Revisiting The “Propaganda Model” Can Help End Information Uncertainty

Nearly 40 years ago, Manufacturing Consent was released by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky to widespread acclaim. The book is principally famous for conceptualising the “Propaganda Model”, explaining how journalistic biases are created and propaganda spread in a market-based media environment. 

The model explains how consent is manufactured for power-elite decisions in Western societies – not through an elite conspiracy or collusion but as a natural consequence of power accumulation by the state and mega-corporations. 

There are five “filters” in the model: the media makes editorial decisions based on profitability. Advertising revenue forces media to focus on maintaining audience sizes with tailored news presentation. Journalists must act in a certain way to access necessary information from government or corporations. That information can become the subject of complaints or libel, so media must carefully consider what they publish. What is left are news items on “the Other”, unlikely to offend the power-elite and entice readers.  

Herman and Chomsky applied the model to a range of examples, including Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. In 2007, they briefly discussed how the model works in the context of the Internet but did not change or adapt their model. In 2026, it is surely evident to readers that media of all kinds are polarised in offering a range of narratives. One need only look to today’s collapse in support for the Conservatives and Labour, and the rise of alternative views in the Greens, Lib Dems, nationalist parties, and Reform UK. 

Perhaps what is different from both 2007 and 1988 is the proliferation of new media in the form of social media posts, reels, online blogs, and podcasts. In 2007, it may have been the case that Labour voters studiously read the Guardian and watched Channel 4 News, while Tory voters read the Times and watched Sky News. Nowadays, voters can receive news entirely in fragments from across new media, rather than one set of acceptable news outlets. 

A Green Party supporter may follow the accounts of Zack Polanski, Novara Media, and a constellation of smaller accounts which are as eye-catching as they are unprofessional, offering inaccurate information or strange conceptualisations without much backing. 

Herman and Chomsky did not foresee a world wherein voters now receive their news so disembodied from elite structures – Peter Pomerantsev, by contrast, named this a strategy of “censorship through noise” in This is Not Propaganda. 

Nowadays, masses of information are freely given to audiences. You want your town to be under attack by mass migration? Look for a few examples of refugees committing crimes and extrapolate the conclusion. You want landlords to be parasites? Find evidence of a few being nasty to tenants, lump in personal stories, and conclude. You could even devise an entire party policy of it: deport all the migrants or abolish all the landlords. 

One general answer often given in combatting this phenomenon lies in the public being open-minded, sceptical, and being empirically discerning when approaching news media. For an individual, it is impossible to do this with every single piece of information due to both temporal and cognitive constraints. For a population, developing such a group immunisation would take masses of time. 

Instead, consider an updated “Propaganda Model”. Media still makes editorial decisions based on profitability. Advertising revenues and social media revenues now encourage media to focus on outrage and branding. Media producers no longer need to access information from governments or corporations for news items, as they can produce their own evidence. Libel and complaints are still coercive. News items still focus on “The Other”, but that changes depending on who you ask.  

Based on the revised model, four things we can broadly do are: require news production no longer be a profit-seeking activity, and put production into charitable, social enterprise, or otherwise arms-length hands; limit access to foreign-owned new media platforms and foster British platforms; introduce new democratically agreed and impartial standards for all media producers on new media before they are allowed to widely disseminate; continue to support anti-SLAPP legislation and associated libel laws to reduce self-censorship. 

We cannot return to the days when everyone received their news from a smattering of outlets. Instead, we must embrace the current diversity of information provided to us but seek to bring some accommodating guardrails. The consequences of inaction are an increasing support for harmful far-right tendencies, and the complete domination of our media space by our biggest adversaries. 

Image: Flickr/RubyGoes

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