LZ BLOG
In June 2024, various sources on the internet reported Noam Chomsky’s death. The news spread rapidly across all social networks. The 95-year-old philosopher and social critic, who had suffered a stroke the previous year, was said to have passed away. As social norms required in such cases, the news was reproduced in a flood of posts and stories, filled with condolences, quotes, and book covers. A week later, I casually discovered that Chomsky was still alive. His wife, Valeria Wasserman Chomsky, had to come forward and deny the reports that the famed linguist had died.1) Chomsky had fallen victim to the spasms of untruthfulness we witness daily on social networks—a banal situation and a daily reminder of the weaknesses of these platforms as tools for mass communication.
Escaping
For years, we have witnessed an alarming drop in trust in traditional media. According to last year’s Gallup poll, only 32% of Americans said they trust the mass media “a great deal” or “a fair amount.” This marks a record low, even lower than in 2021 (36%) and 2022 (34%), and comparable only to 2016 (32%). Another 29% of U.S. adults reported “not very much” trust, while a record-high 39% expressed “none at all.”2) This drop is closely related to the rise of alternative sources of information and mass communication.
Since Gutenberg, the evolution of media and communication methods has included extinctions, improvements, and mimicry. However, with the emergence of the internet, new, more powerful, and versatile mediums have created an unparalleled and quasi-unregulated communication sphere within the public domain.
The internet not only turned people’s heads but also captured their attention with new opportunities. Chomsky described the beginning of this era as follows: “The internet has increased the efficiency and scope of individual and group networking. This has enabled people to escape the mainstream media’s constraints in many diverse cases.”3) He saw the internet as a “valuable addition to the communication arsenal”—a limited ground in the public sphere, full of possibilities and limitations, but also vulnerable to being conquered by powerful interests.
What once seemed like a path to a more democratic means of communication has now become a chaotic nightmare of unfiltered information, stripped of its ethical foundation. People escaped mainstream media only to find themselves in an information jungle—one that easily devolves into a wasteland of misinformation and confusion when left unregulated.
Aside from the limited access to the general population in the early days, Chomsky saw the process of privatization as a major problem. The privatization of the internet’s hardware, the rapid commercialization and consolidation of portals and servers, and their integration into non-internet conglomerates (the AOL-Time Warner merger being a key example), along with the concentrated control of broadband infrastructure, together threatened the internet’s future as a democratic medium.4)
As time passed, privatization became just one of many challenges. The lack of early regulation and legislation, along with the absence of reliable tools for accessing and verifying independent information, became the “elephant in the room” for the everyday consumer.
Epistemological Questions in the Day of a Consumer
The production and reproduction of information—closely aligned with the rise of consumer culture and the public sphere—is not merely a transactional exchange like buying better goods.5) In fact, when it comes to products, consumers often apply more critical scrutiny through reviews and ratings than they do with information.
It’s clear how a consumer society educates its members—and what it prioritizes. But the process of internalizing and reproducing knowledge is deeply intertwined with propaganda and ideology—an a priori framework that shapes the information we encounter.
Even though the internet is no longer new, its alternatives still fall into the binary of right and wrong, true and false. If mainstream media lies, it does not follow that the internet holds the truth. The harsh reality is quite the opposite. Today, filtering information—regardless of the platform—is essential.
In 1989, Chomsky and Herman published their magnum opus, Manufacturing Consent. Written long before the emergence of Web 2.0, the book’s core argument is simple: media often functions to propagate the views of the powerful. This function is institutional and structural, not incidental. “The representatives of these interests have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well-positioned to shape and constrain media policy.”6)
As the internet and other news platforms emerged, traditional media lost its monopoly. Depending on the society, traditional media’s role shifted—no longer the central source for information or entertainment. Today, the network is king.
Chomsky quickly delivered the five famous filters to deconstruct how a propaganda model
functions. The filter include (1) the size, concentrated ownership, (2) advertising (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business and other power structures; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anticommunism”.
