Noam Chomsky: ten media manipulation strategies

  

Noam Chomsky: ten media manipulation strategies 

 The intellectual places the media power at the level of the normalization of behaviors by influencing through different ways in the behaviors, ideas or social forms. 

 Chomsky and manipulation. We could consider that all behavior categorized as anomalous with the passing of days or years will reach normality, even though it is not seen as normal. This fact also makes the sovereign power, the one in charge of indicating that it is legal or illegal, adjust its structure to the behaviors considered anomalous and incorporate its legality.

 A new power manages to expand and mark the beginning of a revolution with the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the establishment of neoliberalism. The communicative revolution made large private television networks take more rigorously the monopoly of the world market, which is the complete opposite of the democratic market, and they found their best ally in the governments that defend the system tooth and nail. 

 The monopolies or oligopolies that run the media market are not the exception to the logic of a power with universal scope because more and more families in the world have a television with access to all the information transmitted; for today's humanity globalization and the role of new technologies as an instantaneous means is a reality.

 The massification of the communication media such as social networks, television and other digital or conventional platforms censor the opposite thinking, because they are not democratic in transcendental decisions, since a small economic group with their own interests is the one who chooses what to do and always saying that they speak In the name of truth, complex situation in times of fake news or false news, maybe there are no facts but interpretations.

 The American linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky is known for the important contribution he made to transformational-generative grammar with his work Syntactic Structures and for having dedicated part of his studies and research to the field of communication media, where he was forceful at the time to talk about the role and methods used by these means for the manipulation of social and individual conscience, which in the end is to annihilate critical thinking.

 Chomsky's 10 manipulation strategies 

 

 To understand the dimensions reached by the power instituted from the media, Chomsky expresses ten manipulation strategies, which are: 

 1. The distraction strategy: diverting the public's attention from important problems and changes decided by economic and political elites: through the technique of deluge or floods of continuous distractions and insignificant information.

 2. Create problems and then offer solutions: the first thing is to create the problem, then there comes an exact moment, a "perfect situation", the objective is for the population to feel a certain reaction, then a planned solution is proposed. For example, when violence and insecurity are created to unite by proposing a norm that remedies the lack by applying restrictions on freedom. Still it is supported because people are in uncertainty due to violence and insecurity. 

3. The strategy of gradualness: every measure has to be gradual, that is to say, periodically and systematically, in order to add unpopular measures without inconvenience. 

4. The strategy of deferral: when the public does not like an economic or political measure, it is to express the decision as "painful and necessary". The tendency is for the episode to be understood in the sense that "tomorrow it will get better." 

5. Addressing the public as a young creature: advertising should be the most superfluous for the conscience, the more calm, devoid, delicate and slow is the communication with the public, the reaction will be reciprocal. 

 6. Use the emotional aspect much more than reflection: it cannot be denied that when there is an emotional shock, reason is automatically set aside. Feelings can generate fears, phobias, behaviors. 

7. Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity: keep the population away from reflection so that they do not see how they are subjected to control. The most used example is precarious education for the classes less favored by capital and keeping them in submission to the system, there is nothing more to do.

 8. Encourage the public to be complacent with mediocrity: promote and encourage the public to the fashion of mediocre, stupid. Frivolities and shows. 

9. Reinforce self-blame: the fault lies only with the individual for his incompetence and lack of intelligence. Thus there are no claims to the system when the fault is one's own. 

10. Knowing individuals more than they know themselves: science and new technologies allow more access to information, including the field of health sciences who know the human body in depth, therefore it is exercised a dominance of science in charge of the system over ordinary people, who do not know each other so much. 

 Chomsky places the media power at the level of the normalization of behaviors by influencing through different forms on behaviors, ideas or social forms, and invites to break the paradigm drawn by the economic-political system in alliance with the media, thus, enter to think critically about reality.