essay writing propaganda techniques

Propaganda Techniques in Literature and Online Political Ads

• Resources & Preparation
• Instructional Plan
• Related Resources

After reading or viewing a text, students are introduced to propaganda techniques and then identify examples in the text. Students discuss these examples, and then explore the use of propaganda in popular culture by looking at examples in the media. Students identify examples of propaganda techniques used in clips of online political advertisements and explain how the techniques are used to persuade voters. Next, students explore the similarities of the propaganda techniques used in the literary text and in the online political ads to explain the commentary the text is making about contemporary society. Finally, students write a persuasive essay in support of a given statement. In this lesson, some specific references are made to Brave New World as examples. A text list suggests additional novels, short stories, plays, and movies that will also work for this activity.

Featured Resources

• Literature Featuring Propaganda Techniques and Themes : This booklist provides lists of novels, short stories, plays, and movies that can be used in lessons about propaganda.
• Persuasion Map : Use this online tool to map out and print your persuasive argument. Included are spaces to map out your thesis, three reasons, and supporting details.
• Persuasive Writing Scoring Guide : Use this reproducible rubric to assess the focus; organization; sentence fluency and word choice; and conventions of persuasive writing assignments.

From Theory to Practice

In the NCTE publication Lesson Plans for Creating Media-Rich Classrooms , editor Scott Sullivan notes that by "making students aware of the ways information is used and manipulated, we allow them to begin making wiser, more informed choices" (176). Students benefit doubly, then, by studying the concept of propaganda in a traditional literary context and in real-world applications pulled from multimedia sources. Their understanding of the literary text is enriched and enhanced and they are encouraged to "become more informed and conscientious citizens" (174). In this lesson, which encourages students to explore "the intrinsic relationships between content, product [or candidate], and profit [or power], they begin to see that what may once have seemed an objective enterprise [a political campaign] is, in fact, subject to a variety of influences, some subtle, some not" (175).

Further Reading

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

• 1. Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
• 4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
• 6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
• 7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
• 8. Students use a variety of technological and information resources (e.g., libraries, databases, computer networks, video) to gather and synthesize information and to create and communicate knowledge.
• 12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).

Materials and Technology

• A literary text featuring propaganda techniques (see booklist for ideas)
• Propaganda Techniques Used in Literature
• Analyzing Propaganda in Print Ads and Commercials
• Background Information before Examining Online Political Ads
• Propaganda Techniques Used in Online Political Ads
• Persuasive Essay Assignment
• Persuasive Writing Scoring Guide

Preparation

• Students should have read or viewed the text that you've chosen for this lesson. Several of the books on the list (and some appropriate Young Adult novels) are featured in the Text Messages podcast episode Teen Time Travel .
• Make copies of the handouts: Propaganda Techniques Used in Literature , Analyzing Propaganda in Print Ads and Commercials , Propaganda Techniques Used in Online Political Ads , and Persuasive Writing Scoring Guide .
• If desired, make copies or an overhead transparency of the Persuasive Essay Assignment .
• Read the background information related to online political advertisements.
• Test the Persuasion Map on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

Student Objectives

Students will:

• analyze texts to identify different types of propaganda techniques.
• identify and explain the goal of propaganda techniques used in a work of literature and an example of non-print media.
• compare and contrast examples of propaganda techniques used in a work of literature and visual media.
• identify and gather evidence from a secondary source.
• use visual literacy skills to analyze, interpret, and explain non-print media.
• participate in a class discussion, gather information, and write a persuasive essay that synthesizes information from their explorations of propaganda.

