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Herman and Chomskys propaganda model is an elite-driven model of the relationship between media
and power that aims to describe the structures and processes underlying liberal mainstream media. Liberal
media institutions are seen as performing a propaganda role. The Internet is important to the continued
relevance of the propaganda model because it modifies these structures and processes. This can allow
audiences to avoid the constraints of traditional media (Herman & Chomsky 2002, p. xv), and therefore
the filters they operate with. Social and independent media on the Internet can provide the means for
autonomy of both journalists and audiences from the interests of elites.
The Internet is an emerging medium. Younger generations predominantly use the Internet as a news
source. Traditional media forms are all consistently declining in popularity (PRC 2011, fig. 2). Online
(massively networked) media will almost certainly be the dominant or singular means to obtain news in
the future. Therefore this essay assumes that if the propaganda model accurately depicts online media in
the Internet era, then it remains relevant to news media in general. First, it will explain the propaganda
model. Then each filter of the model will be analysed, in turn, with regard to online news media. It
concludes that the propaganda model accurately depicts the structure and many processes of elite online
media outlets. Therefore the model remains relevant in the Internet era, to the extent that it effectively
describes elite media institutions in liberal democratic states.
Herman and Chomsky argue that mass media in the United States, and by extension liberal mass media,
are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda
function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without
significant overt coercion (Ibid, p. 306). Media is filtered by five roughly overlapping means:
- size and concentration of ownership, and the profit orientation of the mass media
- reliance on advertising
- sourcing mass media news
- flak
- anti-ideologies (i.e. anti-communism, the War On Terror etc.)
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These filters cause news items and other content to be selected and framed in order that they serve the
interests of the powerful. Elite interests support capitalist hegemony (Ibid, p. 1-36). Herman and
Chomsky write with the suggestion that elites are agents intentionally upholding the status quo and who
engage in a sort of class warfare. Journalists are argued to internalise the filters through the process of
working in elite media institutions and become passive supporters of elite interests.
The model does not need order to be rigidly correct to remain relevant to the mass media. Many aspects
of the model may be explanans in other theories that explore the relationship between media and power,
but with less radical implications. Herring and Robinson shows that alternative models and analyses of
mass media with less materialist conclusions use concepts equivalent to the filters and are structured in
similar fashion (2003, pp. 556-561). Other models may accept the subordination of journalism to political
and economic elites, but define and modify it under alternative theoretical frameworks (Castells 2007).
The model only needs that its filters be roughly applicable to dominant media institutions to remain
relevant.
The Internet is an evolving form of mass media that seems to provide a great deal of autonomy for
communicating and finding information. Subversive news stories can no longer be prevented from
entering public discourse by withholding them from newspapers and television for example, Matt
Drudge was able to use online media to start the Lewinsky scandal which was ignored by mainstream
media outlets for about two weeks (BBC 1998). Journalists appear to be less adherent to and more aware
of the five filters in correlation with the development and growth of the Internet: in the U.S. they are
more likely to emphasise the importance of investigating government claims, more likely to identify as
political Independents and less likely to identify with the status quo Republican or Democratic political
parties (Willnat & Weaver 2014, p. 2). More journalists see liberal media as a government watchdog than
they did during the Vietnam War, and are less interested in providing news that is of interest to the widest
possible audience (Ibid, p. 14, 17). And decentralisation of news and content creation through social
media, blogging etc. seems to prevent any small group of people in shaping the news. However, it isnt
clear that these functions and perceptions are powerful enough to limit or dismiss the propaganda
models relevance.
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Size and concentration of ownership, and the profit orientation of the mass media, comprise the
processes of the first filter described in Manufacturing Consent. Mass media is typically owned by a small
number of dominant corporations. These corporations are owned by elites with political and economic
interests and therefore are involved in supporting those interests. Institutionalised worldviews and
motives are internalised by successful journalists due to the process of recruitment and promotion within
media companies, leading to self-censorship of subversive news. Because newspapers, television and radio
cost a great deal to produce, independent media simply lacks the capital to reach a large audience, giving
elites the bulk of the power over mass media. The ability to control media is demonstrably valuable to
elites based on the amount of money they have invested at a loss into media companies consistently over
history (Herman & Chomsky 2002, pp. 3-5).
