth took a severe beating. People go to social media to see what their friends and the pages they follow are posting. What makes this a “post-truth” election, instead of just your average “people lying a lot about everything” election, is that folks seem entirely indifferent to the truth. Islamic terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda and ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) have proved quite adept at manipulating the mass media to their advantage. They use a combination of technical savvy and ancient techniques for changing minds. In the early 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte tightly controlled the distribution of news in France and his conquered territories. In fact, historians believe fake propaganda news may have induced the Spanish-American War of 1898. And that trend just kept going, especially once the radical socialist movements (especially fascism and Russian communism) got hold of it in the early 20th century. All this was more evolution than revolution because starting in the late 19th century a growing number of powerful propaganda methods and techniques for controlling public opinion were developed. Many of these techniques are actually ancient, but never before have they been used so intensively, persistently, and in greater variety to such a large audience. These efforts went into high gear in the 1990s because, since the 1980s, there has been an unprecedented proliferation of news media. First came round-the-clock TV news that was available worldwide. As that continued to spread in the 1990s, the Internet appeared and the proliferation of news outlets accelerated. While it was nice to have news round-the-clock and with the help of the Internet, from anywhere on the planet, often in real time, there were some downsides. Major problems were created by the fierce competition for the audience. That led to a ruthless approach to presenting the news. It became more important to “attract eyeballs” than reporting the news accurately. Ads about products and services may be disguised to look and sound like a news story. Black PR firms have been providing clients with both post deletion of negative news stories and also provide hit pieces. That also led to more propaganda as governments and special interest groups found that if their message were packaged the right way lies would be more convincing than the truth. Fake news is not a new problem. Everyone can lie. Fake news is just modern propaganda. The only difference is modern technology is making fake news guilt-free, open-season and licensed mendacity. Reality at the information level is more and more difficult to verify and easier to manipulate because of cyberspace. What is also important is the fact that in this information environment, it is very easy to reach people who propagate disinformation. History repeats itself not as farce, but as click-bait. But the age of such cyber-conflict is still in its infancy. There came to be a body of techniques that are most effective. Here they are and if you spend any time at all consuming mass media, you will find these techniques familiar.
A popular conversational gambit is not talking at all about something and it can be very useful in Information War. This selective ignorance is a favorite technique of state controlled media. Thus, in the old Soviet Union you never heard about large scale disasters, serial killers, or areas suffering from pollution. This all came out after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and was demoralizing for many Russians, who always felt their police state was a better place to live in than it actually was. Governments still try to “control the message” and suppress bad news. What you don’t hear about doesn’t exist (until you become one of the victims). The Internet has made this technique much more difficult, which is why so many countries spend a lot of money to censor the Internet. If little lies don’t work try the “one-one punch”. This is where you pretend to represent two sides but one side gets a couple of great lines, the other side gets a lame line. A variation on the old “damning with faint praise” technique. Another selective presentation technique is the use of subtle inaccuracies or a dismissive tone. This often involves misstating a topic, often a serious one, and pretending any objections or concerns about that are silly, unrealistic, or just not necessary. The current debate over climate change brings out a lot of this because many climate professionals are not in agreement with the “consensus” on just what is changing and why. This has led to more and more embarrassments for proponents as the experts eventually get enough people to take a look at the facts. Examples are the old “hockey stick” prediction of historical temperature that tried to ignore the well documented “little ice age” that lasted from the 13th to the 19th century. There were also false reports of glacial melting that did not match reality but were believed for a while because of too much propaganda and not enough facts. In the last decade a lot of people have lost faith in the “consensus,” which goes to show you that all the techniques here tend to have short shelf lives. Selective presentation is often used in conjunction with “volume” and “coordination”. Volume is merely a deluge of the same story line everywhere, until it becomes dominant, and the media's view of it becomes the dominant view. The mass media loves this one because it can make any story “true” even if it isn’t. The mass media tend to follow each other and you will often find that all the "news" stories about a given current event seem to draw a similar conclusion about it. When you notice this, just ask yourself if it's probable that, in a nation of nearly 320 million, no one has a legitimate opposing opinion. This is why the traditional mass media does not like the Internet, where convincing