Big Brother-in-Law is watching - a clarification on conspiracy
Well, the internet being what it is, one never knows who might be reading. Perhaps I should get one of those site counters that were so popular back in the late 90s. Detailed comments are so rare that I usually get back to them immediately, but I've been rather busy dissertating so I haven't had a spare moment to respond.
Conspiracy theory is kind of an intereting concept in our language and culture inextricably wound up with urban legends writ large, and for some reason strongly suggestive of some of the stranger elements of middle American subculture, with Roswell, the moon landings and JFK among the most important markers. The history of the phenomenon is much wider, of course - variations on the theme of conspiratorial Jewish leaders being possibly the longest running example, at least in 'Western' culture. The tin-foil hat variety associated with postwar America seems to have been given a considerable boost by what - by most accounts - was a rather sloppy, unprobing US government report on the 9/11 attacks (although it must be said, the conspiracy theories long predate the report, with unsubstantiated rumours that almost no Jews turned up for work at the WTC that day appearing within a week of the events). In any case, conspiracy theories of the Roswell variety are becoming more popular again, with Charlie Sheen absolutely determined that something is definitely up with the US government's story on 9/11, and Spike Lee's forthcoming documentary on hurricane Katrina loaded with allegations from eye-witnesses that some levees in New Orleans were bombed.
The response of most reasonable people to tales like this is that whichever elements within the US government are supposed secretly to have perpetrated it surely do not have the wherewithall or co-ordination to pull off the job so cleanly. If the Pentagon could orchestrate the JFK cover-up in order to clear the way for escalation in Vietnam, why were they unable to save Nixon's neck from the (much less scandellous) Watergate controversy, which knocked the whole thing on the head?
It all just pieces together too nicely, most of the time, and politicians tend to be much more prone to bungling things, and then changing the subject than carrying out anything seriously seditious in secret.
So "conspiracy theory" becomes a nice label to attach to things which look a little too convenient (or just plainly unlikely) in order to discredit them without engaging with them. This isn't always a bad option: I've tried and tried to engage with the "9/11 truth" folks, but there's always more evidence from some "expert" or other whose credibility cannot easily be judged, so that the whole thing ends up seeming like too much of a waste of time for it to be worth getting to the bottom of.
What's important is to recognise the conceptual distinction between a conspiracy theory, and analysis about what we might, for the sake of brevity, describe as 'structure.'
The media provides a useful example, partly because it's been studied pretty well, and partly because it relates closely to the subject under discussion - advertising and branding. One way of studying the media is to examine the institutional structures, ask what one would expect them to produce, and then compare some evidence.
If we note that the primary consumers in the media industry are advertisers (see previous post), we can expect their interests to be paramount. If we note that the media is a concentrated industry, dominated by monopolistic, multi-national corporations, then we can expect that those making editorial decisions will have a world-view which does not seriously conflict with being in the top levels of management of such a company - if they did, how long would they last in their jobs? If we believe at least some of the public relations industry's own hype, we can appreciate how easy it is to set the news agenda by 'planting stories,' a common technique, used most extensively by government, who provide journalists with information about certain topics, and not others, depriving journalists of the required sources to write about other stories - you go with the piece that lets you include quotes from a government minister, not the one you can't substantiate.
This does not constitute a conspiracy theory, because there is no conspiracy at work. It is simply a matter of trying to detatch oneself from the situation for a moment, look at how the whole business is structured, and then come up with some guesses about what one would expect to find. Studies of these matters tend to confirm these expectations pretty well. Adopting an "ideal type" approach, deviations, exceptions, and examples which do not fit may dilute the explanatory power of the model, but do not discredit it, and are to be expected. In a rather more complicated and subjective procedure, "dissenting views" will often be found to fall within particular parameters, with an apparent range of views which in fact very rarely deviate from a rather narrow range gives the impression of a lively, questioning media.
An interesting example is the criticism of the Iraq war. This is hardly uncommon - but what are the bases? A comparison of the number of articles describing the war as misjudged, a failure, too costly, and impossible task versus those describing it as a war crime for which our leaders would be hanged if the prevailing standards of international law (set out at Nuremberg) were applied, hardly need be conducted. Conspiracy? Or rather what we would reasonably, sensibly expect from a media structured the way it is? Making the distinction has the advantage of opening an important debate, hardly reliant on obscure "experts," but which can be conducted on whatever level you like, using easily available resources.
