Week 6 Communication as Control

Question 1

How do we know what’s true?

Answer 1

• Cognitive biases
• Social conditions (power)
• Media infrastructure

Question 2

“relating or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”

Answer 2

post-truth

Question 3

Post-truth

Answer 3

• Falsehood
• Willful ignorance
• Lying
• Bullshitting

Question 4

Post-truth:
“what seems new in the post-truth era is a challenge not just to the idea of knowing reality but the existence of reality itself. When an individual is misinformed or mistaken, he or she will likely pay the price; wishing that a new drug will cure our heart disease will not make it so. But when our leaders– or plurality of society– are in denial over basic facts, the consequences can be __________”

Answer 4

world shattering

Question 5

Post truth:
“Deniers and other ideologues routinely embrace an obscenely high standard of doubt toward facts that they don’t want to believe alongside complete credulity towards any facts that fit within their agenda. This is not abandonment of facts, but _________ of the process by which facts are credibly gathered and reliably used to __________________. Indeed, the rejection of this undermines the idea that some things are true irrespective of how we feel about them, and that it is in our best interests (and those of policy makers) to attempt to find them”

Answer 5

corruption; shape one’s beliefs about reality

Question 6

Post-truth and media

Answer 6

• Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda isn’t new
• Recent changes in media landscape have exacerbated problems

Question 7

Post-truth and media

What is new?

Answer 7

Speed, scale, and lack of trust in institutions

Question 8

Hannah Arendt “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

Answer 8

• Context: understanding totalitarian movements of the 20th century– Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia
• Text published in 1951

Question 9

Who was Hannah Arendt?

Answer 9

• Philosopher
• Political theorist
• Public intellectual

Question 10

Key questions about totalitarianism?

Answer 10

• What is totalitarianism?
• How does totalitarianism work?
• What are the specific characteristics of totalitarian propaganda?
• Why do people fall for propaganda?
• Why is it so efficient?

Question 11

Bottom line:

Totalitarianism is more than sheer terror and one-directional indoctrination; it’s a combination of what 2 things?

Answer 11

Lies and plausible fiction

Question 11

The (smaller/bigger) and the (less/more) external pressure, the more propaganda

Answer 11

Smaller; more

Question 11

Propaganda 101
“Only the mob and elite can be attracted to the momentum of totalitarianism itself: __________ have to be won by propaganda. Under conditions of constitutional government and freedom of opinion, totalitarian movements struggling for power can use _______ to a limited extent only and share with other parties the necessity of winning adherents and of appearing ________ to a public which is not yet rigorously isolated from all other sources of information”

Answer 11

the masses; terror; plausible

Question 11

Key takeaways: Propaganda

Answer 11

• Propaganda is not the same as indoctrination
• Propaganda is not the same as terror

Question 11

How does propaganda work?

Answer 11

• Direct as well as “indirect, veiled, menacing hints”
• Selective appeals to science and reason– while simultaneously undermining both
• “Pretends that they have discovered the hidden forces that will bring them good fortune in the chain of fatality”

Question 12

True or false: Propaganda changes over time

Answer 12

True

Question 13

Why is propaganda so insidious?

“Totalitarian propaganda raised ideological scientificality and its techniques of making statements in the form of _________ to a height of efficiency of method and absurdity of content because, demagogically speaking, there is hardly a better way to avoid discussion that releasing an argument from the control of the present and by saying that only the ___________ can reveal its merits”

Answer 13

predictions; future

Question 14

Why does propaganda undermine reason?

Answer 14

• Pretends that objective laws of power (i.e. superiority of race or class) can be discovered
• End goal: transformation of human nature according to the respective ideology
• Ideology is not opinion but “as real and untouchable an element in their lives as rules of arithmetic”

Question 15

Key mechanisms of propaganda

Answer 15

• Prophecy
• Infallibility
• Paradox

Question 16

“becomes a retrospective alibi: nothing happened but what had already been predicted”

Answer 16

prophecy

Question 17

Infallibility:
“not so much on superior intelligence as on the correct interpretation of the essentially reliable forces in history or nature, forces which neither defeat nor ruin can prove wrong because they are bound to ________ in the long run”

Answer 17

assert themselves

Question 18

Paradox

Answer 18

People support totalitarian movements even though they don’t represent their interest”

Question 19

Why is propaganda so effective?

Answer 19

• Modern masses no longer connected to communal beliefs
• Totalitarian propaganda provides coherence, cohesion, and consistency in a world that is chaotic and accidental
• Paradox: propaganda insults the common sense
• Instead of accepting uncertainty, the masses follow “the most rigid fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology”

Question 20

Mysteriousness breeds plausible fictions

Lies of the totalitarian movement “succeed best where the official authorities have surrounded themselves with an atmosphere of ____-. In the eye of the masses, they can acquire the reputation of superior ‘realism’ because they can touch upon real conditions whose existence is being hidden. Relevations of scandals in high society, of corruption of politicians, everything that belongs to yellow journalism, becomes in their hands a weapon of more than ____________”

Answer 20

secrecy; sensational importance

Question 21

Plausible fictions are the root of ______

Answer 21

conspiracys

Question 22

What are 3 authoritarian characteristics according to John Oliver?

Answer 22

• Projecting strength
• Demonizing enemies
• Dismantling institutions

Question 23

Lisa Lerer: “America Hires a Strongman”

Donald Trump told Americans exactly what he planned to do.

He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the Independence of Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters. He would be a dictator– if only on Day 1.

And when asked to give him the power to do all of that, the voters said yes.

This was a conquering of the nation not by force but within a permission slip. Now, America stands on the prepice of an _________ style of governance never before seen in its 248 year history

Answer 23

authoritarian