Media and Democracy

By some happy quirk of the UCL module selection process, I was able to venture off-piste in my final year and supplement my French and English studies with a course that belonged to neither of those departments. It’s title – ‘Manufacturing Consent’ – appealed at once to the Chomsky enthusiast in me and I geeked out more than I had for any previous part of my degree. It’s a common grumble of the Left to decry the media elite for meddling with politics. The books and essays I read for this course crystallised the complexities of this criticism and brought the term ‘democracy’ into focus whilst suggesting how we might defend it from corporate and political manipulation. Journalism unconstrained by marketing spin or propaganda is identified as the prerequisite for a free society: this work exposes the extent to which the bad guys have infiltrated the media (and it’s not just pointing a finger at Murdoch &co.).

The essays below outline some of the major concerns that are particularly relevant today. The marks I received for them nudged me over the 2:1-1^st boundary for my final degree so yeh, it’s important stuff. I strongly recommend acquainting yourself with the work of the academics I cite. Many of their lectures can be found on Youtube. That is, if you can peel yourself away from the latest Peaky Blinders.

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How does censorship work in a liberal democracy?

The notion that censorship exists in a liberal democracy seems, initially, to be somewhat contradictory. ‘Censorship’ is generally understood to be the medium by which authoritarian and totalitarian states promote themselves as virtuous, indoctrinate their populations, denigrate and, ultimately, silence their critics. Conversely, a ‘liberal democracy’ is widely considered a state in which the press is at liberty to challenge government, and citizens can participate in elections independently of coercive methods of persuasion influencing their decisions. However, the distinction between censorship and democracy is not so clearly defined as might be assumed. This essay will reveal that liberal democracies that champion themselves as bastions of free speech actually depend upon undetected forms of censorship in order to remain stable. Indeed, it is the invisibility of this censorship that makes it all the more effective a means of suppressing the expression and dissemination of views inconsistent with the business and political interests of the ruling elite.

In order to elucidate the apparent dichotomy of censorship within liberal democracies, it is first necessary to contemplate the terms separately before determining how the seemingly antagonistic concepts might coexist. A liberal democracy has long been touted as the fairest configuration of society wherein individual rights are protected and citizens participate collectively in making decisions about how the state is governed. Perhaps unsurprisingly, its most fervent advocates are those states that identify as liberal democracies (particularly, for the purposes of this essay, the United States and the United Kingdom). Although the idea of liberal democracy can be traced to antiquity, as a political system it took hold in Western Europe in the eighteenth century. Because democracy is defined by the participation of (eligible) citizens, Robert McChesney asserts in Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy (1997 and hereon Corporate Media) that: ‘democracy requires an effective system of political communication… that informs and engages the citizenry, drawing people meaningfully into the polity’ (5). In recognising the means of communication as integral to serving democracy, the necessity for an impartial and uninhibited media that represents and responds to the diverse concerns of the populace becomes clear.

It therefore follows that media censorship should have no place within a liberal democracy because it undermines the capacity for citizens to be co-opted in the governance of their own state. However, the obstruction and restriction of information circulated by the media – censorship – is a process that can occur in a variety of ways. Whereas democracy is characterised by its professed openness and inclusivity, censorship functions through exclusion that can often be achieved in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. Of course, in its most obvious practice (according to which it is typically understood) censorship is the overt denial of views divergent from those of the state. Totalitarian states accomplish this through force. Yet whilst such compulsion is inconceivable in a liberal democracy, and indeed would negate it, there are plenty of other means to quell and distort information that might not be discernable. With characteristic perceptiveness George Orwell noted that ‘unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.’ The cause of this delicate selection and omission of information, Orwell explains, is the ‘extremely centralized’ ownership of media outlets by ‘wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.’

