More like this please: factual and evidence based (in the text and the links) underpinning clear insights, with readiness to draw conclusions that are both direct (commercial pressures drive harmful media distortions) and speculative but worth flagging (possible impact of weak leadership that favours blame culture over setting out a clear vision for action) Thanks!
Raymond Inauen
1 year ago
Well put together, but only for those with open minds that are ready to see through all the propaganda. All these awareness campaigns are more about virtue signaling than and make for great conversations at the dinner table or and any gathers. Scratch any deeper and you’ll be talked down when you point out how misguided some of these messages are. Not to mention is also the overly gross simplification of all these campaigns due to the short encounter spans that the message has to be conveyed.
Last edited 1 year ago by Raymond Inauen
Tony Taylor
1 year ago
Publicity campaigns are a product of more and more people ceding more and more responsibility for more and more of their lives to the government. “I tripped on the footpath – what are you going to do about it?” Whatever happened to watching where you’re going? On the plus side, they keep a lot of people employed.
That is not a “plus side”. Those people could be employed doing something useful (of positive value to society) rather than negative value. Opportunity cost.
That’s a fair call, and one spearheaded by insurance companies and the cold, dead hand of public liability.
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Here in the US we are bombarded by unintentionally hilarious PSAs (public service announcements) telling adults to wash their hands when cooking with raw meat, turn off lights when leaving a room, don’t stand in the middle of a golf course during a lightning storm with a putter raised to the sky – you name it. And all with the tag line “brought to you by the Ad Council”, which is the government’s way of saying “You paid for this, ignorant sucker”.
Andrew Horsman
1 year ago
Once you concede that emotional manipulation is a legitimate tool of public policy, you’ve stepped on to a steep slippery slope with a tyrannical viper pit at the bottom. It’s always going to have unintended consequences. Rather than joining the race to the bottom led by commercial advertisers and clickbait “journalism”, the government should be setting a higher standard in providing nothing but factual, impartial information to which others may aspire and imitate. The government may legitimately try to persuade or deter certain behaviours but it should never try to bully or manipulate people into them.
Unfortunately, government departments, corporations, universities, and ad agencies alike have been captured by deluded social justice warriors with half-baked, vacuous ideas that owe nothing to our shared European philosophical and religious heritage that has forged over more than four millennia. Instead, they seem to have swallowed their own nonsense whole, and deluded themselves as much as anyone else that they know best, that the past is full of horrible racist old men who know nothing, and if only everyone would do what they think they should do everyone will be healthy and happy forever and ever.
They’re wrong, and they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Literally and metaphorically untruthful narratives cannot survive in the long term. The only question is how much damage they in the short term.
Last edited 1 year ago by Andrew Horsman
Su Mac
1 year ago
Interesting read about campaigns that were counterproductive. The workings of the mind are indeed subtle..
Anto Coates
1 year ago
Coincidentally read this piece the day after noticing a Drive Drink Free billboard beside the motorway (here in Auckland, New Zealand). New Zealand PSA’s have started to trend more toward encouragement about what to do, rather than exhortation of what not to do. This technique has long been known to be effective in smoking cessation (embrace the health benefits and savings of “becoming a non-smoker” rather than denying yourself the guilty pleasure of something you enjoy).
Simon Sudbury
1 year ago
Great summary of where we’re at in this attention economy, but short on promising ideas of what to do about these blowback effects; hope springs eternal for inspiring politicians but that could be a long wait given their incentives. So Simon, can you update us with another article on the most promising practical alternatives?
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago
If the Central Office Of Information was in fact a campaigning organisation, I’m glad it was shut down.
R Wright
1 year ago
“measures that might prevent violence — such as restorative justice, one of the most well-evidenced and cost-effective tools for addressing serious violence”
I had to stop reading here to laugh. Getting a stab-happy droog and their victim into a huddle to talk things out is not well evidenced as a tool to addressing serious violence. You’re delusional and/or ideologically blinkered.
And yet, the author provides a link to research which seems to demonstrate the opposite of your riposte. If you disagree, instead of laughing, go about providing the evidence that contradicts the latest research.
As with breaking the law, ignorance is no excuse.
