The Century of the Self - Read and Watch Assignment

Purpose

This read and watch assignment offers a framework for understanding how those in authority in the 20th century built on the foundation of ancient civilizations to gain greater control over the masses. The assignment will raise awareness of bias and encourage you to analyze the media critically, thereby becoming better-informed citizens.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyze how propaganda shapes group consciousness.
• Apply ethical questions involving propaganda as they relate to historical and contemporary practices.
• Identify how cultural patterns are manufactured and used to influence society.

Instructions

The ‘manufacture of consent’ is an idea associated with Noam Chomsky. However, the phrase was actually coined by the American journalist and writer Walter Lippman in his influential book Public Opinion (1922). Lippman contended that, because the world is too complex for any individual to comprehend, a strong society needs people and institutions specialized in collecting data and creating the most accurate interpretations of reality. When used properly, this information should allow decisionmakers to ‘manufacture consent’ in the public interest. However, in one of the most damning critiques of democracy, Lippman identifies how public opinion is instead largely forged by political elites with self-serving interests – powerful people manipulating narratives to their own ends.

The videos presented in this assignment offer a brief overview into Edward Bernays’s and Walter Lippman’s legacy, starting with their rise of the importance of public opinion during the First World War, and extending into public relations, through an examination of why, a century, democracy still has a major mass-media problem. The videos also argue that the mass communication media outlets in the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship.

Watch the edited version of The Century of the Self Episode 2: Engineering Consent, The Fingerprints of Edward Bernays, The Crowd - Manufacturing Consent, and Walter Lippmann - Public Opinion. Consider the following  questions while watching the videos:

• How did American society become so selfish, trivial, materialistic, and enslaved to its bottom-most register of desires?

• What is one factor that enabled American businesses to gain dictatorial control over the public imagination?
• What are some of the ethical implications of the work of Edward Bernays? Are they morally neutral or would you say that what they were doing was right or wrong? Why?
• Explore the ways advertisers are still using Freudian techniques to manipulate us into buying things. (Identify one example.)
• Do you think these kinds of methods are being used politically regarding current American policy situations? (Identify one specific example.)
• Given the upcoming national election, do you see evidence that the ideas from the film being used by candidates, or interest groups, trying to gain political power? (Identify one specific example.)

Context

In the award-winning 2002 documentary produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation and directed and narrated by film maker Adam Curtis called The Century of the Self. Curtis describes the use of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis were used by his nephew Edward Bernays to influence a singular and unconscious Western culture.

Edward Louis Bernays was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of propaganda and public relations. He is referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations". Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life Magazine. One of his best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954. He worked for dozens of major American corporations including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and non-profit organizations.

Watch the video: The Century of the Self - Episode 2: Engineering Consent

As a complement to The Century of the Self video. Watch the following videos: The Fingerprints of Edward Bernays, The Crowd - Manufacturing Consent, and Walter Lippmann - Public Opinion. Develop answers to the following questions after watching the videos:

• Do the corporate media cover events in ways that favor the wealthy elite class?

• Do media and news outlets focus on stories that will benefit their advertisers?

• Why are we not taught to decode advertising?
• How are notions of identity and alterity constructed in cinema and literature?
• How do we scrutinize the ‘objectivity’ of a documentary to better understand ideological processes and analyze the corporate media?

Watch the video: Walter Lippmann - Public Opinion

Watch the video: The Crowd - Manufacturing Consent

Watch the video: The Fingerprints of Edward Bernays

Be prepared to engage in the class discussion about the messaging in the videos and your interpretations of relevance to communication, cultural patterns, and tradition.