THE POLITICS OF

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
GOVT3009

Title: Final Assessment

ID No.: 620122798

Lecturer: Tracy-Ann Johnson-Myers

SECTION ONE
Question 1.

I. “Article VI, Section 2 of the Constitution is known as the Supremacy Clause. It

declares that the Constitution and the laws of the United States “shall be the Supreme

law of the land.”  The Supremacy Clause empowers Congress to preempt or supersede

State law.  Congress can do so expressly with explicit statutory language or by

implication when a Federal law occupies the same field or conflicts with State law”

(Jurkowski, 2017).

II. “The Tenth Amendment was inserted in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights to

further explain the balance of power between the federal government and the states. T

full text of the amendment is “the powers not delegated to the United States by the

Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,

or to the people.” Simply put, the Tenth Amendment emphasizes that the inclusion of

a bill of rights does not change the fundamental character of the national government”

(Smentkowski, 2019).

III. “The U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause represents one of Congress' most

important sources of legislative powers. The clause refers to Article I, Section 8,

Clause 3 of the US Constitution. It gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce

with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes.

According to Rutkow and Vernick (2011), “although the Commerce Clause's text

neither explicitly mentions nor even alludes to public health, its interpretation by the

U.S. Supreme Court has played a key role in either promoting or hindering efforts to

achieve landmark legislation affecting the public's health”

b. In a federal system of government, there is the reconciliation of the desire for overall unity

along with the desire for regional autonomy. A country that employs federalism has national

and regional governments, each operating independently, in their own jurisdictional

area. Unlike unitary government, federalism promotes specific values. Two (2) advantages of

Canadian federalism include:

• It allows citizens have a degree of local autonomy. In other words, Canadian

federalism enables citizens to achieve their goals through a federal government acting

within the limits of its jurisdiction on a national agenda.

• Canadian Federalism also afford citizens the opportunity to access multiple points of

government, which increases participation among the population within the electoral

process.

Question 2

Liberalism and Conservatism are two of most valuable ideologies that has influenced

politics. Notably, each ideology has their conflicting views on separate facets in society.

FOUR (4) key differences between Liberalism and Conservatism on state intervention are:

• Liberalism emphasizes that government action is needed in society to achieve equal

opportunities and equity for all citizens, also that it is the responsibility of the

government to reduce community issues and to protect individuals’ civil liberties.

Conservatives instead believe that in this sense the state’s role is only to provide

individuals the necessary liberty to pursue their own goals.

• In private matters, liberalists have a tendency oppose state intervention. Liberals

believe that government has no business in personal matters therefore there should be

no laws that restricts abortion, contraception or same-sex marriage for example. On

 the contrary, conservatives tend to favor state intervention to promote traditional

morality, for example, outlawing abortion and marijuana etc.

• Liberalists believes that state should interfere in economic matters i.e. government

should regulate businesses, establishing minimum wages and poverty programs.

Conservatives on the contrary takes the opposite position and believes that state

should stay out of economic matters totally.

• Liberalists believe that the state has the right to exercise eminent domain which refers

to the power of government to seize private property and covert to public use while

conservatives believe that government should not exercise eminent domain for public

development as they respect ownership and believe in private property rights.

Question 3

Freeman & Johnson (1999) define social movements as “organized yet informal social

entities that are engaged in extra-institutional conflict that is oriented towards a goal.” Four

(4) types of social movements include:

• Alternative movements: Alternative movements observe a specific portion of the

population. These movements typically emphasize self-improvement and specific

modifications to individual behaviours and beliefs. The Mothers Against Drunk

Driving movement in the U.S., Canada and Brazil is an example of an alternative

social movement.

• Redemptive movements/ Religions movements: These social movements are

“meaning-seeking.” They also focus on a selective portion of the population. Their

purpose is to evoke inner change or spiritual growth in individuals. The Church of

England, The Unification church in South Korea and some minority religions are

some examples of redemptive social movements.

 • Reformative social movements: These movements seek to change something

specific about the social structure. They may seek a more limited change but are

targeted at the entire population. Environmental movements such as Friends of the

Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace in Britain and the U.S. Woman’s Suffrage Movement are

examples of reformative movements.

• Revolutionary movements: These movements seek to alter every aspect of society

totally. They are aimed at destroying the old social order and replace it with a new

one. The U.S. Civil Rights Movement (Malcolm X or the Black Panthers violent

approach) and the American Revolution are examples of revolutionary movements.

