Analyzing the Western (primarily American) reality today with full grounds it could be argued that there emerged and developed a new type of totalitarianism – the financial information that has common features with the other types (religious and political) and specific features. The nature of this phenomenon is rather difficult, mixed, and the role of Media in the management of mass consciousness.
Information-financial totalitarianism (neototalitarism) characterized, above all, the nationwide level of social organization. In this case, often depoliticized and non-religious ideology is used, representing a conglomerate of ideas and values of consumerism, individualism, abstract negative freedom, and success as an elevation above the other. System-factor, the core of the ideology of information totalitarianism advocated the preservation of social values of status quo and political stability. In the U.S., the most advanced in this field kind of ideology is cemented to the ideas of American exceptionalism, pan-Americanism, and world leadership (dominance). So, the information sphere was created by authoritarian forces as a means of control over the public. Political scientist Noam Chomsky, media theorist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, all of his long career devoted to a demonstration of how the United States Government improved the science of mass media to convince people of the appropriateness of any war, or that the various unions threaten their national security.
For example, in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson was elected by the pacifist society on the basis of their peaceful election platform. But when his administration became committed to the war, he felt the need to change public opinion and created a promotional group. Using the press in a creative way, the commission has ensured that America looked with enthusiasm at the possibility of war with Germany. More importantly, the Commission has developed major promotional tricks to this day used to control public opinion. Media giant centralized hierarchy consists of these techniques, which is now finalized, started working at odds with their same initial settings.
Thanks to people like Chomsky, we know the essence of these techniques and the basic assumptions that underlie their success. Again, it is important to remember that people involved in the promotion, do not necessarily believe that doing something is to identify evil and evil. They are simply acting in accordance with their outlook. One of the first assumptions that make the media controllers (as opposed to media activists), is that the American nation functions as an “audience of democracy.”
Liberal intellectuals believed that the masses are too stupid to understand what are the difficulties associated with running the country. In connection there was a need to determine the best course of action, then “fabricate” the consent of citizens to action, which they do not want to, but which are taken in their interest. Rather than convince the public through intellectual arguments, public relations experts try to make problems primitive and to cause a purely emotional reaction.
Chomsky and other scientists have shown that the main task of the mass media industry was “to control the public consciousness.” Their techniques have definitively completed in the late 30-ies when the trade union movement threatened to restore true democracy in the hands of the masses. Rather than directly attacking, the corporation decided to influence public opinion through the media. This, by their own definition, “the scientific method to combat strikes” was a conceptual campaign that reduces the entire set of issues about the rights of workers to a single, extremely clear idea: “strikers hurt all of us.” They are destroying American harmony. This simple recipe for propaganda was to equate the union activity to something bad, that is, to undermine the unity of the country and anti-American (Communist) activities.
It should be noted that this is the simple admission – to divert attention and oversimplification – was used in the ’90s by the Bush administration not to allow the public to doubt the wisdom of the war in the Persian Gulf. Congressmen-Democrats were afraid to voice even a protest against the war. Protest against meant “to endanger our troops.”
As long as people feel that they have no power over the way that they are presented to the media, they will feel that they have no power over the events of the real world. Giving news and media as a sterile, easy imposed “from above”, impregnable, the line consisting of a continuum of slogans, mass media hinder individuals thinking independently, to establish positive feedback from around the world. (Farnsworth, 2008, p123)
Political communication scholars have developed two major approaches to understanding the government-media nexus in foreign policy: hegemony and indexing. Both perceive the media as too subservient to the government, and both endorse more democracy in foreign policy. Hegemony theorists believe that government officials keep the information available to the public within such narrow ideological boundaries that democratic deliberation and influence are all but impossible. (Entman, 2003, p69)
The last and probably most hurtful reason for the effect of media propaganda is that it deliberately distorts reality. People do not believe everything they read – titles in the entire bandwidth of tabloid newspapers taught them more critically relate to the written word – but voiced “picture” that they see on television, they still seem to be real. Even fictitious images may appeal to emotions and influence public opinion.
When America starts a war, Hollywood – intentionally or not – is supporting the efforts of advocates, “reflecting the mindset of society” and depicting the heroic battle with “evil fascist forces.” For example, the “Red Dawn” (1984), a film about American schoolchildren, heroically battling with treacherously attacked in the U.S. Russian-Cuban Army, appeared at the height of Reagan Administration attempts / Bush increased military spending.
Mess taking place now, when it is impossible to distinguish the tabloid TV from Producer TV show how precarious was the boundary between reality and fiction in the modern media and how to blend completely and a number of nullifying the efforts mass media. Borrowing real news frames and placing them in fictional films, even if based on facts, TV transmits information from the world of hard facts in the conventional realm of fiction.
In fact, all of the mass media methods have been compromised by the fact the application of these techniques in the media. Americans either believe what the media have reported or lost to them any interest. At least allows the irony to distance itself. Emotionally distanced from the material, the spectators are given the protection of methods of control over thoughts.