facts or opinions that contradict the mass media truth can get into circulation. Police states (like China) particularly hate this. Coordination occurs when a number of likeminded journalists all report the same angle at about the same time. This really doesn't require a conspiracy, there are so few "journalists" and they can easily see what their buddies' takes are on issues, then parrot the same line. This also occurs in any large organization (corporation, university, government bureaucracy). Some cultures are more into this than others. In Japan there is a saying that, “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” If all else fails you can try fogging an issue. This is often called the total nonsense gambit. Sometimes certain groups have an interest in making sure that as few people pay attention to an issue as possible. A good propagandist can write a long, nonsensical article for the purpose of confusing the majority of readers, who themselves work hard all day. It doesn't take much for them to see a catchy headline, then begin to dig into a long rambling article, then throw their hands up and say "I don't have the extra energy to decipher this!" The reader is correct, the fault is with the propagandist. The fog is often reinforced by distracting or absurd statistics. With this technique the writer attempts to drag the reader into a debate about what the reader is even seeing. This is usually used when the propagandist is falling behind and must hurry to destroy correct understanding of events. Some very simple techniques continue to be effective. One of these is the 2,3,4 Technique. Mentioning only one side of an issue two, three, or four times in an article, each time pretending you are about to present the opposing side but you never do. Then the article suddenly ends and the reader feels bombarded, outnumbered, and alone. Even if the opposing view is held by many people, the author need merely refuse to present that side of the argument. A variation on “2,3,4” is shock and awe. This is when the writer "attacks" the reader viciously at the very outset of the article with the "acceptable" view of the topic. The writer tries to "beat it into" the reader without any regard to other views. Another sneaky, but basic tactic is simply framing the debate. Setting an argument around two "alternatives" which you would prefer, rather than the true alternatives. A variation on that is “token equal time”. Sometimes a weak, tiny understatement is added to a propaganda piece, apparently so the writer can pretend they had been fair. This technique is quite common, it consists of an article written with entirely one point of view, then at the end a meager statement from the opposing view is printed, it is immediately refuted, then the article either ends or continues on with the preferred point of view. Framing the debate is often complemented by efforts to "interpret" A Statement. Have you ever seen a writer say that someone said something, then what the person said followed even though it didn't look anything like what the writer claimed was meant? Selective presentation of information by misinterpretation is as good as an outright lie. A variation on that is withholding Information. Is it the same as lying? Some in the media might not want to answer that question. There are many other techniques, as the last century has been a golden age for this sort of duplicity. The Internet has accelerated the development of new techniques because the web tends to shorten the useful life of these media scams. Now even religious zealots and mass murderers like ISIL are using these tools to get what they want." Human minds crave order, and they try to minimize the discomfort of uncertainty by suggesting ways to make sense of chaos and disorder. One of the ways they do this is by encouraging us to accept information that confirms pre-existing views or ideas. Often times one sees what one wants to see, frequently to the exclusion of other relevant factors like a valid-but-contradictory viewpoint. This is called confirmation bias, that often inhibit the ability to make good decisions. The deleterious effects of confirmation bias may alter perception of reality, leading to neglect of the fundamental problem one must address. Humans use only 10% of their brain. Eating carrots improves your eyesight. Vitamin C cures the common cold. None of those things are true. Repetition is what makes fake news work, too, as researchers at Central Washington University pointed out in a study way back in 2012 before the term was everywhere. It’s also a staple of political propaganda. It’s why flacks feed politicians and CEOs sound bites that they can say over and over again. Not to go all Godwin’s Law on you, but even Adolf Hitler knew about the technique. “Slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea,” he wrote in Mein Kampf. As with any cognitive bias, the best way not to fall prey to it is to know it exists. Emily Dreyfuss Mass Communication & Media Technology"One never says a picture is true or false. It either captures your attention or it doesn’t." Visual stimulus has a hypnotic power to demand the observer’s attention, as they say “One picture worth’s more than thousands of words”. The integration of sound and moving images can reorganise space, time and narrative. In visual media, violence is shown and is seen as a means of resolving problems, and reaching goals. This causes desensitisation and stimulation, especially on the immature minds. Characters that are likely to be imitated are shown not to take responsibility for their actions but are repeatedly recognized as heroes, due to the gaining of respect and numerous other rewards through their actions. This distorts people’s understandings of our society, and moral values as fantasy is presented as if it’s the real thing. Although media technology was first exploited by the fascist totalitarians, however