The Internet provides a new method to reach hundreds of millions of people at lower costs. Anybody can
create a blog and produce controversial content without real risk. However, while the cost of hosting a
website is minimal, bandwidth costs rise linearly with the size of a sites audience. Massive audiences still
cost any media group a great deal, and elite institutions are realistically the only groups that can afford to
continuously spend on mass media over the Internet. The top online news outlets are all owned by media
conglomerates or the largest Internet businesses, and most of them have operated in the red for years
(eBizMBA 2014). Notably the only independent news site with a significant audience, HuffingtonPost,
was bought in 2011 by AOL at more than double the estimated market value, joining a set of other blogs
and news groups acquired by the corporation (Salmon 2011). So the Internet is not a means by which
subversive media can easily reach a massive audience.
There are some significant exceptions. reddit (sic) is a content aggregation website. Users submit articles,
opinions and other media to the website, which are then ranked according to a democratic system. The
site uses a combination of minimal advertising, efficient bandwidth consumption and a
donation/merchandising system to break even on its huge bandwidth costs (though a majority stake is
owned by a media conglomerate, it operates independently). News that is voted to the front page tends to
be anti-establishment, and discussion on news forums tend to align with Marxist and anarcho-syndicalist
frameworks. Content aggregation sites demonstrate that it is possible for media sites to exist in
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conjunction with public discourse subversive to elite interests en masse, and in a way that isnt (at least
directly) controlled by elites.
However, content aggregation still relies on other media to provide content for submission. Though
reddit remains anti-establishment, the majority of news submissions are from elite media institutions. For
such sites to avoid performing a propaganda role their news would need to be from alternative sources or
self-generated. Social media sites provide this capability. Content is self-generated, self-directed and self-
selected, which given the size of such sites may be challenging and powerful enough to subvert any
propaganda function (Castells 2007, p. 248). 61% of online adults use and generate media on Facebook
alone (PRC 2013). Twitter is used to break news by independent journalists. The virality of alternative
news stories spread through Facebook show that it is possible to break subversive news at no cost to
massive groups of people on mediums owned by elites. But so far alternative news stories have failed to
gain a consistent social media audience close to the levels of elite media institutions, which are in the
continuous process of embedding within new social media and content aggregation sites. Alternative
news sites cannot afford to compete with mainstream media in this way, and the sites that can be used to
produce subversive content are mostly owned by elites. The first filter is therefore valid when describing
online media.
The second filter refers to the dependence of mass media institutions on advertising to do business
(Herman & Chomsky, p. 14-18). Adverts are an effective means for a media institution to remain
profitable. Adverts target affluent people because they can afford the products being advertised. As such,
media institutions that appeal to the privileged under a capitalist system are more likely to succeed.
Adverts are more effective when they are embedded in a supportive consumerist framework, so media
institutions seek to establish a buying mood (Ibid, p. 17) in order to obtain more from advertisers.
Advertisers themselves tend to be elites and therefore wish to advertise in mediums that support their
worldview and avoid controversial viewpoints. Their adverts are in and of themselves a form of
propaganda for consumerist, capitalist society. Finally, the threat of pulling ads motivates media
institutions to maintain good relations with advertisers. This is achieved in part by producing content
agreeable to them.
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The majority of access to the Internet requires ownership of expensive technologies (computers,
smartphones, broadband). Internet users are therefore largely affluent, so the ideal audience for mass
media remains the same. Herman and Chomsky believe that advertising has become steadily more
important in newer Internet-based media institutions (2009). They give evidence for this in the form of
alternative operators on the Internet seeking advertising revenue to fund their operations and
compromising their alternative character by this process. Some websites do not rely on advertising to
remain online Wikipedia is able to pay for operational costs through crowd-sourced donations alone,
despite being one of the largest sites on the Internet. However, this is an impractical or impossible
position for most large websites. Advertising is almost the sole means by which major Internet media and
database services are funded, suggesting great propaganda potential for upholding the economic status
quo.
