Andales Meldgyrie Mae M.

PS 141 – A3

PROPAGANDA

In Edward Bernays’ (1928) Propaganda, he explicitly said that,

We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas are

suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. (p. 9 para. 2)

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

propaganda of the government. Propaganda, as not a pejorative word, helps the

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.

Basically, propaganda is information used to manipulate beliefs and behavior. It

attempts to manipulate behaviors like: voting, purchasing, and health and in beliefs such

as: religious, scientific and foreign, public and social policies.

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

by which is subsequent usage is associated by other scholars as: manipulations,

persuasion, lies, deceptive, mind control, brainwashing, palaver, psychological warfare,

distortion and sometimes evil (Jowett & O’Donnell, 2005).

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

and around your country by simply clicking single button.

With this advanced technologies accompanied by the existence of Internet and

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

propaganda. According to Ronald Standler (2005) “Propaganda is a subset of rhetoric,

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

propaganda, as said by Standler, it uses emotions to manipulate people thus, the

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

Analysis during the years of 1937-1942)

1. Name Calling or ad hominem the use of negative words to label person, group

or an idea

2. Glittering Generality the use of virtuous words. It is an opposite of name calling

3. Transfer a device by which the propagandist links the authority or prestige of

something well respected and revered, such as church or nation, to something

he would have us accept (www.propagandacritic.com)

 4. Testimonial a well-known personality that endorses political candidate, product

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

ideas are for the people.

6. Card Stacking selected presentation of information and conclusion that would

and could influence and convince the audience

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

of propaganda. So, according to Jowett & O’Donnell (2005) that propaganda is

sometimes agitative and sometimes integrative. A propaganda is agitative if it tries to

convince or influence its audience to some end and makes significant changes and a

propaganda is integrative if it tries to convince or influence its audience to accept all of

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

propaganda and it attempts to build credibility with the audience

(http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/). It is presented in a way which

convinces and persuades the audiences that the sender of the information is “good”.

Gray propagandas is somewhere in between white and black propaganda, its

information is in questionable origin that is never sourced and whose accuracy is

doubtful (Knowledgenuts.com). Gray propaganda examples maybe seen also in

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

its information spreads lies, deception, and untruth.

Since advanced technologies are everywhere and that this contemporary

technologies is capable of instantaneous transmission of messages and since there is a

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,

In this age of instantaneous television transmission, containment of information is

no longer easy. Yet, propaganda itself, as a form of communication, is influenced

by the technological devices for the sending messages that are available in the

given time. As technologies advances, propagandists have more sophisticated

tools at their service. (p. 15-16, para 3)

References:

Jowett & O’Donnell. (2005). What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ from

Persuasion (4th ed.). Sage Publications

Bernays, E. L. (1928). Propaganda. Horace Liveright Inc.: New York

Mesquita, E., Dickson, E. S., (no date). The Propaganda of the Deed: Terrorism,

Counterterrorism, and Mobilization. From:

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

Propaganda Techniques. From www.propagandacritic.com

Brahm, E., (2006). Propaganda. From:

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/