Briefly acquaint yourself with the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry aboutÉmile Durkheim. Afterward, read a couple of pages fromThe Elementary Forms of Religious Lifeby Émile Durkheim. Please discuss this reading assignment in light of the reading materials for this unit. Jacques Ellul, a French theologian/socialist and anarchist Jacques Ellul, argues that propaganda is a tool for the elite to control the masses and what the masses inherently want and willingly participate to feel more valuable (Ellul, 1965). In the era of information technology, one can argue that we have more access to information at our tips. Hence more choice of deciding on the information we would like to consume. For instance, some scholars argue that social media has played a positive role in fighting government propaganda in closed regimes (Howard et al., 2011). The role of social media during the Arab spring seems to contradict Ellul’s argument that technological society is powered by propaganda (Ellul, 1965). Instead, in
