SINGAPORE: Doctoring images, sharing morphed images and videos, and circulating framed stories are exemplars of propaganda techniques. These techniques work primarily through communicative inversion, the use of symbols to communicate the exact opposite of the materiality of events.

Events thus presented within frames of propaganda take up inverted meanings, re-presenting falsities as truths.

Such propaganda techniques are vital resources in serving authoritarian agendas of nation states. Other voices can be silenced to the extent that they are seen as threats to the unmitigated power of the nation state, often assumed to be synonymous with the ruling elite by media actors seeking to ingratiate to power.

Buzzwords such as nationalism, development, and growth can be deployed creatively to mark the “other” that stands in the way of the state and therefore must be silenced. Indigenous communities in Eastern India resisting the occupation of their homes through state-sponsored privatized mining projects must be marked as “Maoist” so development can be carried out. Minorities must be marked as “terrorist” so an image of a homogenous nation state can be propped up. Environmental activists must be marked as “foreign influence” so unmitigated industrialization can be carried out. Universities must be marked as “anti-national” so critical thoughts and conversations can be silenced in order to make way for the hegemony of the state inscribed on pedagogy.

In all of these instances, media manufacture consent precisely to serve the agendas of authoritarianism, increasingly contributing to the shrinking of public spheres. The manufacturing of consent is enabled by an environment of audience reception where news recipients engage with news through comments, Facebook posts, WhatsApp messages, and tweets.

A passive audience given to hysterical media anchors to make up conclusions through the performance of debate is the perfect recipe for the emergence of nationalist authoritarianism. The absence of a deliberative climate of engagement with news is fodder for uncritical circulation of rhetoric that is dripping with nationalist jingoism.

The power of an authoritarian regime is paradoxically sustained through the manipulation of media in circulating images, coded in dichotomies that actively construct “the other” and work systematically to reproduce public sentiment that is uncritically directed at “the other.” Once potential threats can be identified, they are deployed in catalyzing anxiety around national security. In the US for instance, in the post 9-11 climate, the threat of terror was systematically deployed to exaggerate the need for national security. Once the security narrative was established, it became the basis for state repression of a wide range of civil liberties.

In a climate of cooked up anxieties around national security, the rage of public opinion is turned onto the “other,” suspending norms of civility and opportunities for dialogue, and instead feeding an authoritarian climate of repression. The narrative thus established on dichotomies, is devoid of arguments, bereft of the quest for evidence, and removed from considered conversation. The elements of news that make it news are robbed from the hyperbole as news turns to mobilizing mobs. The attacks of lawyers on JNU student union President Kanhaiya Kumar is a mirror image of the mob lynching of Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid on social media. A quick look at the comments sections of news stories depicts this climate of public hysteria, cooked up on the image of the nation.

The heightened media attacks on the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) over a two week period has been synchronized with repressive attacks of the state on students and faculty of the University, as well as on the very institutional structure of JNU. Teachers, students, and the institution have been accused of breeding anti-nationalism. Political leaders associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have called for the state to shut-down the University. Yet another ruling party politician speculates about the allegedly licentious behavior of JNU students, marking the University as a site of anti-cultural activities.

Media stories have asked some form or the other of the question “Why is the taxpayer’s money going into subsidizing anti-nationals?” The attack on JNU is part of a broader systemic attack by the BJP-ruled Indian state on critical thought across Universities in India, seeking to limit the possibilities of conversations and debates within Universities. And a widely viewed section of the mainstream media in India are complicit in this attack.

At the heart of the recent bout of media propaganda is a cultural event held at JNU on February 9 that sought to engage inconvenient questions about the sovereignty of Kashmir and the juridical trial of Afzal Guru. The February 9 event has been framed as an exemplar of the anti-national activities allegedly being carried out on university campuses across India, offering legitimacy to a state-driven purge of critical thought and analysis. Twitter handles such as #shutdownJNU and #taxpayerJNU have amplified the nationalist rhetoric. The media stories covering the event were bereft of evidence or based on concocted evidence. Yet, evidence does not matter to the nationalist mob who must now avenge their “mother India.”