*The basic ideas expressed here are set out (much more articulately) in a good introductory essay by Noam Chomsky, "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?" A slightly longer version of the same argument was given in a talk called "The Journalist from Mars" and fleshed out with examples in Edward Herman's book "Manufacturing Consent" and Chomsky's even denser 'Necessary Illusions"
Conspiracy theory is kind of an intereting concept in our language and culture inextricably wound up with urban legends writ large, and for some reason strongly suggestive of some of the stranger elements of middle American subculture, with Roswell, the moon landings and JFK among the most important markers. The history of the phenomenon is much wider, of course - variations on the theme of conspiratorial Jewish leaders being possibly the longest running example, at least in 'Western' culture. The tin-foil hat variety associated with postwar America seems to have been given a considerable boost by what - by most accounts - was a rather sloppy, unprobing US government report on the 9/11 attacks (although it must be said, the conspiracy theories long predate the report, with unsubstantiated rumours that almost no Jews turned up for work at the WTC that day appearing within a week of the events). In any case, conspiracy theories of the Roswell variety are becoming more popular again, with Charlie Sheen absolutely determined that something is definitely up with the US government's story on 9/11, and Spike Lee's forthcoming documentary on hurricane Katrina loaded with allegations from eye-witnesses that some levees in New Orleans were bombed.
The response of most reasonable people to tales like this is that whichever elements within the US government are supposed secretly to have perpetrated it surely do not have the wherewithall or co-ordination to pull off the job so cleanly. If the Pentagon could orchestrate the JFK cover-up in order to clear the way for escalation in Vietnam, why were they unable to save Nixon's neck from the (much less scandellous) Watergate controversy, which knocked the whole thing on the head?
It all just pieces together too nicely, most of the time, and politicians tend to be much more prone to bungling things, and then changing the subject than carrying out anything seriously seditious in secret.
So "conspiracy theory" becomes a nice label to attach to things which look a little too convenient (or just plainly unlikely) in order to discredit them without engaging with them. This isn't always a bad option: I've tried and tried to engage with the "9/11 truth" folks, but there's always more evidence from some "expert" or other whose credibility cannot easily be judged, so that the whole thing ends up seeming like too much of a waste of time for it to be worth getting to the bottom of.
What's important is to recognise the conceptual distinction between a conspiracy theory, and analysis about what we might, for the sake of brevity, describe as 'structure.'
The media provides a useful example, partly because it's been studied pretty well, and partly because it relates closely to the subject under discussion - advertising and branding. One way of studying the media is to examine the institutional structures, ask what one would expect them to produce, and then compare some evidence.
If we note that the primary consumers in the media industry are advertisers (see previous post), we can expect their interests to be paramount. If we note that the media is a concentrated industry, dominated by monopolistic, multi-national corporations, then we can expect that those making editorial decisions will have a world-view which does not seriously conflict with being in the top levels of management of such a company - if they did, how long would they last in their jobs? If we believe at least some of the public relations industry's own hype, we can appreciate how easy it is to set the news agenda by 'planting stories,' a common technique, used most extensively by government, who provide journalists with information about certain topics, and not others, depriving journalists of the required sources to write about other stories - you go with the piece that lets you include quotes from a government minister, not the one you can't substantiate.
This does not constitute a conspiracy theory, because there is no conspiracy at work. It is simply a matter of trying to detatch oneself from the situation for a moment, look at how the whole business is structured, and then come up with some guesses about what one would expect to find. Studies of these matters tend to confirm these expectations pretty well. Adopting an "ideal type" approach, deviations, exceptions, and examples which do not fit may dilute the explanatory power of the model, but do not discredit it, and are to be expected. In a rather more complicated and subjective procedure, "dissenting views" will often be found to fall within particular parameters, with an apparent range of views which in fact very rarely deviate from a rather narrow range gives the impression of a lively, questioning media.
An interesting example is the criticism of the Iraq war. This is hardly uncommon - but what are the bases? A comparison of the number of articles describing the war as misjudged, a failure, too costly, and impossible task versus those describing it as a war crime for which our leaders would be hanged if the prevailing standards of international law (set out at Nuremberg) were applied, hardly need be conducted. Conspiracy? Or rather what we would reasonably, sensibly expect from a media structured the way it is? Making the distinction has the advantage of opening an important debate, hardly reliant on obscure "experts," but which can be conducted on whatever level you like, using easily available resources.
*The basic ideas expressed here are set out (much more articulately) in a good introductory essay by Noam Chomsky, "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream?" A slightly longer version of the same argument was given in a talk called "The Journalist from Mars" and fleshed out with examples in Edward Herman's book "Manufacturing Consent" and Chomsky's even denser 'Necessary Illusions"
posted by UK plc at 8:31 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home