" You talkin' to me ?!? "
- Before speaking of disinformation, however, one tends to forget that the term ' information' derives from the Latin 'to shape, mould'. And it is, objectively, often difficult to be totally objective
- Disinformation ( public broadcasting of knowingly false, biased, or deliberately incomplete information), as we said in the previous post, exists equally in the private sphere, although in that case we would more willingly call it 'manipulation', person to person, small group to small group
- Large scale disinformation has a more insidious, Kafkaesque profile, for it implies a structure, a system, within which the information has deliberately been concocted to deceive a group of citizens or rivals, particularly in business or politics. In reality, it represents an attempt to twist, more than to shape, the information in question
- When you speak to students about this disinformation, whether in advertising or politics, they shrug cynically, admitting and even accepting its existence. However, many unfortunately remain in the grip of 'newspeak' or 'adspeak' out of a lack of information, education or experience.
- Nevertheless, knowing it exists is a start. To study examples of propaganda, whether it be posters or film (WW1 German, Soviet, Nazi, McCarthy era American...), certainly permits greater critical awareness in the viewer
- Before examining disinformation in more detail, we need first to introduce the important notion of volume, destined to become information overload, which, like too much alcohol, dulls the senses and blunts critical thinking
- With advertising, the phenomenon is rather subtle, for although we receive too much information, its medium and form will vary according to the product or service; it may please, flatter, even amuse or, Heaven forbid ...inform !
- As Eric Clark stated in his book 'The Wantmakers' , the risk of manipulation resides not so much in the individual advertising message - more or less effective - but in the constant, massive barrage to which we are subjected in the 'developed' societies, an informational overdose whose profound societal consequences are yet to be calculated
- Probable results of the omnipresence of the advertising discourse : delinquency, debt, divorce, de-politicisation, depression...
(to be continued)
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