Session One

• In this session, students will move toward a definition of propaganda by responding in writing or verbally to the question, "What is propaganda?"
• Have students discuss their thoughts and opinions of propaganda as you share information from the Wikipedia definition of propaganda and/or the What is Propaganda? definition with the class.
• Ask students if they have ever seen or heard propaganda used. If so, have students share what they saw or heard and what effect it had on them. Depending on their knowledge of propaganda, the effect may have been the same as or different from what the propagandist intended. Ask them to think about the reasons leaders and organizations often employ propaganda.
• Discuss how propaganda is a powerful tool when combined with mass media.
• Review examples of propaganda and discuss the ideas and examples with the students.
• Identify an example of each type of propaganda technique used in the text you've chosen.
• Explain what goal each technique is trying to accomplish.
• Consider why the propaganda in the text is not challenged by most people in the society.
• Identify any characters who seem to question the propaganda in the text (e.g., John the Savage, Helmholtz, and Bernard in Brave New World ) and explore the possible reasons for their questioning.

Session Two

• As you move to a discussion of propaganda in literature in this session, have the students share the types of propaganda they have found in the text they examined in the first session.
• As students present their ideas, draw attention to whether students identify the same propaganda techniques. If there are any differences among the examples or techniques, ask students to consider whether more than one applies.
• Why is the propaganda in the text not challenged by most people in the society?
• Which characters do question the propaganda and what causes their questioning?
• To provide students the opportunity to make connections to propaganda in their own lives, assign Analyzing Propaganda in Print Ads and Commercials for homework. This activity asks students to look for examples of propaganda in their world. Online video clip sites such as YouTube are useful resources for students to explore. Invite students also to bring in the ads they use for their assignment or video clips from television or movies.
• Before the next session, select two or three political election advertisements from the Internet to show to students during the next session. If you cannot easily project the ads, students can also view the advertisements at home or at a public computer. If students will explore the advertisements on their own, be sure to allow enough time between this and the following session for students to complete the viewing.

Session Three

• Begin this session, focusing on identifying propaganda in cotemporary and historical political advertisements, by reviewing the Analyzing Propaganda in Print Ads and Commercials sheet that students completed for homework. Allow students to share any examples they brought with them.
• Show students the two political advertisements you've chosen for the session.
• Who are the members of the target audience—women, men, young voters, baby boomers, senior citizens?
• Is the political ad trying to sell a message (tough/soft on crime, cut/raise taxes, strong/weak defense, clean up the mess in Washington) or the candidate (has experience, creates new ideas, tells the truth, tells lies, is a loving family member)?
• How does the political ad use production elements (sound effects, music, camera angles and movement, black and white or in color, special effects, graphics) to sell the message?
• What kind of propaganda techniques are used in the advertisement?
• What facts are being used in the ads? Who's providing the facts and where did they get them?
• Is the political advertising effective? Did it get the message across? Will voters vote for the candidate? Are you convinced? Explain each of your answers.
• Explain the connections between propaganda used in the political ad and propaganda used in the literary text you explored in earlier sessions.
• Using links to Websites from the online political campaign sites or from historical sites (see Resources section), assign the students the task of evaluating online political advertisements, using the Propaganda Techniques Used in Online Political Ads sheet as a guide.
• What facts are being used in the ads?
• Who is providing the facts and where did they get them?
• Explain any connections between the propaganda used in the political ad and propaganda used in the literary text you explored in earlier sessions.

Session Four

Using specific examples of propaganda techniques from the piece of literature you've explored and the online political advertisements, write a well-organized essay that argues in support or against the following statement: "It is essential in a democratic society that young people and adults learn how to think, learn how to make up their minds. They must learn how to think independently, and they must learn how to think together. They must come to conclusions, but at the same time they must recognize the right of other men to come to opposite conclusions. So far as individuals are concerned, the art of democracy is the art of thinking and discussing independently together." (Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939)

• structure ideas and arguments in a sustained and logical fashion.
• use specific rhetorical devices to support assertions (e.g., appeal to logic through reasoning; appeal to emotion or ethical belief; personal anecdote, case study, or analogy).
• clarify and defend positions with precise and relevant evidence, including facts, expert opinions, quotations, and/or expressions of commonly accepted beliefs and logical reasoning.
• address readers' concerns, counterclaims, biases, and/or expectations.
• Share the Persuasive Writing Scoring Guide to explore the requirements of the assignment in more detail.
• Demonstrate the Persuasion Map and work through a sample topic to show students how to use the tool to structure their essays.
• Allow students the remainder of class to work with the Persuasion Map as a brainstorming tool and to guide them through work on their papers.
• Encourage students to share their thoughts and drafts with the class as they work for feedback and support.
• See the ReadWriteThink lessons Argument, Persuasion, or Propaganda? Analyzing World War II Posters and Analyzing the Stylistic Choices of Political Cartoonists to extend or enrich your study of propaganda and political messages.

