by Propaganda
site publications helped to restore balance in a way not possible in the early 1980s.
When protests took place in Quebec City in April 2001 against the meetings of the
Free Trade Areas of the Americas, a wide variety of reports appeared on the Internet,
supplementing the accounts in the established media.62 Documented police excesses
at the time of the G20 meetings in Toronto in June 2010 have been reported, and here
again the alternate media have had an important role in keeping up the pressure for
accountability.63
6. The human factor must not be forgotten. The ability to summon up a lot of in-
depth material is not the equivalent of reading it carefully and digesting it. Staring at a
screen is less pleasurable than holding a book or newspaper in one’s hand. A reaction
against this mode of information access may be setting in, as people ask themselves
why they are spending so much time indoors watching a screen, perhaps developing
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health problems with eyes glued to the imagery and text for such extended periods.
Another point to consider is that while contact is possible with people worldwide, it
is also mediated contact. That does not matter so much when we contact people we
already know, but those we meet only through the Internet seem less likely to inspire
the same confidence and trust than those we meet in person. We do not have access to
the facial cues and body language that accompany expression of ideas.
Participation even in local political discussion groups dissipates as the computer
with its Internet access ceases to be a toy and becomes an accepted tool of every-
day life, demanding time and energy perhaps spent more productively elsewhere.
Although the Internet makes useful information easily available to activists, they may
feel pressured to disseminate and act upon the new information, leading some who
engage in this type of work to regret the amount of time consumed. This phenomenon
is not new, but it becomes more threatening when involvement is increased.
In the first edition of this book, we noted that interesting information about
the kind of people who get information from the Internet had been provided by the
Annenberg Public Policy Center, as reported in a column by Jeffrey Simpson for the
Globe and Mail. Surveying 48,000 people during the first six months of 2000, this study found that those using the Internet for political information tended to be men who
earned a median income of $57,500. Only 20 per cent of those interviewed said they got
their news online, 45 per cent having Internet access but not using it for news, the other
35 per cent not having any access to the Internet at al .64 This profile, we then wrote, does not encourage the thought that the Internet is rapidly radicalizing the population.
Much has changed since the 2000 figures were reported. A 2012 study by the Pew
Internet Project examining the demographics of Internet social networking reported
that 92 per cent of Internet users in the 18 to 29 age bracket were also users of social
networking sites.65 The number decreased steadily with older population segments,
and only 38 per cent of the 65+ age category (sometimes known as “silver surfers”)
were social media users. The change since 2005 has been dramatic. The highest bracket
of social networking site users at that time was only 9 per cent, followed by 7 per cent
and 6 per cent in the 30 to 49 and 50 to 64 age brackets respectively, with apparently
a negligible number of silver surfers. Current social networking usage by white, black,
and Hispanics differs little, with numbers, respectively of 68, 68, and 72 per cent.
The study also notes that 75 per cent of women were using social networking sites,
compared with 63 per cent of men. Women also use social networking more than
men, with 54 per cent of them likely to be using it on a given day compared to 42 per
cent of male Internet users.66 These demographics help to explain Barack Obama’s win
over Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, since the latter’s policies and pronouncements
tended to be more unpopular with demographics (young people and women particu-
larly) that were more prone to communicate through the social media. Old-style mass
media could allow some gaffes to be forgotten, and they would fade in the public
mind. But social media continue to keep such things resonating right up until the time
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to cast a vote. Moreover, social media can be particularly useful for reminding people to vote, in addition to reminding them of why they should vote in a certain way.
7. A final problem impeding the development of a democratic Internet is the threat of
increasing government intrusion into private communications. Fear of terrorism has
resulted in a public more accepting of government surveillance, not thinking about
the impact this would have on our overall consciousness. Government legislation has
been introduced in Canada under the Orwellian name “Lawful Access.” This sounds
very good and acceptable until one realizes that what it means is that wire-tapping
and other forms of hitherto illegal eavesdropping without a warrant will be made legal
under the new legislation. Fortunately, civil liberties groups are well aware of what is
involved and are communicating their concerns to the public. But this issue remains
to be played out in the political and judicial arenas.