A better understanding of how censorship arises and operates within a liberal democracy calls for a more detailed examination of its sources. As already mentioned, censorship is portrayed as the repressive control of media content. To take a concrete example, Iran is a country in which the rulers actively prohibit the production of media that is not in line with the ideology of the state. Attempts to contravene this directive result in civil sentences – as in the case of Jafar Panahi, who tried to produce a film about life in Iran and the systems of governance and was consequently placed under house arrest. Yet media control is not only imposed by the government of the state within which it is produced. In a liberal democracy, pressures impinging on media freedom might equally derive from the owners of media outlets, those who produce the content, those who consume it, and – more generally – the nature of the state within which it is produced and distributed. Since a media unfettered by private constraints is vital to democracy and yet the capitalist foundation of liberal democracies stimulates disparities between social classes (namely, between businesses/land-owners and the working classes), this essay focuses predominantly on the impact of media ownership within liberal democracies. In Rich Media, Poor Democracy (2000), McChesney indicates that ‘there are distinct limits on how egalitarian and democratic any capitalist society will allow itself to be’ (243). The question of whether a capitalist society is at all conducive to democracy therefore arises.

The liberal democracies that have developed in the aftermath of industrial revolutions are notable for the concentration of business ownership among wealthy individuals. This sets capitalist and communist societies apart and the media industry is no exception. Yet the commercial competition that is at the heart of capitalism has focussed media ownership in the hands of an ever-tighter group of corporations and conglomerates. McChesney observes that the ownership of media outlets has shrunk into an ‘integrated oligopoly’ (Corporate Media 17) with, since the millennium, the global media market dominated by six US-based firms. The implication of this reduction in ownership is, predictably, a considerably narrower spectrum of opinions and views being catered to by the media. This is due to the self-evident truth that media owners wouldn’t promulgate information that challenges the very capitalism upon which their wealth is predicated. McChesney later refers to this lack of diversity as ‘the virtual blackout of critical coverage of the operations of the giant media and telecommunication firms’ (25).

Such a constraint on media output by its owners cannot possibly reflect the wide range of issues and opinions of citizens within a state. On the contrary, this sort of censorship confines popular discussion to issues innocuous to the business empires of media-owning elites. The very fact that a public debate about issues of media control is simply not on the agenda constitutes a form of censorship. This contradicts the democratic principle that news should reflect public interests, not the profiteering interests of its owners. Certainly, private ownership of media is a result of the neoliberal doctrine that reigns in liberal democracies. It is for this reason that democracy would be better served – and considerably less susceptible to censorship – if the systems of communication were state-owned and paid for by taxes (as is the model with the BBC). Instead, the media oligopoly is capable of controlling – that is to say, censoring – the output of their media networks. As Nick Cohen put it in ‘The Death of News’ (1998), this form of censorship functions by the manipulation of ‘would-be monopolists [who] treat the channels of democratic debate as their private property’ (20).

Any investigation of the ways in which censorship works in a liberal democracy leads to the inescapable recognition that media control is motivated by the accumulation of wealth. Far from being protected as a framework to support democracy, the media is both commoditised and utilised as a means by which to exploit and capitalise on its consumers. Indeed, within the neoliberal confines that shape Western civilisations, democracy as a system of collective governance is, arguably, unviable. Milton Friedman, major architect of the neoliberal reality that emerged from economic depressions of the 1970s, provides his own interpretation of democracy in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) wherein he maintains that it is assured by market competition and therefore, government intervention and regulation of the market would be antidemocratic. This is a radically different conception of democracy to that endorsed by McChesney since it views all human interaction as a form of competitive exchange. Yet it is upon this very principle that liberal “democracies” are founded, actively fracturing societies rather than uniting them. Margaret Thatcher’s insistence that ‘there is no such thing as society, only individual(s)’ famously gave voice to this view. David Harvey succinctly observes that ‘increasing social inequality [is] such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project’ (A Brief History of Neoliberalism 16). Crucially, it is through censorship that this social organisation is preserved.

