Introduction

Explaining aspects of the history of the Propaganda Model (PM), this introduction outlines how the PM serves as an effective means of revealing dominant systems of manipulation and how they shape capitalist societies. It explains how this volume presents cutting edge international research, demonstrating the model’s general validity and critically updating, expanding, and refining the PM. Locating these studies within a wider body of work on the PM and on the political economy of the media, it indicates the societal contexts within which the PM is applied. The introduction reflects on contemporary forms of media performance grounded in a history of social engineering right through to the hijacking of democracy by state and financial powers beginning in the 1970s-80s. Such operations are, the PM explains, indirect and necessitate the appearance of a functioning ‘liberal’ and ostensibly ‘free’ media system attentive to issues of gender and racial equality, but blind to the interests of the working class affected by the elite ‘consensus’ of a ‘progressive’ neoliberalism frustrating citizen efforts toward a truly progressive politics. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the structure of the book, which in turn considers methodological aspects of the PM, new concepts of propaganda and their practices in digital communications, applications in a range of media content, and lastly case studies of corporate media and reporting.