behaviour and to maintain or change community practices. It can also be used to distort people’s perception and understanding of an event. All it takes is to have certain elements in a story that makes it appear as truth. If it lends itself to someone’s belief system, it will be accepted as truth. So in the case of human right issues, one has to appeal to people’s sensibilities and belief about their own community that is more deserving than others and the story will have a life of its own as a community narrative. In the case of racism, one has to appeal to the sense of white superiority and the belief in the institution that has everyone’s interest (that usually mean themselves) that makes it easy to disregard human right issues. What role does media and political communication play in contributing to hateful rhetoric? I believe the basis of all this is the economy, the kind of economy we have that encourages domination and oppression. Media and politics are part of the institution that privilege certain communities of people over others. With the system in the place that perpetuates and normalize the social divisions, we don’t have to look very far to see how normal the hateful rhetoric we see playing out in media and political communication every day. The systems are interconnected so it is difficult to pinpoint one thing. We have to address as many things as possible so we can show how everything is connected. What I do know is that the hateful rhetoric pays because it keeps people engaged on the media. We have to be resistant to that and find other avenues that won’t contribute our dollars to the oppressive institutions.
48 // DISCOURSE: THE POWER OF LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION.