More like this please: factual and evidence based (in the text and the links) underpinning clear insights, with readiness to draw conclusions that are both direct (commercial pressures drive harmful media distortions) and speculative but worth flagging (possible impact of weak leadership that favours blame culture over setting out a clear vision for action) Thanks!
Well put together, but only for those with open minds that are ready to see through all the propaganda. All these awareness campaigns are more about virtue signaling than and make for great conversations at the dinner table or and any gathers. Scratch any deeper and you’ll be talked down when you point out how misguided some of these messages are. Not to mention is also the overly gross simplification of all these campaigns due to the short encounter spans that the message has to be conveyed.
Publicity campaigns are a product of more and more people ceding more and more responsibility for more and more of their lives to the government. “I tripped on the footpath – what are you going to do about it?” Whatever happened to watching where you’re going? On the plus side, they keep a lot of people employed.
That is not a “plus side”. Those people could be employed doing something useful (of positive value to society) rather than negative value. Opportunity cost.
I’m not sure it’s possible to find something useful for those people to do.
I would say it is the reverse. Most people haven’t actively ceded responsibility, they have been conditioned by the government’s ‘help’.
That’s a fair call, and one spearheaded by insurance companies and the cold, dead hand of public liability.
Here in the US we are bombarded by unintentionally hilarious PSAs (public service announcements) telling adults to wash their hands when cooking with raw meat, turn off lights when leaving a room, don’t stand in the middle of a golf course during a lightning storm with a putter raised to the sky – you name it. And all with the tag line “brought to you by the Ad Council”, which is the government’s way of saying “You paid for this, ignorant sucker”.
Once you concede that emotional manipulation is a legitimate tool of public policy, you’ve stepped on to a steep slippery slope with a tyrannical viper pit at the bottom. It’s always going to have unintended consequences. Rather than joining the race to the bottom led by commercial advertisers and clickbait “journalism”, the government should be setting a higher standard in providing nothing but factual, impartial information to which others may aspire and imitate. The government may legitimately try to persuade or deter certain behaviours but it should never try to bully or manipulate people into them.
Unfortunately, government departments, corporations, universities, and ad agencies alike have been captured by deluded social justice warriors with half-baked, vacuous ideas that owe nothing to our shared European philosophical and religious heritage that has forged over more than four millennia. Instead, they seem to have swallowed their own nonsense whole, and deluded themselves as much as anyone else that they know best, that the past is full of horrible racist old men who know nothing, and if only everyone would do what they think they should do everyone will be healthy and happy forever and ever.
They’re wrong, and they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Literally and metaphorically untruthful narratives cannot survive in the long term. The only question is how much damage they in the short term.
Interesting read about campaigns that were counterproductive. The workings of the mind are indeed subtle..
Coincidentally read this piece the day after noticing a Drive Drink Free billboard beside the motorway (here in Auckland, New Zealand). New Zealand PSA’s have started to trend more toward encouragement about what to do, rather than exhortation of what not to do. This technique has long been known to be effective in smoking cessation (embrace the health benefits and savings of “becoming a non-smoker” rather than denying yourself the guilty pleasure of something you enjoy).
Great summary of where we’re at in this attention economy, but short on promising ideas of what to do about these blowback effects; hope springs eternal for inspiring politicians but that could be a long wait given their incentives. So Simon, can you update us with another article on the most promising practical alternatives?
If the Central Office Of Information was in fact a campaigning organisation, I’m glad it was shut down.
“measures that might prevent violence — such as restorative justice, one of the most well-evidenced and cost-effective tools for addressing serious violence”
I had to stop reading here to laugh. Getting a stab-happy droog and their victim into a huddle to talk things out is not well evidenced as a tool to addressing serious violence. You’re delusional and/or ideologically blinkered.
And yet, the author provides a link to research which seems to demonstrate the opposite of your riposte. If you disagree, instead of laughing, go about providing the evidence that contradicts the latest research.
As with breaking the law, ignorance is no excuse.
https://unherd.com/2022/05/new-york-is-betraying-rape-victims/
Here’s another Unherd recent article which discusses the disaster that is RJ.