Shadows in the Cave: An Analysis of Narratives and Manipulation for Political Gains via Lessons From the Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy
By Leesa Danzek
Every once in a while, the mind plays tricks on itself. Was it a dream or did that really happen? Is the optical illusion one thing or another? Is this the full picture or must it be zoomed out further?
Philosophers have asked themselves these questions for centuries. Dating back to Plato, humankind has wondered how to know if what they believe to be true is actually true.
Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave presents questions around the interpretation of reality via a hypothetical group of prisoners confined to an underground cave. The prisoners can only see the cave walls for their entire lives, with shadows by fire light dancing on the cave walls. As such, this group believes the shadows on the wall are real and their interpretation of reality is unknowingly too confined to what is merely shown to them, what has been manufactured for them.
The current media environment and manipulation of it by authoritarian regimes allows interpretation of reality via traditional media and social media to be just as skewed as those in our hypothetical cave.
As covered in the first panel on The Rhetoric and Realities of De-Globalization at the 2023 Milton Wolf Seminar, Russian propagandists are expertly spinning national and regional history to re-write memory, legitimizing the War in Ukraine. State-produced propaganda in Russian traditional media, in addition to the annihilation of independent media in the state, conveys only one explanation of society without transparency and debate, constructing limited knowledge and influencing perspectives among viewers.
As media outside of Russia has widely reported, the Kremlin continuously and falsely accuses Ukraine of being controlled by Nazis. While many outside of Russia’s state media grip are aware of the absurdity of this fabrication, their efforts to manufacture facts is a premier example of how media systems are being exploited to create political cover.
And the problem is metastasizing. In Hungary, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s grasp tightens and squeezes out democracy, traditionally public media has become the mouthpiece of Hungarian right-wing government. As one case study panelist on Global Trends, Local Realities illustrated, the state is buying out news outlets or obstructing editorial teams to strategically be replaced by representatives with state-friendly rhetoric. By removing independent investigation and transparency from public media, such regimes are creating difficult-to-challenge narratives that are manufactured, despite being interpreted as reality.
Even public digital spaces, once regarded as the modern public square for free speech, have become utilized and manipulated by oppressive state actors to engineer false narratives. As one panelist on Resistance, Response, and Revolutions: Global Movements for a World on the Edge demonstrated with their research, oppressive regimes, like state actors from the Islamic Republic of Iran, are not only capable of, but are actively maliciously creating fake accounts and using manipulated language to skew perceivably public rhetoric around protests following the death of Mahsa Amini.
And in strong democracies, the fear of misinformation and disinformation developed from sharing unchecked information and opinions from individual social media users as fact. The rise within some mainstream media outlets of reporting misleading information – now termed “fake news” – also poses a problem for democracies. Ultimately, the pervasiveness of false narratives from both social media platforms and privately-owned mainstream media worsens distrust. The question has become, as the panel on Geopolitics, Diplomacy, and the End of Truth pointed out, “what is truth?”
When truth is manufactured though – designed by self-interested political actors rather than by objective observation and analysis – it becomes impossible for communities of perceived realities to actually know what truth is.
The panel briefly compared the Iranian regime’s digital oppression and diversion tactics with the brutal, violent oppression of the Assad regime in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. Evaluating the relationship of the oppressed with false narratives in each of these cases requires one to recognize that the overtness of physical and violent tactics is the intersection of the purported false narrative and the objective reality of residents. Manipulation of digital information – particularly on social media platforms perceived on a varying scale of freeness based on political environment – are much harder to recognize, harder to witness as manipulation and control.
Those consuming false narratives – by choice or by force – are modern, minimized, versions of Plato’s Allegory of the cave. While their interpretation of reality is similarly designed without reference to other perspectives, the world is not yet necessarily privy to the circumstances of liberation from the Cave. One can only hope, and is forced to wonder, if the outcomes would too be similar.
The modern analyst may wonder what this means for the future of authoritarian regimes, and to what extent does ratio between physical oppression and digital oppression fluctuate in order to achieve various authoritarian objectives.
Assuming digital manipulation and challenges to independent press will not only continue but also expand, it is critical to wonder what good actors can do.