Question 4

The Electoral College is the process by which the United States selects their President

and Vice President. It consists of 538 delegates nationwide that meet in their home states

every four years and cast one vote per person for the president and vice president. This

process begins when American voters goes to the polls on the first Tuesday in November and

cast their votes for a candidate. The will of the voters, however, is portrayed in the actions of

the state delegates. In 48 states, the electoral votes are allocated on a winner-takes-all basis,

while Nebraska and Maine apportion their votes by the congressional district with two

additional votes reserved for the statewide winner. After this election, each state governor

submits a Certificate of Ascertainment to Congress and the National Archives with a list of

the names of the delegates for both parties. On the second Wednesday after the first Monday

in December, the delegates convene usually in their respective states in order to cast their

ballots. The following year on January 6, a joint session of Congress is convened where the

electoral votes are tallied and certified. The candidate that receives 270 or more electoral

votes wins the election. In a case where neither party receive 270 or more of the electoral
votes, the House of Representative chooses electoral college finishers to elect the president

using the majority vote.

b. Nagel (2001) defines Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system as “an electoral

systems designed to approximate the ideal of proportionality in converting citizens' votes into

legislative seats.” FOUR (4) advantages of proportional representation electoral system for

industrialized countries are:

• PR systems closely translate votes casted into seats won. This tool avoids some of

the undermining and unfair that can arise in plurality/majority electoral systems.

• PR systems allow minority parties accessibility to some representation. Unless the

threshold is disproportionately high, or the district magnitude is usually low, then

any political party can again representation in the legislature even if they only

receive a small percentage of the vote casted.

• PR systems does not allow votes to be wasted. When thresholds are low, almost

every vote casted in a PR election go toward electing a chosen candidate.

• PR systems encourages political parties to campaign beyond the districts in which

they are the strongest or where the results are expected to be close. The reason

behind this is to maximize the overall vote irrespective of where they might come

from.

Question 5

Voluntary quotas: Dimitrievska (2004) states that voluntary party quotas are “effective

policies implemented by government to increase the representation of women in politics”.

Voluntary party quota declares that a percentage of nominated political candidates elected

must be women (usually around 20% to 30% or even up to 50% percent in some cases.
Candidate quotas: “This type of quota is usually a binding form of candidate quota for all

parties that intend to contest parliamentary seats. Legislated candidate quotas give the state

the opportunity to enforce sanctions to compel political parties to abide by the adopted

standard”. (Krook, 2007).

Reserved seats: Krook & O’Brien (2010) asserts that “reserved seats stipulate the number

of women or representatives of an under-represented sex to be elected to legislative

bodies”.
 References

Dimitrievska, D. (2004). Quotas: the case of Marcedonia. Retrieved from

https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/2877/file/Quotas_The%20Case%20of

%20Macedonia.pdf

Freeman, J. & Johnson, V. (1999) Waves of protest: Social movements since the sixties.

Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Jurkowski, S. (2017). Supremacy Clause. Retrieved from

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/supremecy_clause

Krook, M. L. (2007). Candidate gender quotas: A framework for analysis. European Journal

of Political Research. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6765.2007.00704.x Retrieved from

http://mlkrook.org/pdf/ejpr_07.pdf

Krook, M., & O'Brien, D. (2010). The Politics of Group Representation: Quotas for Women and

Minorities Worldwide. Comparative Politics, 42(3), 253-272. Retrieved from

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27822309

Nagel, J. H. (2001). Proportional Representation. International Encyclopedia of the Social

and Behavioral Science. Retrieved from

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/proportional-representation

Rutkow, L. & Vernick, J. S. (2011). The U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause, the Supreme

Court, and Public Health. Retrieved from

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151195/

Smentkowski, B. P. (2019). Tenth Amendment. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tenth-Amendment
SECTION TWO

In the contemporary era, propaganda is a term that have become a part of our daily

discourse. According to Smith (2016), propaganda can be defined as “information that is

usually subjective and is commonly used to influence audiences and/or by extension agendas,

often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or

using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the

information that is presented”. According to many scholars, mass media can be thought of as

a form of propaganda that can be employed with the intent to manipulate the public to further

the agenda of the power elites. Correspondingly, Herman and Chomsky (1988) holds that the

media among their other scope of activities, serves and propagandize according to their

interests and power societal influences that finance and control them. Herman and Chomsky

(1988) further contend that the representatives of these influential interests have their

important agendas and principles that they seek to advance, therefore they are willing and

prepared to influence and constrain media policy. This essay seeks to overview mass media,

examine the propaganda model and highlight arguments relating to the propaganda model

concerning the overall patterns of mass media behaviour.

According to many, mass media and propaganda are two inextricable phenomena.

Mass media refers to the channels of communications that involves the dissemination

information to people in some way shape or form. In most cases mass media relay

information to the public with the intent of entertaining with rules and values that situate

them in society. Mass media exerts the most influential control in public opinions. It can be

said that mass media takes major responsibility in how people view the world in general. In

more recent times, the media still fail to remain merely neutral in their coverage and exert

substantial influence in their analysis and reporting of certain information (Neel, 2019). 

Therefore, Herman and Chomsky introduced the five-filter model also known as the
propaganda model in 1988 which seeks to examine mass media behaviour by the examining

of the institutional pressures that constrain and influence news content operating within a

capitalist economy. The Propaganda Model emphasizes that factors such as size ownership,

and profit orientation will ultimately shape the behaviour of the media in many ways and will

also encourage partiality towards the right-wing within their mainstream media discourses.

The model also notes that it is through advertising that media generate the bulk of their

profits for most mainstream and commercial media house, therefore media discourses will

portray tendencies to reflect the interests of advertisers as well as the market (Klaehn, 2009).

