Not that abstract, Chris.

You might find Hans Magnus Enzenberger's comments on Stern in his
book of essays _Mediocrities and Delusions_ interesting (apart from
anything else, he's always a pleasure to read). He makes the same
comment about media proprietors being more savvy about media theory
than the students protesting against it.

Best

Alison


>Martin and list
>
>Yes, the question you are asking is what I am also asking myself. To be
>honest I don't fully understand the mechanics of how this is happening. It is
>more that gut feeling which hits you and raises your suspicions and to do a
>rigorous analysis I would have to access a media monitor service and get all
>the footage and clippings. Since this was a discussion list I didn't want to
>pull punches with qualifiers like I suspect, also.
>
>The scapegoating stuff is fairly clear. On the front cover of yesterday's
>_Telegraph_, a Murdoch tabloid, was a graphic of 21 blanked out faces with
>the headline something like: 21 arsonists who set Sydney ablaze. It is fairly
>clear that these 21 mainly teenagers are being blamed for all the fires yet I
>know already that some of these so-called arsonists were caught attempting to
>light a fire and did not light the major fires. The fire in the northern
>suburbs of Sydney may have been deliberately lit but the fire to the south of
>the Blue Mountains appears to be caused by lightening strikes, also. It will
>take forensic testing to be more certain and even then this is not always
>conclusive. Forensic science can be wrong, often inconclusive or open to
>legal challenge and is easy to tamper with.
>
>The type of media analysis, critique and theory I am using is not interested
>in arguing a point of truth and trying to disprove the coverage, although
>this may arise as a serious concern. Nor is it interested in in the
>individual person or people being portrayed. I think this may be what Candice
>is referring to with the sort of simplistic critique of media events which
>relies on a sort of judgment of truth and which Chomsky falls into the trap
>of doing. What I am doing is in general looking at the relation of forces and
>the real effects and outcomes.
>
>Ummm... sorry, I know what I just said is very abstract. Perhaps one way in
>is a particular type of practical use of Foucault's discourse analysis. To
>understand how this works, I should say that Foucault entered academic
>thinking in Australia through the radical gay liberation movement which was
>led by various members of revolutionary marxist organisations and university
>academics and students so Foucault more or less got re-read in a historical
>materialist way. In this street based thinking and discussion which also
>infected academic thinking theory became not a way of understanding or
>interpreting the world but as a useful tool in changing the world. This has
>had an impact on the type of media criticism which is taught in the
>Communication degree at the University of Technology, Sydney and the
>University of Western Sydney, two of Australia's leading communication
>schools. so when I say a relation of forces I am not talking about
>relativism, either. Into this gets thrown anything else that is useful such
>as Deleuzian philosophy, science system theories like cybernetic systems
>and so forth. It is a type of critical method and analysis that works not
>only in literary theory, but also scientific discourse. it may sound eclectic
>but it is a rigorous synthesis which in the simplest terms makes theory a
>tool of analysis and critique. (To be fair to Chomsky, he was one of the
>people who inspired this approach I take through one of his graduate students
>at Harvard, Noel Sanders, who then came to Australia and began developing
>these ideas through his readings Foucault, Deleuze and many, many other
>theorists and then taught this to students at UTS. Noel was working on a book
>on horrendous gay murders in Wollongong, so I must chase it up and see if it
>has been published.)
>
>So to go back to the scapegoat, I am not using it in terms of an actual
>person but more in the sense of a trope. But not trope as in a metaphor or
>figure of speech but the older usage, from the ancient Greek, as a turning
>away or diversion which then occupies a position on the margins. Through the
>social operation of ageism teenagers are marginalised in this sense and then
>become set up as rhetorical scapegoats in a signifying system. The other
>thing I should say is because this is occurring in some sort of cybernetic
>communication system you never really know what will happen but can only
>modulate the various outcomes in what would be complex feedback loops.
>Anyone who has ever had to make an editorial decision in publishing should be
>able to relate this in the sense that you never really know what is going to
>be the outcome of your decision. But you can modulate what does happen and if
>lucky, through publicity and so forth perhaps end up with a best seller.
>
>As for tracing the actual mechanisms that then make the government complicit
>in this incitement of teenagers to light these fires that would be quite a
>research project involving a team effort including psychologists, statistical
>analysis, and so forth. But having worked in the field and having several
>contacts with the government (as any journalist would have, of course) I just
>get a very strong feeling this is happening although I need to stress they
>may not be conscious that they are actually doing this and may be quite
>shocked to hear this.
>
>If you want to know more about cybernetic criminology I think the following
>web-site is useful:
>http://www.tryoung.com
>
>
>I don't feel I have done a good job of answering your question, but hope this
>at least helps.
>
>best, Chris Jones.
>
>
>[PS It is not a good idea to assume the editors and proprietors of the
>_Telegraph_ and other Murdoch tabloids as just stupid idiots. Lachlan Murdoch
>is very smart and knows his media theory and how to use it. He obviously got
>a lot out of Yale and got me thinking. I have to admire him.]
>
>
>
>On Thursday 03 January 2002 22:40, you wrote:
>> That was a very powerful & illuminating mail, Chris, its local precision
>> made me understand better than before the way modern governments
>> orchestrate *events & manipulate, engineer as you put it, people's
>> (re-)actions. But I don't quite understand yet the factual logic of
>> <The kids are doing what the
>> social engineering of the government is inciting, in effect. In the final
>> analysis the Carr Labor Government as good as lit those fires but then that
>> is the beauty of cybernetic social engineering. You can always deny
>> responsibility and blame a scapegoat.>
>> A scapegoat is usually innocent of the crime for which s/he is ostensibly
>> punished, in this case not. I don't quite grasp how those kids are innocent
>> of lighting the fires, even if social engineering predisposed them to do it
>> ~ but how did it do that? I am genuinely unclear about this. I do
>> understand that their guilt is less than that of a venal &
>> self-aggrandising power structure using it (their guilt) to divert
>> attention from the real exploitative crime(s) & the cui bono aspect of the
>> situation, pacifying critical social unease & creating a fake consensus.
>> Perhaps you could clarify that point.
>> Martin


--


Alison Croggon

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