IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020 - 64

Harnessing of ICTs to the
sustainability goals may hinge
on overcoming dominant
misunderstandings of mass media as
neutral transmitters of information
rather than constitutive of reality.
despotism [10]. Ironically, as he observes, this left
Americans blind to the dangers of social media. A fateful decision was taken in the 1940s to substitute political decision making for engineering, as if the social
good was best served by embracing a laissez-faire
media system, on the assumption - proven wrong
today - that heterogeneity also preserved diversity of
viewpoints and advanced democracy.
A non-dominant strand of scholarship has long
called attention to the ideological functions of mainstream, corporate media [37]-[42]. Against dominant
conceptions, they stress that communication structures
are not neutral facilitators of information transmission,
even in the absence of misinformation because,
through the framing of issues, events, and the repetition of messages, media constitute reality [9] by shaping subjectivities and dominant meanings, including
perceptions of what is possible, good, and necessary.
Our dispositions are shaped by social conditioning, in
which media play a central - albeit not exclusive -
role, including understandings and attitudes towards
climate change [43], [44].
Cognitive scientists have shown the extent to which
humans protect deeply engrained values and beliefs
against new scientific information in the area of climate
change [29]. They have also called attention to mass
communications systems' role in shaping public
assumptions and values through "neuropolitics" [45] - a
process of molding neurological networks in our
brains - and our values, assumptions, goals, and ideals -
through persistent and pervasive repetition of particular
messages and frames. Cultural and normative understandings are resistant to change, but while social psychology offers important insights into common patterns
in human understanding and behavior, both are malleable. Cultural and normative understandings are not dictated by our genes, nor do they "fall from the sky"; they
grow in response to information and influences that
become cognitive habits. They grow to "stick" at the level
of habits and emotions, coming to dominate our "fast

thinking" - our immediate, intuitive reactions to information that, by some accounts, dominates up to 98% of
our cognition [46], but they grow in response to information and influences. The social world is malleable. It is
reproduced through the repetition of interpretations: "its
so-called laws are actually norms re-instituted time and
again, dramatized every moment of every day. The "realism" of society .... [is] achieved and performed" [47, p.
44]. It is through such repetition of messages that elites
make their highly unequal access to, pollution of, and
benefit from environmental resources seem natural
despite being detrimental to the public interest [48]. This
widespread acceptance of the status quo is further
ensured through representations of human nature as
selfish and predatory rather than equally capable of
altruism and inclined towards cooperation [49], [50].
Once mass media are understood as tools of
power, it becomes clear why it matters profoundly
who owns and controls them. Mass media are overwhelmingly controlled by elites throughout the world.
Media ownership concentration and consequent control over content is high - and increasing - around
the world [51, p. 9], allowing small groups of elites to
wield vastly disproportionate influence on public
understandings of reality, manifestly including climate
change [52]-[54]. In Latin America as elsewhere,
elites use "media's definitional power to further, consciously or unconsciously, a set of class- and familybased interests and ideologies that have helped
maintain a status quo of social inequality" [55]. In
Brazil, this power has been used to deprive publics of
proper understanding of the unequal benefit-sharing
of the meat- and soy-centered national development
model and economy, and of this key lever for reducing
national emissions [44].
Today, these and other mass meaning-influencing
elites are receiving a turbo-boost from AI.

Mystification about Human Control: Laissezfaire AI is a Dangerous Political Choice
What world do we want? The question marks a major
challenge - and opportunity - facing AI researchers. They must not be left alone in deciding that
question. Communications technologies can be
democratized and made more attentive to environmental and socio-economic justice-attuned governance; countries like Canada, whose CBC is a major
media producer and controlled by an independent
public board, provide a model.
Leaving decisions about the world we want in the
hands of AI engineers is to allow undue play of the
biases of overwhelmingly white, male engineers in the
global North and of capital elites oriented towards private, financial gain rather than considerations of the

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

∕

JUNE 2020

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2020