In the early 1920s Walter Lippmann, a pioneer of the public relations industry that aims to manage popular opinion, coined the phrase “the manufacture of consent”. According to Lippmann, this was the objective of public relations and the media was the instrument with which the public would be persuaded to conform to their societal position as pacific consumers who do not question their participation in a hyper-commercialized system that delivers enormous wealth and political security to a small minority. The term ‘censorship’ might consequently be replaced with ‘propaganda’ that better illustrates the purpose of the tightly controlled media within liberal democracies. In the seminal work Manufacturing Consent (1988), authors Herman and Chomsky treat censorship as such, pointing to five main “filters” through which news must pass before it is deemed fit for circulation. Together, these comprise what the authors term a ‘propaganda model’ that tacitly screens content, eradicating anything that might lead citizens to resist civil rule.

Aside from the already discussed repercussions of media being in the domain of corporations – therefore serving their consumer-based empires rather than acting as the means for citizens to engage democratically with governance of the country – the use of media as a vehicle for advertising represents a form of censorship that encourages people to literally buy into a vision of society presided over by corporations. Consequently, advertising has infiltrated all media within liberal democracies, eroding their capacity to objectively inform populations. This effect is achieved both via the marketing campaigns that permeate media, but also through pressure put on news outlets by advertisers who pay vast sums to access the consumers of that media. With regards to the former, the authors of Toxic Sludge is Good for You!… (1995) estimate that the US newspaper industry has been so colonized by advertisers that (at the time of publication) PR agents outnumbered traditional journalists by approximately 20 000. In ‘Manufacturing Consent’ (a documentary of the same name as the book and featuring Chomsky) a conservative estimate of 40% news to 60% advertisements in a typical newspaper corroborates the extent of this occupation of the press by advertisers.

However, advertising agencies have not only the ability to inundate media forms with marketing campaigns that divert popular attention from issues detrimental to the sale of products, their presence within media-producing corporations allows them to significantly influence (censor) the output of these outlets. For instance, Chomsky and Herman take the example of the public-television station WNET whose corporate sponsorship was withdrawn following the broadcast of a documentary that advertisers deemed “virulently anti-business if not anti-American” (Manufacturing Consent 17). Importantly, commentators of this debacle surmised that the station would not repeat such an offence. This supposition is indicative of the self-censorship that has become so ingrained in the psyche of media producers that it rarely needs enforcing by private owners and advertisers. Moreover, this severe limitation to media output means that the debate and popularisation of ideas that might destabilise the dominance the ruling, media-owning minority is rendered almost impossible; citizens are stripped of their collective democratic power and reduced to individual consumers, blind to many avenues of analytical thought. Such a mode of censorship is compelling since it is embedded within the neoliberal tenets upon which liberal democracies reside.

In conclusion, far from being exclusive to authoritarian regimes, censorship is prevalent within liberal democracies. In order to understand how it works within this politico-economic structure, it is essential to recognise that it necessarily exists within a liberal democracy in order to preserve the status quo. This ensures that large integrated corporations can profit from the sale of products to consumers who are surrounded by a highly ‘filtered’ media. This systematic censorship removes democratic agency from citizens, withholding the means for collective organisation in a way that functions through its invisibility. In doing so, citizens are deprived of their social and democratic liberties and conform to a societal paradigm whose implications to democracy are concealed by repressive censorship. As such censorship within a liberal democracy might best be understood as an attitude characteristic of neoliberalism rather than an overt practice.

List of works cited

Cohen, Nick. ‘The Death of News’. New Statesman, May 22^nd 1998. Print.

Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago, Chicago UP, 1962. Print.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

Herman, E. and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. London, Vintage Books, 1988. Print.

McChesney, Robert. Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy. New York, Seven Stories Press, 1997. Print.

McChesney, Robert. Rich Media, Poor Democracy. New York, The New Press, 2000. Print.

Orwell, George. ‘The Freedom of the Press’ (proposed preface to Animal Farm). 1945. Orwell.ru. Web. Stauber, J. and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. Maine, Common Courage Press, 1995. Print.

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What are the ways in which media has damaged democracy?

