Fear Tactics // FMP

Oh boy isn’t everyone tired of hearing about Brexit and Trump but whatever, here I go.

Donald Trump is a fool and Brexit is our most foolish endeavour.  There, I said it.  Two of the most polarising subjects in the Western World at the moment.  The thoughts of American citizens lie with Trump, and ours are on Brexit.  There’s too much fear and sensationalist news articles for anyone to be able to know anything.  The Brexit campaign was based on some untruths (said through gritted teeth at the very least), but it worked.  Why?  How did a campaign with so few relative facts and figures win?  A red bus emblazoned with dodgy stats about raking in millions more pounds for the NHS has since proved to be lies, and it’s all turning out a little bit shit.  If the people up the top with degrees in Economics, Political Science, or EU Law had no idea whether to pick Leave or Stay, how are the UK peasant folk (this includes myself) expected to react?  They will react in the way that people normally do when threatened, which is to lash out and shun the outsiders (here meaning refugees and immigrants), and they voted for a solution based on border control ergo fewer immigrants ergo safer jobs/housing/money/banks etc., but we just know that’s not how it works.

Let’s take a quote from Hermann Goring on how to whip up the populous into voting for and putting their faith in something quite sinister.

“The people don’t want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.  This is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, ad denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.  It works the same in every country.”

Are the similarities not achingly similar?  God damn it’s too much.

Besides, for me this is all about how your personal position on a topic can be influenced, even without you realising.  It’s about personal preference and personal choice.  By encouraging the viewer to perceive the world through different eyes is that not how we reach greater levels of understanding?  Reading an infinite number of articles on Facebook that may or may not be true, I would argue is making us blind to the real facts of the matter.  Fundamentally we are all human beings with similar needs, and ultimately our position in this life is determined largely before we’re born.  But what if the viewer was encouraged to view or understand themselves in a different way?  In a way that meant that they understood their position in relation to a given topic based on something more real rather than fear tactics or frightening statistics that nobody quite understands?

After speaking with Matt, he said:

What’s missing from your email is the ‘what’.

What are your viewers being asked to position themselves on? Where’s the bit where your viewer empathises, and as a result, becomes uncomfortable?

Are you:

a) Creating an experience that promotes reflection on the nature of positioning and influence in general terms – i.e. the information content is predominantly factual, and maybe deals with stuff like cognitive bias, subliminal messaging, body language etc.

Viewers are directed around your way-finding points with simple exercises that illustrate some of these principles.

b) Creating an experience where the viewer is directed to position themselves within a topic, and the way-finding is more about you curating that personal journey for them.

c) A mix of the two, where the general principles behind your idea form the touch points for the viewer to position themselves on a topic.

I think for me the whole thing is about how to bring those things together.  It’s about how the audience understands it and reacts to it, which will be entirely different based on the viewer themselves.  By navigating through some story or map, I would like the outcome of this to promote questioning, or as a way-finding exercise through some overarching ‘story’.

Something that means people realise at the end that they have in fact made a choice, whether they were aware of it or not.  I just need to find the ‘Something’. 

Post-Truth // FMP

I have since found myself at this TV advertisement from 1964, part of Lyndon Johnson’s campaign for President of the United States.

It’s been widely described as one of the most controversial and effective political adverts in US history, and it’s easy to see why.  There is zero fact, it runs on emotional triggers and fear.

2017 Trump campaign anyone?

Something to Think About // FMP

Societal norms and how this impacts our decision making process in relation to how we project ourselves and assess our self-worth.

“Social norms or mores are the rules of behaviour that are considered acceptable in a group or society. People who do not follow these norms may be shunned or suffer some kind of consequence. Norms change according to the environment or situation and may change or be modified over time.”

Mass media and its impact on our understanding and collective consciousness – how are we impacted by what we see around us?  Do we make conscious decisions based on this or are we ‘groomed’ into thinking a certain way?

How does a Culture of Fear in modern media impact our general well-being and how we perceive the world around us.  Is it positive or negative?  What is the impact?

In what ways do we ‘choose’ a path.  Are we simply pin-balled between ideas and information at random, eventually finding a path that is linear in line with social norms and what is ‘expected’.  How much of our actions are choice?  How much is inaction?

How does the media influence our perception of what is normal?  What would happen if we were left to our own devices and encouraged to make decisions for ourselves, free from the influence of what is being told to us?

Media provides new information that persuades individuals to accept it (individual channel), but also, media informs listeners about what others learn, thus facilitating coordination (social channel).

Click to access AriasCommonKnowledge.pdf

Pessimism, Optimism, empathy and sympathy.

Is the media responsible for the dissemination of facts, or as an influential tool of governments and organisations to impact what is considered normal?

“Social norms marketing includes marketing techniques, such as mass media and face-to-face campaigns, that are designed to alter individuals’ perceptions of social norms, specifically perceptions of attitudes and behaviours that are typical or desirable in their community.”

“Public information not only causes individuals to update their personal beliefs, but
also allows them to update their beliefs about how widely these beliefs are shared (Morris
and Shin, 2002). That is, public information is used to know that others received the information, and that everyone who received the information knows that everybody else that received the information knows this, and so on, creating common knowledge. In this vein, some authors argue that “attempts to change public behaviours by changing private attitudes will not be effective unless some effort is also made to bridge the boundary between the public and the private.”

http://www.personal.psu.edu/bfr3/blogs/applied_social_psychology/2011/11/medias-influence-on-social-norms-and-identity-development-of-youth.html

“So what is identity? For starters, we technically are not born with identity; it is a socially constructed attribute.  The self-concept, which is the knowledge of who we are, combines with self awareness to develop a cognitive representation of the self, called identity (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2010, p.118).  In other words, who we are is controlled by internal and external factors that combine to make us who we become. Add in new media outlets, such as the internet, and media is now considered an “extension of everyday life and a tool of cultural change” (Singh, 2010).  Thus, identity formation, as a social concept, is being transformed in new and even more global ways.”

Cause and effect between Social Norms and Mass Media.
Does Mass Media simply act as a mirror to our social norms, or are our social norms dictated to us by the media?

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-b-ab&biw=1280&bih=721&q=impact+of+social+media+on+identity&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjri5fIiLTSAhViIMAKHU35ASoQ1QIIVCgA

https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/rsa-blogs/2013/01/is-social-networking-redefining-identity

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-b-ab&biw=1280&bih=721&q=media+influence+on+identity+formation&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjri5fIiLTSAhViIMAKHU35ASoQ1QIIWSgF