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Media Mind Control
Are we actually being controlled by the media?
In the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” we witness a self-absorbed woman experience the titular event, driven by her plummeting reputation on a social network that has the power to control everything from what flights you get to whether or not you have a job.
In the 1976 film Network, a dying news show gets a boost when anchor Howard Beale announces that he will commit suicide on live television. This launches a chain reaction of events in which international politics and network deal-inking play out through the media, as Beale becomes a populist hero.
In the novel 1984 and its film adaptations, the government has imposed Newspeak, a restricted language that encourages complacency and obedience. Behavior and thought are controlled through devices called telescreens, which combine broadcast, communication, and monitoring.
Science fiction has long explored, and warned of, our obsession with media and its power to control our thoughts. As propaganda efforts successfully encouraged complacency among citizens of Nazi-led Germany, as countless Americans today willfully consume fake news, these concerns seem justified. Even Black Mirror has done its part to control our behavior, making some of us (ahem) sit for hours to finish the episode “Bandersnatch.” It appears…
