I am quickly becoming aware of the subject and theme of this course. It is quite brutally shoved in our face every time we open a required reading. The subject: Media Hegemony. The theme: We are letting ourselves be controlled.
“When corporations say ‘we care,’ it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do NOT care. Some of the industrial polluters with the worst records have devised ‘public education’ campaigns that allow them to placate the public while they continue polluting” (Rampton and Stauber 131).
Again, it is just one more way that those WHITE MEN IN SUITS have control over us. It is just one may way that we are nursed into submission, being told that “it’s okay.” I must sound like a conspiracy theorist when I discuss the “evil ways of the media,” and how they’re trying to control our every move, but that’s just how I feel after reading all of these things. I feel like we have no control over what we do. I know that we do, of course, have the option to try and shut it all out, but in this age, shutting everything out would be one difficult task.
The book discusses the way the government uses propaganda to control the economy. It also discusses how big companies use propaganda to mislead the public into buying their products. It really feels unsafe to trust anything anymore, how do I know who is lying to me? TOXIC SLUDGE IS GOOD FOR YOU really is the perfect title for the book and the book has the perfect message for this course: they are only trying to sell you something.
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2 comments:
you get it. hegemony -- the ideological implications of hegemony -- is at the root of my teaching . . . along with information theory (but there's fewer things written about that).
It's not the job of politicians to inform you. It is supposedly the job of the media, but their central concern is to sell you,
and therefore they don't want to upset you.
Their primary responsibility is not to their listeners or their readers, but to the owners,
the stockholders.
And it is the interests of the military-industrial-complex
that millions remain uninformed
and misinformed.
-Mumia Abu Jamal, from death row, for free speech radio
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