While scrolling through Facebook, an article titled "FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE" appears. While most may decide to scroll by, two hundred thousand others decided to share this truthful news amongst their friend group, further spreading the shocking, attention-grabbing, and most of all, accurate news. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, citizens of the dystopian society, known as the World State, are consistently consuming media to escape the harsh realities of life, and to remain ignorant of the outside world. The government bans all forms of Media they have not approved, which includes all books, and ensures the media satisfies people while also not revealing the actual dilemmas the world …show more content…
faces. In Brave New World’s dystopian society, media controls society by shaping citizens at birth, in addition to keeping them satisfied and ignorant throughout their lives. 1. Propaganda As depicted in Brave New World, the government utilizes propaganda to manipulate the World State’s citizens in favor of their current position in life.
Governments distribute propaganda through various forms of media, and citizens of the World State are continuously consuming media. In addition, due to a lack of information about the outside world, people remain unaware that they are being manipulated. A creator of such propaganda stated, “Why was that old fellow [Shakespeare] such a marvelous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about” (Huxley, 188). Members of the media search for inspiration to create prevailing propaganda in order to effectively influence society. Media such as television and newspapers all pass through the “The Propaganda House”, similarly the media today, strive to create emotion invoking news. Journalists are known as “emotion engineers”, and play an instrumental role to control the thoughts of fellow citizens. Instead of distrusting the media, residents respect journalists. To illustrate, "No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy—to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all" (Huxley 115-6). Society appreciates the time “emotion engineers” take in order to create the news, and believe journalists keep their lives unpretentious. Without any suspicion or any prior knowledge, these people cannot evaluate the news they consume, and as a result all media is perceived as the
truth. Huxley depicts media consumption in this manner, because mass media rapidly grew during his time, and he drew parallels to what he witnessed during his era. Throughout history people have been manipulating public opinion, formally known as propaganda. Stanford researchers described, “propaganda tactics help shape the presentation of the information to be more effective and help persuade people” (Media's Use of Propaganda). Brave New World depicts a society in which propaganda becomes disguised in every form of media. The government crafts every thought of its citizens, leading to a society where individuality disappears. Modern people recollect on the past, stating, “Old men in the bad old days used … to spend their time reading, thinking–thinking!” (Brave New World 4.134). They negatively react to the idea that people before themselves were subject to individual thought, and read from various sources with varying opinions. The government does not even need censor or ban books, because there is no desire to read beyond what the government provides. II. Fake News Dishonest news is an arising epidemic activated by the rise of technology, and leads to real-life consequences. Fake news played a fundamental role in the 2016 presidential election, with numerous amounts of false information spreading, causing voter confusion. To illustrate, “False news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared eight million times” (Fake News in the 2016 Election). While researchers have proven authors of fake news are more likely to positively reflect Trump, Donald still tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media … is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People! SICK!” (Trump, Donald). An Example of how media can manipulate information in order to convey more controversial, interesting news, is how the New York Times took this exact tweet and created an article titled, “Trump Calls the News Media the ‘Enemy of the American People’” (Grynbaum). The article strategically removed “fake” from Trump’s tweet, in order to create a more interesting headline. Without seeking Trump’s original tweet, readers of the New York Times will only develop an opinion of his statement through a filter. Huxley’s Brave New World depicts an era where the truth no longer matters, and people only seek pleasure from the media. For Example, “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth” (Huxley 213). Citizens no longer wish to seek the truth, and find comfort disregarding the truth. While consuming media, people do not wish to bother themselves with validity, and prefer to remain ignorant. It is proven that “people who watch significant amounts of television will report worldviews more in-line with television portrayals than people who spend little time with the TV” as seen in several case studies (Bissell and Parrott, 3). Following this theory, the government in the World State ensures its citizens consume the most amount of media, to form their model citizen. As long as the government provides entertainment in line with their own personal agenda, they will maintain their totalitarian control.
