How would you analyse this picture purely on the basis of communication theories?

A perpetual state of Cognitive Dissonance?

Students today seem to be in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. do they 'study' for marks, or for knowledge? Should they participate in a project voluntarily or wait for it to be made compulsory? Should they wait for others to participate? They tend to wait either for being persuaded by authority or by someone they like. For some, like me, 'Like' has almost become a hated word, almost like propoganda! Social Media sites like Facebook add to this dissonance, and because it is now a habit, present in your hands perpetually, it becomes all the more important.

"Should I 'Comment' or 'Like?"

"He/She commented on my last status update even though it was meaningless. So should I now comment in return?"

Do people feel compelled to 'Like' a status update even if they don't really want to?

Can you relate all this to theories of persuasion and cognitive dissonance? Any other theories too? (Look up the 'Balance Theory' on the Internet, advocated by Fritz Heider and Theodore Newcomb)

Time biased or space biased?

Clay and stone tablets, manuscripts, hand-written parchments, carvings on temples, and oral messages, are, according to Harold Innis, time-biased media that last for many generations, but a limited in their reach. Space-biased media, like radio and television convey information to many people over long distances, but have short exposure times. While time-biased media favour stability, community, tradition and religion, space-biased media facilitate rapid change, materialism, secularism and empire. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Innis's_communications_theories).

If that is true, then how do we treat the Internet as a medium? Is Harold Innis's concept of space and time biased media redundant? On one hand, the Internet was able to spread messages faster and reached more people, acting as a catalyst in the 'Arab Spring', destabilizing the existing regimes. There could be another destabilizing set of messages speedily spread by the same Internet; at the same time, the messages / content that were uploaded during the uprising could be available even now. 

So is Internet Space Biased or Time Biased medium? Can the Internet set an agenda? Can it manufacture consent? 

Democracy? Oh really!

The concept of democracy is a product of media. We live in a democracy, but not necessarily a democratic country. What do you think?

Media + Kratos = Mediacracy?

Demos (People) + Kratos (Power) = Democracy
Media + Kratos = Mediacracy
Do we live in a 'mediacratic' world?

The IAC Injection

I overheard an interesting conversation while travelling to work in the mumbai local train today. The topic was Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption. One person was vehemently defending his argument that the IAC campaign was actually a well planned propaganda campaign, essentially to build public opinion, influence and get the public to ratify that a new political party needed to be launched to fight corruption. What do you say?