A New York philosopher who believes Fox News can brainwash liberals has received a $50,400 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study propaganda, the Washington Free Beacon reported Friday.
Eric Mandelbaum, a "philosopher and cognitive scientist" at City University of New York, received the grant this month for the project, "Propaganda and Belief in the Modern World," which will be three scholarly articles and a book-length study on the "psychology of belief formation."
Mandelbaum broached a similar subject in a paper he co-wrote in 2015 titled "Believing without Reason, or: Why Liberals Shouldn't Watch Fox News."
The premise was that the news feed running at the lower edge of a TV screen could unconsciously influence viewers.
"[I]f the evidence … is correct, then merely attending to some element of the scene (e.g., the crawl) while suppressing attention to the others will induce, load and trigger an unconscious passive acceptance of whatever you read, whether or not you consider the source to be credible," Mandelbaum explained.
"The reluctant liberal Fox News viewer, then, will not merely unwillingly accept information (e.g.,) embedded in the crawl, but will integrate that information with other previously held beliefs," he wrote.
"This information — these new beliefs — will not only be acquired in an evidence-less fashion, but they will be acquired from sources the viewer explicitly rejects as trustworthy sources. These beliefs will then be integrated into the subject's future decisions and attitudes, unbeknownst to her and despite her better judgment. If the Spinozan model is correct, this proliferation of belief without evidence is real and serious," he added.
Jon Peede, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is the current chairman of the NEH.
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