Theories in Communication and Media Studies ( Lec-07) The History of propaganda Propaganda is today most often used in reference to polit...
Theories in Communication and Media Studies ( Lec-07)
The History of propaganda
Propaganda is today most often used in reference to political statements, but the word comes to our language through its use in a religious context. The Congregato de propaganda fide (“Congregation for propagating the faith”) was an organization established in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV as a means of furthering Catholic missionary activity.
The word propaganda is from the ablative singular feminine of propogandu, which is the gerundive of the Latin propagare, meaning “to propagate.” The first use of the word propaganda (without the rest of the Latin title) in English was in reference to this Catholic organization.
It was not until the beginning of the 19th century that it began to be used as a term denoting ideas or information that are of questionable accuracy as a means of advancing a cause.
Definition of Propaganda
Propaganda is defined as the systematic, widespread distribution of specific ideas, doctrines, practices which can help one cause or be harmful to another cause.
Some important salient of propaganda:
1. Propaganda messages can be delivered as part of the mainstream news media, including
through music, magazines, movies, and television shows.
2. Propaganda may also take the form of reports, publications, and leaflets targeted to a
particular segment of the population.
3. Propaganda presents the facts selectively in order to encourage people to come to a
particular conclusion.
4. Propaganda often delivers loaded messages designed to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information that is being presented.
5. It is common for propaganda to be aimed at children and young adults, because they lack the critical reasoning skills and contextual comprehension abilities to help determine the objectivity of a particular message.
6. Techniques used in propaganda can include appeals to fear, statements of prejudice, black and white fallacies, disinformation, demonizing the enemy, flag waving, intentional
vagueness, oversimplification.
7. The most effective propaganda campaigns are based upon the truth
The seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938
1. Name-calling
2. Glittering generalities
3. Transfer
4. Testimonial
5. Plain folks
6. Card stacking
7. Bandwagon
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Name-calling is a form of ad hominem attack that draws a vague equivalence between a concept and a person, group or idea. By linking the person or idea being attacked to a negative symbol, the propagandist hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), one of the first organizations to systematically
study propaganda in the early 20th century, included name-calling in its list of common
rhetorical techniques. "Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development," they stated. "They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races."
Examples of name calling include: commie, fascist, pig, yuppie, bum, queer, terrorist,
Glittering generalities "was one of the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the
Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. It also occurs very often in politics and political
propaganda.
Glittering generalities are words that have different positive meaning for individual
subjects, but are linked to highly valued concepts. When these words are used, they demand approval without thinking, simply because such an important concept is involved. For example, when a person is asked to do something in 'defense of democracy' they are more likely to agree.
The concept of democracy has a positive connotation to them because it is linked to a concept that they value.
Words often used as glittering generalities are honor, glory, love of country, and especially in the United States, freedom.
When coming across with glittering generalities, we should especially consider the merits of the idea itself when separated from specific words.
- Transfer:
The term transfer has been used to describe a specific propaganda technique (similar to guilt by association). It has also been used as a form of doublespeak in reference to proposals for the mass deportation of Palestinian refugees.
- Testimonial:
The use of personal experience to convince. By describing the successes or failures
of one’s own experience lends credibility to the pitch. "I tried doing that exactly the way you did, but it didn’t work because..." or "I followed this path and got this result..."
Use of the testimonial is common in Evangelical Christianity, commercial advertising, advocacy advertising.
- Plain folks:
By using plain folk’s rhetoric, speakers attempt to convince their audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people."
The device is used by advertisers and politicians alike. America's recent presidents have all been millionaires, but they have gone to great lengths to present themselves as ordinary citizens.
We are all familiar with candidates who campaign as political outsiders or who challenge a mythical "cultural elite," presumably aligning themselves with "ordinary Americans." In all of these examples, the plain-folk’s device is at work.
Bandwagon:"You're either with us or against us" appeals to an audience to join a ground swell of public opinion and activity because everybody else is joining. The "bandwagon" technique appeals to feelings of loyalty and nationalism, as well as the desire to be on the winning side.
The technique tends to obscure the ethics of the activity at the expense of victory: better to belong to the winning side than be too concerned with the rightness of the means to achieve it.
The "4 out of 5 doctors recommend..." slogan uses both the bandwagon technique and the
argument to authority to promote an action. Herman and Chomsky The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky which argues systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic
- causes:
The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political
- importance:
The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.[30][31]
First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers) and relying primarily on government and corporate information and propaganda.
The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media:
1. Ownership of the medium,
2. The medium's Funding/ Advertisement,
3. Sourcing of the news,
4. Flak, and
5. Anti-communist ideology/ Anti terrorism.
The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles the model postulates as the cause of media bias.
It also reduces public expectation of opposition and in doing so it contributes to establishing diktats: it’s a way of mandating acceptance of ideology, policies or laws by presenting them as if they are the only viable alternative.
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