Student Assessment / Reflections

• As students discuss propaganda and the issues in text, listen for specific evidence from the story that connects to the information students have researched. The connections they make between the details in the novel and the details they choose as the supporting reasons for their position will reveal their understanding and engagement with the text.
• Monitor student interaction and progress during group work to assess social skills and assist any students having problems with the project.
• Use the Persuasive Writing Scoring Guide to assess students’ papers.
• Student participation in all activities and completion of homework assignments
• Quality of student responses to in-class and homework activities
• Calendar Activities
• Strategy Guides
• Professional Library
• Student Interactives
• Lesson Plans

Election Day is held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

The Persuasion Map is an interactive graphic organizer that enables students to map out their arguments for a persuasive essay or debate.

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Critical Reading

Propaganda  is a way to deliver a message that appeals to the emotions instead of presenting solid evidence to support a point. It is used by advertisers, salespeople, and politicians who may lack adequate facts to persuade people to support their point of view. Governments may use propaganda to rally support and influence people for a specific agenda, such as war. Part of being a critical reader is the ability to recognize these propaganda techniques.

Beyond Words

• Who is the creator of these images?
• Why were they created?
• Who is the target audience?
• What biases are they portraying?
• What is the perspective of the creators?

Red Herring

A type of “logical fallacy,” this form of propaganda presents data or issues that, while compelling, have nothing to do with the argument. This ad argues that parents should control what their children learn in school, but what children are learning in school really has nothing to do with the issue, which is whether or not to legalize gay marriage.

Glittering Generality

This form of propaganda applies emotional words to a product or idea that presents no concrete argument or analysis. This John McCain political ad applies the words “reform, prosperity, and peace” to the “McCain for President” campaign.

Testimonial

This form of propaganda features an expert, person of authority, or respected public figure who supports the argument and encourages others to accept the opinions and beliefs as their own. In this ad, Michael Jordan, arguably one of the greatest basketball athletes in history, simply drinks Gatorade, which is an easy way for anyone—regardless of how well they play basketball—to “be like Mike.”

This form of propaganda arouses prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, or even finds desirable. In this ad, the viewer is led to believe that people who have a Volkswagen “experience” will in turn become a Caribbean stereotype, complete with an accent and a “no worry” attitude even if it’s a bad Monday at the office.

Beautiful People

This type of propaganda features attractive, happy, or famous people associated with an idea to make other people think that if they buy a product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be attractive, happy, and successful.

• Propaganda. Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Red Herring. Provided by : LingLogic Wiki. Located at : http://linglogic.wikia.com/wiki/Red_herring . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Propaganda. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Everyone Is Doing It (Banned). Authored by : GamerSpawn. Provided by : Activision Blizzard. Located at : http://youtu.be/l7NgLArJidY . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube license
• Yes on 8 TV Ad: It's Already Happened. Authored by : VoteYesonProp8. Provided by : Yes on Prop 8. Located at : http://youtu.be/0PgjcgqFYP4 . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube license
• Global. Authored by : JohnMcCain. Provided by : JohnMcCain.com. Located at : http://youtu.be/0E1nB-3l4GE . Project : 2008 Presidential Election. License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube license
• Be Like Mike Gatorade Commercial (ORIGINAL). Authored by : bigwayne84. Provided by : Gatorade. Located at : http://youtu.be/b0AGiq9j_Ak . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube license
• Go Daddy Super Bowl 2013 Commercial Bar Refaeli kisses Jesse Heiman with Danica Patrick. Authored by : JungleJuice2000. Provided by : Go Daddy. Located at : http://youtu.be/iE6TTYfRiAg . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube license

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Special Issue: Propaganda

This essay was published as part of the Special Issue “Propaganda Analysis Revisited”, guest-edited by Dr. A. J. Bauer (Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Creative Media, University of Alabama) and Dr. Anthony Nadler (Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Ursinus College).

Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques

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This essay argues that the recent scholarship on misinformation and fake news suffers from a lack of historical contextualization. The fact that misinformation scholarship has, by and large, failed to engage with the history of propaganda and with how propaganda has been studied by media and communication researchers is an empirical detriment to it, and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem they are trying to solve is unclear.

School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK

Introduction

Propaganda has a history and so does research on it. In other words, the mechanisms and methods through which media scholars have sought to understand propaganda—or misinformation, or disinformation, or fake news, or whatever you would like to call it—are themselves historically embedded and carry with them underlying notions of power and causality. To summarize the already quite truncated argument below, the larger conceptual frameworks for understanding information that is understood as “pernicious” in some way can be grouped into four large categories: studies of propaganda, the analysis of ideology and its relationship to culture, notions of conspiracy theory, and finally, concepts of misinformation and its impact. The fact that misinformation scholarship generally proceeds without acknowledging these theoretical frameworks is an empirical detriment to it and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem to be solved is unclear. 

The following pages discuss each of these frameworks—propaganda, ideology, conspiracy, and misinformation—before returning to the stakes and implications of these arguments for future research on pernicious media content.

Propaganda and applied research

The most salient aspect of propaganda research is the fact that it is powerful in terms of resources while at the same time it is often intellectually derided, or at least regularly dismissed. Although there has been a left-wing tradition of propaganda research housed uneasily within the academy (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Seldes & Seldes, 1943), this is not the primary way in which journalism or media messaging has been understood in many journalism schools or mainstream communications departments. This relates, of course, to the institutionalization of journalism and communication studies within the academic enterprise. Within this paradox, we see the greater paradox of communication research as both an applied and a disciplinary field. Propaganda is taken quite seriously by governments, the military, and the foreign service apparatus (Simpson, 1994); at the same time, it has occupied a tenuous conceptual place in most media studies and communications departments, with the dominant intellectual traditions embracing either a “limited effects” notion of what communication “does” or else more concerned with the more slippery concept of ideology (and on that, see more below). There is little doubt that the practical study of the power of messages and the field of communication research grew up together. Summarizing an initially revisionist line of research that has now become accepted within the historiography of the field, Nietzel notes that “from the very beginning, communication research was at least in part designed as an applied science, intended to deliver systematic knowledge that could be used for the business of government to the political authorities.” He adds, however, that

“this context also had its limits, for by the end of the decade, communication research had become established at American universities and lost much of its dependence on state funds. Furthermore, it had become increasingly clear that communication scientists could not necessarily deliver knowledge to the political authorities that could serve as a pattern for political acting (Simpson, 1994 pp. 88–89). From then on, politics and communication science parted ways. Many of the approaches and techniques which seemed innovative and even revolutionary in the 1940s and early 1950s, promising a magic key to managing propaganda activities and controlling public opinion, became routine fields of work, and institutions like the USIA carried out much of this kind of research themselves.” (Nietzel, 2016, p. 66)

It is important to note that this parting of ways did  not  mean that no one in the United States and the Soviet Union was studying propaganda. American government records document that, in inflation-adjusted terms, total funding for the United States Information Agency (USIA) rose from $1.2 billion in 1955 to $1.7 billion in 1999, shortly before its functions were absorbed into the United States Department of State. And this was dwarfed by Soviet spending, which spent more money jamming Western Radio transmissions alone than the United States did in its entire propaganda budget. Media effects research in the form of propaganda studies was a big and well-funded business. It was simply not treated as such within the traditional academy (Zollman, 2019). It is also important to note that this does not mean that no one in academia studies propaganda or the effect of government messages on willing or unwilling recipients, particularly in fields like health communication (also quite well-funded). These more academic studies, however, were tempered by the generally accepted fact that there existed no decontextualized, universal laws of communication that could render media messages easily useable by interested actors.

