• Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
  Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Institute of Philosophy & Theology, Pune.

Propaganda is inseparable from the “technical society,” as Jacques Ellul described it. It is largely the product of communication techniques which, far from being content to convey it, shape its contours, techniques, and effects. It is therefore necessary to consider the extent to which the advent of electronic media marks a break with the age of what Marshall MacLuhan called “electric media” (television and radio). Unlike traditional mass media, electronic media allows instant feedback from the receiver to the sender and ultra-personalization of the message, as “Data Mining” makes it possible to refine the knowledge of each individual. From this point of view, Web 2.0 has given rise to propaganda 2.0, which is targeted, personalised, and increasingly automated. This cybernetic propaganda is all the more formidable because it is less and less noticeable. And it becomes very difficult to escape it.
Citizens of authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century had no difficulty in identifying what was and was not propaganda: they could, therefore, choose not to expose themselves to it, for example, by not going to the cinema, and they often had the ability to escape it in their private sphere. However, unless they live totally disconnected, citizens in the twenty-first century can no longer escape propaganda since 2.5 billion people use a smartphone, the modern equivalent of the “telescreen” imagined by Barjavel and Orwell. Our daily lives are enriched by screens and connected objects. In addition, scientific advances in social psychology, behavioural economics, cognitive science, or, more recently, neuroscience allow for more detailed knowledge of individuals’ motivations and decision-making levers, further strengthening the effectiveness of propaganda. So, we are entering the age of total propaganda.
The dissemination of fake news has been a propaganda technique for a very long time. Since 2016, it has been impossible to ignore the role played by social networks in the large-scale dissemination of fake news during election campaigns: for propagandists, these networks have the advantage of making it possible to deliver geographically targeted and personalised false information, which most often aims to dissuade a specific category of voters from going to the polls, as we see in the recent elections in India or elsewhere. It is necessary to fight fake news, but the current mechanisms to combat fake news seem to be ineffective. They often have the opposite effect to the one intended: many researchers have shown that debunking fake news makes it more credible to a significant proportion of the public. This is known as the “boomerang effect.” Any such measure can only encourage mistrust and political polarisation in a climate of mistrust of the media and politics. For the same reason, fact-checking systems quickly find their limits, especially when they consist of assessing the validity of information according to the presumed reliability of its source. The fight against fake news needs to be more in line with the spirit of the Enlightenment, encouraging critical thinking. This involves media and digital literacy but also exposes propagandist techniques to as many people as possible to encourage critical thinking and learn how to guard against manipulation.
Never before have our societies reached such a high level of education; never before have we had access to so much information, and yet we can see the ravages of mass manipulation every day. There is no longer a common basis of information, no more commonly accepted facts. I believe, however, that it should be seen above all as a symptom of the shrinking of public space in the sense given to it by Jürgen Habermas. The crisis of traditional media, the rise of a delineated and personalised “post-television,” and the growing polarisation of political life combine with the effects of the “algorithmic bubble” of social networks to lock individuals into groups or communities whose values and points of view they share. There is no longer a common basis of information, no more commonly accepted facts, and the “rational truths” must increasingly prevail over the “factual truths,” as Arendt put it.