Inception In The Media: How Publications And Algorithms Are Shaping Your Thoughts And Behaviors

Source: Squarespace/ Unsplash

Implanting Ideas

In Inception, Christopher Nolan’s characters infiltrate dreams to implant ideas so subtle the subject believes they came up with them. In the real world, it doesn’t take sedatives or dream-sharing tech. It just takes a newsroom—or better yet, a newsfeed.

Every morning, publishers—whether digital, print, TV, or radio—release stories into the atmosphere with the quiet intention of shaping how we see ourselves, each other, and the world. The difference between journalism and propaganda used to be a commitment to truth and context. But today, even the most reputable outlets walk a fine line: choosing what to emphasize, what to omit, what to repeat, and what tone to strike. It’s not that they’re lying—it’s that they’re curating reality.

Anchors aren’t just reading headlines. They’re injecting affect. Outrage, reassurance, urgency. The front page isn’t just telling you what happened—it’s framing what matters. Over time, this becomes a kind of mental architecture. Most people aren’t aware it’s happening. That’s the point. Inception only works if the subject believes the idea was theirs.

Algorithmic Influence

But in the last decade, another force joined the operation: algorithms.

Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and X don’t just show you news—they learn what grabs your attention, then give you more of it. If you pause on a story about political dysfunction, you’ll get a dozen more in different outfits. If you click on economic doom, it won’t be long before you’re seeing graphs of collapse and comment threads filled with anxiety. The algorithm isn’t trying to inform you—it’s trying to keep you. Its currency is engagement, and the best way to guarantee it is repetition with variation: feed the fear, stroke the anger, affirm the bias.

So now, the inception isn’t just coming from editors—it’s coming from code. Machine-curated echo chambers amplify what editorially planted seeds began. You might think you’re simply reacting to the world, but you’re reacting to a version of the world designed to provoke you. And because it feels personal—your feed, your clicks—it feels more real. More chosen. As if you arrived at the conclusion yourself.

No single headline tips the scale. But a hundred coordinated nudges? That’s how you plant an idea. That’s how you get someone to believe they’re tired, enraged, hopeless, or “just being realistic.” That’s how you engineer a mindset.

It’s tempting to think of journalists or tech platforms as villains in this story. But most of them aren’t plotting. Most are just feeding a system that rewards emotional charge over nuance, certainty over complexity. They’re moving fast because the machine demands it. And the machine is learning faster than anyone.

Informed Media Consumption

You don’t need a spinning top to tell if you’re dreaming. Just scroll your feed. Ask yourself: who benefits from you feeling this way? Who’s gaining from your attention, your despair, your certainty?

It is always important to have a diversified strategy for information and media consumption. Some statements whether from government institutions or institutional publishers can be noticeably false, its about getting through the misinformation to locate the truth, the facts, and those golden nuggets of information that can make or break publicly traded companies or global superpowers.

In an era where the lines between media, machine, and mind have blurred, inception isn’t science fiction. It’s standard operating procedure—with push notifications.