Propaganda
Propaganda is everywhere and and Edward Bernays told us that it, “Does change our mental pictures of the world” (Bernays, 1928, p. 53). Propaganda is created in a specific way and aims to reach people on an emotional level and tries to influence attitudes, opinions and behaviors. Its effectiveness depends on the context of the message. Propaganda might not always be telling us the truth, and we learned from Bernays that, “Propaganda is good or bad depending upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published” (Bernays, 1928, p. 48). We can find propaganda in many different forms, and I know that I personally see can find it in many different places throughout my day. Websites, newspapers, books, movies, music, videogames, TV shows and social media networks are just some of these places propaganda can be found. Six specific categories of where propaganda can always be found are within news and information, advertising, entertainment, education, government, and activism.
News and Information
In my opinion, news and information should be propaganda-free because people rely on the news to receive correct and reliable information. Caroline Jack’s tells us in Lexicon of Lies: Term for Problematic Information, “News organizations have a duty to keep people informed.” This is why the news that is being shared with the public should be reported from one viewpoint, but because of propaganda, news is not always factual or neutral. Today, news is very opinionated and the information you receive depends on what source you receive it from. For example, a news source that I see that uses propaganda is CNN News. CNN has been ripping on President Trump for a long time now, and they use propaganda because by reporting their news a certain way to get viewers to think the same way they do. They’re voicing their opinions about what’s right from wrong, and good from evil, when they should be reporting news from a neutral standpoint. They posted an article called, President Trump’s 2017, in 17 Tweets, where the collected all of his tweets and tried to make him look bad to anyone reading the article.
As we learned from Ryan Holiday in Trust Me I’m Lying, blogs are a big news and information source where propaganda can be found. Holiday tells us that he, “Used blogs to control the news” (Holiday, 2013, p. 1). In his book, we read about how anyone could post something online and it could easily become news. Caroline Jack tells us to consider, “The flourishing of questionable news sites that published unsourced, unverifiable, or fabricated stories during the 2016 election cycle. Many of these were money-making ventures, whose owners were driven less by politics than by the prospect of profit from clicks. These sites’ curators were not necessarily aiming to deliberately mislead the public; rather they had a specific plan to game Google’s AdSense system which overrode any concerns about whether the stories they posted were true or false” (Jack, 2017, p. 3). This is an example of anyone being able to make something up and it becoming news like Holiday talked about.
Advertising
I often find propaganda within advertising. Advertisers use many different forms of propaganda. Some of these forms include celebrity endorsements, attacking a similar company, or by making people feel like “everyone else is doing it” so they need to, too. Propaganda within advertising aims to influence someone to purchase items, not because they necessarily need it, but because they want to thing that the ad portrays. Bernays tells us, “A thing may be desired not for its intrinsic worth or usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see it as a symbol of something else” (Bernays, 1928, p. 75). Propaganda is used to achieve this mentality. Advertisements for young women my age are often filled with women who look unrealistic. Advertisers hope to get women to buy their products in hopes that they could look similar to the models in the ad, not because of the product itself. Advertising propaganda that first comes to my mind is Victoria’s Secret’s “The Perfect Body” campaign. All of the women in these advertisements are stick-thin and according to this ad, have the “perfect bodies.” It aimed to associate beauty and perfection with their products. Women see this ad and unconsciously associate Victoria’s Secret with being skinny and beautiful. These advertisements are harmful and use propaganda to send out the messages, “this toned skinny body is what the perfect woman looks like in our society,” so buy these products to achieve this look
Entertainment
Music includes propaganda when singers often “throw shade” on certain people or promote certain lifestyles while bashing others in their lyrics. Singers voice their individual opinions in their music, which then rub off on the people listening to their music. People listen to these people, because they’re famous. A specific example that I can think of is from Kanye West’s lyrics about Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift fired back and released a song with negative lyrics that were supposedly about Kanye. These are both forms of propaganda because they’re both trying to get their listeners to think a certain way about the other, while promoting themselves.
Comedy shows are another source of entertainment where I’ve seen propaganda. These shows that I’ve watched used propaganda to promote personal opinions and views and to get people to think a certain way. Comedians often bash certain ethnic groups, political parties, and other groups during their shows to humor their audience. They often respond to the audience’s need of a good laugh and will say inappropriate things to achieve that. An example of this would be when Kathy Griffin held up a bloody face that looked just like Donald Trump. She did this to fulfill her career as a comedian by mocking a political figure, although she did not get the most positive feedback for obvious reasons.
Education
Propaganda is all over the University of Rhode Island campus, but the specific propaganda that has affected me personally has to do with Greek life on campus.
Four techniques of propaganda are activate strong emotion, respond to the audiences needs, simplify information and ideas, and to attack opponents. Frats and sororities use all of these techniques to recruit new members, to accomplish their goals of coming out of the rush competition on top. We learned that propaganda also does not always use the truth, and during this type of propaganda the truth is definitely bent and lies are told in order for the organizations to present their best selves. Everything that is said and done while frats and sororities are rushing new members is planned out and is done in order to grab peoples attention and to influence them to join their organization.
Government
Prior to reading about propaganda, I felt like the government used propaganda more often than not. Bernays validated this thought of mine when he told us, “Given our present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born leader can lead is the expert use of propaganda” (Bernays, 1928, p. 110). Political leaders count on propaganda, and use it to basically control what the general public thinks.
As we’ve discussed in class and seen in the film, Look Who’s Back, Hitler was an extreme case of a government using propaganda. Although our government today isn’t nearly as extreme, we still are affected by government propaganda in ways that we might not even realize. I see the government using propaganda the most during presidential elections. Candidates use propaganda to bash their opponent and to make themselves look good in the eye of the public. Presidential candidates often spread rumors about each other to make their competition look bad. President Trump uses propaganda on a daily basis when he sends out tweets, which are often very opinionated and sometimes offensive. Some people agree with the things Trump says, no matter how ridiculous they are, just because of his status. A specific time when Trump used propaganda on Twitter was when he said that CNN News, along with many others, delivered “fake news.” After he said this, I’m sure the news stations that he publicly bashed lost a lot of Trump supporter viewers because Trump told them these sources weren’t reliable.
https://www.cnet.com/news/donald-trump-twitter-redefines-presidency-politics/Activism
Activism
Activism uses propaganda to influence opinions while trying to improve society or create a change. I often see activism on the URI campus, where many clubs who are passionate about a topic try to spread knowledge and bring about a change. Activist groups often create public events and campaigns to get their word out. An example of propaganda that just recently passed was The Women’s March on Philadelphia. During this march, women try to create change by promoting women’s equality and rights. They use many different forms of propaganda, some including posting pictures and tweets on social media, advertising before the event, live coverage of the event, having famous people speak and join the march, just to name a few. They basically do anything to get the medias attention to shine light on the movement. This form of propaganda is especially effective because activism usually taps deep into the emotions of many.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/thousands-attend-second-womens-march-on-philadelphia-2018-20180120.html
Works Cited
Holiday, R. (2013). Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator. Penguin.
Bernays, E. (1928). Propaganda. Brooklyn: Ig Publishing.
Jack, Caroline (2017). Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information. New York: Data and Society.