Ideology, economics, and false consciousness

If academics have been less interested than governments and health scientists in analyzing the role played by propaganda in the formation of public opinion, what has the academy worried about instead when it comes to the study of pernicious messages and their role in public life? Open dominant, deeply contested line of study has revolved around the concept of  ideology.  As defined by Raymond Williams in his wonderful  Keywords , ideology refers to an interlocking set of ideas, beliefs, concepts, or philosophical principles that are naturalized, taken for granted, or regarded as self-evident by various segments of society. Three controversial and interrelated principles then follow. First, ideology—particularly in its Marxist version—carries with it the implication that these ideas are somehow deceptive or disassociated from what actually exists. “Ideology is then abstract and false thought, in a sense directly related to the original conservative use but with the alternative—knowledge of real material conditions and relationships—differently stated” (Williams, 1976). Second, in all versions of Marxism, ideology is related to economic conditions in some fashion, with material reality, the economics of a situation, usually dominant and helping give birth to ideological precepts. In common Marxist terminology, this is usually described as the relationship between the base (economics and material conditions) and the superstructure (the realm of concepts, culture, and ideas). Third and finally, it is possible that different segments of society will have  different  ideologies, differences that are based in part on their position within the class structure of that society. 

Western Marxism in general (Anderson, 1976) and Antonio Gramsci in particular helped take these concepts and put them on the agenda of media and communications scholars by attaching more importance to “the superstructure” (and within it, media messages and cultural industries) than was the case in earlier Marxist thought. Journalism and “the media” thus play a major role in creating and maintaining ideology and thus perpetuating the deception that underlies ideological operations. In the study of the relationship between the media and ideology, “pernicious messages” obviously mean something different than they do in research on propaganda—a more structural, subtle, reinforcing, invisible, and materially dependent set of messages than is usually the case in propaganda analysis.  Perhaps most importantly, little research on media and communication understands ideology in terms of “discrete falsehoods and erroneous belief,” preferring to focus on processes of deep structural  misrecognition  that serves dominant economic interests (Corner, 2001, p. 526). This obviously marks a difference in emphasis as compared to most propaganda research. 

Much like in the study of propaganda, real-world developments have also had an impact on the academic analysis of media ideology. The collapse of communism in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of neoliberal governance obviously has played a major role in these changes. Although only one amongst a great many debates about the status of ideology in a post-Marxist communications context, the exchange between Corner (2001, 2016) and Downey (2008; Downey et al., 2014) is useful for understanding how scholars have dealt with the relationship between large macro-economic and geopolitical changes in the world and fashions of research within the academy. Regardless of whether concepts of ideology are likely to return to fashion, any analysis of misinformation that is consonant with this tradition must keep in mind the relationship between class and culture, the outstanding and open question of “false consciousness,” and the key scholarly insight that ideological analysis is less concerned with false messages than it is with questions of structural misrecognition and the implications this might have for the maintenance of hegemony.

Postmodern conspiracy

Theorizing pernicious media content as a “conspiracy” theory is less common than either of the two perspectives discussed above. Certainly, conspiratorial media as an explanatory factor for political pathology has something of a post-Marxist (and indeed, postmodern) aura. Nevertheless, there was a period in the 1990s and early 2000s when some of the most interesting notions of conspiracy theories were analyzed in academic work, and it seems hard to deny that much of this literature would be relevant to the current emergence of the “QAnon” cult, the misinformation that is said to drive it, and other even more exotic notions of elites conspiring against the public. 