The mass media has an essential role in today’s society as a channel of valuable information. Lots of people rely on media as the epicenter of information and as the yardstick on which they form their decisions and opinions (Agner, 1999). Any selection of messages in the mass media would have a profound impact on the entire society, this is according to Cultural selection theory. In the short story “Gray Noise”, Rojo uses this story to express his annoyance toward technology, but more specifically his most effective critic is on how society has overpowered valuable news with “dramaturgically crafted news” (Vettehen) and competition while desensitizing their viewers. Since competition has also stiffened up in are of mass media as the attention of readers, TV-viewers and listeners are fought for by every journalist. For this reason, every news media has turned to other strategies such as scandal-mongering and entertainment as tools of making a profit since a large audience is assured of such news even if they are not correct. Rojo’s views on critics of technology are widely shared among many people including the authors of the following studies, “Research Note: Sensationalism in Dutch Current Affairs Programmes by Paul Hendriks Vettehen
398).It is also stated that news divisions reduced their costs, and raised the entertainment factor of the broadcasts put on air. (p. 400). Secondly, the media determines its sources for stories by putting the best journalists on the case and assign them to areas where news worthy stories just emanates. (p.400). Third, the media decides how to present the news by taking the most controversial or relevant events and compressing them into 30 second sound-bites. (p.402). finally, the authors also explain how the media affects the general public. The authors’ state “The effect of one news story on public opinion may be trivial but the cumulative effect of dozens of news stories may be important. This shows a direct correlation between public opinions and what the media may find “relevant”. (Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, 2015, p.
Through manipulation and lies, media manages to modify objective news into biased news in order to convince the public of what the media wants them to believe. The article, “How the Media Twist the News”, by Sheila Gribben Liaugminas discusses the major influence that news has on readers based on their choice of stories and words. “How the Media Twists the News” has borrowed from multiple other texts such as the books like Public Opinion and Liberty and News, news magazine writers such as Ruderman, and news networks like CBS through Bias, A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News and CNN to make her arguments valid and prove that the news is biased and that it does influence readers significantly because of it.
During WW1, the Americans had influenced the war by propaganda. Propaganda is when you spread rumors to influence society. Propaganda was used to affect Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. In Germany propaganda was used to give the soldiers morals and people with false information that was sent by balloons or planes. In America propaganda was used to persuade other Americans to join the war against Germany. In Great Britain, propaganda was meant to convince men into joining the war and for people to save food for the war effort.
This era in modern society is simply recalled the “Age of the Television,” meaning that all exchange is in the form of entertainment, which shows that people care more about pleasuring one another and expressing themselves rather than focusing on accomplishing tasks or pressing issues. For example, when Paris was bombed last year, many people changed their Facebook profile pictures to a French flag to show support; however, this was merely another form of passivity, implying that they do not want to actively contribute to better the situation. Instead, these people would only like to give the semblance that they care to get praise and protect their ego. Consequently, all types of a society’s media foreshadow how truth will be displayed, reinforcing Huxley’s prediction that the “truth will be drowned in a sea of irrelevance,” and that irrelevance in today’s society is in the form of television and the
When dystopias are mentioned, books like Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World come to mind, but no one ever thinks of modern, popular religions. The goal of these books are to warn the modern society of what could go wrong if it keeps behaving like it is by exaggerating the flaws of the modern society. Scientology is a fairly new religion that has gained many followers over the past decade because of its illusion of a utopia, but it is also exactly what Huxley and Orwell are warning about in their books. Like A Brave New World, The church of scientology started off with good intentions, but over time all the rules and beliefs have turned out to be corrupt and unfair. Utopias like in A Brave New World and Scientology often become dystopias because
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World illustrates a colorful, fantastic universe of sex and emotion, programming and fascism that has a powerful draw in a happy handicap. This reality pause button is called “Soma”. “Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.” ( Huxley 54 ).
Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, showcases a world alternate from ours, in a dystopian setting. Where human morals are drastically altered, families, love, history, and art are removed by the government. They used multiple methods to control the people, but no method in the world is more highly used and more effective than propaganda. The world state heavily implemented the use of propaganda to control, to set morals, and to condition the minds of every citizen in their world. However, such uses of propaganda have already been used in our world and even at this very moment.
“"Propaganda is as powerful as heroin, it surreptitiously dissolves all capacity to think” by Gil Courtemanche connects to the sad fact of using propaganda as a deadly weapon to feed people with false information and stop them from thinking. George Orwell’s novel, 1984, describes a totalitarian dystopian society where the Party is constantly brainwashing its citizens with information that is beneficial to its own rights. On the opposite side, people are working for the party just like dominated slaves for their masters without knowing what’s going on. But, in order for the party to achieve this goal, they have to use different techniques of propaganda in Oceania to create fear for people so that they can obey the rules. The use of propaganda in the society of 1984 takes away freedom from individuals because of the absence of privacy, thinking and making decisions.
As our society has progressed since the beginning of its creation, there have been many the developments of “artificial” and man-created aspects of society, such as money, taxes, and so forth, that have developed into either a benefit or hindrance to society. One such aspect that is beginning to be a hindrance to society is entertainment. Although there is portion of our modern society which will argue entertainment’s beneficial value, they will fail to see how it has become a force of control in our daily lives that has created a socially inept, stagnant, and dumbed down society.
