Rough Notes:
What changed recently?
- The new technic media (social media)
- allows people to organize themselves and present their own positions
- There is no authority on this.
- Creates a paradox (“paradoxical position”)…. first, we like this because there is absolute free speech. But this also creates a vacuum for fake news (this is the paradox).
- allows people to organize themselves and present their own positions
- Distrust of “Official public spaces” and its version of events.
- Rise of Populism has dragged out this sense of distrust of public media and official
- He says it’s a justified distrust… official accounts have been subverted by Wikileaks
- Referring to Chomsky’s manufacturing consent, there is a complex web of interplaying variables (implicit rules, manners, customs, etc..) that manufactures political consent.. which is breaking down.
- Uses an interesting anecdote: in China there is a popular wisdom that the rumors that are circulating (of whatever latest scandal, etc.) are only confirmed true once the government denies them.