--- On Wed, 8/19/09, M <myles.sussman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Doesn't this poll sort of argue against the idea that it's
> just plain old American common sense that makes people
> oppose health care reform? Talk about catapulting the
> propaganda! They managed to get half the population
> believing lies. That is an achievement that ought to merit
> an award (suitably designed to resemble a propaganda
> catapult of course)
>
[WS:] I do not think you can attribute that just to propaganda. First of all, I do not think that the public was bombarded with propaganda that drowned out all other voices. Instead, there was receptiveness to anti-government voices, even though such voices were not the only ones to be heard.
To put it in another way, corporate propaganda has little difficulty swaying public opinion in Amerika, whereas anti-business voices have a much harder time being heard. Left leaning media have audiences counted in thousands whereas right leaning media - in millions.
Therefore, mere existence of propaganda is not enough to explain public attitudes - you need also explain public receptiveness to that propaganda. For example, Soviet block countries were among most heavily propagandized, yet large segments of the public was not receptive to this particular propaganda claims. In other words, we need to focus not just on what is being said, but also on what is being heard.
My own view of the issue is that the receptiveness to corporate propaganda in the US has two roots. The first one is anti-intellectualism, both right and left. The pro-government or anti-corporate messages almost invariably have intellectual elitist aftertaste, if not over flavor - they are grounded in reasoned arguments and abstract concepts. The right wing and corporate propaganda, otoh, has almost populist gut-feeling flavor, and if it makes arguments to reason, it is mostly of the smart alec type. Since anti-intellectualism is deeply rooted in the US culture, as it has been argued on this list time and again, the public tends to be more receptive to right wing or corporate propaganda rather than its left-wing counter part.
The second root is that in the US, much more so than in most other countries, media consumption (radio, tv) tends to be a solitary rather than a collective activity. People often listen to the radio or T alone in the privacy of their cars, bedrooms, or ipods. As a result, the media contents is likely to be socially mediated and interpreted than in other countries, and thus taken for its face value. In many other countries, by contrast, media, especially the news tend to be consumed collectively, as a family or a circle of friends activity, and the contents is immediately commented and interpreted by the collectivity. Therefore, media messages, propagandistic or otherwise, are "filtered" through what sociologist call the stock knowledge particular to a social group and their original meaning often distorted or even altogether rejected if it does not conform to that stock knowledge.
In short, the US is probably the most propagandized society on the face of the earth - but that is a result of social structure and social belief system more than the mere effectiveness of propaganda.
Wojtek