Since the Industrial Revolutions that shaped Western societies into the market-driven economies that exist today, the relationship between media and democracy has been fraught – the aims of one frequently deviating from those of the other. The ways in which media has harmed democracy are numerous, often provoked by private acquisition of the means of public communication in order that the citizenry might be influenced to financial or political ends. In recent years, civic interaction with media has rapidly evolved through technological advancements that have increasingly allowed media to penetrate personal and previously private domains. This essay will consider various media forms, exploring their encroachment on democracy and the ways in which they subvert it.

In order to ascertain precisely how democracy is damaged by media, it is first necessary to clarify the term itself. Noam Chomsky asserts that it ‘has always been a highly contested concept’[1] whose meaning has been reinterpreted innumerable times to suit different purposes, frequently divorcing it from its etymological signification of ‘rule by people’. Of course, this basic reading of the term is problematic in itself since it poses questions as to who should be eligible to participate in a democracy and the power that might be collectively wielded over individuals. Thinkers from Socrates to Sartre have spent time considering democracy, its benefits and inadequacies, and whether it can or should be part of societal organization. Yet these debates aside, the intrinsically collective nature of democracy – that in theory permits members to share equally decision-making and the responsibilities therein – is threatened by any media source that disputes and diffuses views that distort the public ability to contribute to this collective form of governance. Put simply, when media no longer responds to and reflects the diversity of opinion within the public sphere it can be seen as damaging to democracy.

Herein lies the most obvious flaw with media within neoliberal societies: it is overwhelmingly a private enterprise. The ownership of popular mass media by private corporations represents a significant contradiction to democracy, wherein the objectives of media outlets are to produce profit rather than provide the impartial information vital for democracy to function unimpeded. Whilst some countries do have state-owned communications services (for instance, the UK and Canada), no equivalent public entity exists in the USA and mass media is conceived almost entirely as a profit-making endeavour: a close oligopoly dominated by an increasingly select cluster of corporations whose legal commitment is to individual shareholders rather than the consumers of their content. Notably, this model of private ownership, and the policies that enable it, is replicated in all neoliberal economies, effecting an acute concentration of media ownership. Taking the example of the UK to illustrate this, the Media Reform Coalition – a London-based organization that campaigns for reform of mainstream media – calculate that 83% of print news circulation is produced by three companies whilst ‘two companies own nearly half of all commercial analogue radio stations’. Consequently, the media market is effectively controlled by private individuals whose agenda is not to inform consumers but rather to subject them to the advertising and publicity campaigns whence their revenue is derived. Recognising that mass media income is generated predominantly through advertising rather than sales to consumers is essential in understanding why media output aligns with the interests of their client companies rather than their individual consumers.

Importantly, the notion that media outlets cater to the demands and interests of individual consumers is erroneous since this would depend on a competitive market. The ever-tighter grasp of media corporations over the means of communication is far from the competitive environment that such interplay between the public and the service provider would entail. Hardly vox populi, media owning corporations greatly limit the scope of their output such that wider issues that question their dominance are never aired. In Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy (1997), Robert McChesney explicates the current market as ‘a plutocratic mechanism rather than a democratic one’ (45) wherein wealth trumps popular support. In such a system individual consumers – or collectively, the electorate – are provided with a media that falls only within the ‘range of what is most profitable to produce and/or the political interests of the producers’ (46). This goes strongly against the widely purported myth that countries such as the UK and USA are capitalist systems wherein demand shapes supply. In fact, this theoretical conception of capitalism is inverted so that supply shapes demand, simplistically because consumers are presented with such a narrow breadth of media content that it becomes difficult to conceive of how this might be different without any prominent examples of an alternative. This configuration of the means of public communication as a primarily profit-seeking entity is anti-democratic not only in its suppression of information unconducive to its business motivations, but also in its fundamental design wherein the interests of wealthy parties are actively prioritised over those of the community at large. Writing in 1944 on the topic of advertising within the media, Albert Camus insisted that privately leaning media ‘is not what the public wants [but] what the public has been taught to want… which isn’t the same thing’ (Camus at Combat 149). In this succinct summary, Camus identifies persuasion and coercion as the objectives of modern media systems instead of engaging people in the political process.