Rereading Chomsky’s Propaganda Filters
In the 2002 introduction to his book, Chomsky revised the filters, as some had become outdated due to political shifts in the Eastern Bloc during the 1990s. But how can we put on anti-propaganda glasses while scrolling through our phones? Is it even possible? Let’s attempt to revisit these filters one by one, keeping in mind the predominant medium of our time: social media.7)
The first propaganda filter, the ownership filter, needs to be applied in two ways to the news you encounter on social networks: first, to the ownership of the platform itself, and second, to the ownership of the pages or channels you follow within the platform. The recent change in ownership of a well-known social network has profoundly impacted the data generated within it, altering the flow of news based on updates to its terms, conditions, and algorithms. The ownership of specific pages or channels, however, often lies beyond the average user’s knowledge or control.
The second filter is typically inapplicable or difficult to use for filtering social media content. Channels and pages spreading propaganda or ideologies on social media do not usually earn revenue through traditional advertising models, such as those used by TV or radio. This makes applying the second filter to social media largely ineffective.
The third filter can be applied to social media without modification.
The fourth filter, or “flak,” is perhaps the most recognizable on social media. It appears as trolling, memes, or targeted attacks on public figures, internet personalities, or events. If you frequently encounter this kind of content, the page or channel you’re following is likely engaging in some form of propaganda. This type of material often ranks highly on social platforms, serving as crowd-pleasing content that fuels engagement through shares and heated comment threads.
The fifth filter has evolved, transforming anticommunism into anti-establishment and pro-conspiracy rhetoric. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, everyone became Foukouyamaist or Foukoyama became everyone. Anticommunist ideology has given way to a belief in the “invisible hand” and the “miracle of the market” as dominant ideological forces. Criticizing capitalism, viewed as the only viable system in the democratic world, has become dogmatic and nearly unthinkable. In simple terms, if the system is assumed to be the best available, any problems must lie elsewhere.
In this context, the fifth propaganda filter—the anti-establishment filter—takes on different nuances depending on the political spectrum of the propagandist. It often blends various strains of anti-establishment rhetoric that we encounter daily in media consumption. I will refrain from elaborating on specific examples here to avoid legitimizing these narratives in public discourse.
Since the second filter is largely irrelevant in this new context, I propose adding a sixth filter to this guide: the auto-centrism filter. Social media is inherently auto-centric. While this is not exclusive to social media—traditional news outlets also tailor content based on their audience’s political leanings—social networks amplify this tendency. The reason is simple: platform profit. Algorithms drive auto-centrism by continuously showing you content similar to what you like, comment on, and share, keeping you engaged. In this system, your attention is the platform’s commodity.8)
However, this shouldn’t dictate the content you consume. If the material you encounter consistently reinforces the same ideologies and opinion leaders without exposing you to diverse perspectives, it is likely propaganda.
A Final Note
The instrumentalisation of mass media isn’t new—nor is the illusion that new platforms will liberate us and bring the truth. What seems particularly striking is this escapism toward new media and public spaces without any criticism or tools to better navigate the daily content.
That’s why figures like Chomsky are more relevant than ever. His propaganda model is not just a critique of media; it’s a guide for media literacy. In an era dominated by screens, spectacle, algorithms, and consumerism, we need more than blue light glasses—we need anti-propaganda filters.
As Chomsky reminds us: “Citizens of democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy.”9)
References:
1)https://apnews.com/article/noam-chomsky-alive-not-dead-5b7a1b23b8731ca311e1ec38cdc3c119
2)https://news.gallup.com/poll/512861/media-confidence-matches-2016-record-low.aspx
3) 4) Chomsky, Noam & Herman, Edward S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (2002 Introduction)
5)Habermas Jurgen (1991): The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
6)Chomsky, Noam & Herman, Edward S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (2002 Introduction)
7)https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2023/12/01/tv-marketings-reign-is-over-now-social-media-has-taken-its-place/#:~:text=The%20average%20internet%20user%20spends,shift%20in%20media%20consumption%20habits.
8)https://journal.businesstoday.org/bt-online/2021/the-attention-economy-asher-joy
9)Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992): A documentary
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This blog is my personal space for reflection, inquiry, and critique. I hope you find something that sparks thought and dialogue.