Why did the Left Fail the Covid Test So Badly?
Note: Contrary to this site’s policy of not republishing work from other sites, which has been in effect for several years, this exception is a must. It is…
Tag: propaganda
Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson on Social Engineering
Interview by Emma Briant https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/social-engineering Emma Briant: Cambridge Analytica often pitched their methods as a contemporary digital marketing firm –…
After a Year of Being Locked Down
Nobody (as far as I know) has commented on how hard this year of lockdowns has been on university professors. That’s good: nobody should. Many millions of workers…
Decálogo de dictadores: cuando el poder se ejerce desde la violencia
Hace un par de meses me llamaron la atención una serie de documentales del Discovery Channel, sobre cómo todas las dictaduras más férreas de la historia seguían un…
Goodbye “American Greatness”
Part 3 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. Indispensable. Here was the so-called “indispensable nation,” the self-appointed saviour of the world, with generations of its leaders and thinkers…
From Hollywood to Hitler: Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Propaganda
What is propaganda? What does cinema reveal about the Third Reich and its people? What are German films about during the Third Reich? What do they reveal? And…
Der Westen und die Hongkong-Proteste – Kritik aus der chinesischen Netzgemeinde
Medien und Politik im Westen haben die Demonstrationen in Hongkong von Anfang an kritisch begleitet. Die jeweiligen Standpunkte und Aktivitäten werden auch in China aufmerksam verfolgt und rufen…
Krampfhaftes Kontrastsehen: Handke, Srebrenica und der Nobelpreis
Seit die Schwedische Akademie im Oktober 2019 verkündet hat, Peter Hanke den Nobelpreis zu verleihen, reisst Kritik an dieser Entscheidung nicht ab. Verdient Handke den Literaturnobelpreis? Verharmlos…
Girls, Groupies, and Grim Reapers: The Religious Politics of Mass Response
Following a week at the UN and ensuing climate change “protests” (state-sanctioned, party-approved, media-praised, university-endorsed, “protests”), in which we were yet agai…
America: Imagine an America without Her
What might world history have looked like if there had never been a United States, or if it ceased to exist before the 20th-century? Is “America” an “exceptional”…
The WikiLeaks Case: Democracy Dies in Empire
In the avalanche of news reports that have washed over the globe since the abduction of Julian Assange, this conversation struck me as containing numerous points of importance.…
US-manufactured Crisis in Venezuela: Creating a “Need” for Intervention
Eva Bartlett, reporting from Venezuela, is a freelance journalist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. See her website, In Gaza, for more of her work,…
Top Articles of 2018
As the year winds down, Anthropology News rounds up our most popular articles of 2018. From critical reflections on the discipline and experiences of it, to grappling with…
How “Fake News” Lost Its Meaning
Collins Dictionary named “fake news” its 2017 word of the year, an easy choice given the word’s “unprecedented usage increase” of 365 percent over the previous year. Collins…
A Theory of Propaganda for the Social Media Age
Intertextuality and the propagation of disinformation Propaganda typically refers to manipulative techniques and misleading messages used to gain public acquiescence for a political cause, especially …
Die guten Menschen von Sichuan: Alles nur fake?
Eine Reihe von guten Taten beschäftigt derzeit die chinesische Netzgemeinde. Ausgelöst wurde die Diskussion von einer Reihe Fotos, die besonders vorbildliches Verhalten chinesischer Bürger in der U-Ba…
Chasing their tails
Unpacking a local cultural meme on political corruption There’s a cultural meme circulating locally about the upcoming election. It’s on the radio and TV, in newspapers, and th…
Chasing their tails
Unpacking a local cultural meme on political corruption There’s a cultural meme circulating locally about the upcoming election. It’s on the radio and TV, in newspapers, and th…
Chasing their tails
Unpacking a local cultural meme on political corruption There’s a cultural meme circulating locally about the upcoming election. It’s on the radio and TV, in newspapers, and th…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
Spreading Alerts in Egypt and Elsewhere
When people keep getting warnings but nothing ever happens… they just start ignoring them. One of the interesting things about living as an expatriate in Egypt and India…
Realism or Iconography? The Pentagon’s Implicit Theory of Visual Representation
The following is an extract from my chapter, “A Flickr of Militarization: Photographic Regulation, Symbolic Consecration, and the Strategic Communication of ‘Good Intentions’,” published in Good Int…