Alan Macleod - Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent

Propaganda in the Information Age is a collaborative volume which updates Herman and Chomskys propaganda model for the twenty-first-century media landscape and makes the case for the continuing relevance of their original ideas. It includes an exclusive interview with Noam Chomsky himself.

2018 marks 30 years since the publication of Edward Herman and Noam Chomskys ground-breaking book Manufacturing Consent, which lifted the veil over how the mass media operate. The books model presented five filters which all potentially newsworthy events must pass through before they reach our TV screens, smartphones or newspapers. In Propaganda in the Information Age, many of the worlds leading media scholars, analysts and journalists use this model to explore the modern media world, covering some of the most pressing contemporary topics such as fake news, Cambridge Analytica, the Syrian Civil War and Russiagate. The collection also acknowledges that in an increasingly globalized world, our media is increasingly globalized as well, with chapters exploring both Indian and African media.

For students of Media Studies, Journalism, Communication and Sociology, Propaganda in the Information Age offers a fascinating introduction to the propaganda model and how it can be applied to our understanding not only of how media functions in corporate America, but across the world in the twenty-first century.

Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow Media Group and completed his PhD in 2017. His first book, Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in 2018. His research interests include propaganda, media theory, social media and Latin American politics.

First published 2019

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ISBN: 978-1-138-36639-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-36640-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-43032-9 (ebk)

This book is dedicated to the memory of Edward S. Herman (19252017)

Matthew Alford focuses on the relationship between entertainment, political institutions and propaganda in the West in his research. His own feature film, The Writer with No Hands, was premiered in the Future Cult Classics strand at Hot Docs, Toronto and went on to receive three festival wins, seven further nominations and distribution via international television platforms. He is based at the University of Bath, UK.

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State University, and California Polytechnic State University, USA. He has published primarily in the field of media studies. His recent books include Western Mainstream Media and the Ukraine Crisis (2017), Media Imperialism (2014) and co-author of Hollywood and the CIA (2011).

Noam Chomsky is Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of more than 100 books, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1995). In 1979 the New York Times described him as arguably the most important intellectual alive. He has spent his life dedicated to political activism and challenging media power.

Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist currently working for the Latin America Bureau in London. He was previously a reporter for the Financial Times and has written for the Guardian, the New York Times and Mother Jones. He is the author of two books, Irregular Army (2012), about the degradation of the US military during the War on Terror and The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs. the Masters of the Universe (2015), which details the pressures journalists face at work while trying to scrutinize power.

Tabassum Ruhi Khan is a filmmaker and Associate Professor Media and Cultural Studies at University of California, Riverside, USA. She received her PhD from Ohio University in 2009 and a Masters degree from Syracuse University in 1998. She teaches courses exploring intersections of media and popular culture in neoliberal globalized contexts with special focus on political economy of media, construction of environment debate and formation of digital public spheres. Her monograph, Beyond Hybridity and Fundamentalism: Emerging Muslim Identity in Globalized India, was published in 2015.

Alan MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group and completed his PhD in 2017. His first book, Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting, was published in April 2018. His research interests include propaganda, media theory, Venezuelan politics and social media and online communities.

Jacinta Mwende Maweu is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Media Studies at the University of Nairobi, Kenya. She holds a PhD from Rhodes University, South Africa, a Master of Arts in Communication Studies and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Her research interests include the political economy of the media and media and human rights. Her most recent publication was Peace propaganda? The application of Chomskys propaganda model to the Daily Nations coverage of the 2013 Kenyan elections in the journal Communication.

Azmat Rasul earned his PhD as a Fulbright research scholar from the School of Communication at Florida State University, USA. Currently, he is working as a faculty member in the Department of Communication Arts at Valdosta State University. His research focuses on the interplay between politics and entertainment and the political economy of global entertainment industries. Rasul publishes in academic outlets such as the Communication Review, Asian Journal of Communication and International Communication Gazette.

Florian Zollmann is a Lecturer in Journalism at Newcastle University. He has widely published on the propaganda model, contemporary forms of organized persuasive communication and news media reporting of war, foreign policy and conflict. His latest book is Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention (2017).