4 ms·

Yeah, it strongly reminds me the media of USSR. They switched narratives in a perfect unison with politics like that. Sometimes they even did it ahead of politi

• vneumanarc 7y ago
  It's in all states. It just becomes more noticable in times of stress ( economic, military, societal ). Go read about the mccarthy era, the red scare before that or the yellow peril before that. Or go read about how how china and the chinese were viewed pre-1970 to how the media changed perceptions during the 1970s with deng's visit, etc as they prepared to open trade relations. Read about how chinatowns historically were stereotyped as the worst kind of ghetto with drugs, crime, etc by the media for much of history. During the 1970s, the media turned chinatown from a ghetto to a hip ethnic enclave. The same thing with the natives, blacks, mexicans, japanese, germans, russians, chinese, italians, catholics, irish, jews, etc in the US. There were periods where they were demonized and then some switched got flipped and the media softened or completely reversed their stance. Why and at whose request, who knows. Go look at sino-soviet relations. They are "best buds" and their respective media praised each other. Things go sour and the media pushes anti-sino and anti-russo rhetoric. Same thing with sino-american relations. The interests of the ruling class determine what perceptions the media creates. Remember when Bush looked into putin's eye and saw a good man? The media was praising putin for stabilizing russia and improving living conditions? It was only 15 years ago, but in media terms, it feels like a lifetime ago. How things quickly change.
  • chvid 7y ago
    I think it is the Trump 2020 campaign. Essentially Trump has figured out he can win the 2020 election by going to war with China. So it is anti-China all over; from smearing of political opponents to policy to information campaigning.
  • deleted 7y ago
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• liability 7y ago
  > "I wonder what the mechanics of it might be in a democratic society. It was easy to do in USSR: top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders." In this case I doubt there is any sort of formal command structure, or in fact any centralized orchestration at all. Rather what we're seeing is an emergent phenomenon, not unlike fish schooling or birds swarming. All the actors involved are taking cues from their peers and otherwise consume more or less the same information from the environment. Combine that with a relatively uniform philosophy or worldview and the appearance of orchestrated activity emerges.
  • MichaelMoser123 7y ago
    Well, in socialist countries there was no index that would spell out explicitly what is strictly verboten. Ordinary people were expected to know that via hints and rumours. Well if the official media was calling genetics nasty names then that was a strong indicator that genetics is verboten. I guess that the media used to be more directly orchestrated.
    • liability 7y ago
      Centralized orchestration is certainly a possibility. I think it's far from certain though, because the observed effect of uniform messaging could also be explained as emergent behaviour. Centralized coordination is probably more likely in some countries, and emergent swarming seems more likely in others. But either way, the end result is pretty similar.
      • MichaelMoser123 7y ago
        I think it is more a difference in editorial style rather than in substance: all media outlets still have an editor who in turn has to answer to the owner of a news outlet - an author can't always write just the stuff that he wants and also get his work published, don't think it works like this. In other words I find it hard to follow the comparison of an author to a fish. Still there is definitely more freedom in a system that doesn't censor every single utterance.
• rayiner 7y ago
  In every society, there are accepted narratives everyone is expected to subscribe to. This doesn’t need to happen by coercion; humans have an innate need to repeat and strengthen the basic narratives that are part of their society.
• 50656E6973 7y ago
  >top-down structure allowed state to rule media by orders. But democracy is more nuanced than that I believe. At least I've never witnessed ahead-of-time switch in narratives of democratic media. If you're referring to "western" or american media, it's not democratic, it's primarily corporate, which is top down, ruled by orders. Straying too far outside the narrative/overton window will get you fired
• deleted 7y ago
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