In an age where students spend hours immersed in social media, algorithm-driven content, and attention economies, the illusion of free access to information often masks a deeper reality: our perceptions are curated, not chosen. Drawing on Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, this article examines how corporate and political forces shape digital environments in ways that influence not just what we consume, but how we think.
While schools have begun to introduce basic media literacy, these efforts often stop at fact-checking or bias detection, ignoring the larger systems of power that determine which narratives thrive and which disappear. The consequences are damaging: media systems routinely obscure the exploitation behind consumer culture. From cobalt mining in Congo for tech companies to modern slave labour in fast fashion, these injustices are hidden behind curated content, ads, and trends all rarely questioned by those consuming them.
Mass media, along with market forces, have socialised us into detaching, justifying, and ultimately accepting the contradictions between our values and our behaviours. In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman propose the “propaganda model,” a framework that explains how media functions not as an unbiased information source but as a system conditioned to serve elite interests. According to the model, there are five structural filters through which news and ideas must pass before they reach the public: ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and ideology.
The first filter, ownership, highlights how the control of media organisations by large corporations with specific commercial and political interests can influence the content and perspectives presented in the media. In Australia, this is strikingly evident with a single company, News Corp, owning a majority of the country’s print media and having significant influence across television, radio, and digital platforms. Although these outlets target different audiences through different channels, much of the editorial direction follows a consistent ideological line, resulting in a media environment where plurality of format often fails to translate to plurality of perspective.
The second filter, advertising, serves as a primary revenue source for media, which can lead to content being shaped to avoid offending advertisers. Stories that might unsettle advertisers, such as those questioning overconsumption, fossil fuel dependency, or the ethics of fast fashion, are avoided or softened, and instead, audiences are encouraged to feel empowered through consumption. This supports the idea that social and environmental issues can be solved simply through better purchasing decisions.
The third filter, sourcing, highlights how journalists’ reliance on information from government departments, corporate spokespeople, and think tanks can result in media narratives that align with these entities’ agendas, limiting diverse perspectives. The use of these biased sources leads to a limited range of voices and perspectives that are represented in the news.
The fourth filter, flak, involves forms of pressure or backlash directed at media organisations that challenge dominant power structures. These can include legal threats, public complaints, or advertiser boycotts, all of which create a risk-averse climate that encourages conformity, and discourages independent scrutiny and criticism.
The fifth and final filter, ideology, originally focused on Cold War anti-communism but has expanded to include dominant narratives like neoliberalism, economic growth, and national security. These subtly shape media content and public perception. These ideological frameworks are embedded in media discourse and absorbed by the public, rarely subjected to critical scrutiny.
Media has not only informed us, they have socialised us. We are taught, often unconsciously, to detach from contradictions: to value human rights while consuming products built on exploitation, or to advocate for climate justice while endorsing brands that rely on unsustainable practices. These tensions become normalised through repetition, aesthetic packaging, and an absence of critical framing. True media literacy must go beyond technical skills. It must ask harder questions: Whose interests are being served? What stories are missing? What assumptions are embedded in the “neutral” narratives we receive? Without these questions, students are equipped only to decode individual texts, but never the systems that produce them.
As digital citizens, we must learn not only how to read media, but how to read the power behind them. Only then can we reclaim our agency and begin to think, truly, for ourselves.
Sources: Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
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