Frederic Jameson has penned remarks on conspiracy theory that represent the starting point for much current writing on the conspiratorial mindset, although an earlier and interrelated vein of scholarship can be found in the work of American writers such as Hofstadter (1964) and Rogin (1986). “Conspiracy is the poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age,” Jameson writes, “it is a degraded figure of the total logic of late capital, a desperate attempt to represent the latter’s system” (Jameson, 1991). If “postmodernism,” in Jameson’s terms, is marked by a skepticism toward metanarratives, then conspiracy theory is the only narrative system available to explain the various deformations of the capitalist system. As Horn and Rabinach put it:

“The broad interest taken by cultural studies in popular conspiracy theories mostly adopted Jameson’s view and regards them as the wrong answers to the right questions. Showing the symptoms of disorientation and loss of social transparency, conspiracy theorists are seen as the disenfranchised “poor in spirit,” who, for lack of a real understanding of the world they live in, come up with paranoid systems of world explanation.” (Horn & Rabinach, 2008)

Other thinkers, many of them operating from a perch within media studies and communications departments, have tried to take conspiracy theories more seriously (Bratich, 2008; Fenster, 2008; Pratt, 2003; Melley, 2008). The key question for all of these thinkers lies within the debate discussed in the previous section, the degree to which “real material interests” lie behind systems of ideological mystification and whether audiences themselves bear any responsibility for their own predicament. In general, writers sympathetic to Jameson have tended to maintain a Marxist perspective in which conspiracy represents a pastiche of hegemonic overthrow, thus rendering it just another form of ideological false consciousness. Theorists less taken with Marxist categories see conspiracy as an entirely rational (though incorrect) response to conditions of late modernity or even as potentially liberatory. Writers emphasizing that pernicious media content tends to fuel a conspiratorial mindset often emphasize the mediated aspects of information rather than the economics that lie behind these mediations. Both ideological analysis and academic writings on conspiracy theory argue that there is a gap between “what seems to be going on” and “what is actually going on,” and that this gap is maintained and widened by pernicious media messages. Research on ideology tends to see the purpose of pernicious media content as having an ultimately material source that is rooted in “real interests,” while research on conspiracies plays down these class aspects and questions whether any real interests exist that go beyond the exercise of political power.

The needs of informationally ill communities

The current thinking in misinformation studies owes something to all these approaches. But it owes an even more profound debt to two perspectives on information and journalism that emerged in the early 2000s, both of which are indebted to an “ecosystemic” perspective on information flows. One perspective sees information organizations and their audiences as approximating a natural ecosystem, in which different media providers contribute equally to the health of an information environment, which then leads to healthy citizens. The second perspective analyzes the flows of messages as they travel across an information environment, with messages becoming reshaped and distorted as they travel across an information network. 

Both of these perspectives owe a debt to the notion of the “informational citizen” that was popular around the turn of the century and that is best represented by the 2009 Knight Foundation report  The Information Needs of Communities  (Knight Foundation, 2009). This report pioneered the idea that communities were informational communities whose political health depended in large part on the quality of information these communities ingested. Additional reports by The Knight Foundation, the Pew Foundation, and this author (Anderson, 2010) looked at how messages circulated across these communities, and how their transformation impacted community health. 

It is a short step from these ecosystemic notions to a view of misinformation that sees it as a pollutant or even a virus (Anderson, 2020), one whose presence in a community turns it toward sickness or even political derangement. My argument here is that the current misinformation perspective owes less to its predecessors (with one key exception that I will discuss below) and more to concepts of information that were common at the turn of the century. The major difference between the concept of misinformation and earlier notions of informationally healthy citizens lies in the fact that the normative standard by which health is understood within information studies is crypto-normative. Where writings about journalism and ecosystemic health were openly liberal in nature and embraced notions of a rational, autonomous citizenry who just needed the right inputs in order to produce the right outputs, misinformation studies has a tendency to embrace liberal behavioralism without embracing a liberal political theory. What the political theory of misinformation studies is, in the end, deeply unclear.

