With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the repeal of the” Fairness Doctrine” and the rise of alternative media, the power of the gatekeepers, if not broken, has been badly battered. From an elite perspective, the barbarians are past the gates, in the city and setting up shop. This diversification of media voices has brought a much higher degree of potential transparency to government and media operations.
It is far harder now, whether you are interrogating al Qaida captives in Afghanistan or making editorial decisions on the slant of a CBS news segment to keep the information process secret from the information consumer. It is also the case that the sheer volume of information transmission, the number of mediums and the esoteric variety of content is subdividing mass audiences into networks of niche subcultures – the ” demassification” predicted by Alvin and Heidi Toffler. It is harder and harder to command mass attention because an event that once might command global or at least national attention is often merely a needle in a haystack of media choices and goes undigested by vast swaths of the population. Even for those who do see and react to an event find that the ” news cycle” has accelerated and devalues the significance of any event, on average, the way inflation devalues a dollar.
How can this situation be manipulated in a 4GW sense ?
Deception, misdirection and camouflage are naturally easier to achieve necause it takes advantage on the increase in media ” White Noise” to which Dr. Barnett has referred. Occasionally, a mega-story will develop by chance that manages to capture the imagination of the masses and dominate various mediums for varying lengths of time – the Tsunami, the OJ Simpson Trial, the death of a revered world-historical figure – and so on. These are periods in which to initiate operations that must fly under the radar.
Since a a grave natural disaster does not happen on a weekly basis – Weapons of Mass Distraction can be employed, essentially psychological warfare conducted by hyping psuedo-issues in the media, a technique that relies upon the same cognitive principles as does negative advertising in political campaigns. It doesn’t really matter intrinsically what side ” wins” on such issues as Terry Schiavo, steroids in professional sports and the ” appearance of impropriety ” ethical scandal of the week – the real win is moving the media attention away from a subject you’d rather not have them notice. ” Feeding the Beast” makes for a more docile pet and regular ” feeders” are recruiting journalists and through them, their editors and producers.
As Dr. Barnett suggested, those clamoring for attention in the fractured, global, mediasphere have their work cut out for them. Not only do they face the structural problems mentioned above but events are perceived through different cultural-linguistic frames in a way that prejudices against a complexity of message. Such groups will have to rely upon two primary tactics:
Archetype imaging to hit the lowest common psychological denominator but the widest cross-cultural appeal. The grotesque beheadings carried out by Zarqawi’s al Qaida offshoot in Iraq exhibited a lurid fascination in the global media. The shelf-life of this stunt was relatively short.
Magnitude. Staging an event on a scale that cannot be ignored such as 3/11 or 9/11 – some of these are full fledged System Perturbations.
The media is a dynamic feedback loop. It can be prompted, shaken, fed, distracted, manipulated, intimidated or engaged but outside of a few isolated, totally disconnected Gap hellholes like North Korea, it cannot be controlled. It is part of the environment for the players on the global stage, shaping them and being shaped by them.
UPDATE:
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