Chomsky’s Propaganda Model
The overarching framework by Chomsky and Herman that suggests media shapes consent for elite interests.
What is the propaganda model?
This postmodern theorist argued that the media doesn’t just reflect reality—it constructs it.
Who is Jean Baudrillard?
In moral panic theory, the term for the group scapegoated as a threat to societal values.
What is folk-devils?
Term Horkheimer & Adorno used for the system of mass-produced culture that manipulates people
What is the Culture Industry?
Name one way Chomsky’s model shows how structure limits individual choice about media messages.
What is corporate ownership shapes content?
Filter describing media’s dependence on this kind of revenue, shaping what gets covered.
What is advertising?
Baudrillard's term for the blending of symbols and reality—where representations replace the “real.”
What is hyper-reality?
Term for the escalating social reaction disproportional to actual threat.
What is a moral panic?
This concept refers to desires socially constructed by media to serve capitalist ends
What are false needs?
How might Baudrillard’s hyperreality reduce our ability to distinguish reality from representation?
What is loss of critical agency to discern the real?
The first “filter” in Chomsky’s model, involving who owns media outlets.
When a simulated experience (like Disneyland) feels more “real” than reality, it’s called this.
What is simulacrum?
A moral panic is an exaggerated reaction to this.
What is a perceived threat to social norms or values?
The effect of media content designed for distraction, not critical engagement.
What is passive consumption?
Moral panic’s amplification process (the resulting action from a moral panic) is a structural mechanism; what is an example of agency within it?
What is community resistance, media literacy, counter-narratives?
This “filter” refers to the media’s reliance on institutional gatekeepers for information.
What is sourcing?
When media versions of reality are edited, filtered, or staged until they seem “more real than real.”
What is a simulation?
The author and book behind the moral panic theory.
Who is Stanley Cohen, and what is Folk Devils and Moral Panics?
When a reality show normalises a narrow beauty ideal, it reinforces this, in Frankfurt School terms.
What is ideological control?
The Frankfurt School argued that the culture industry enforces norms—what’s one way viewers might resist?
What is more critical media consumption, supporting independent media?
Label this: backlash campaigns that can punish and discipline media for stepping out of line.
What is flak?
In Baudrillard’s view, media maintains this “illusion of actuality” to keep us consuming and entertained.
What is the illusion of reality created by consumer culture?
Put these stages of a moral panic in order: public concern, media exaggeration, identification of a threat, authority response, social change or receding panic
What is 1) Identification, 2) Media response, 3) Public anxiety, 4) Response from authorities, 5) Panic recedes or results in change?
The theorist known for theorising the 'fall of the public sphere'.
Combine two theories: explain how Chomsky and the Frankfurt School both see media as a structural force, summarized in one sentence.
What is Both the Propaganda Model and the Culture Industry argue that media systems, motivated by economics and power, shape public perception and limit critical agency?