Crucially, it should be understood that capitalism per se is not the root of the media control that obstructs democracy. In its ideal sense, capitalism is promoted as a meritocratic structure that would link inextricably a media outlet’s financial success to their interaction with, and hence patronage from, their readership (who would be their primary source of income). This economic model would be an egalitarian space where media outlets would necessarily reflect the diversity of opinion within the populace in order to be competitive on the open market by attracting a broader range of consumers. Yet the diminution of media owners (and the consequent restricted scope of their output) is not at all the result of the journalistic prowess of the controlling corporations: their supremacy over competitors is not, as they might claim, a sign of public approval. Rather, it stems from collusion between media-owning magnates and state and national authorities that together set policies favourable to the privatisation and exploitation of the market. For instance, the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996 removed regulations that had safeguarded the popular communication markets from corporate monopolization. This Act, which was partly drafted by the lobbyists of communications companies concerned, facilitated a succession of mergers and acquisitions that, as McChesney puts it, ‘“unleashed” US-based transnational media firms to grow’ (44). Similarly, in Manufacturing Consent (1988), Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman refer to the political relationship between media corporations and authorities as a ‘revolving-door flow of personnel between regulators and the regulated firms’ (13). This metaphor expresses the inter-dependence of media and government that undermines the possibility for media to serve as a tool for democracy.

The mutually beneficial arrangement between business and ruling elites has not gone unnoticed by the general public, whose disenfranchisement with the media systems surrounding them is reflected in pitifully low consumer trust. Findings of the 2018 European Broadcasting Union (EBU) ‘Trust in Media’ survey are indicative of the declining faith audiences have in media. In a detailed review of the five principal media categories (radio, television, print newspapers, Internet, social networks), an overall deterioration of trust in the media since 2012 is registered – especially in the mediums of Internet and social networks whose audience trust has fallen by 17% and 42% respectively (a respective 34% and 20% of those surveyed tending to trust these sources). Strikingly, whilst on average Europe-wide trust in the broadcast mediums of radio and television has slightly improved since 2012, the UK is conspicuous for recording significant reductions of over 10% in these mediums as well (the only other country sharing this inauspicious accolade being Slovenia). Similarly, the UK consistently ranks in the three worst performing nations for audience trust in all media forms. The Ofcom 2018 ‘News Consumption in the UK’ report states that for 44% of UK adults, social media is the most popular source of news. Crucially, the report highlights society’s departure from ‘traditional’ broadcasting and printed news sources, with the Internet being the dominant platform for information for the younger demographic: 82% of 16-24 year-olds find information related to current affairs primarily online. Given that the Internet and online sources garner such low trust among users, it is evidently problematic for democratic ends (that require the provision of reliable information) that such a large and growing portion of the population finds their information through such untrustworthy outlets.

Furthermore, the EBU results show a direct correlation between press freedom and trust in broadcast media. Disappointingly for the detractors of partial and corporate media, giant multinational companies have also colonized the online domain, setting agendas for content that curtail press freedom online as well. Much as in the pre-Internet era, they pursue similarly aggressive tactics to avoid taxation or being held publically accountable. The House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee final report: ‘Disinformation and “fake news”’ (published February 2019), observes that ‘Facebook seems willing neither to be regulated nor scrutinised’ (14). The authors of the report disparage the world’s largest and most powerful social media platform for its ‘opaque’ management structure that seems ‘designed to conceal knowledge of and responsibility for specific decisions’ (ibid). Of course, the managerial tendency of private media outlets to conceal and obscure their motives is precisely what distances them from their consumers and erodes the audience trust necessary for media to assist and enable democracy. This is not a novel phenomenon but one that Karl Polanyi insists is inherent in neoliberal societies wherein ‘the freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom’ whilst ‘free enterprise’ and private ownership are simultaneously championed (The Great Transformation266). Clearly in such a climate the stakes for democracy are high.

