“In alliance with the authoritarian regime, the [Russian] mass media has made the country a real ‘society of the spectacle,’”, says Ilya Budraitskis, a political and social theorist previously based in Moscow. Currently he is a Visiting Scholar with the Program in Critical Theory, UC Berkeley in the US.
Wasn’t that always the case in authoritarian countries of all kinds since the invention of mass media?
to a certain degree even in democracies. Manufacturing consent
It’s the case in pretty much every country, but it’s particularly bad in countries that have a lot of power and minimal oversight (Russia, the US, China, India, even the UK).