The Propaganda Model: theoretical and methodological considerations (original) (raw)
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The Propaganda Model and Sociology: understanding the media and society
Synaesthesia: Communication Across Cultures, 2010
This article unpacks reasons why the Propaganda Model represents a critical sociological approach to understanding media and society, explores the model’s potential within the sociological field, and considers the trajectory of its reputational reception to date. The article also introduces the three central hypotheses and five operative principles of the Propaganda Model and suggests that the model complements other (competing) approaches that explore the relationship between ideological and institutional power and discursive phenomena.
The Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model: a critical approach to analyzing mass media behavior
Sociology Compass, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 215-229, 2010
The Propaganda Model (PM), developed by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky and published in Manufacturing Consent in 1988, sought to explain the behaviour of the mass media in the United States. Analysing the function, operation and effects of the media are essential to any understanding of contemporary societies and the article begins by sketching out the contours of the liberal-pluralist vs. critical-Marxist debate about the role of the media. The article then presents an overview of the PM, locates it within the field of media and communication studies, considers its reception, discusses a number of complementary methodological and theoretical approaches, and argues that the PM, more than 20 years after its formulation, continues to provide an invaluable tool for understanding the media within contemporary capitalist societies.
The Propaganda Model in the Early 21st Century Part II
2011b This two-part article explores Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model from diverse angles, with the aim of deepening its current dynamism and validity for explaining mass media production and content in advanced capitalist democracies. Part I of the contribution studies the contemporary relevance of the five components or “filters” that comprise the model, relates them to ongoing sociohistorical developments, and focuses on the different interactions affecting the media in the context of power relations. It then analyzes the situations in which the spectrum of media opinion is more open. Part II focuses on the validity of the model for explaining news content both in countries other than the United States and on the Internet, as well as for explaining media products other than news. This is followed by an examination of the possibility of expanding and modifying the model by incorporating other factors, which may be considered secondary filters.
The Propaganda Model in the Early 21st Century Part I
2011 This two-part article explores Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model from diverse angles, with the aim of deepening its current dynamism and validity for explaining mass media production and content in advanced capitalist democracies. Part I of the contribution studies the contemporary relevance of the five components or “filters” that comprise the model, relates them to ongoing sociohistorical developments, and focuses on the different interactions affecting the media in the context of power relations. It then analyzes the situations in which the spectrum of media opinion is more open. Part II focuses on the validity of the model for explaining news content both in countries other than the United States and on the Internet, as well as for explaining media products other than news. This is followed by an examination of the possibility of expanding and modifying the model by incorporating other factors, which may be considered secondary filters.
Media Theory, Public Relevance and the Propaganda Model Today
2018
Since its initial formulation in 1988, the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model (PM) has become one of the most widely tested models of media performance in the social sciences. This is largely due to the combined efforts of a loose group of international scholars as well as an increasing number of students who have produced studies in the US, UK, Canadian, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, German, and Dutch contexts, amongst others. Yet, the PM has also been marginalised in media and communication scholarship, largely due to the fact that the PM’s radical scholarly outlook challenges the liberal and conservative underpinnings of mainstream schools of thought in capitalist democracies. This paper brings together, for the first time, leading scholars to discuss important questions pertaining to the PM’s origins, public relevance, connections to other approaches within Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, applicability in the social media age, as well as impact and influence. The p...
What the Propaganda Model Can Learn from the Sociology of Journalism
The Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness, 2018
This chapter will attempt to resolve one of the major conflicts surrounding Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model (PM). This conflict is the result of the political-economic focus of the model, achieved by leaving out consideration of journalists themselves. I argue that incorporating sociological theory about journalism, specifically professionalism, self-censorship, and secondary socialisation, will better enhance the PM’s explanatory power and help address concerns about its limitations. Such sociological aspects function as ‘filters’ in a similar way to the five described in the PM and are, in fact, implied heavily in the PM, especially in the sourcing and ideology filters.
The Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness
2018
While the individual elements of the propaganda system (or filters) identified by the Propaganda Model (PM) – ownership, advertising, sources, flak and anti-communism – have previously been the focus of much scholarly attention, their systematisation in a model, empirical corroboration and historicisation have made the PM a useful tool for media analysis across cultural and geographical boundaries. Despite the wealth of scholarly research Herman and Chomsky’s work has set into motion over the past decades, the PM has been subjected to marginalisation, poorly informed critiques and misrepresentations. Interestingly, while the PM enables researchers to form discerning predictions as regards corporate media performance, Herman and Chomsky had further predicted that the PM itself would meet with such marginalisation and contempt. In current theoretical and empirical studies of mass media performance, uses of the PM continue, nonetheless, to yield important insights into the workings of ...
Propaganda and contemporary media environment
We can surly say that millions of messages in the one minute over the world sent by media in its different outlets and received by the audience in their different orientations, believes, awareness and economics level. This messages delivered to people with various forms and contains, this can be easily recognized, but it is not
Excerpted from Manufacturing Consent, 1988 The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda.
The Five Filters of Media: The Propaganda Model Revisited (Ed Herman with my commentary)
2025
With my added commentary to Ed Herman's model explaining the silence of journalists who due to big bank loans ought to fear price hikes and the impending crash of Germany, Europe most of all. Surely nobody has a gag on journos? But instead of showing minimal self-interest life-preservation they're advokating for nuclear war against Russia, global nuclear winter, and keep a lid on the Holocaust of Gaza in a time when we're all Palestinians in the eyes of pre-Mesopotamian elites. Edward S. Herman: The Propaganda Model Revisited, The Jus Semper Global Alliance, November, 2020 *https://jussemper.org/Resources/Democracy%20Best%20Practices/Resources/EdwardHerman-PropagandaModel.pdf