A visual technique that I saw in the movie Manufacturing Consent that follows the propaganda model, is the way the video/audio was edited in a way that would have fragments from of Noam’s speeches on different occasions would fit together to prove a point, or complete a thought. Instead of having footage of Noam completing the idea in one sitting, the video would take clips from a number of different interviews or speeches and synthesize it. I think that this plays into the propaganda model in a way that it takes information (which could be out of context) from a multitude of places so that it can prove one point. However, although the speaker is the same, the facts are taken out of context and we are not getting the true information. It is like plagiarism in that the person editing the video only takes what he or she wants from the speech and puts the pieces together so that it can prove their point, even though that was not the speakers’ initial intention. The constant cutting of shot clips also plays into a viewer’s short attention span. If the media were to show continuous footage of Noam Chomsky speaking, they may get bored and not absorb the point that the media was trying to relay to them. In order to fix this the media bounces from clip to clip that seemingly melds together well enough to prove their point.
Another technique that I saw would be the occasional interjection of statistics. The random additions may be true; however, the viewer does not take a moment to think about where the statistic came from or if it is even true. Since it appears on the screen and is placed concurrently with an image that relates to it, viewers will believe it, even if the statistics that appear are not coupled with any kind of source citation.
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