The technology of targeted advertising and big data aggregation mitigates some of the impact of
advertising dependence. Targeted advertising refers to the analysis of a users location, browsing history
and other contextual information to determine what they are most likely to be interested in. The user may
then be given adverts they are most likely to be interested in. Firstly, this makes advertising online more
effective than through traditional media. In combination with relatively low costs of operation, alternative
online media outlets are able to use minimal, unobtrusive, but effective advertising to make ends meet.
reddit and VICE are working examples of this. This minimises the impact of adverts to the audience who
would be put off these outlets for compromising their alternative character. Secondly, because sites using
big data to advertise do not know in advance what specific adverts will appear on their webpages, media
content cannot support targeted adverts with the efficacy it can static ones. Less specificity means
journalists have a greater degree of autonomy after the advertising filter has been considered. But these
are all very minimal reductions in the coercive strength of advertising the majority of online adverts still
endorse the capitalist status quo, mainstream media sites are still vested in promoting a general buying
mood even where they may not be as detailed about doing so, and ultimately even minimal advertising
remains a form of online propaganda.
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Mass media news requires elite media institutions to rely heavily on third party sources. In order to supply
a steady flow of important news stories in combination with the public relations apparatus of government,
journalists broadly tend to become reliant on public officials and corporate representatives. Governments
have constructed large public relations departments in order to provide media for journalists and can
often offer exclusive information regarding areas like national statistical data and conflict. This
information also tends to be biased towards the interests of political and economic elites. This leads to
news released by the mass media that fulfils a propaganda role(Herman & Chomsky 2002, p. 18-25).
The Internet provides far greater sourcing capabilities than elite institutions can. It can be used to
communicate freely and instantly from almost all locations, meaning that many stories are initially limited
to the Internet. Using online sources often allow journalists to break a story faster than if institutions
were to be used. In 2013 53.8% of journalists used microblogs (Twitter, etc.) to gather information and
report on stories (Willnat & Weaver 2014, p. 20). And information cannot be effectively censored on the
Internet, at least to those willing to look for it. Furthermore, audiences of elite media institutions rely
increasingly on citizen journalism to discover breaking news stories through social media sites (Allan
2007, p. 18), particularly on topics previously exclusively accessed through government sources. Sites like
LiveLeak offer unprecedented access to international conflict from all possible perspectives. However,
the sheer convenience and authority that comes from sourcing elite institutions remains valuable.
Journalists must perform significantly more research verifying and finding information online before
producing stories. Citizen journalism is also often criticised as a credible source of information it is seen
as lacking objectivity and quality (Maher 2005). Mainstream media largely continue to source from elite
institutions.
There are also technical details to sourcing from the Internet that lead to a degree of self-fulfilling
prophecy for journalists researching news. To obtain information, journalists use search engine databases
and social media networks. Journalists working in elite media institutions have internalised the filters of
the propaganda model, and their networks are likely to be dominated by people with similar internalised
views. This means that social media networks as a means of sourcing therefore are likely to provide
information that has already been framed by colleagues, relations and so forth and support the status quo.
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Also, a persons worldview and habits modify the range of information search engines will provide.
Search engines are smart and attempt to provide information that they think people will be interested in.
To do this, they make use of data aggregation to find things that should be more relevant to people. For
example, Google records all searches and links clicked by individuals who use its service and uses this
data to determine future results. This can entrench pre-established ideological convictions if I read right
wing media websites, and Google becomes aware of this because I use it to search for them, then when
sourcing news information Google will skew my results towards right wing media. This makes it difficult
for a journalist in elite media, surrounded by an ideological data footprint, to learn about controversial or
subversive information and retain autonomy when investigating a story on the Internet.
Flak in the propaganda model refers to the negative response of elite institutions and audiences to
subversive media. This may take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches
and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action (Herman &
Chomsky 2002, p. 26). Flak can be costly and is undesirable to elite media institutions. Elites can produce
a great deal of flak and will do so if it is in their interests that the media should suppress stories, or frame
them in a certain way.