later, the state, military and corporates all began influencing their societies by spinning the truth and distorted reality. The only difference is that the state favoured concentrated mass viewing whereas the corporates favoured private diffused viewing as it encourages buying more objects. Today because of this commercialization by the corporates through media technologies, our world is filled ‘magical’ seducing objects that symbolises Ideas that have been distorted (partially highlighted and partially hidden) to design a fantasy. The actual use value becomes taken for granted after such remaking of the observer’s perception and habits. Human beings have a need to show that they have achieved happiness. The concept of happiness has been misrepresented by using media technology. It created a deep need to have visual proof for existence of happiness in our lives. In our modern societies, happiness is measured by buying fantastical tools (objects). The fantasy is introduced to us and reality is hidden from us by using media technologies so that everyone in the society is transformed into a potential customer. The reason for spectacle in the modern society is because of this flawed understanding of how we choose to represent our intrinsic need for happiness. This is why we fetishize newer objects that we don’t even need. Human beings are naturally adept at organising into permanent groups, exchanging of ideas with each other and having enduring self-expressions. The desire for self-expression and the obvious appreciation for beauty and aesthetics led to cultural innovations such as art, literature and music. Communication is our basic need and mass communication has become the scepter of human communication. Whether we accept it or not, it's a fact that our world is a materialistic world and we have materialistic desires. Without the desire to buy, we would cease to be human. Trade and commodities have a direct link with our the quality of our life, not only for physical comfort but also how we perceive ourselves (identity). Capitalism is about trading of the fact that you are getting a good deal (bargain). Both the parties think they have exploited each other if they have a narrow mentality. The issue is not with trade but how we trade with each other, that needs reform and re-contextualizing. Trade works on demand. A demand that's driven by price, peer-pressure (trends), and manipulation of information (communication). The story so far has been about reducing cost and increasing profits. It's about the idea of this narrow profit, and how you look at it. When it's all about perception, then the ones who have the power to influence is the leader. Its open to manipulation. We are yet to respond to this challenge. Mass media and within that television has played and big role in how we perceive our world. It has the power to influence the society, our behaviour pattern, by injecting a collective memory. The objective of visual media is to sell, and sell things that we don't need to buy. It uses the fact that we use materials to show our identity and sensibilities. It creates identities in products (or rather product brands). It gives objects a new context in our life which makes it more meaningful. Thus an object of decoration becomes an important meaning that defines the identity of a society. Mass Media builds an emotional relationship with the viewers. It transforms itself from mere functional objects to something that's magical in the sense that it can affect how you feel or think of yourself. These invisible attributes are important. Films also serve as a visual anthropology. In the West, during the era of rapid industrialization, new technological innovations and fast changing social order, our natural reactions like anxieties, trauma and fears gets expressed though human imagination, as in it takes the form of popular media. For example, films about man-made machines or monsters becoming more powerful than humans like 'Frankenstein', 'Metropolis' and Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' to name a few. The rise of the developing world, is responsible due to the diverse, large middle-class society but they are facing a flux of contradictions and counter-contradictions. This is about influencing (colonising) your choices through all kinds of propagandas and of that the use of coded mass media (communication) are in the frontlines. Ads uses the fact that we use materials to show our identity and sensibilities by communicating a meaning (through association) to build an emotional connection (personalization). It has the power to influence the society, our behaviour pattern, by injecting a collective memory. Advertising uses fetishism so that consumers can sustain their private fantasies (due to injected or inherit complexes/fears/disturbances, for example the desire to be alpha male or superwomen) that they have liked with the identity of the product. (It's not uncommon, in a world of rapid industrialization, new technological innovations and fast changing social order, our natural reactions like anxieties, trauma and fears) A lot of money is spent on advertising & public relation management because they know, brand 'image is everything'. Every Adman knows how objects in relation with other objects, their interactions, give meaning and add qualities to the objects that didn't exist. It is a way to communicate like language but more powerful as the meaning and the object becomes one. Deliberate manipulation to associate meaning, adding a fantastical element and desirability, making it more attractive. The visual culture of the modern society is about ‘spectacle’. Spectacle itself is not a single concept; instead it holds different meanings depending on the time period and geographical location. But spectacle became identifiable during the Modern period, when commercialization, mass media and globalisation altered how societies spent