What is the project?

Our team members are Anya Farooqui, Nael Daniyal, Meekail Syed, Zara Ahmed, Raaniya
Jamali and Zara Irani. The theme for our project was ‘Technology’, and we chose to explore the
use of technology in propaganda, as well as its impact on the world. Our goal was to raise
awareness on propaganda amongst our peers, and we hope to see a change in their interactions
with digital information in the future.

Division of Roles:

Zara Ahmed
Raaniya and I opened the presentation with a short skit illustrating how propaganda
perpetuated our society and then I also went on to elaborate on the issue of propaganda locally,
using some examples to illustrate. I then also presented an interview that she conducted with a
US IT director that shed light on his experiences about propaganda in Karachi and the US. I
went on to present the solution to propaganda and implored the audience to think about the
information they read and check if it was too dramatic or too emotional, had biases or was
targeted at a particular audience because if it was, it was likely that it was propaganda.

Nael
With the popularity of AI skyrocketing in recent years, and it being associated with technological
advancements, Nael wanted to see how its capabilities could be misused by political parties in
order to manipulate the general public into believing an agenda that would benefit them. Ai has
a wide scope of abilities that range from image generation to article manipulation which can aid
powerful political parties into creating a disillusion in relation to their true intentions along with
creating propaganda that brings other parties down. With the easy access to AI and its low
pricing, misinformation created by programs like chatgpt can spread like wildfire. Victims can
be made out to be oppressors and vice versa. This leads to a bad reputation for certain
minorities who will then be shunned despite not doing anything wrong as the public has been
blinded by the media,leading to a lower quality of life for them. Thus, overall by researching
about AI, Nael found out more about the most known and most invested in the field of
technology in the modern era and how, now and in the future, it could be misused.

Meekail:
I researched how propaganda affects those who live in more private countries with less media
coverage globally like China and one main example was of the Uighur Muslims .Pakistan has
even had an agreement with China not to talk about the issue of the Uighur Muslims with China
and it just goes to show the seclusion they must feel.Propaganda has managed to convey the
wrong impressions of such communities and lacks international coverage.So I wrote a speech
about the Muslims and how propaganda is used to further mistreat them and label them
terrorists.This issue is especially similar to that of Palestine these days but with no media news
at all.Firstly I researched many articles on supposed uighur Muslims and picked reputable
sources like al jazeera chatgpt and couple other sites based in Europe or China itself to see how
Chinese media use propaganda to do so.Making points on what these texts said and further
elaborating upon them and connecting them to the use of propaganda.I discussed the issue and
how propaganda affects the issue and why they are closely linked especially the Uighur Muslims
in general.In the end I summarized a speech with valid points and content organization.

Raaniya
I researched about propaganda and its use in Myanmar, and with my researched I found out
that the Myanmar Times, a prominent newspaper in Myanmar, has been lying about the human
rights violations the Myanmar government has participated in against the Rohingya Muslims,
painting the Rohingya Muslims as a terrorist group rather than showing how they are simply
people who want to live their lives without living in terror. In addition, I made the Fake vs Real
charts, and researched statistics based on the distribution of the working population in Japan
and the age distribution in Germany. After that, I made fake graphs with fake statistics, and then
asked the class to guess which ones were real and which ones were fake. Only two people could
guess both the real statistics correctly. Lastly, I edited the screenshots for the survey in which
two consisted of fake information and one had real information.

Anya
I researched the use of propaganda in Kashmir, and discovered the depth of the propaganda on
both sides. Kashmir has been oppressed since partition, and the people’s voices have been
suppressed. Both Pakistan and India work for their own personal agendas, rather than the
betterment of Kashmir as a whole. I also helped Raaniya with the Fake vs. Real charts. Finally, I
designed the questions for our survey. We sent our survey to people from ages 10 and above,
although the majority of the respondents were above 18. We asked them questions about
propaganda, such as what they knew about it, if they thought it was important and testing their
ability to recognise it, using 2 fake screenshots. Most respondents were unable to recognise
which images were fake, and which one was real. Overall, I learned just how pervasive
propaganda is in our lives. We need to take further steps to ensure that people are better
informed about propaganda, in order to stop the spread of misinformation and allow for a more
knowledgeable society.

Zara Irani
I first researched the issue to truly understand propaganda as a problem in today's society.
During the presentation, I asked the questions for my teammates' interview, contributing to a
well-rounded perspective to our understanding of the matter. I wrote a comprehensive speech,
focusing on the intricate role of propaganda in the ongoing Israel - Palestine conflict and how it
is used as a weapon of defense in war, highlighting how false news significantly influences
various aspects of the conflict. I delved into the nuanced ways propaganda shapes perceptions in
the context of this issue.