Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 26 – At the end of
Soviet times, a small number of Russians didn’t watch television lest they be
drawn into the official version of life in the USSR. Some labelled those who
did so “internal emigrants.” Now, a much larger share is ignoring television
and using the Internet, and they deserve the same designation, Georgy
Pocheptsov says.
But their isolation from the
official version of life is even greater because of changes in the nature of
information and controls over it, the Ukrainian specialist on information
technology says; and that makes their integration into the life of the broader
society even more problematic (ng.ru/stsenarii/2019-03-25/9_7539_tv.html).
Such individuals “try to escape from
the space in which television carries out its political function of creating a
collective identity,” Pocheptsov says. “In Soviet times, such work with the
masses as much easier: everyone read and watched one and the same thing. Then
no one had to speak about ‘bindings;’ absolutely everything bound people
together.”
Now, things have changed. Television
has continued to take on the old functions it had, “but here is the guarantee
that it can recover under the conditions of the new life of the country the old
Soviet interest?” People not only view different things in different channels
but view them in a new way because “today we have post-truth,” or what is the
same thing, personal truth.
The Internet is playing a major role
in this transformation, Pocheptsov says, because it “has separated news from
its sources” and thereby allowed its consumers to decide about it for
themselves. That means the media work for the consumer rather than the producer
of content, something that challenges and undermines television further.
While it is still the case that a
large portion of the population still gets its news from television, ever more
people, especially younger people don’t; and television is changing as well.
But at the same time television is becoming “a secondary source of
information,” it has become “the primary source of post-truth since various
political talk shows have played this role.”
TV, especially given the increasing
dominance of talk shows, the analyst says, “like other forms of media has
become an instrument of cognitive war,” one that identifies and then reinforces
views about who is an enemy and who is a friend, intensifying positions rather
than clarifying them and playing to the emotions of viewers rather than to
their minds.
When television functions as
intended, Pocheptsov says, “it creates a collective identity and directs it.
People must see and distinguish good and evil from a single point of view.” And
it continues to play that role to an extent because once such positions are
established, it is difficult for anything to change them.
But television is being challenged
in many ways, some of which are taking place within the TV world itself. Many
serials do not echo the views of the news, people binge watch programs rather
than others that do. And even if they do not want to, talk shows put on
alternatives to make things interesting – and some people pick up on these
alternatives.
Indeed, psychologists have shown
that when people see a point of view they identify with, they become more
attached to it even if and perhaps especially if it is attacked by others they
do not accept as authorities – and when they can get reinforcement elsewhere as
the Internet provides in opposition to television.
Television in response, Pocheptsov says, is
countering this trend by becoming the pre-eminent voice for post-truth, playing
on emotions rather than facts and seeking to mobilize people around those
emotions rather than to convince them.
That makes it important for some; but it alienates others who now have
somewhere to go.
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