The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media | Study Guide

Brooke Gladstone explains her reasons for writing The Influencing Machine as both a journalist and a consumer of news. As a journalist, she is curious about how media has evolved to serve people and how issues like bias, technology, censorship, and power come into play. Presented in graphic format, The Influencing Machine, Gladstone's "graphic manifesto," is relevant to the current climate of technological development of news media and the ways in which people consume information. In collaboration with artist Josh Neufeld (b. 1967), Gladstone breaks down the history, philosophy, and psychology of media in a way that is entertaining to look at through illustrations and mock "interviews" with political figures and journalists of the past and present.