Blog #2- Manufacturing Consent

Noam Chomsky is a linguist and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his 1992 documentary “Manufacturing Consent”, Chomsky presents his idea of the propaganda model. Propaganda is the spread of ideas, information, or opinions using the mass media to help or hurt a person, cause or institution. The propaganda model depicts corporate media as profit driven establishments. He insinuates that corporate media tends to serve the interests of only those elite groups in society that have the means to meet the expense of there services.

At one of Chomsky’s speeches held at the West Edmonton Mall in Canada a large screen was used. This visual aid drew in the attention of many people that may not have been listening to the speech specifically but because of its superior positioning at a place of high traffic, people were still exposed to the ideas. This large screen also reinforces the point he is making to the crowd that is present for his speech because it is used as an aide to help people see, hear and understand the ideas being presented a little better. Although Chomsky is speaking about propaganda, he himself is using the same techniques as the corporate media to attract attention and sway the opinions of the viewers.

Chomsky also utilizes several other visual techniques including zooming and selective focus. Zooming in when the camera does not move and the lens is focused down from a long-shot to a close-up whilst the picture is still being shown. The zoom begins with an overall shot of the whole scene but as the speech continues they zoom in on Chomsky and on all the people that are avidly listening to him. By doing this they show the overall reaction of the crowd and how they are feeling about the propaganda being presented to the audience. While selective focus is rendering only part of the action field in sharp focus through the use of a shallow depth of field. This occurred in the zoom when the camera focused directly on Chomsky. By using these techniques Chomsky presents his argument in a visually pleasing manner that catches the attention of the viewers. He presented an idea that was outside of the norm. People like to follow what is familiar and safe to them. Since at the time this idea was foreign, bringing in commonly used elements such as propaganda and visual media to present his idea made it mode easily accessible and acceptable to the addressees.