Abstract
Donald Trump wasn’t just a sign of a broken reality; he was the beneficiary of it. Mainstream consensual reality had shattered a long time ago; it was just that shattering hadn’t gone mainstream.
As the right understood, when reality becomes a free-for-all, then reality becomes available for the taking. It becomes a weaponizable force for anyone with the power to seize and lay claim to it. This is what Trump achieved. Reality itself was seized, and the valid claims of ‘fake news’ were reversed back against the mainstream media themselves, sucking the reality out of their journalism.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Techonomy 2016. https://techonomy.com/2016/11/live-techonomy-2016/
- 2.
Ibid.
- 3.
President Barack Obama Says Fake News Is a Problem for ‘Democratic Freedoms’, Time, 18 November 2016. http://time.com/4575981/barack-obama-fake-news-democracy-facebook/
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Facebook to begin flagging fake news in response to mounting criticism, The Guardian, 15 December 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/15/facebook-flag-fake-news-fact-check
- 8.
Facebook deletes Norwegian PM’s post as ‘napalm girl’ row escalates. The Guardian: 9 September 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-deletes-norway-pms-post-napalm-girl-post-row
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Dear reader, please don’t email me. The Guardian. 8 January 2007. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jan/08/mondaymediasection13
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Pope warns media over ‘sin’ of spreading fake news, smearing politicians. Reuters. 7 December 2016. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-media/pope-warns-media-over-sin-of-spreading-fake-news-smearing-politicians-idUSKBN13W1TU
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
Full transcript and video: Trump news conference. The New York Times. 16 February 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/us/politics/donald-trump-press-conference-transcript.html
- 17.
Bob Clarke. Lecture: From Grub Street to Fleet Street: The Development of the Early English Newspaper. 3 June 2013. https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/from-grub-street-to-fleet-street-the-development-of-the-early-english-newspaper
- 18.
Daniel J. Boorstin. 1962. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper Colophon, p. 205.
- 19.
Boorstin p. 211.
- 20.
Boorstin p. 36.
- 21.
Boorstin p. 252.
- 22.
Guy Debord (1967/1994). Society of the spectacle (translated by D. Nicholson-Smith) New York: Zone Books.-
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Boorstin p. 249.
- 25.
Elizabeth Dubois and Grant Blank. 2018. The myth of the echo chamber. The Conversation. 8 March 2018. https://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-the-echo-chamber-92544
- 26.
Chris Anderson. The Long Tail. Wired. 1 October 2004. https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/
- 27.
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. 1996. The Medium is the Massage. San Francisco: Hardwired.
- 28.
Jeff Jarvis, Trump and the Press: A Murder-Suicide Pact. In Happer, Catherine, Andrew Hoskins and William Merrin (Eds.) Trump’s War on the Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
- 29.
Russell Brand. BBC News. 23 October 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24648651/russell-brand-i-ve-never-voted-never-will
- 30.
Gerasimov, Valery (2013) ‘The Value of Science is in the Foresight’, Military Review, Jan–Feb, pp. 23–29, http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/MilitaryReview/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20160228_art008.pdf
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
Ibid.
- 33.
Jonathan Albright. The #Election2016 Micro-Propaganda Machine. Medium. 18 November 2016. https://medium.com/@d1gi/the-election2016-micro-propaganda-machine-383449cc1fba
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Happer, C., Hoskins, A., Merrin, W. (2019). Weaponizing Reality: An Introduction to Trump’s War on the Media. In: Happer, C., Hoskins, A., Merrin, W. (eds) Trump’s Media War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94069-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94068-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94069-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)