Is anyone else sick of the constant media barrage/changing media narratives built to fulfil unbeknownst agendas? (1 Viewer)

[souli]

I don't know if this is just because we've studied 1984 and I suddenly have become super critical of society and mass media, but I can't help but feel frustrated; especially after reading the thread about the Israel/Palestine conflict on here...


I can't understand how these narratives keep coming up to everyone on the mass media; why do we consume them and allow ourselves to be emotionally impacted and ultimately.. what are we being distracted from? Why does the mass media keep distracting the population? (The constant media barrage is truly reminiscent of the Two Minutes of Hate!! Aren't we truly like Winston, told one week we're at 'war' with a metaphorical 'Eastasia' and the next 'Eurasia', and told something else??)


Take the COVID pandemic. The government locked us down, forcibly, displayed daily broadcasts of statistics and deaths and pushed a vaccine surrounded by mystery and facts that weren't always true about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID vaccine. -> Made mandatory for the majority of the population and thus the media portrayed a narrative encouraging anger/bias towards the people who didn't get vaccinated for reasons of XYZ, blaming them for transmissions, stating the. I'm not going to take sides here, but I feel it became clear at certain points what the agenda of the daily broadcasts were, and how they were ultimately dividing society, spreading hate towards certain groups (in this case vaccinated VS unvaccinated).


What about the sudden change in narrative towards an anti-China tirade? What happened to the narrative being espoused of persecution of Ughyur Muslims and Christians in China due to their faith? Followed by the Hong Kong/China issue and rising tensions between Australia and China... threats of war? Increasing our navy capacity, etc? Increased military ads on TV? Then we started hearing about the Russia Ukraine conflict. (A whole other issue in itself.. considering the anti-Russia campaign; [ignoring of the military base on Russia's doorstep which the US wanted but Russia didn't..] that has existed forever by Western media. That stretched on for how long?) (Of which we don't see in the media anywhere, speaking of)


Why did the issue about China just appear and disappear out of nowhere? Why did this anti-China media narrative stop being played? If we had such bad relations with China, the majority of where Australian migrants come from, how did the narrative switch in a few months to increasing immigration to our country to 5 million by year X?


Then all we would hear about was an impending recession, the slowing economy, people can't afford their home loans, they have to move out of Sydney, people aren't in a position to afford to purchase houses, let alone find somewhere to rent? How people can't afford their groceries, let alone mortgages, etc? Then the anger at the class issues began! What happened to the plan to bring 5 million into the nation, into the current housing crisis, where we can't seem to afford anything anyway? And what happened to the broadcasting of interest rates being central to the media? All the economic news? Disappeared!!


Now everything has been dropped for the Israel/Palestine conflict. Most people I know have an anti-Palestine view. Yet the media continues with a Pro-Israel narrative. And what happens? Everyone becomes angry and frustrated not only at ISRAEL (with the exception of people with various viewpoints.. even better, a bigger target for division within society!!) with the MEDIA itself, with our country for taking the side of XYZ. And within a few months we'll have another narrative to follow and a different group of people to be angry with and distract us from something else!!


My question is, surely I cannot be the only one who notices this endless tirade of division by the media, constantly shifting narrative and hate towards XYZ, a new issue every week, every month, an obvious distraction to whatever is going on. How long are we going to be oblivious (or pretend to be!!) to this obvious pattern? But what exactly are we being distracted from? How do we separate this convoluted mess by the media to rev up the population to what we should truly be aware of and focus on?


TLDR; media keeps changing narratives constantly, shifting just like the party in 1984 and everyone just goes along with it. What are we being distracted from?


PS. Sorry for the long rant, but it's super duper frustrating that we keep following with this unknown agenda?? And nobody talks about it? What is the agenda? Why are we allowing ourselves to be manipulated by mass media?

 

[its_ace21]

well said my friend. reason why i dont look at news/media as much as i used to (only looked at it for legal but now thats done)

 

[its_ace21]

ngl i dont believe the media anymore, and i dont care what happens in our society

 

[souli]

well said my friend. reason why i dont look at news/media as much as i used to (only looked at it for legal but now thats done)

Me too. I used to watch the news, read the news, but now I try to avoid it as much as I can. It still definitely works its way into our lives, like through the radio, advertising, conversations, etc, so it's hard to avoid. And I feel like you don't really even NEED to watch the news.. everything becomes the same with a different name..

 

[Rattlehead15]

My take is that, we are a peaceful society and as such there is nothing too crazy going on. Especially in Australia. Everything is so ordinary that we are constantly looking for drama, as part of our human nature. Our senses tell us to be alert because in the wild, we had to look out for threats, predators, worry about what to eat, hunting, etc. Every day we would need to worry about all of this. But now we live extremely boring lives, in a country with no active threats like those found in nature. Sometimes the biggest task we have to do in a given day is go to the shops to grab a loaf of bread.

