An interesting article in the latest issue of Media, Culture and Society by Andrew Mullen suggests academics have systematically under-examined the Propaganda Model (sorry the article is behind a paywall). I have tended to think Chomsky’s Propaganda Model (PM) is one of the better known and more discussed recent theories, perhaps because of the critical media scholars I tend to hang out with or perhaps because at least the outlines of it are reasonably well known among the general public (at least those who are interested in the media). It seems however that in a sample taken from ten media and communication journals between 1988 and 2007 only 2.6% of the total “attended to” the PM model and according to Mullen most did little more than cite it. Similarly 43% of media and communication textbooks he surveyed didn’t mention the PM, and 22% only discussed it briefly.
Whatever you think of the PM it is reputable enough to at least be worth engaging for the benefit of students who will have encountered it, and if as scholars assert its tenets need updating and would need to be applied differently in different national contexts more work could usefully be done to try to gather the empirical evidence necessary to see whether and to what extent it remains applicable in different countries and since the advent of the internet.
[…] via The blog of David Brake academic, consultant & journalist. […]
Pingback by The blog of David Brake academic, consultant & journalist « Chomsky Watch — 26 September 2010 @ 10:31 am
I suggest academics have their own problems with credibility and paid representations. In http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2010/11/14-november-night-musings.html
I noted some associations with Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada that seem to give academic cover to foreign policy propositions which minimize appreciation of the real damage and death caused by occupation of countries by the US/UK/NATO etc. To give some historical comparison I included Chinese views of their sufferings under British rule.
But the Propaganda Model was done by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley to good effect. I especially appreciated Orwell’s stories of Catalonia fairly recently – though Brave New World and 1984 were both read in my youth. I kept track of what I thought were the best references – though I have Diigo and Delicious files as Oldephartte and Opit respectively.
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/perception-alteration.html
Comment by opit — 14 November 2010 @ 9:44 pm