Communicative inversions manufacture the image of the anti-national that must then be disciplined and controlled. The disciplining of the anti-national is based on the image of the anti-national, built up in media narratives that mark this “other” through a variety of symbolic strategies such as highlighting faces, circling faces, and foregrounding faces. In the cooked-up media images, we witness an amplified image of Umar highlighted for the viewer. We witness the image of a Kanhaiya shouting slogans, Umar standing by him. The evidence of the students seemingly shouting anti-national slogans is simply absent, and yet, once the images of the “other” have been highlighted, the conclusions are already drawn up and social media amplify these conclusions with the vigor of virality. The story of a Kanhaiya Kumar or an Umar Khalid goes viral, feeding the public imaginations of a nation state taught to feed on hashtags, likes, and shares.

In this role of tools of propaganda, media structures deploy strategies of image making and sloganeering, capturing heuristic responses in tweets and social-media tailored messages. Journalists and anchors, not only perform on the news show, but also on twitter handles and Facebook feeds, driving up the propaganda narrative in hashtags. Online comments, Facebook posts, and tweets have called for the anti-nationalists to be adequately punished. What becomes apparent from this exaggerated sense of public rage, accompanied by state repression and media anxiety is the loss of reason. For propaganda to work, consent must be manufactured; for consent to be manufactured, reasoned engagement must take leave.

The threat as the “other”

Making up the threat of the “other” is a key element of the propaganda strategy. The manufacturing of mass consent on the anti-national offers the anchor for the mobilization of the nation state.

The February 9 event at JNU becomes the center of the anti-national narrative. The February 10 coverage of the event on Times Now, February 11 coverage on Zee News, and the coverage on a relatively unknown channel NewsX initiated and then fed the propaganda, driven by the single-handed agenda of portraying the students as anti-national.

The performance of propaganda on the Newshour debate already concluded that the students organizing the event were anti-national. The episode operated as an exemplar of the non-debate propaganda genre, making claims without evidence, jumping from the claims to conclusions, and drawing from the conclusions to accusations. The show was performed as a choreographed attack on the JNU students, with Goswami working collaboratively with the BJP spokesperson, Nupur Sharma. Goswami’s shrill accusations of the students being anti-national were layered over Sharma’s accusations of the students being terrorists.

Similarly, the Zee News coverage of February 11 aired doctored videos to push a pre-configured agenda of portraying the students as anti-nationals. Later events including the resignation of the Zee News producer Vishwa Deepak draw attention to the manufacturing of the “Pakistan Zindabad” slogans on the telecast although the captured video of the event has no “Pakistan Zindabad” slogan captured in it. In spite of later evidence that questioned the veracity of the evidence presented by Zee News, the channel carried out with its propaganda function, drawing out other angles to highlight the anti-national narrative. The portrayal of the “other” in this instance is part of a deliberate propaganda strategy.

Once the accusation has been made, media narratives further exaggerate the “othering.” The assumption of guilt placed on the other becomes the bases for side stories, exploring linkages with terrorist groups, seeking out Maoist narratives, depicting familial history, any strategy that would keep intact the propaganda story. The media as key players in the propaganda story amplify falsities even after they are brought to light rather than apologizing for them and correcting the inaccuracy. The power of propaganda is re-inscribed through the amplification of the narrative at any cost, in spite of building evidence to the contrary. At the peak of propaganda, journalists turn into uncritical spokespersons for the nation state rather than seekers of truth in narratives that offer vital anchors for the nation state and keep unmitigated state-market power in check.

As we witness in the example of Zee News, the power of media propaganda as a genre lies in its suspension of critical thought. Universally accepted journalistic practices such as asking for evidence, carefully considering evidence, and balancing multiple viewpoints to an issue are easily forgotten as the channel serves the nationalist agenda.

Evidence-making

The media must make up evidence in order to serve the propaganda function.

Evidence-making is the creation of evidence where there isn’t any. As a strategy, evidence making mostly functions through the erasure of uncertainty. It works as a strategy of manufacturing claims by its very appearance of certainty. We discover a rabid Arnab Goswami on February 10 that has already concluded the complicity of the students on his show. He thus begins with the very premise that the students are guilty, without attending to the evidence for the claim.