Since part of the problem with democratizing the Internet comes from the ways
in which PR techniques can be adapted to this new medium, part of the solution
will consist in the general population becoming familiar with different techniques
of propaganda and persuasion. For this reason, it is appropriate to turn our attention
to procedures for recognizing and analyzing such techniques, which are, of course,
applicable to the whole range of media and not just the Internet. Some have existed
for centuries or millennia, but the arrival of the Internet has introduced a wider scope
of application. Some techniques, such as digital enhancement, are new, but the related
ethical concerns and principles involved share common ground with, for instance, a
Renaissance portrait artist’s falsification of a subject’s attributes.
Wikileaks
One development with a high potential for democratizing society is the arrival of
WikiLeaks. This is the name given to the mechanism devised by Julian Assange and
others whereby those with access to secret government or corporate documents (legiti-
mately or through hacking) are provided with the means for exposing them anony-
mously on the Internet. Whereas whistleblowers in the past might have contemplated
exposing government or corporate wrongdoing, they knew their own careers usually
would suffer, sometimes terminating abruptly. With anonymity, this strong deterrent
to whistleblowing is removed. The benefits from enabling timely exposure of official
deceptions can be enormous, such as avoidance of a costly and ill-fated war. Daniel
Ellsberg, who leaked official documents that contradicted the optimistic claims from
US military leaders about progress in the V
ietnam War, wishes he had done so earlier
to greater effect. Not surprisingly, he has expressed support for the WikiLeaks expo-
sures alleged to have been provided by Private Bradley Manning.67
There are ethical problems connected with WikiLeaks, or Anonymous, or any
similar hacker successor group. Ellsberg was a name with a face, standing accountable
for his actions. By contrast, the Wikileaker is anonymous and not accountable. The
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potential for irresponsible mischief is there, checked only by those in the group who act as gatekeepers preventing such abuse. Assange’s dissemination of hundreds of thousands of military dispatches, “The War Logs,” from Afghanistan and Iraq, and their
selective publication in the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel in late July 2010 led to expressions of outrage in some official quarters.68
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich said publication of the
WikiLeaks documents on Afghanistan should be considered an “unconscionable”
act of treason.69 Tom Flanagan, a former senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister
Stephen Harper, reacted to leaks of diplomatic correspondence a few months later by
saying he thought it would be fitting to have Assange assassinated. Later he retracted
his “glib” remark, but the full set of words, though stated jocularly, suggests a serious
edge at the time he made them.70 US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called
Assange “a high-tech terrorist” who “has done enormous damage to our country.”71
These are very serious charges, and the potential for major harm certainly exists.
But the charges and related ethical questions need to be seen in a broader context. We
live in a highly propagandized environment. PR and advertising, combined with corpo-
rate ownership of the mass media, have greatly influenced how we think and what we
think. Lobbyists for major corporations abound in the corridors of power. Their aim is
to get the most favourable treatment for their company and its profits, without neces-
sarily being concerned about maximizing the public interest. PR advisors alert clients
to the dangers of bad publicity and suggest ways of discrediting sources of negative
publicity.72 Just as information is power, one can see power trying to control informa-
tion. George Orwell prophetically described the coming of a surveillance society, where
different layers of intimidation discourage departure from groupthink.73 With increas-
ing brazenness, it seems, facts are distorted and images manipulated to accomplish
government or corporate objectives. The most conspicuous example, as we have seen at
the end of the last chapter, was the US buildup to the Iraq war. Members of the Bush
administration were quite prepared to do their own leaking to the press, not only on
policy matters but also apparently as a kind of punishment, as exemplified by the outing
of Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative. Her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former US
diplomat, had written a New York Times opinion piece debunking the government’s
claim that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium for weapons use from Niger.74
The point is not that WikiLeaks can be justified in meeting wrongdoing with
wrongdoing, which would be false. The point is that public servants who see wrongdo-
ing—and that includes misleading the public in order to gain support for war—can
be justified in using WikiLeaks as a way of exposing this wrongdoing when no other
recourse is open to them. They have an obligation to obey their superiors, but they
also are sworn to uphold their country’s constitution and the rule of law, including
international law. They cannot allow themselves to be party to illegal and immoral
behaviour on the part of their superiors. An analogous truth holds for people who
work in corporations that engage in unlawful behaviour, whether dishonest financial
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dealings, safety or health violations, or the like. The possibility of a person engaging in legitimate whistleblowing without ending his or her career has a huge potential for
regaining a measure of democracy in a society where lack of accountability is rampant.
