The creation of strategic narratives within the media has become the bedrock of communication in business, politics and warfare. Modern social media has become so powerful that it has enabled society to communicate in ways unseen before. Over the past decade, contemporary media professionals have created a propaganda that has the power to shape warfare and opinions and influence political outcomes. These professionals work on and off the battlefield with politicians, militaries and intelligence agencies to strategize a global media landscape. This process of media production has mastered perception management. This has created a tension between media professionals; those who produce news stories out of liberation, and those who produce stories to control. The contemporary media professional should be able to navigate the cultural complexity of contemporary globalized media landscapes to create alternative rationalities, versus alternative realities.
This ideology that the media has the power to create an alternative reality globally is best represented now more than ever in the Middle East. Ronald Reagan first took office as the President of the United States in 1981, just when the country was beginning to feel targeted by forces of international terrorism. Americans then began to feel more vulnerable, as more tragic events were taking place internationally. Reagan’s political strategy to win over his country was to create a villain, so he could be a hero with the help of the media. This is when the media and the rest of society was introduced to Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, who was the leader of Libya at the time. American media perceived Qaddafi as an adversary who wanted war and who was responsible for terrorist attacks such as the Lockerbie bombing, despite the proof provided by an Al Jazeera TV documentary that claims Iran was guilty for the bombing. The American Government’s involvement with Qaddafi is an example of how the media has the power to create a perception of the mind, despite facts or any sense of reality. The fake reality became so predominant because of the media that teachers, musicians, PR reps and the rest of society began to believe that Colonel Gaddafi actually was a war hero after always being perceived as an evil dictator. This is when the Western World got the idea that if you remove the figurehead, such as Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, the Middle East would act as a regular, functioning, democratic society. This achievement from the media was the highest level of perception management; turning a man from a villain to a hero of democracy.
In the Western World, people are so far removed from the reality of war that they turn to the TV or the internet for answers. Society soon learned that you could organize people without the exercise of authority and power, and this quietly became a revolution. For example, in 2011, Egypt had a massive revolution and demonstrated resistance by demanding the overthrow of Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. This revolution began on Facebook, when an accidental activist, Ghonim, shared a frustration online that immediately became viral. This uprising gained international attention and the idea of manipulating and shaping politics into anything you want it to be was an ideology that also birthed in modern times by politicians such as Vladimir Putin. Political shapeshifting became so unstoppable because the media perceived it to be undeniable. Vladislav Surkov, who helped create Vladimir Putin’s campaign, was previously obsessed with and studied theatre and took these avant-garde theatre-like ideas and used them in politics. This turned Russia into a bewildering piece of theatre, which in the beginning seemingly backed up every group that was circulating on cyberspace and creating its own sense of revolution. He used both media and social media to create a platform that no one actually knew what was fake and what was real. This was a strategy of power that confuses any opposition, while the real power was hidden behind the stage.
Then we have Trump. Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and his current presidency, are the perfect showcase of mind manipulation in Western media. During his campaign, most of the facts that Trump asserted were just untrue. For example, Trump said, and repeated this claim four times, that a “new spirit of optimism is sweeping our country: in just a few months, we have made record investments in our military that will protect the safety of our people and enhance the security of our wonderful friends and allies,” during his speech on terrorism and Islam in May 21st, 2017. The fact of the matter is, according to the Associated Press, that the “10 percent increase he called for in his March budget (2017) outline has been exceeded three times in recent history.” Trump is unbothered by the fact that he leads the media to spew lies, because he and his audience know that little of what he says has anything to do with reality. The journalists covering Trump and his presidency believe that their job is find out the hidden truth about him, but this has now become irrelevant.
Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert proposed a standard model to show how people react when they are lied to. Gilbert believes, “that the human mind when faced with shortages of time or conclusive evidence may fail to accept the ideas that they involuntarily accept during comprehension.” This supports the idea that our current society is so overwhelmed with potential lies from the media that eventually our brains stop trying to make sense of it. On top of that, the only journalists that are permitted and allowed at his Administrations’ press conferences are the ones who are working for a conservative organisation. This creates a different dynamic between Trump and the media globally.
Media practices are more distorted now than ever before, and society has the perception that the press is either meant to antagonize or contradict people in power. This new fear within society with the help of the media and our relationship with technology, turned the reality of modern politics to something meant to be manipulated and shaped into anything. This leads to a society of fake news and doomed campaigns that quickly turn into a world of reality. This new world of fear and anxiety has completely corrupted society’s mind, and spread uncertainty and doubt within Western Politics and the media. The once stabilized structure that kept journalism in touch with reality has been blurred into a sea of rationality, on a foundation of fear and lost hope with the larger powers that rule all of globalization.
