MUSIC AS A TOOL OF SOCIAL CRITICISM: "POST-TRUTH" AND BEYOND IN MISERY INDEX'S "RITUALS OF POWER" ALBUM BİR TOPLUMSAL ELEŞTİRİ ARACI OLARAK MÜZİK: MISERY INDEX'İN "RITUALS OF POWER" ALBÜMÜNDE "POST-TRUTH" VE ÖTESİ
Yegah Musicology Journal, cilt.7, sa.4, ss.745-780, 2024 (Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 7 Sayı: 4
- Basım Tarihi: 2024
- Doi Numarası: 10.51576/ymd.1561980
- Dergi Adı: Yegah Musicology Journal
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.745-780
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Dystopia, echo chambers, media manipulation, post-truth, social criticism, sociology of music
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Throughout history, music has served as a powerful platform for social criticism, acting as a mirror of social structure, a tool that reflects the spirit of the time, and a voice calling for change. This study aims to reveal and interpret the construction and transmission forms of the post-truth phenomenon in the textual content of the album "Rituals of Power", released in 2019 by Misery Index, a metal music band from Baltimore, Maryland, to uncover the function of music as a tool for social criticism in today's world, where information pollution and manipulation are increasing daily. Adopting a qualitative content analysis approach, the lyrics of the album were systematically and inductively coded after being transferred to the MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2024 software and interpreted within the framework of four themes: “media and politics”, “social collapse”, “social oppression and exclusion” and “the cyclical nature of power”. The findings show that the album presents a dark depiction of a world struggling with distorted reality, institutional failure, and the deliberate manipulation of information. In this context, the lyrics address issues related to the post-truth phenomenon such as media manipulation, echo chambers, political deception, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, social collapse, moral corruption, dystopian future and loss of trust in institutions. Through an interdisciplinary examination of the multifaceted relationship between music and social structure, this study emphasizes the potential of music to question and convey current socio-political issues to the audience and expands our understanding of the impact of the post-truth phenomenon on artistic expressions.