The BBC & It’s Spiral of Silence

In this Information Age, how can a majority be silenced? What is the role of mass media and virtual media in this process?

The Spiral of Silence is the theory of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German political scientist who has a very interesting story. To explain and scrutinize it, we will refer to the role of media and in particular, the role of BBC broadcasting media in silencing Iranian society.A lot of talk is made about BBC’s bias and its role in shaping public opinion throughout the world using its many different language services, but my question about BBC revolves around one fundamental fact. Does BBC present the news to its audience as it is? Or do they report fake news?
In this article, I will go one step further and reveal to you a secret that is not really such a secret. Contrary to many people’s beliefs, BBC does not lie to you. For this media, it doesn’t matter at all whether you believe the news or not. People who are familiar with the Spiral of Silence know that by using the principles of psychology, the media’s bias unknowingly takes the player into play and shapes its thoughts.
Given the psychological phenomena of a human being, it’s been proven that we have undergone a series of developments and acquired a series of buttons, and pressing these buttons can lead a person to undertake movements that are unimaginable in their normal behavioral modes. When you watch TV today and see an ad, you must understand that millions and millions were spent by experts in the psychological marketing field to reach deep down into your subconscious and reach you in ways that you yourself cannot understand. These experts know what makes you tick better than you do.
I remember my grandfather, a university professor, always reminding us kids to avoid drugs. My grandfather had a famous sentence. He said those addicted to heroin thought they could handle it, but did not know it was not possible.
Just as our body can become addicted to a drug, so our psyche can become addicted to a series of lines of thought. The Spiral of Silence Theory deals with this phenomenon. To explain this phenomenon, we will take a look at some examples from the 1979 disaster euphemistically called The Iranian Revolution.
Let’s take a look at this  picture from the events of those days:

This image shows a normally calm nation that is inflamed and is acting with savagery, much like harmless animals such as sheep and goats, which are very calm and peaceful in normal situations, but at one point, terrified by realizing an imminent danger, act unpredictably. So is man. While man is a thoughtful being, he behaves unpredictably when inflamed.

In the case of the tragedy of 1979, BBC Radio’s Persian service played a leading role in angering the population against the Shah and bringing people to streets.

From sending a picture of Khomeini to the moon, to succeeding in stirring up public opinion that the burning of the Rex Cinema in Abadan was ordered by the Shah of the country, which were promoted by BBC, have, with the passage of time and declassification of British & American intelligence documents have all been proven to be nothing but a body of lies designed to stir up an uprising. It was the false reports of the BBC that changed a country and drove people crazy. These false reports were purposeful. BBC’s Persian language coverage is the primary cause of all those negative effects, and to this day BBC has not apologized to the Iranian people for that behavior.
A question remains. What happened to our people that they behaved that way?
I’ll begin to answer that question with another question. . How is it that the British government collects a significant tax from its citizens each year in the form of a television license for the privilege of watching BBC’s TV programming, but provides a free co-free satellite TV & radio channel in Persian for the Iranian people, with an annual budget of about £40 million?
If you have ever noticed, when the time comes for the anniversary of the 1979 disaster, BBC does not provide a platform or voice for the monarchists who were and remain opposed to the Islamic revolution. Even when the subject under discussion in the BBC is about environmental news, about music, about literature, about history, about women’s rights, or any other issue, there is never an invitation from the royalist spectrum. Why?
The answer to this question lies in the theory of the Spiral of Silence. Ms. Noelle Neumann, the creator of the Spiral of Silence, was one of Joseph Goebbels’ deputies during World War II. We all know that Goebbels was a war criminal, but he was also considered an evil and demonic propaganda genius. Several German genius filmmakers, such as Leni Riefenstahl, were trained under him. After World War II, Noelle Neumann, in collaboration with her husband, set up a polling company and became very popular in general psychology, advertising, public opinion, and statistics. In various elections in Germany, all parties referred to them exclusively. She also became famous in the United States in the early Seventies and was repeatedly invited to teach and give lectures at several Ivy League universities.
Something happens during an election in Germany that arouses Ms. Neumann’s curiosity. In consolidating her theory, she begins carefully studying this election. In this election, between the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Party, by definition, the center-right and the center-left, in the mid-1970s, Ms. Neumann’s poll shows public support toward the two parties is a fifty-fifty split. But when it comes to polling, the question: “Which party do you think will win the election?, 80 percent say the Christian Democrats will win, and that’s exactly what happens! The Christian Democrats win in a landslide. How is it that in a poll, supporters of both parties split fifty-fifty, but the public opinion is also indicative of an 80 percent victory for the Christian Democrats?
Ms. Noel Neumann decides to investigate this phenomenon. Her discoveries reveal what factors played a very important role in German society at the time. Through these, she realizes that the sole determining factor in this instance is that the two German television networks, ARD, and ZDF, even in non-political programs, such as art, culture, and literature, booked guests exclusively aligned with the Christian Democratic Party and ignored all other spectrums of political thought. She concludes that this behavior creates doubt & reticence in the minds of the people who would otherwise want to elect the Social Democratic Party.

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.

In closed societies, such as the Islamic Republic, where all public media is in the hands of the government and virtual media is filtered, foreign media, such as the BBC, play a very important role in giving voice to public opinion.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann warns us in the theory of the Spiral of Silence that we must first understand that humans, in our evolutionary will to survive, learned to live in a group or tribe or herd to make life easier, and any threat to this existence frightens humans into conformity. To prevent kicked to the curb, as it were, humans have adopted their tribes’ customs and way of dress among other things. Even today in the modern world, Neumann says, we have an unconscious antenna that works to spot our behavior, our actions, and our speech, and compare them with those around us in society without us realizing it. Human beings are always comparing their thoughts with those around them. This current is also present in the political thinking of human beings. We are always comparing ourselves to those around us in our subconscious.
Then Ms. Neumann states, “We humans in general have an ingrained doubt in expressing our feelings & preferences when we feel like we’re in the minority, especially if that belief or opinion is tied to our morality or its perception by those around us.” At this time, human beings do not want to express their opinions. When you label an opinion or thought as immoral, or if you consider that opinion or thought in the minority, people avoid expressing it. Just as an example, the question of homosexuality, and that has nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong. It’s a question that is closely tied to a person’s moral beliefs.
Ms. Neumann goes one step further. She states that in closed societies, it is not enough to keep a mindset in the minority. Using the spirals of silence, we can instill this thought into a majority so it thinks that it is in the minority. In this way BBC’s Persian service has successfully been able to convince the Iranian people over the past 41 years that the Islamic Republic is in the majority and its opponents are in the minority, thus keeping the Iranian people highly silent.
The role of the Spiral of Silence in shaping public opinion is to explicitly instill the thought into a majority to think they are in the minority, forcing them to remain silent. The success of this psychological trick lies in injecting an active minority into the media it wants to control any boycott all other thought from emanating from that media. That’s how a majority can be disabled and silenced. And this trick works like a tornado, and the spiral automatically gets bigger and bigger. I think CNN is a perfect example of today’s US media. When a giant media outlet such a BBC, a certain point of view is censored and not allowed to express one’s opinion to a particular political spectrum, one must ask whether the spiral of silence is at work or not?
The answer to this question is a resounding yes. It is important for all to know that watching BBC is harmful to your mental health.

Khosro Fravahar 

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My TV show in Andishe TV from Feb/2017 about BBC and Spiral of Silence:

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