The PM model suggests that there exists a set of new filters that weakens the original

news content and transmutes it to a content that conforms to the interests of capitalists. These

five filters include: size, ownership and profit orientation, advertising, sourcing, flak and anti-

communism (sometimes referred to as the common enemy). Firstly, according to Herman &

Chomsky (1988), the ‘size, ownership and profit filter’ emphasizes that mass media outlets

are usually large companies and corporations. The media house must protect those companies

interests and by way of doing this, they end up filtering out the raw information that they

supply to the public or the masses. Therefore, news goes through the process of ‘self-

censorship’. For example, because CNN is owned by TBS which is a subsidiary of TNT,

CNN will be mindful of the news that it sends out that may threaten the benefit of its owners

(both TBS and TNT) as the media needs to remain profitable. The second filter known as the

‘advertising filter’ states that for media outlets to survive, they have to generate revenue by

covering advertisements. The media is heavily dependent on this revenue so that they can

remain profitable. Notably, the profits that the media generate through advertisements is way

higher than the revenue generate through subscriptions and sales. Within this filter element,

an example could be Amazon and AT&T which are two of the companies that spends the

most money on advertisements. The media will try their best to not portray either company in
a bad light as this will threaten the benefit of two of their major sources of profits. For

example, the media house that advertises for AT&T will not cover an advertisement that

claim T-Mobile is the best mobile network as this will allow AT&T to lose profits which

ultimately threatens the media’s profits. The third filter known as ‘sourcing filter’ draws

attention to and highlights the ways in which news discourses are socially constructed with

regards to sources (Klaehn, 2005). Simply put, the media and their influential interests

(journalists or other powerful sources) through which they receive their information engage

in a relationship that is mutually beneficial according to economic necessity and interests.

Noteworthily, sources that typically dominate news discourses are often connected. Due to

this, news serves to portray institutional interests on a macro level. When the different news

stories are covered, the media tend to encode the preferred meanings which influence how

their articles are disseminated as it relates to their headlines, their leads and the overall

presentation of story paying particular attention to what they choose to emphasize as well as

their tone (Klaehn, 2007). The PM’s fourth filter is ‘flak’. This filter constitutes the negative

commentary that is generated on either side of the symbiotic relationship; however, they are

more commonly directed at the media. When news medias portray individual stories that

stray too far from the consensus, they can get flak (Chomsky, 2017). Flak can come in the

form of complaints, lawsuits, petition, government sanction etc. For instance, a journalist in

Sweden who critiques nuclear power could receive phone calls from angry complainants who

are employed in the nuclear power industry. The fifth and final filter in the model is ‘anti-

communism’ or ‘the common enemy’. According to Bourdieu (1991) This filter element

“may be related to any number of case studies involving power and powerlessness and seems

particularly well-suited for analysis concerned to investigate media and the legitimatization

of power”. For example, it was possible for many years in the US to use the fear for

communism to suppress ideas that were not related to communism. Another example of this
filter element could be how the media would portray western identification of ‘the enemy’ or

the ‘evil dictator’ for example how the media portrays Goddafi or Osama Bin Laden. This

creates and instills a sense of fear in people and are targeted towards an agenda.

Collectively and in essence, the five filters of the Propaganda Model provides a

framework which illustrates how and why structural dimensions such as the media express

systematic partiality towards the right wing and encourages a limited range of debate to avoid

chaos within the mainstream media discourses. As such, as aforementioned and with the

points that were put forward, I do agree with the notion that media is definitely a form of

propaganda that is primarily used to influence their intended audiences. Therefore Herman

and Chomsky propaganda model provide a basis for and strengthens the general argument

that the media house which is thought of as ‘fit to print’ will overwhelmingly be politically

and ideologically advantageous to the interests of power at the detriment of their audience.

In the final analysis, this paper has provided an overview of mass media, examine the

propaganda model and highlight arguments relating to the propaganda model concerning the

overall patterns of mass media behaviour. In conclusion, it can be said that the mass media is

a form of propaganda. Herman and Chomsky in their propaganda model outlined five filters

which are size, ownership and profit orientation, advertising, sourcing, flak and anti-

communism which explains the different channels in which raw news or information is

passed and filtered to convey skewed messages to the intended audience within a profit-based

or capitalist economy that fixated on their interests.

 References

Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge: Polity.

Chomsky, N. (2017). Noam Chomsky: The five filters of the mass media. Retrieved from

https://prruk.org/noam-chomsky-the-five-filters-of-the-mass-media-machine/

Herman, E. S., & Chomsky, N. (2010). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of

the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.

Hijab, E., Murad, K. Sheikh, D. & Al-Bayati, R. (2017). Media and Political Propaganda.

Retrieved from

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321850683_Media_and_Political_Propagan

da

Klaehn, J. (2005). A critical review and assessment of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda.

Montreal: Black Rose Books.

Klaehn, J. (2009). The Propaganda Model: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. Retrieved from

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255667986_The_Propaganda_Model_Theor

etical_and_Methodological_Considerations/citation/download

Neel, M. (2019). Noam Chomsky: The five-filters of the mass media. Retrieved from

https://www.sociologygroup.com/mass-media-as-a-power-institution/