Edward Bernays wrote in 1928 that creating or changing public opinion requires understanding human motives, identifying the interests and groups represented in a population, and understanding the channels used to reach the public, including
“Consumerism” has more than one established meaning. In psychology, one meaning is the purchase and consumption of goods and services beyond basic needs, often connected with conspicuous consumption and social status. The word can also mean
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s 1988 propaganda model identified five structural filters affecting mass-media output: concentrated ownership and profit orientation; advertising as a major revenue source; reliance on government, business
No. In the consumption-oriented psychological definition, consumerism refers to purchasing and consuming beyond basic needs, and it is often associated with conspicuous consumption—using goods to obtain or signal social status.
Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model explicitly argued that systematic media bias can arise without formal censorship and without requiring journalists to act dishonestly or participate in a conspiracy. They wrote that structural constrain
Yes. The “mere-exposure effect” is the finding that repeated exposure to a stimulus can increase liking or preference for it. A 2017 meta-analysis examined 268 exposure-response curves from 81 articles and found the overall pattern was posi
Narrative control is the shaping of how people interpret events by controlling the surrounding frame: what is emphasized, omitted, repeated, contextualized, or treated as important. The underlying events do not necessarily have to be fabric
Yes. Social psychologists call this pluralistic ignorance: members of a group systematically misjudge the private attitudes or beliefs of the other members. A group can publicly behave as though a norm is widely supported while many individ
A Pew Research Center survey conducted August 18–24, 2025 found that 38% of U.S. adults said they regularly got news on Facebook.
BROADSIDE DEFINITION: Semantic control is influencing perception by controlling meanings instead of changing the underlying information. It works by narrowing, broadening, relabeling, or shifting definitions so that the same event can be un
