What has disrupted the hegemonic control of information is social media, which has fractured media consumption, allowing apertures to emerge for direct testimony from the colonies. The hysteria around social media and particularly TikTok, foreign-owned, is directly related to this erosion 7/

News in the metropole is a vital part of the machinery of empire, as vital as propaganda outlets in the colonies like Voice of America clearly are. As I keep telling my students, imperial discourse is not window-dressing, it is productive of empire.