their everyday lives, how they spent their leisure time and expressed themselves. A new and expanding class, the working middle class, emerged as societies exploited internal labour and external raw materials. This new class began fundamentally re-shaping their societies, challenging the exclusiveness of the past fixed order. Media affects us both consciously and subconsciously. Mass media has been calculatingly used as a powerful propaganda tool in managing and swaying human behaviour, standardizing perception, creating a collective memory, discouraging reflection, since its early inception. Television and print based news, due primarily to their fixation with crime and violence arguably has a pessimistic impact upon our societal behaviour. Newspapers can be very biased about a story and current event are not always impartial. Writers have the gift to blend their bias in their work by using statistics and crowd counts, word choice and tone, and through omission. They do not inform the audience of the entire truth by omitting the less interesting parts and tend to emphasise on the dramatic, generally violent stories and images to capture and sustain its audience, under the facade of keeping us informed. The news can be described as being an oxymoron; giving us the skin of the truth stuffed with lies. Is There A Good Piracy?It’s painful to be robbed of what’s yours. Yet if one thinks beyond the hurt, there may be a bigger opportunity out there. Remember that only valuable things get robbed. Imagine what would have happened if the Music Labels – the Virgins, EMIs, etc., had gotten together and invested in Napster or just bought it outright and made it their industry ‘digital music’ distribution channel? Wasn’t Napster actually ‘iTunes’ way before iTunes really came on the scene? Shouldn’t the big music companies still create a competitor to the iPod and iTunes? if public tastes are changing, the black market will discover this long before legitimate industry does. We’ve seen this happen again and again over the last two decades. In the ’80s, we borrowed movies from the video library long before the Hollywood studios had the bright idea of releasing legal videos in India. Before that, in the ’70s, when such Indian music companies as Polydor and HMV were still churning out LP records, the likes of Gulshan Kumar and the pirates of the Eastern world had worked out that the audio cassette was the preferred medium of choice for Indians. Globally pirates, bootleggers, and black marketers have always been ahead of the curve. Piracy is the new consumer ’speak’ and ‘do’, and it’s here to stay. Like it or not, piracy or not, music and all forms of entertainment is going to be zapped all over the world without any restrictions. It’s the job of the industry to capitalize on it rather than squander it away. Pirates are the best advertising agents out there. And they come for free. Consumers distribute content amongst themselves – leading to almost tsunami like waves of consumption and distribution. Pirate marketing is the new currency of value. They tell fans about new bands without spends on ads. The secret sauce to leverage piracy was something called ‘inviziads’ – where we placed invisible ads in our games that went with the games when the pirates take them. These ads automatically become visible on pirate websites. The interesting concept is that the content remains pristine. The consumer wins (gets content without paying), the pirates win (become popular thanks to evergreen content) and we win (thanks to the ads in the content). Everyone in the eco-system win. The big gaming-console companies did not succeed in markets like China due to rampant piracy. Their game CDs were copied and sold in the black market. They felt cheated and held back. That created a massive vacuum in the market that was filled by the online game companies that created games that were meant only for the browser that required subscriptions and virtual goods purchases. This was the stepping-stone to games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. I remember, over a decade back, fashion giants like D&G, Lacoste and Lee all, in spite of their worry for fakes, voiced together that they could tolerate fake as it made them realize how popular they were so that they could take their product innovation and quality to next level, letting the gray market thrive on fakes of residuals. While the typical Hollywood studio frowns on movies being shared on BitTorrent, it's a different story for independent filmmakers. It seems that within days of being ripped, the little movie no one's heard of has enjoyed a sudden boom in profile. Case in point, IMDB indicates that the film rose 81,093% on their MovieMeter this week alone. That's a pretty staggering upstream no matter how you look at it. They had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that got generated made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of them bought the original DVD from the official website. This highlights the effectiveness of a modern grassroots option for independent artists to publicize and distribute their work without the help of a multimillion-dollar launch campaign. This is a perfect contrast to someone who's trying to satiate the entertainment business from someone whose only goal is to have their movie seen to as many people as possible. Author Paulo Coelho thinks that giving people the possibility to swap his books for free, actually has a positive effect on sales. Id's Doom was a shareware game, in which you got a free version of the game first and paid a fee to upgrade the game if you wanted to do so, but I think Mr. Stude makes a good case here. Oftentimes letting people have a taste of a game, if it is a good game, is the very thing that helps a developer gain a foothold in the market. Recently, companies are responding to piracy by giving apps away for free, so that they can build