Online, it is difficult to create significant flak for new media. The Internet is largely unregulated
websites cannot realistically be suppressed or punished in any permanent or meaningful way with lawsuits
and takedown requests. The Streisand Effect means that flak often has a beneficial effect for
controversial online media outlets. Once online, the more attempts to censor content that occur, the
more widespread it is likely to become. For example, Wikileaks suffered DoS attacks and rejection from
ISPs as a consequence of the U.S. cable leaks, As a result it was voluntarily mirrored by those sympathetic
to their cause, spreading the leaks and making it impossible to remove them completely (Agence France-
Presse 2010). Finally, as journalists can write with anonymity, it isnt possible to punish the writer offline.
This effectively denies flak as a filter on the current Internet.
However, the technology underpinning the Internet remains controlled by major corporations and
governments. Internet Service Providers are massive companies with control over the online networks of
entire countries, and work closely with government. These companies have the power to refuse or limit
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access to any website. Herman and Chomsky summarise: The privatization of the Internet's hardware,
the rapid commercialization and concentration of Internet portals and servers and their integration into
non-Internet conglomerates the AOL-Time Warner merger was a giant step in that direction and the
private and concentrated control of the new broadband technology, together threaten to limit any future
prospects of the Internet as a democratic media vehicle. Whilst AOL-Time Warner no longer exists, the
new merger of Comcast and Time Warner will mean that the combined company will control 40% of U.S.
wired broadband (Meyer 2014). For the time being, the Internet is a way for journalists to avoid or exploit
flak from controversial news stories, but elite institutions remain in ultimate control of the Internet, and if
sufficiently motivated to produce flak will be able to.
The final filter refers to established social control mechanisms and anti-ideologies. In Manufacturing Consent
Herman and Chomsky refer to anti-communism as the major control mechanism (2002, pp. 29-31),
however this is clearly not the case currently. Rather, the underlying mechanism is seen to be the creation
of artificial fear. In the 21
st
century, the War on Terror can be seen to replace anti-communism
(Herman & Chomsky 2009). The Internet helps to mitigate anti-ideologies by creating a massive public
sphere that naturally combines disparate social networks. Sites like reddit, Facebook and Twitter allow for
the merging of culturally or fundamentally different groups by race, religion, age or gender. Simply
using the Internet is enough to increase peoples perceived autonomy (Castells 2002, pp. 419), challenging
the power of anti-ideologies. However, autonomy may be limited to self-perception, rather than providing
real freedom from social control mechanisms. All major websites and databases use forms of
personalisation for their users that may lead to the impression that one is free to be challenged by groups
and information via the Internet, where may actually not be the case. Online demographics in the West
tend to be affluent and middle class, so naturally endorse the free market system they have exceeded in to
some extent on social media sites regardless of their alternative characteristics. Beyond reddit, there are
no other large websites where discourse opposes the status quo. So even though the Internet can be
effective at increasing personal autonomy and challenging the power of anti-ideologies, this effect is
limited by its user base and the underlying features of websites. In future, as Internet technology becomes
cheaper and more accessible, a wider range of economic demographics and ideologies will be able to
interact this could mitigate the anti-ideology filter.
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The first two filters describe the institutional size and structure of the mainstream media. The Internet era
has neither changed the structure nor dominance of elite media institutions in this regard. It is controlled
by elites at both an infrastructure and front-end level. There are websites which arent affected by the first
two filters, but not enough to pose a serious threat to elite media hegemony. Sourcing is less important as
a propaganda mechanism in the Internet era, due to the limitations of institutional sources in comparison
to online sources, and due to the decentralisation of online information. However, there are still technical
limitations on the autonomy of institutionalised journalists when sourcing from the Internet. Flak has
been, for now, been rendered impotent online. It is unclear whether anti-ideologies or other social control
mechanisms affect online journalists as is traditional as the Internet becomes more accessible, there
might be potential for greater media autonomy/democratisation. But political and economic elites are still
in control of the network as a whole. In summary, in the Internet era the propaganda model remains
relevant to the overwhelming majority of online mass media, as well as the social control mechanisms
underlying elite media institutions. Online media performs a propaganda role and is likely to continue to
do so.










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