That being said, we subconsciously crave that primal instinct for awareness. Though there is no danger, we want to be aware of it naturally even if it isn't there because only the most aware humans in the wild would survive. This is why we become glued to conflicts and international news, even if its from the other side of the planet. The media knows this, its textbook media skills to draw attention by covering conflicts, fights, terrorism, bombings, shootings, etc. But none of that happens on our way to the grocery store here in Australia. So instead, we become media addicts and consume all kinds of shocking news from conflicts happening in the real world. We satisfy our primal desire for awareness of threats by, well, making up the threats in the first place. By gluing our eyes to what's happening in Israel/Palestine. By keeping up with school shootings in America and, for whatever reason, trying to make ourselves involved in the debates going on there. Isn't it ironic that the US elections are televised just as much as the Australian ones. When you go on social media and consume content, most of it is chaos from abroad.

Essentially, to satisfy our primal desire for awareness and knowledge of threats that is made obsolete by our modern lifestyles, we try to simulate threats and surround ourselves with media that covers war and horrors and doom to satisfy this itch that's been numbed by the safety and boredom of the modern day in Australia or any relatively safe society with nothing going on that puts us in immediate danger.

Just editing to add here: This in my opinion somewhat contributes to the apparant epidemic of social media/information/news addiction.

 

[AsuTeksu]

I think it plays a role that people confine themselves to one side of the media. I don’t know many people that take it upon themselves to look at what other information is out there and make a decision for themselves. Several individuals settle for the first thing that they are told without reflecting on their own beliefs, values or morals, or even daring to go against what is being told.

It doesn’t help either when people remain close-minded and don’t try to take up the opportunity to see why it is that people hold up such views. We can’t just shut down people's opinions just because they don’t align with our own. That’s like saying people's feelings are not valid because it’s not what we feel ourselves.

Personally, I deleted social media a while ago. The content it presents is just all blurred and filtered these days. I just can’t tolerate it and it’s a shame to see people polluted by it.

I’m very appreciative of your initiative to create a thread about this. It’s refreshing to see, quite frankly.

As someone who has also read 1984, I believe the reading may have sparked your interest in starting this, although, I do not believe your feelings stemmed from it. I think it just provided some sort of reassurance that what you are feeling is shared amongst several others.

 

[its_ace21]

i stopped believing in the media after covid one article saying it comes from bats, another saying it was man-made, another saying it was created to control the world population, another saying America spread it to China first. crazy stuff

 

[Trebla]

Well for starters, you have to consume media/news from somewhere? Or would you prefer to live in a bubble where everyone is sunshine, lollypops and rainbows? Or worse, consume media that is only appealing to your existing beliefs/biases (e.g. from social media) and not something more balanced?

On the emotional/distraction impact, I feel that is in eye of beholder. At the end of the day you are in control of your own media consumption. A good skill to have is the ability to differentiate between the facts and the interpretation of the facts. Most media present their interpretation of the facts. If you can analytically decipher the underlying objective facts when presented with someone’s interpretation of them (even better if you can pick up the nuances people often miss) then this whole “media narrative” thing is irrelevant and you simply just have everything you need to be informed about the news. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[SadCeliac]

TLDR; media keeps changing narratives constantly, shifting just like the party in 1984 and everyone just goes along with it. What are we being distracted from?

atp especially with the whole Israel-in-the-media, it feels like it's just one persons propaganda against another persons propaganda, and nobody is bothered to even attempt to see the whole image. I'm equally frustrated by all this

 

[Trebla]

i stopped believing in the media after covid one article saying it comes from bats, another saying it was man-made, another saying it was created to control the world population, another saying America spread it to China first. crazy stuff

I think it is unwise to assume there is such thing as an absolute truth. These should always be seen as a piece of evidence based on what we know today to support a theory. New information may come about that supports another theory and this is simply the scientific process in action (think about how scientific theories have evolved over time). It is not a function of someone not telling the “truth”. It’s just what they hypothesise is happening based on the limited data they have at the time.

There are competing theories and at best you can only say one is more likely to be true than another (i.e. the real world works in grey probabilities not black and white). No one actually conclusively knows what really happened but it is unfortunate that some people completely miss that nuance and take something that is likely as an absolute “truth”.

 

[SadCeliac]

I think it is unwise to assume there is such thing as an absolute truth. These should always be seen as a piece of evidence based on what we know today to support a theory. New information may come about that supports another theory and this is simply the scientific process in action (think about how scientific theories have evolved over time).

There are competing theories and at best you can only say one is more likely to be true than another (i.e. the real world works in grey probabilities not black and white). No one actually conclusively knows what really happened but it is unfortunate that some people completely miss that nuance and take something that is likely as an absolute “truth”.

Adding to this, we're entitled to our own opinions but I think we should always try see the entire picture rather than spotlighting the news that fits our own arguments.

 

[carrotsss]

People buy more things and are more invested in reading media when they have strong emotions. As businesses, the logical move for media companies is to promote issues that make people emotional - for a recent example, with the Israel-Palestine conflict, people are invested and watching/reading more media about it, hence giving them more money both from increased viewership and increased ad conversion. The media nexus as a whole don’t care what you think about these relatively non-important issues (to us as Australians) like Israel/Palestine or Russia-Ukraine. It’s about getting you emotionally invested in some side, and issues like this are extremely lucrative for media companies because they can stoke intense emotions without any danger of having an impact on real issues within our country.