Distanced effects of media – intentional and unintentional – provide the aesthetic and emotional safety of the spectators. Similarly, the transformation of world events to overact conflicts is a sense of irony, the more isolating potential propaganda from the world of real experiences.
Another of the now-extinct receptions of media dominance is the control over technology. During the Second World War, Hitler was able to shoot exploration of the United States, creating the illusion of its presence in several locations simultaneously. As it turned out later, people who worked for Hitler’s experts have invented a magnetic recording tape – a novelty, which the army allied powers could not in those days and think. So a very frontal way Hitler used media-exclusive technology to create a false picture of peace. Now that citizens have access to once-exclusive technology (and, in general terms, understand it), they are not so easily fooled, as American intelligence during the Second World War. Progress in the field of home video and media fixated on them fundamentally changed the relationship with images, supplied with television. (Glynn, 1999, p34)
So, when the American information sphere was born it brought with it its own range of problems. It would be appropriate to consider two models of the information sphere as true, the social landscape. One – perhaps more extreme – implies media space as a generation of nature. According to this model, the threads of media like the web of fibers, roots, or dendrites of biological organisms and tend to increase complexity and coupling. Being given as a living being, the ability to emotional reactions, the media conduct themselves accordingly.
A less radical approach is to consider the information sphere as the unintentional realization that current mathematics is called an “integrated system”. The theory of “complex systems”, a relatively new branch of mathematics that has become possible thanks to the emergence of computers requires a new set of rules if the system – such as weather, ocean waves, the world’s population – has become too complex to be described by simple, linear equations. When the system reaches that level of complexity, it becomes “chaotic” and demonstrates a whole new set of properties; these properties are generally conducive to the destruction of any externally imposed order or control, just as the power of the ocean, in the end, destroys the constraints of its dams and dams. But what would the point of view on the confluence of media in the information sphere we adhere to, it become clear to us that this technology is out of control. It has become too global and too complex for any group to control it and betrayed its original purpose by making it more powerful than most people, for the management of which it was developed.
The dramatic increase in the quality of information power in domestic and international politics makes it a leading instrument of totalitarian control in the coming information society. The role of media in the mechanism of Information totalitarianism does not deny the broad use and other more traditional methods of social management, which include economic and political, and coercive power. So, the possible influence of economic power on the minds and the behavior of people is extremely high. In its impact on policy the economic power has the following properties: (1) universalism of motivational impact; (2) constant exposure; (3) high penetration ability and invisibility. (Farnsworth, 2005, p45)
In the face of totalitarianism Economic Information Authorities successfully replaces typical political totalitarianism’s mass cultivation of fear. However, in this case in the first place stands the fear of losing their jobs, which gets mass distribution. Fear of psychological state has the property of the broadcast – the expansion of its object and move to other areas.
The Focus role of information and economic controls no totalitarian system is manifested in dominance in the indirect, hidden impact on the mass of statistical programming, and their consciousness behavior. This allows taking full advantage of the democratic institutions in order to manipulate the masses and hiding a system of totalitarian rule. To maintain such popularity in our time, the democratic image of information and financial totalitarianism replace the notion of democracy as a democracy. It is interpreted in the spirit definition proposed by J. Schumpeter, as a way of Reinventing Government, based on competition applicants for positions of power, as power is a minority, elite, with the help of legitimate elections. In terms of effective management of consciousness and electoral behavior citizens of the election into an entertaining show and maintain the illusion of freedom and democracy. This type of advertising and manipulative activities makes the choice of the citizens of a free, conscious decision to the formal act of pre-programmed by experts on the formation of mass consciousness.
As the famous American sociologist A., Toffler says, at the end of the beginning of the XX-XXI centuries namely, knowledge and information are becoming a key resource of power. Today in post-industrial countries “knowledge… control force and wealth and has become a determining factor in the functioning of authorities.” They provide an opportunity “to achieve the desired goals, minimum spending the resources of power; convince people in their personal interest in that purpose; turn opponents of the Allies’.
The profound social conflict and social forces seeking to solve, or rather to suppress their demonstration with them through innovative methods of social control – this reality in many countries, especially the United States. The Secret of political stability and tranquility of America reveals many independent researchers.
As the eminent American sociologist, G. Vidal noted: “the American political elite from the outset, featured an enviable ability to convince people to vote against their own interests.”
As clearly demonstrated in the research of American Professor G. Schiller, “manipulation of consciousness of Americans turned to the finest art. Nowhere is the ability of the formation and perception of ideas is not programmed so skillfully.” In the U.S. itself, a manifestation of totalitarianism is enough camouflaged with relatively high living standards of the population and limited availability of democratic institutions, which, however, provide Democracy mainly only for the most influential lays of society.
References
Entman Robert M. (2003). Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy. University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition
Farnsworth Stephen J. (2008). Spinner-in-Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and Themselves. Paradigm Publishers
Farnsworth Stephen J. , Lichter S. Robert. (2005). Mediated Presidency:Television News & Presidential Governance. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Glynn Carroll J. , Herbst Susan , Shapiro Robert , O’Keefe Garrett. (1999) Public Opinion, Westview Press