Rather than being a neutral conduit for the communication of information, the U.S. media plays an intricate role in shaping and controlling political opinions. Media is extremely powerful in the sense that without an adequate functioning media, it is virtually impossible for a sophisticated social structure like the U.S. Government to exist. Henceforth, all known sophisticated social structure, have always dependent upon the media’s ability to socialize. The U.S. government generally will exploit the media, often times manipulating the enormous power of the printed word. Ultimately empowering the U.S. government, strengthening it with the ability to determine and control the popular perception of reality. One way in which government achieves this objective, is by its ability to misuse the media’s ability to set the agenda. Contrary to popular belief, media is in fact an enormous hegemony. In fact, separate independent news organizations relatively do not exist. Rather than creating an independent structured agenda of there own, generally lesser smaller news organizations adapt to a prepared agenda, previously constructed by a higher medium. Based upon this information alone, it is quite apparent that media functions in adherence to the characteristics of a hierarchy. This simply means that media is structured in a way that it operates functioning from top to bottom. This is also identical to the hierarchical nature of the human body, in that from the commands of the brain transferred through the central nervous system, the body responds accordingly. In order for the U.S. government to control and determine the public’s popular perception of reality, the government must shape and oversee the information that the media reports to the existing populous. This particular process of democracy is known and referred to by political scientists as cognitive socialization. However, many of us, who do not adhere to the cushioning of political correctness, refer to it as the propaganda machine. Numerous political scientists consider cognitive socialization to be the most effective form of political socialization. According to theory, cognitive socialization is doctored up information, which is strategically fragmented in such a manipulative manner, that the probability of its rationalization is highly predictable. The manipulative properties of cognitive socialization are so diabolical and Machiavellian in nature, that I consider it to be the ultimate perversion of the democratic process. In all seriousness, numerous intellectuals, and gentleman held in good stature agree, that cognitive socialization is the product of an evil genius.
Chomsky points out that the manufacturing of consent is so systematically planned, that the very people reporting story’s and indoctrinating the public may not even be aware of their bias. Bernays name for this concept is ‘Engineering of consent’. As the public slowly becomes more distant from live situations and first-hand experiences of world news events, the media, and leaders communications are relied on and taken by the public most often at face value. As Bernays describes the “highly organized mechanical web”, the people at the top creating the messages forced on the public are our leaders, big news companies, and those with a lot of money and an agenda they wish to see realized. It is not enough to merely advertise the subject matter or communicate propaganda to the public. Without a complicated plan of playing the minds of viewers, all efforts will likely go to waste. “Words, sounds, and pictures accomplish little unless they are the tools of a soundly thought out plan and carefully organized methods.” (Bernays) Also stated, is that to influence the public it is important that those with the impact must first understand what the majority supports, and what their opinions on the subject matter are so the topics are approached in a way that will not shut out the public from said
Can a utopian society ever exist? The answer to that question is a blunt no. Everyone’s different expectations create a world with many diversities. The society in Brave New World is considered dystopian because the people are living under the assumption that their world is perfect. They have a major drug addiction and uncontrolled sexual intercourse, plus a whole lot of other social issues. While our current society may not be perfect, it would be far better off than the society pictured in the novel. Therefore, the society in Brave New World is different from the current society in the United States of America.
Brainwashing and Mind Control are “best thought of as a series of techniques that are used over time to shape a person’s perception, cognition, emotions, decision making and behavior to such an extent that they have lost their freedom of choice” (Mind Control Today). These techniques, once in existence within authoritarian and totalitarian governments, are increasingly being practiced by advertising companies and mass media. There are extensive similarities among the political and economic standards that cause negative impacts on society, as a result of adopting these mind control tactics. As Malcom X pointed out, “The media is the most powerful entity on earth, because they control the minds of the masses”.
Althusser (1971) explains that, as an ideological state apparatus, media doesn’t use pressure as a way to bind society together under one dominant ideology, but instead uses the will of the people to make them accept the dominant ideology. However, media is also used as a way for people to challenge the dominant ideology. Newspapers, for example, will have articles that openly criticise and oppose the dominant ideology for what it is, whilst at the same time providing perspectives and opinions on different ideologies (such as feminism) that society can believe in. Although these alternate ideological perspectives exist, they are usually overlooked and only ever reach small audiences. Ideology can also help us understand the media because of the way in which it distributes ideology.