I genuinely don’t know enough about it specifically to properly compare. I do know enough to tell that a lot of the processes of legitimization are similar, and certainly some of the content, but I couldn’t place radio specifically as part of that loop.

I think ultimately the difference is the decentralization. Even those “soft” gatekeepers are just a handful of people broadcasting one-to-many. Sure, the 20th century liberalization of media in Europe moved to a more business-driven media landscape, but it was still a handful of corporations plus the remnants of the public broadcasting systems at the helm.

Now it’s point-to-point dissemination, and the disinformation and radicalization is all about SEO and playing algorithmic selection in general. It’s so much harder to stop. You can get radicalized right under everybody’s noses and nobody will know what firehose of garbage is reaching you. Governments don’t even have airwaves to regulate or own.

I can’t promise this is worse, but I can promise it’s a much harder genie to put back in the bottle.