Noam Chomsky’s Insights on Media’s Invisible Power
I had the opportunity to learn from Noam Chomsky through the I4GMasterClass Scholarship on Masterclass — a streaming platform with online classes taught by the world’s best. I’d known Chomsky to be the “father of modern linguistics” from the university so I was more willing to learn from him. Chomsky is a scholar, linguist, and political activist. He is the author of more than 150 books and one of the most cited scholars in history. The way he analyzed the world around us was quite illuminating and I’m excited to share some of my learnings with you from his class on “Independent Thinking and Media’s Invisible Power”. We live in a world where people make videos of strangers and post on TikTok without them knowing that they are being seen by millions of people. Chomsky saw this as a soft means of control and domination, what he termed “soft fascism”. Phone manufacturers could actually withhold the use of that power but they choose not to because they want people to be in control. Chomsky shared his perspective on the use of “Algo speak” on social media platforms, especially TikTok. Algo speak refers to the use of coded words or phrases in posts to communicate some strict content publicly. For instance, “Leg booty” for LGBTQ and “panda express” for pandemic. Only the users of these terms would understand it. Chomsky referred to this practice as cloaking reality to support power and to avoid power.
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