Here the established media may not always co-operate, but we have seen how with the
communications networks of the Internet, they may be bypassed, so that they become
pressured into co-operating in a way they would not have done in pre-Internet days.75
PRoPAgAnDA AnALySIS
Various suggestions for systematic propaganda analysis have been made elsewhere, and
these can be usefully applied to the analysis of materials on the Internet. The following
are pertinent questions to ask.
What Is the Source?
This is the most important question. Who is the real author of a given message?
Unless we know who the source is, we cannot make an adequate appraisal of the like-
lihood of authority against possible bias. Getting to the original source of an idea can
be difficult but also telling. Someone expresses a startling idea or notable fact, which
we discover had been printed in the morning’s newspaper. How did the article come
to appear in the paper? Was it from a press release? Who provided the press release?
Was it from government or industry? Was it from an industry “think tank”? How
open is the newspaper to covering “think tank” materials from institutions of a dif-
ferent political persuasion? Even events may have been subject to control for their PR
impact. What influences may have been behind the timing of a given event? If there
is a story about a group protest, we want to know whether this is a genuine expression
of concern by informed citizens, or whether this is a group artificially created by com-
mercial interests to fight grassroots opposition. Sometimes a group protesting clear
cutting of a forest does not consist of environmental activists but is a “fair environmen-
tal practices” group, covertly sponsored by the industry, which seeks nice-sounding,
but ineffective, constraints to clear cutting.
What Is the Message?
When we look for propaganda, we have the obvious job of asking what messages are
being propagated. Not all messages are straightforward and may contain subtexts not
stated but insinuated in the main message. Remember the point made in Chapter 3
that a barrage of facts, truthful in themselves, may nevertheless create a false impres-
sion. By noting the source, the less obvious message can be seen. The fact that a doc-
tor has left Canada to work in the United States can be presented to suggest either
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that Canada’s health system is no good and should be privatized or that Canada’s health system should be better supported with public money. Or it could have no
significance at al : the doctor has decided that he or she has put up with one blizzard
too many. So in asking the question “What is the message?,” we need to differentiate
between direct message and the sub-text—what is presupposed in, and reinforced by,
the message and its implication (conclusions
the message recipient reaches on the basis
of earlier conditioning).
Who Stands to gain?
The old Latin watchword “Cui bono” (“to whom the good”) should always be part
of any propaganda analysis. It can be the clue to identifying the source when that is
unknown. If the source is known, it may help to uncover hidden alliances between
source and beneficiary of a message. The Internet has made it much easier to verify the
ownership structure of the various media and the related business interests that might
benefit from slanting of the news. It allows for speedy determination of the names of
those involved in a conglomerate, along with their other connections.
Techniques Used to Impart the Message
Propaganda analysis seeks to spell out the methods used to impart a message. The wide
array of tools involved include the rhetorical analysis we have encountered from the
Institute for Propaganda Analysis (see Chapter 3) and many similar proposals. There is
the phenomenon of orchestration, whereby a planned assault on many different media
at the same time conveys to the receiver the idea of unquestionable truth. Is repetition
part of what helps to get the message accepted? Is the recipient bombarded with more
information than he or she can deal with in a critical state of mind? Is the message
presented in a way that “piggybacks” on some favoured cause or personality popular
at the moment? Is the piggybacking legitimate, or is it artificial in the sense of twisting
facts to give a false appearance of connected interests? If the message is communicated
through a news story, ask whether the news is genuinely important or whether its
value is doubtful. If the latter, it is legitimate to look for possible extraneous reasons
for appearance of the message. Was it free copy for the editor, supplied by industry or
government? Is there significant advertising in the media outlet to suggest favouring
the message supplier? Are there connections between the media ownership and the
interests supported by the message? It is not stretching the word “technique” to see it
applied to the practice of providing lavish tourist accommodation to a freelance writer
in order to encourage a favourable write-up of some travel destination. It is up to the
