Blogs abuzz with gossip

Check out this news item from Reuters, Blogs Abuzz with Gossip in Caustic U.S. Campaign. I want to go through and deconstruct some segments of this article to expose the messages that are actually being conveyed underneath:

    The U.S. presidential campaign between George W. Bush and John Kerry has prompted a frenzy of gossip and conspiracy theories among Internet bloggers, hybrid online sites that blend news, gossip and opinion.

First off, you gotta look at their prominent use of the words: “frenzy”, “gossip”, and “conspiracy theories”. Those words are immediate contextual cues for loyal mainstream media followers on how to categorize the information which is gleaned off of non-mainstream websites. You are to believe that people who write on these sites are “in a frenzy,” meaning they are crazy, or just arent’t paying attention to what they are doing. And everyone knows that “gossip” is basically another word for being nosy and a little flighty. And “conspiracy theories”, well that is pretty much the biggest red flag you can wave in the game of media. From the mainstream media perspective, its basically the same as saying something “comes from the Devil”. It is a method to reflexively activate the viewer’s cultural immune system.

NOTE: I certainly recognize that a lot of blogs ARE exactly the things described above. Just as many are not, though. And even if they are, there is still value in looking at alternative views, and questioning the mainstream.

    Experts say much of the gossip on the Internet is as loony as supermarket tabloid stories claiming Elvis Presley lives, but that it still has a role to play in the campaign.

Again, this is basically an attempt by mainstream media to retain control over its centralized distribution of its story-system. They want you to equate in your mind that information you find on the internet from an unestablished source is basically no better than garbage.

    Robert Thompson, pop culture professor at Syracuse University, called the accusation “the biggest conspiracy theory” of the campaign to date. “Until there’s a credible source I’m not sure I buy it,” he said.

The translation here is, “Until we tell you to believe something, don’t bother struggling to piece together what is really going on for yourself.”

I’d like to paste in a quote from another article, entitled the Rescue Net, which I think is a delicious antidote to the kinds of things being peddled by the above article. Read it and weep.

    My last bastion of refuge is the Internet. I navigate my way through the morass of information and disinformation. I am practicing discernment. It’s more fun than practicing abstinence.
    It is on the Internet that I begin to find sites and programs that are validating my observations. Through the Internet I am communicating with other like minded souls who are aware that something has gone drastically wrong in our country and in the world. The Internet becomes my pipeline to the oil that lubricates my brain. I have entered a parallel universe where wars are not just sanitized events occurring elsewhere against less than human people. There are pictures of burned and deformed babies and articles explaining the injustices our country has been perpetrating. There are articles about the dumbing down of our young people and the destruction of the education system. Some articles talk about how the greedy pharmaceutical cartels are medicating the populace and the devastating effects that result. The Internet exposes the lies that have brought us into the present war as well as past wars. It shares information that has been silenced by the controlled media and the revised history curriculum. The Internet talks about the global elite, the New World Order, a nefarious, unconscionable cabal, who care little for the vast majority of the people and thrive on power, greed and control.

    The Internet brings me into a parallel universe where discovering the truth becomes my passion. I watch icons smash and belief systems shatter and the illusions which have poisoned my mind begin to retreat. I bid them a fond adieu.


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This entry was written by Tim Boucher, posted on October 12, 2004 at 10:43 pm.

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