In nowadays society, advertisement is not only a tool for product promotion, but also a force for shaping culture and guiding needs. Through careful design, modern advertisements not only satisfy people’s basic needs, but also continuously stimulate new needs, and even lead people to become dissatisfied with materials and experiences, thus promoting the spread of consumerist culture (Charly, 2015).
From Satisfying Needs to Creating Desires
In the past, advertisements focused more on the satisfaction of basic needs (e.g. food, clothing, housing and transportation), while today’s advertisements not only emphasise satisfaction, but also guide people to pursue higher-level needs, such as identity, status, social recognition and self-realisation.
By deliberately emphasising the inadequacy of the status quote, the advert evokes the desire for a better life. For example, ‘Your mobile phone doesn’t take clear enough pictures, your car isn’t smart enough, your clothes aren’t stylish enough’.
However, that’s the media manufacturing consent.
In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman propose a model of the system, the ‘filter’. The book explains that Western mainstream media control public opinion through specific mechanisms, such as advertising and narratives, which consolidate power structures and capital interests.
In Chomsky’s theory, consent is not naturally occurring, but is deliberately created through media and propaganda strategies.
The role of the mainstream mass media is not merely to report the facts, but to act as a propaganda tool, serving the interests of the State, the power elite and big capital. Thus, advertising and cultural products ‘create demand’, mostly in order to direct people’s desire for consumption and lifestyles, thereby maximising the interests of capital.
Whose consensus is being manufactured?
According to Chomsky’s analysis, there are two main target groups: the political class and the general public. The political class accounts for 20% of the population and includes policy makers, business executives and academics. They hold the power, and through media advertisements this group of people is made to agree with mainstream policies to achieve market economic freedom. While the other 80% of the population are consumers.
How to overcome media-created consensus?
In the present highly informative and entertaining society, ordinary people are more easily guided, but it is equally possible to resist the monolithic nature of elite narratives, emphasise the social value of pluralistic co-existence, and rebuild independent critical thinking through public discussion and action.
REFERENCE：
Herman, E. S., Chomsky, N. (2010). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. United Kingdom: Random House.
Jaffe, C. (2015). How advertising has become an agent of social change. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@moonstorming/how-advertising-has-become-an-agent-of-social-change-148aa0ef303a [Accessed 18 Nov. 2024].
