As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate.
To whom should propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia or the less educated masses? It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses.
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
You just have to be careful because social media can begin to affect personal things such as relationships, just to pin point. People have become so entitled as it relates to social media.
People automatically assume and expect that every moment and every bit of personal data should be broadcasted on social media, especially as it relates to them - and thats just not cuttin' it for me. If you can make it through the age of social media and come out with the same friends and lover, kudos!
The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince... the masses. But the masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember them.
Humor and absurdism are inevitable. If you look at our current massive flow of consumer products and digital communication and related media from a sort of astute perspective and carefully state what you see you can't help but sounding like you're joking.
We live in this world of tweeting, and social media, and anti-social media, and all the rest, so no matter what you say, there is going to be what people say is a firestorm. I don't know what a firestorm is.
The number of the opposition has certainly increased [in Iran]. There is more disgruntlement, but because there is no media, the voice of this opposition is not heard outside Iran.
To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic.
I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy.