Silence, and its relationship to power. 

The power silence holds is fascinating. Scholars such as Rath believe that democrats and dictators alike have attempted to use silence to maintain control and prolong their rule throughout history. Whereas dictatorships are often associated with silencing their population, democracies have been grossly guilty of the act. 

Silence is enforced through tools that can ensure the unity of the process. One such tool until recently had been the mass press. In his book Unfreedom of the press, Mark Levin noted that the development of the mass press as an instrument of Mass Communication in its self inhibited the ability of a large number of the population to express its opinion. If we were to couple that with the intense concentration of media ownership worldwide, then we have an apparatus in place that silences a majority of the population. 

For example, in 1790, then US president Adam passed the sedition law, which made it illegal to print anything against the government. During the civil war, Lincoln wanted to control the telegraph lines. Woodrow Wilson, the supposed champion of liberal values and "Wilsonian Idealism," curtailed press freedom during World War 1; Franklin D. Rosvelete launched a war against the press during his new deal campaign. 

The intense concentration of media ownership has given influential organizations and governments tools to exercise and enforce silence more subtly by drowning out the voice of people in a sea of noise.In my opinion, this proves Raths point that even though silence might not exist objectively, it does exist in the subjective sense. 

Comments

  1. Anisha MistryNovember 30, 2021 at 8:47 AM

    Hi Ahmad,

    This is a very interesting point you bring up about silence and print. While I was reading this, I was drawn back to Krukoski's writing on noise in relation to the dichotomy between analog and digital. I think especially in relation to your point about the mass press, Krukoski's argument that analog media is a continuous stream of information that always includes noise. I think it would be interesting to look at your point of mass print and apply it to Krukoski's ideas. In this sense, it is impossible to eliminate noise because there is a constant stream of information coming from the source.

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