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Propaganda
Propaganda
PS 141 – A3
PROPAGANDA
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas are
Although we never see it or even feel it all the things on how we perceived things, how
we do things and on how we see society works is influenced by government. Ever since
we go to school our minds, ideas, beliefs, behaviors and perspective are molded with
the help of our teachers from which also is taught to love and adore government. All
things are used by propaganda. All the above mentioned were influences of
government to work in a sense that it uses this for the purpose to make the people
believe that their government is doing well and better than another government, this
would help the government to form each constituent’s nationalism and patriotism. It is
also used to mobilize the mass by molding the minds of the masses.
attempts to manipulate behaviors like: voting, purchasing, and health and in beliefs such
Propaganda is a modern Latin word meaning “to propagate” or “to sow”. This
term was first used by Pope George XV, this was when he established the Sacra
Congregatio de Propaganda Fide meaning the scared congregation for propagating the
faith of Roman Catholic Church. Since the time of establishing it is the time when
Protestantism was new and influencing many Roman Catholics which is why also the
propaganda of Roman Catholic Church was created to reconquer those people who
were once Roman Catholics and this is where propaganda take its pejorative sense and
Over the centuries, propaganda has been useful in wars. Propaganda has been
an instrument for many victories that as well manipulate the population like in the study
of Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Ethan Dickson entitled The Propaganda of the Deed:
Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Mobilization which examines the terrorism and its use
of propaganda in mobilizing the population and the government as well. Similar with this
act, Nazi Germans uses propagandas particularly black propagandas in another way of
fighting its enemies in World War II. Americans, English, Russians and many other
countries which uses propaganda against each other in the time of the World War I and
II and also in Cold Wars. Manipulating and influencing the population is easy at this time
because of the presence of televisions and newspapers from which each country would
manipulate information which is half true and half false. Nowadays, propaganda is
easier to enforce because a lot of communication access can spread around the world
the World Wide Web, information – manipulated or not, good or bad, true or false – can
spread all throughout the world in just a second and that is the reason also why
propaganda in the modern world is difficult to recognized and to sort. So, it is necessary
that the audiences will have to recognize it so that one can avoid to be used by
in which the speaker or the writer attempts to manipulate the audience with emotions
and fallacious reasoning”. Accordingly, propaganda’s common theme is the “us versus
them” by this means audiences will be convinced by the speaker or we may say, the
propagandist, to join the “us” which is the reasonable group and argues with the “them”
because they are bad. And in this, it is inherent in us to conform and take note that
common victim of the propagandist are those that are irrational or unthinking.
(The following propaganda techniques that were mention are from Ronald Standler in
his essay Propaganda and How to Recognize it (2005). The mentioned below are the
classic propaganda techniques that was recognized by the Institute for Propaganda
1. Name Calling or ad hominem the use of negative words to label person, group
or an idea
or a policy from which the well-known personality can influence the opinion of the
audience
5. Plain Folks attempts to convince audiences that a well-known personality and its
7. Bandwagon the appeal that “everyone is doing it, and so should you”
To know more about propaganda, we have also to examine the types and forms
convince or influence its audience to some end and makes significant changes and a
its information readily without hesitation. A propaganda may be a white, gray and black.
White propagandas come from its official source and can be easily distinguished as
convinces and persuades the audiences that the sender of the information is “good”.
advertisements which shows statistics that they are no. 1 when actually they are not or
like in safeguard that it says that it kills 99.9% of germs when actually it did not. Black
propagandas are when its source is hidden or disguised by another authority by which
wide exposure of mass media throughout the world it is hard for a country to isolate its
population from the ideas from other countries like to what happen to China, that even
they have controlled their people’s access to the internet there are still times that people
can access those things. As what Jowett & O’Donnell (2005) said,
by the technological devices for the sending messages that are available in the
References:
Jowett & O’Donnell. (2005). What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ from
Mesquita, E., Dickson, E. S., (no date). The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism,
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/dickson/dickson_propaganda.pdf
Standler, R. E., (2005). Propaganda and How to Recognize It.
From: http://www.rbs0.com/propaganda.pdf
http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/propaganda
Kelly, D., (2014). The Difference Between Gray, White And Black Propaganda. From:
http://knowledgenuts.com/2014/02/12/the-difference-between-gray-white-and-
black-propaganda/