Well, it depends on who the good actors are. In one vein, there is space for democratic governments to regulate platforms. However, it is a slippery slope because democratic governments are not exempt of change nor populist leaders.
In another approach, platforms and privately-owned media corporations can regulate their own spaces, only allowing objective truth and transparency to permeate their networks. However, many democratic nations built capitalist economies where these corporations thrive from profit-driven behavior rather than that for the public good. As was covered in the discussion on Platforms and Demagogues: The Future of Digital Monopolies, where internet was initially a public space for the common good, it has become infrastructure while discourse moves to interactive social platforms.
Another model suggests that publicly funded media with stronger senses of responsibility for objective reporting would drive beneficial results. One dialogue between panelists and a Seminar attendee detailed how public media models are supported by direct reference to the cost to each taxpayer. In turn, some of these models become trusted, legitimate, and transparent media outlets, producing similarly trusted, legitimate, and transparent news. Finland, as covered in the Seminar and reported by CNN and multiple organizations, is a golden model of “a strong regional press” and media literacy.
In developing democracies with heavy foreign economic, infrastructure, and political influence, a publicly funded media system may provide more benefit to voters and cultivating long-term democratic structures.
For instance, in some South American and African developing democracies, Russian and Chinese state propagandists enter media markets with intent to manipulate information and spread their narrative – pro-Russia and pro-Chinese – as news. Doing so is a tactic of expanding global influence, particularly in developing economies home to resources or markets key to China’s and Russia’s hegemonic growth. Such foreign influence distorts voters’ interpretations of their political and economic realities. Would a strong publicly funded media source be impenetrable to such influence in developing democracies?
It is tricky for developing democracies just as it is in stronger ones.
The problem remains a slippery slope for nations home to heated and competing concepts of reality, as well as opportunity to backslide away from democracy and closer to autocracy. As panelists in the final session on Dreams of Utopia and normative journalistic practices for the present environment noted, state capture of national media outlets is associated with democratic crisis and populist rhetoric. Then comes the suspicion that international public media is perceived as a global power, supporting populist desires for deglobalization.
Given the rise of authoritarian populism across the globe in the 21st century, especially in traditional Western democracies, it is difficult to be confident in the future immortality of independent journalism.
Some suggest that modern media models allow space for “political entrepreneurs gifted at exploiting resentments and undermining the notion of truth.” One Freedom House report parallels the rise in right-wing populist with threats to press freedom and “nuanced” attempts to deteriorate independent media.
It is no secret, though, that free press is not the only enemy of right-wing strains of populism. If, as Pippa Norris pointed out in 2016, the rise in populism is a backlash to the expansion of civil liberties like “gay marriage, sexual equality, and tolerance of social diversity,” then attempts to control the narrative align with attempts to control who has access to what in society. Thus, independent press then becomes both the opposition and part of a tactic for rising authoritarian populists.
Authoritarian regimes increasingly incorporate manipulative and oppressive digital tactics. And while debate will continue around policy and allocation of public funds to support unbiased media, the state of the world requires action be taken more quickly than the parliaments, congresses, and assemblies of the world can act and implement.
Fair or not, this lift actually trickles down to those facing this uphill battle: independent journalists themselves. Utilizing the technology available to them to publicly document what they witness is an opportunity to circumvent the restrictions of authoritarian regimes who struggle to obstruct social media while thriving in their control of the media narrative. As one panelist pointed out, Russia does not block YouTube.
Thus, are creative, multi-platform approaches a valid avenue for independent journalism to be, as the same panelist put it, be resistance? Given public access to the platform, does that not suggest that nearly any member of the public can similarly join the resistance against false narratives and manipulated interpretations of reality?
Once again, the crux of the question here is truth. Who is interested in the truth? Who has a right to the truth? What truths matter? Who is responsible for telling the truth?
In the current state of the world, independent journalists and eyewitnesses serve as some of the few champions of truth we have left.
References
MasterClass: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave Explained
New York Times: Why Vladimir Putin Invokes Nazis to Justify His Invasion of Ukraine
University of Michigan Library: “Fake News,” Lies and Propaganda: How to Sort Fact from Fiction
CNN: Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy
Washington Post: It’s not just Trump. Authoritarian populism is rising across the West. Here’s why.