The making of evidence is the use of communication to render as common sense unfounded assumptions that are not grounded in evidence. The making of evidence of the “anti-national JNU students” is driven precisely by the lack of direct evidence that points toward the students carrying out the slogans.

The Newshour Debate hyperventilates on the apparent truth of the students raising anti-national slogans. The viewer witnesses Goswami the nationalist join in the chorus with BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma to mark the students as anti-national without the presentation of evidence. News as evidence making has little concern for the materiality of the evidence and the quality of evidence available to journalists and news anchors. Such forms of evidence making offer the perfect recipe for state repression.

The manufacturing of evidence drives state repression by rendering as necessary action by the state. The Zee News story that broke on February 11, 2016 became the basis for the evidence that was filed by the police. Instead of checking for the veracity of tapes and the quality of the evidence being presented, the Delhi police acted in haste, launching a search on JNU campus and arresting the President of the student union of JNU, Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar. That the Delhi Police acted in haste is now corroborated by the admission by Delhi Police that it does not have evidence demonstrating Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar shouting the anti-national slogan.

In this sordid tale of an orchestrated witch hunt, the state collaborated with the media, feeding on the media narrative and the jingoism of nationalism in the social media scape. Even as later reports emerged about the doctored nature of the tapes, the Delhi police continued to hold Mr. Kanhaiya Kumar in custody. BJP politicians in the parliament continued to drive up the frenzy, in spite of the weak grounds for the claims.

State actors also corroborated in further exacerbating the media lies. After the story broke on national media, state ministers commented. In fact, several representatives of the BJP appeared on TV channels to cook up the propaganda. For instance, the BJP spokesperson appeared on Times Now with the doctored tape. Arnab Goswami noted that the tape could not be corroborated and then went on to run the entire show on the assumption that the tape was corroborated. Similarly, the BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma appeared on the Newshour Debate to initiate along with Goswami the anti-national label directed at the students participating on the show. The students were accused of being terrorists or closet terrorists, without interrogating the basis for such serious claims with clearly harmful consequences for the students.

Particularly salient was the attack on Umar Khalid, a JNU student from a minority community that quickly became the villain in the 24X7 media cycles. Khalid’s image fed the nationalist image of a Hindu India, aligned with the homogenous imaginary of a BJP-led India that sees its Muslim minorities as threats to the Hindu nation. Rogue stories with apparent references to Khalid’s relationship with Jaesh-e-Mohammed were circulated on the media. Later versions of these stories made references to the number of times Khalid allegedly travelled to Pakistan, oblivious to the fact that Khalid didn’t even own a passport. Later versions of stories desperate to establish Khalid’s linkages with a terror narrative sought to portray his phone calls to Kashmir as reason for suspicion. In the latest version of the narratives of the bizarre circulated through the state-media nexus, Khalid is accused of orchestrating an attack on the Aam Admi Party leader and indigenous activist Soni Sori, who had been systematically attacked by the state for her protests against state-led privatization projects being carried out in the name of development and threatening to displace indigenous people.

The attack on Khalid by the media is replicated by threats of violence faced by his family. His sisters continue to face threats of physical and sexual violence. His father faces death threats. Social media is rife with comments inciting violence on Khalid. The making of evidence is the instrument of the cycle of violence we are witnessing across public spaces in India. Moreover, this making of evidence is the bulwark of repression.

Media accountability and media ethics

The role of the media in shaping the national discourse over the last two weeks offers an opportunity for widespread discussion among media workers and media scholars on the ethical responsibilities of media in a democracy. The question of media ethics also needs to be situated in relationship to the nature of media institutions in a democracy. The privatization of mass media is implicitly tied to the corporate interests that control the media and shape media agendas. Media houses are profit-driven structures, often depending on favors curried by the state in carrying out their everyday functions. When the profit-driven agendas of the media and the control of the state are aligned, the role of the media become antithetical to the spirit of democracy. It is within this context that we need serious discussions about media ownership, media accountability and state repression in India.

(Mohan J. Dutta is Provost’s Chair Professor of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore).

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