Manufactured silence and the politics of media research: a consideration of the "propaganda model."

Abstract

The discipline of media studies in the United States has coalesced around specific types of research, promoting itself as a scientif ic study of social phenomena. Nevertheless, it is significant that, in a discipline as diverse and interdisciplinary as media studies, it remains possible for the field as a body to remain distant from work that engages with the theory, methods, and subject matter of the field. For example, Herman and Chomnsky have argued persuasively for a propaganda model of the press, discussing their method for testing the model and presenting evidence to support it. Their subject deals with issues of immediate concern to media researchers working in several streams of research, and they present an enormous amount of well-documented evidence, all of which is available for debate and challenge by media researchers. Nevertheless, Herman and Chornsky remain undercited (even uncited) in mainstream media research. This paper shows that media researchers have remained distant from the propaganda model, just as the model predicts. The author also suggests a problematic issue that exists within the method of testing the model, and proposes a research agenda which contains alternative ways of supporting the model.