The Propaganda Model Today

While the individual elements of the propaganda system (or filters) identified by the Propaganda Model (PM) – ownership, advertising, sources, flak and anti-communism – have previously been the focus of much scholarly attention, their systematisation in a model, empirical corroboration and historicisation have made the PM a useful tool for media analysis across cultural and geographical boundaries. Despite the wealth of scholarly research Herman and Chomsky’s work has set into motion over the past decades, the PM has been subjected to marginalisation, poorly informed critiques and misrepresentations. Interestingly, while the PM enables researchers to form discerning predictions as regards corporate media performance, Herman and Chomsky had further predicted that the PM itself would meet with such marginalisation and contempt. In current theoretical and empirical studies of mass media performance, uses of the PM continue, nonetheless, to yield important insights into the workings of political and economic power in society, due in large measure to the model’s considerable explanatory power.

Thirty years after Chomsky and Herman elaborated the Propaganda Model this title aims to introduce a new generation of readers to it. It presents cutting-edge research demonstrating the model's general validity as well as new attempts - in the light of digital media and 21st century politics - to critically update, expand, and refine it. International researchers thus analyse the continuities and new developments in media Environments throughout various regions of the world. Part I addresses the theoretical and methodological dimensions of the PM beginning with an interview with Edward Herman on the model itself. Part II reflects on propaganda as a concept and practice within new mediated digital communications systems and interfaces. Applications of the Propaganda Model are featured in Part III notably new forms of media and content not previously analysed within it: the entertainment industries through the analysis of television, professional sports, Hollywood movies and videogames using quantitative and qualitative research methods. The last section presents case studies of corporate media and reporting practices as reflections of elite power. An extensive re-visioning of the PM this book concludes by identifying the fundamental dimensions of the model, the key modifications and expansions that are suggested--such as the inclusion of new filters--whilst assessing the model's overall value for conducting research in different geographical contexts and media systems and products.

Thirty years after Chomsky and Herman elaborated the Propaganda Model this title aims to introduce a new generation of readers to it. It presents cutting-edge research demonstrating the model's general validity as well as new attempts - in the light of digital media and 21st century politics - to critically update, expand, and refine it. International researchers thus analyse the continuities and new developments in media Environments throughout various regions of the world. Part I addresses the theoretical and methodological dimensions of the PM beginning with an interview with Edward Herman on the model itself. Part II reflects on propaganda as a concept and practice within new mediated digital communications systems and interfaces. Applications of the Propaganda Model are featured in Part III notably new forms of media and content not previously analysed within it: the entertainment industries through the analysis of television, professional sports, Hollywood movies and videogames using quantitative and qualitative research methods. The last section presents case studies of corporate media and reporting practices as reflections of elite power. An extensive re-visioning of the PM this book concludes by identifying the fundamental dimensions of the model, the key modifications and expansions that are suggested--such as the inclusion of new filters--whilst assessing the model's overall value for conducting research in different geographical contexts and media systems and products.

An intellectual dissection of the modern media to show how an underlying economics of publishing warps the news.

Propaganda in the Information Age is a collaborative volume which updates Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model for the twenty-first-century media landscape and makes the case for the continuing relevance of their original ideas. It includes an exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky himself. 2018 marks 30 years since the publication of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s ground-breaking book Manufacturing Consent, which lifted the veil over how the mass media operate. The book’s model presented five filters which all potentially newsworthy events must pass through before they reach our TV screens, smartphones or newspapers. In Propaganda in the Information Age, many of the world’s leading media scholars, analysts and journalists use this model to explore the modern media world, covering some of the most pressing contemporary topics such as fake news, Cambridge Analytica, the Syrian Civil War and Russiagate. The collection also acknowledges that in an increasingly globalized world, our media is increasingly globalized as well, with chapters exploring both Indian and African media. For students of Media Studies, Journalism, Communication and Sociology, Propaganda in the Information Age offers a fascinating introduction to the propaganda model and how it can be applied to our understanding not only of how media functions in corporate America, but across the world in the twenty-first century.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

First published in 1988, Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent remains the go-to book for those interested in understanding why the mainstream media act as vehicles for power-elite propaganda. The analytical heart of Manufacturing Consent lies in what it calls ‘The Propaganda Model.’ According to this model, there are five filters which all newsworthy stories have to pass through before reaching the public sphere. However, a lot has changed in the subsequent thirty-something years. Consequently, a key question that needs to be addressed is whether Manufacturing Consent is still fit for purpose. The conceit underpinning Understanding Media Propaganda in the 21st Century: Manufacturing Consent Revisited and Revised is that the election of Trump in 2016 constitutes the proverbial ‘year zero’ for fourth estate journalism. As a result of the ‘journalistic’ cultural revolution that ensued, it argues that the Propaganda Model needs to be overhauled if it is to retain its epistemological bona fides. To this end, this book is a radical—in the true critical sense of the word—intervention into the propaganda/fake news debate. For students (in the broadest sense of the term) of media studies, journalism, communication studies and sociology, it provides both a compelling critique of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, while at the same time proffering a new explanatory model to understand why MSM output typically replicates the ‘stenographer for power’ playbook.

This seminal study and critique of propaganda from one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1962. Taking not only a psychological approach, but a sociological approach as well, Ellul’s book outlines the taxonomy for propaganda, and ultimately, it’s destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.