Book by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman. It explores the role of traditional media in shaping public opinion by introducing the concept of the "propaganda model". Large media outlets, despite claims of independence, often serve the interests of powerful elites. Creation of news goes thru these filters to fit to the needs of the elites...
Published on Nov 21, 2024
Polybius, a greek historian living in Rome during the height of roman civilization created a theory on the cycle of rise and fall of empires called Anacyclosis.
Published on Nov 14, 2024
The range of acceptable ideas in a society at a given time.
Published on Sep 24, 2024
The process by which people continuously create, through their actions and interactions, a shared reality that is experienced as objectively factual and subjectively meaningful.
Published on Sep 01, 2024
If a sign is used to mean a specific thing for a long time and by enough people, that meaning solidifies into a Myth. Eg. The sign 'red' has a meaning: danger. That is a myth.
Published on Aug 26, 2024
Semiotics is the study of signs - or how words and images(signs) come to have meaning.
Published on Aug 26, 2024
We see others as 'Intentional agents' - and that is a major advantage our specie has: it enables us to corporate better with others.
Published on Aug 24, 2024
High Mordernism is the belief that science and technology will improve humanity - and as a result, try to get nature to bend to the will of central planning.
Published on May 19, 2024
People who adopt new technology fit in one of these 5 categories...
Published on Jan 25, 2024
Social identity is the part of a person's self-concept that is made from their membership in a social group.
Published on Jan 01, 2023
All people have some bad movements. Social media outrage is generally driven by a collective memory of just those bad movements.
Published on Jan 01, 2023
Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.
Published on Jan 01, 2023
This model was introduced by Adam Smith - Grandfather of Economics
Published on Jan 01, 2023
A country that exists in a networked manner - places might be distributed all over the globe - but connected by internet and a shared national identity.
Published on Dec 02, 2022
When someone judges/gives opinion on matters outside their area of expertise. Eg. A football star talking about a political situation.
Published on Oct 15, 2022
We are programmed to observe the world and generalize our experiences into mental modals that can be used to understand and predict the world.
Published on Apr 09, 2022
Dunbar, who created the Dunbar's Number, says that language is a 'cheap' form of social grooming(akin to flea picking in apes). Its more efficient - you can talk to more than one person at a time - and you can do it when doing other things.
Published on Apr 08, 2022
If we surround yourself with people who has the same habits as the one you want to build, it will be easier for you to adopt that habit.
Published on Feb 10, 2022
Human's can maintain social relations with upto 150 people. In such societies, everyone knows everyone else - and how each relates to others. These is a cognitive limit we have.
Published on Feb 10, 2022
Content than make you emotional are more likely to be spread/shared.
Published on Jan 27, 2022
Objective facts are given less importance in favor of arguments that appeal to emotion and personal beliefs.
Published on Jan 18, 2022
Online Drift happens in online social media platforms - where you start of as a centrist - but gets slowly pushed to one extreme or the other. All online platforms will serve you content that you like. There is a progression for this - it will start of as mild - but it will become more and more extreme over time. This is to increase engagement.
Published on Jan 10, 2022
A moment to share creative work so that others can use and innovate freely. They wish to create a Commons for the creative field.
Published on Dec 03, 2021
Illiberal means that the most important unit is not the individual - it's the group.
Published on May 17, 2021
People learn behavior by observing and duplicating the behavior of others. This starts in childhood - and continues thru life. This can lead to conflict. If one person wants something, another person sees that desire and wants the same thing. Now there are two people in competition for the same thing. This can happen to large groups as well.
Published on May 17, 2021
In Anthropology, imagined community is the idea of a community within all its members minds. Eg. Nations. Some characteristics...
Published on Apr 19, 2021
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It asks the same questions philosophers have asked - but only questions about humans(Why language? What is morality? etc). But rather than looking inward like philosophy, anthropology studies human cultures to get the the answers. Due to this, the answers Anthropology finds are not universal truths - its the truth of a set of people at a specific point in time.
Published on Apr 19, 2021
Portraying staged events(like wrestling) as real - including the internal politics, rivalries and relationships.
Published on Feb 02, 2021
The decreased trust in others is both the reason to and result of decreased participation in communal activities. Without trust, we have to find costly ways to formalize our relationship(eg. creating a contract).
Published on Jan 27, 2021
When individuals in a group interact, they can sometimes reach results that would not have reached them if each had acted alone. Whole is more than the sum of its parts.
Published on Jan 22, 2021
There is a social aspect to belief, such that we may discount even the evidence of our own senses if we think that our beliefs are not in harmony with those around us. Peer pressure works. Just as we seek to have harmony within our own beliefs(Cognitive Dissonance), we also seek harmony with the beliefs of those around us.
Published on Jan 22, 2021
People tend to accept ideas that a threshold percentage of their friends also subscribe to. This can be manipulated by creating a Majority Illusion
Published on Dec 19, 2020
Social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare. Its the local impression that a specific attribute is common when the global truth is entirely different. Eg. In a group of 5 people, 1 person is a drinker and others are drinkers. Everyone in the group is friend with one person and the drinker. So 4 people will see that 50% of their friends are drinkers - even though, in reality only 20% of the 5 is a drinker.
Published on Dec 19, 2020
Too much bonding social capital and it will create group think that will not take in ideas from outside. Too little and ideas will not be shared between members.
Published on Dec 19, 2020