However, although the well-documented damage effected by corporate media to democracy is severe, the adverse consequences of media for participative self-government extend far beyond issues surrounding private ownership of public communications channels. Indeed, diminishing public trust in media cannot be entirely attributed to the corporate “chokehold” (as McChesney puts it) of the mass media. The word ‘media’ is itself far-reaching and might be applied to a broad variety of information generated in the public or private spheres. Importantly, society has never been so saturated by media as in the present age with the result that the intention of media producers often no longer aligns with its effect – the sheer profusion of information entailing inadvertent impairment to democracy. Much of this harm has only been made possible since the technological ‘revolution’ that has brought previously sequestered aspects of human existence within media reach. Ironically, social media networks – most commonly accessed via smartphones – have greatly contributed to a sense of isolation among its users, particularly young users. Research psychologists surveying 9-15 year-olds in the United States concluded that an increased amount of time spent on social networks decreases socially inclined values such as compassion and the need for community cohesion. The Office for National Statistics estimates that 91% of 16-24 year-olds regularly use social media networks. In the UK it is, therefore, likely that a similar shift away from sentiments favourable to democracy has been provoked by social media.

It goes without saying that democracy is a process that demands objective mediation between parties of differing perspectives. Conversely, social media plays on emotion rather than fostering reasoned and rational deliberation. Such a media creates divergent opinions and promotes extremes whilst obscuring the middle ground between parties, which is precisely where democracy resides. As such, this rampantly divisive media makes diplomacy increasingly unfeasible. One mechanism by which this stratification is achieved among users is the algorithms that filter content to present to each user. This selection process is structured around a ranking system whose primary criterion is proximity (rather than popularity, as generally employed by search engines). The result of such a method is that users see content that corresponds to their own views rather than being confronted with material that challenges their preconceptions. This circle of confirmation leads to what some researchers label ideological or filter ‘bubbles’ that polarise popular opinion, thereby detracting from democratic debate. Speaking to The Guardian on the subject, the chief executive of Oxford Information Labs stated that “we now exist in curated environments where we never see anything outside our own bubble… we don’t realise how curated they are”. The damage done by social media to democracy is so effective because it has been able to influence individuals so much more directly than was ever previously possible. Although not impartial, traditional broadcasting mediums do, at least, present some diversity of opinion – even if only within the narrow confines set by its owners. Yet with social media, the feedback loop between user input and content presented is instantaneous. This allows external companies or organisations to tailor their content to the personal preferences of each user, calculating what will best sway the individual in their favour. Evidently, this form of insidious coercion – most notably exercised by Cambridge Analytica – is greatly damaging to democracy which is itself a communicative process of discussion between citizens that they might collectively mediate and agree on how to proceed towards a future that best suits them rather than third parties seeking to exploit them.

In addition to the separation of users into politically and ethically antagonistic factions by misleadingly portraying society as a binary space devoid of nuance, social media also obscures reality by acting as a platform for the dissemination of unverified – and oftentimes intentionally false – ‘news’. Social media’s defining characteristic from other media forms is the ability users have to create and share content independently of editorial fact-checking procedures. Consequently, the channels of information distribution have become horizontal rather than vertical, the traditional hierarchy of verification being bypassed. The circulation of untrue information that this unchecked structure makes possible can result in intentionally deceptive material being mistaken for truth among large swathes of social media users. A House of Lords enquiry into fake news cites a Buzzfeed analysis:

in the final three months of the (2016) US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more [reader] engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News and others.

In the same year the Oxford English Dictionary named ‘post-truth’ as their Word of the Year, its definition: ‘Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping political debate or public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’[2]. Within such an environment, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide reliable information to individuals in order that real circumstances can be understood and appropriate decisions made in accordance. Alarmingly, truth itself is no longer a fixed entity that can be illuminated through unbiased pursuit of facts. Instead, it has become transient – a question of what people might be persuaded to believe rather than what really happened. As such, verified facts can be derided and denounced as ‘fake news’ if an individual or party is uncomfortable with the truth that they present.

In the midst of media sensationalism that grips international audiences, it is important to consider the term ‘democracy’ not only on the national scale but as a concept rooted in the close inter-personal relationships that can exist only at the community or domestic levels. Naturally, democracy is most effective at the local level when the affinity between negotiating individuals can mitigate their differences and bring about an agreement satisfactory for all involved. The more this democratic model is stretched to incorporate distant bodies, the less successful it will be as a means of satisfying the participating members. It is, therefore, essential to preserve the bonds that guarantee cohesive communities in order for democracy to be viable beyond local boundaries. ‘Democracy’ is largely synonymous with unity and consequently becomes achievable only once concord is assured at sub-national levels. For this reason, the expansion of media into the familial – and even individual – environment is hazardous to democracy since it inhibits the capacity to communicate freely with surrounding individuals. Quite simply, media places a constraint on interaction and increases the likelihood of misunderstanding by messages being distorted and the “sender’s” intention being misinterpreted by the “receiver”. As such, the allure of entertainment media (be it Netflix, Youtube, video games &c.) serves only to distract individuals from the democratic act of conversing and exchanging with others within one’s vicinity. So too, the profusion of personal media devices (smart phones, tablets &c.) that divert attention from one’s immediate surroundings. George Monbiot, in Out of the Wreckage (2017), states the obvious: ‘Entertainment can alienate us from each other… it encourages us to not connect with those around us’ (62). In this way, the media of the 21^st century makes possible a divorce from reality and human existence becomes increasingly subjective, unsympathetic, and incapable of realizing the collective unison that is the very cornerstone of democracy.

In conclusion, the technologically advanced societies of the developed modern world are suffused with ever more prevalent media that spreads to every aspect of contemporary life. This can, and does, fracture communities and subdue avenues of critical thought by publicising greatly filtered, simplified, and often false presentations of reality. Writing in 1944, Karl Polanyi asserted that ‘humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to offer freedom’s triumph over all its age-old foes’ (The Great Transformation 258) – a statement that, in the era of smart phones that permit communication over great distance, seems ominously prescient. Yet neoliberalism, as promulgated by the media, has been the vehicle by which freedom for the masses is withheld and societies veer towards hierarchical, oligopolistic, and authoritarian organisation. Whether privately motivated or resulting from the very way in which it is consumed, the repercussions that this media has on democracy are inevitably detrimental.

[1] See FORSEA Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia ‘A message by Professor Noam Chomsky’, 16.2.2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV2KFnsfYPk

[2] See Oxford English Dictionary entry for ‘post-truth’: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/58609044?redirectedFrom=posttruth#eid

List of works cited

‘Disinformation and “fake news”: Final Report’. House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, February 2019. Web. 16 April 2019.

Greenfield, Patricia, et al. ‘21^st century media, fame, and other future aspirations: A national survey of 9-15 year olds’. Cyberpsychology 8: 4, December 2014. Web. 16 April 2019.

Herman, E. and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. London, Vintage Books, 1988. Print.

Hern, Alex. ‘How social media filter bubbles and algorithms influence the election’. The Guardian, 22 May 2017. Web. 16 April 2019.

‘In Focus: Fake News’. House of Lords, 25 April 2017. Web. 16 April 2019.

‘Internet access – households and individuals, Great Britain: 2018’. Office for National Statistics, August 2018. Web. 16 April 2019.

‘Market Insights: Trust in Media 2018’. European Broadcasting Union, media intelligence service, February 2018: 9-36. Web. 16 April 2019.

McChesney, Robert. Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy. New York, Seven Stories Press, 1997. Print.

Monbiot, George. Out of the Wreckage. London, Verso, 2017. Print.

‘News Consumption in the UK: 2018’. Ofcom, April 2018: 2-69. Web. 16 April 2019.

‘Who Owns the UK Media?’ Media Reform Coalition, March 2019. Web. 16 April 2019.

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Kudos if you’ve made it this far.

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