The Remote Control Over the Masses:: The Media

In this chapter, we look at the ‘drug’ of nations: the media. We compare and contrast the in-your-face media practices of some of the authoritarian East, to the insidious practices of some of the Western media tycoons that often go unnoticed. From China’s social credit system to the BBC’s editorial guidelines, we highlight the coercive control that the media has over its global ‘customer’ base. Not only does it draw attention to the malpractices of the traditional global news media, but we also focus on the new media and provide a critical insight into the normalisation of being watched and how this normalisation has changed society’s notions of the Orwellian gaze of the omnipresent ‘Big Brother’ from a chilling prophecy to a much-coveted prosumer lifestyle.