loyalty with those who download them and draw revenue from in-app commerce, or users paying for more levels of service or content. I think the nature of the audience is changing. People are eager to engage at the level of argument. They want to read. They want to discuss what they’ve read. (The web and twitter help them do this.) And they know that there is life beyond the auto-cue. So whenever marketing people say things to me like “You’ve got to keep it short and light” or “make it colourful and sensational” or “nobody has the patience to read,” I smile to myself. To paraphrase and adapt Bob Dylan: Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Juneja? It’s not something they taught you at business school. It’s the wisdom of the street. Just ask the pirates… In 2021, Russia was added to a US government “priority watch list” of countries which do not sufficiently protect US intellectual properties. As part of its deadly assault on Ukraine, Russia has taken the rare step to use intellectual property rights as a war tactic. In a stunning escalation of the rift between Russia and the West, the Russian Federation has issued an edict allowing its citizens to copy and use Western patents without payment or authority. It is also an answer to many multinational companies’ decisions to cease doing business with Russian companies. https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/courage-under-fire-ravish-kumars-lonely-tryst-with-truth/cid/1968935
The popular "story" tellers are politician who are skilled in the art of mud sticks & sling. My observation on how spin doctors uses propaganda or smear campaign to discredit ideas or person or groups or a nation in order to decimates other's support base and cause uncertainty so that there is less defection within their own:
Authority & Associative Image: To keep hammering that you are socially powerful and highly-regarded people like you or agree with you. Social Comparison: While it sounds complex, it’s actually really simple. It states that we are constantly evaluating our beliefs by checking in with people like us, to see if they see the world the same way as us. We’re tribal creatures. In situations of uncertainty, we tend to follow the herd. All of these people couldn’t be wrong, could they? In many ways, Social Comparison Theory tries to understand how social proof works. Why do people tend to become similar to one another? What drives us to bind together with our fellow men and women? When you see social proof as a way of evaluating your environment, and getting second and third and fourth opinions on your perception, it makes a lot of sense. After all, in math class we’re taught to check our work. Why wouldn’t we also double-check our perception? Obviously the beliefs you have, the way you see the world, is valid; at least all of these people think the same way as you. The rally just might be the perfect way for people to validate and strengthen their beliefs. And, once your attitude changes, your behaviors will change as well. Identity: If you can appeal to someone’s core identity, you have them. Interestingly, the researchers think that the reason simple words increase perceived intelligence is due to something called cognitive fluency. Things that have low cognitive fluency are hard to think about, while things that have high cognitive fluency are very easy to think about. We like things that are highly fluent. We are also more likely to believe the explanation that is easy to think about. Likability: One of the principles of persuasion is likability. To change someone’s mind you have to first hold their attention, and there’s no better way to get attention than to do something outrageous or unexpected. Predictable people are boring. But storytelling and humor are great tools. By defused the seriousness of the moment and making people laugh, you make everyone feel good and associate the positive feelings with you. The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters, paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds. High Ground maneuver: The opposite of reward is punishment — when we inflict pain on someone for doing a behavior we don’t want to see again in the future. Spanking and “grounding” are two classic forms of punishment that most of us are familiar with from our childhoods. Insults are another popular form of punishment that we, and politicians, use liberally. By calling attention to strange, unique weaknesses you are able to destroy the public’s perception of them. When it stops being effective, you A/B test something new, choose the best, and then hammer with the new linguistic kill shot. Confidence: Even if you have no idea what you're saying, or doing, it pays to say it and do it with confidence. If you exude confidence while you are doing something, or speaking to an audience, that raises their estimation of your competence, and therefore, their confidence in you. Trouble is, we as human beings are too easily and often swayed by what may amount to bluster, bravado, and fakery. We too quickly buy into façades and noise, because it sounds “strong” or “powerful”. When we value larger-than-life blanket statements, and over the top facial expressions and gestures, and are perfectly willing to turn off the fact checker or BS detector, any performer can sound good, especially if we are looking for a simple message. The Art of War's 50 Dark Strategies of Power |
AuthorI am interested in unfolding scene design, character design and image design; representing contemporary narrative strategy, narrative shot and narrative style. The flowing images, which combine aesthetics and ideology. NoticeThis site contains copyrighted material for purposes that constitutes 'fair use'; and has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. No fee is charged, and no money is made off this site. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
CategoriesArchives
June 2020
|