Make / Believe

We and They on a Digital Planet

By: John Hartley

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eText | 23 January 2025 | Edition Number 1

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This book illustrates that mediated popular culture and science-based knowledge systems, entangled and compromised as both have become, are still a robust crucible for system change for the future when they combine forces.

Planetary crises require responses from everyone. This means that collective action is not simply a scientific or political problem. It is a problem of culture and media. But modern politics, journalism, and science were not designed for global climate action. They've divided humans into competitive and often hostile 'we' and 'they' groups. Identity, news, and knowledge are all weaponized. Culture makes groups, groups make knowledge, and knowledge makes enemies.

What can be done to prevent global conflict and the drift to war? Make/Believe turns to popular culture and social media to argue for an alternative storyline. While the Great Powers are making new enemies, emergent 'classes' - led by children - are using planetary connectivity to make new worlds. A digital planet generates new kinds of strategic stories for pan-human action, based on difference, intersectionality, and cooperation for a sustainable Earth system.

Make/Believe shows how alternatives to the 'Great Game' of global contestation are gathering strength in unlikely places, among women, children, lifestyle, and pop culture. Popular digital media literacy is now a prerequisite for the remediation of the planet.