I wrote earlier that misinformation studies owed more to notions of journalism from the turn of the century than it did to earlier traditions of theorizing. There is one exception to this, however. Misinformation studies, like propaganda analysis, is a radically de-structured notion of what information does. Buried within analysis of pernicious information there is

“A powerful cultural contradiction—the need to understand and explain social influence versus a rigid intolerance of the sociological and Marxist perspectives that could provide the theoretical basis for such an understanding. Brainwashing, after all, is ultimately a theory of ideology in the crude Marxian sense of “false consciousness.” Yet the concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of thinkers profoundly hostile to Marxism not only to its economic assumptions but also to its emphasis on structural, rather than individual, causality.” (Melley, 2008, p. 149)

For misinformation studies to grow in such a way that allows it to take its place among important academic theories of media and communication, several things must be done. The field needs to be more conscious of its own history, particularly its historical conceptual predecessors. It needs to more deeply interrogate its  informational-agentic  concept of what pernicious media content does, and perhaps find room in its arsenal for Marxist notions of hegemony or poststructuralist concepts of conspiracy. Finally, it needs to more openly advance its normative agenda, and indeed, take a normative position on what a good information environment would look like from the point of view of political theory. If this environment is a liberal one, so be it. But this position needs to be stated clearly.

Of course, misinformation studies need not worry about its academic bona fides at all. As the opening pages of this Commentary have shown, propaganda research was only briefly taken seriously as an important academic field. This did not stop it from being funded by the U.S. government to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars a year. While it is unlikely that media research will ever see that kind of investment again, at least by an American government, let’s not forget that geopolitical Great Power conflict has not disappeared in the four years that Donald Trump was the American president. Powerful state forces in Western society will have their own needs, and their own demands, for misinformation research. It is up to the scholarly community to decide how they will react to these temptations. 

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Cite this Essay

Anderson, C. W. (2021). Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-64

Bibliography

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Anderson, C. W. (2020, August 10). Fake news is not a virus: On platforms and their effects. Communication Theory , 31 (1), 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa008

Anderson, P. (1976). Considerations on Western Marxism . Verso.

Bratich, J. Z. (2008). Conspiracy panics: Political rationality and popular culture. State University of New York Press.

Corner, J. (2001). ‘Ideology’: A note on conceptual salvage. Media, Culture & Society , 23 (4), 525–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344301023004006

Corner, J. (2016). ‘Ideology’ and media research. Media, Culture & Society , 38 (2), 265 – 273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443715610923

Downey, J. (2008). Recognition and renewal of ideology critique. In D. Hesmondhaigh & J. Toynbee (Eds.), The media and social theory (pp. 59–74). Routledge.

Downey, J., Titley, G., & Toynbee, J. (2014). Ideology critique: The challenge for media studies. Media, Culture & Society , 36 (6), 878–887. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714536113

Fenster (2008). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture (Rev. ed.). University of Minnesota Press.

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This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

Propaganda Education for a Digital Age

• Posted March 4, 2021
• By Jill Anderson
• Moral, Civic, and Ethical Education
• Teachers and Teaching
• Technology and Media

While most of us don’t think about propaganda as something occurring today, it is everywhere. Propaganda is part of our news, entertainment, education, social media, and more. In order to understand the complexities of propaganda, we have to teach it, says Renee Hobbs , Ed.D.’85, director of the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island.

“When you start to learn about propaganda, you inevitably realize the value and the importance of multiperspectival thinking,” she says. “The ability to think about a topic from a range of different points of view turns out to be incredibly powerful, to activate intellectual curiosity, to promote reasoning, to encourage genuine value judgements.”

Hobbs shares that understanding propaganda and being able to analyze, critique, and create it can strengthen democracy and impact the growing polarization in the country. In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Hobbs shares how to revitalize propaganda education in the digital age.

• Propaganda education can fit in across all parts of the curriculum.
• A key goal of propaganda education is how to interpret messages while being mindful and strategic. Use familiar and inquiry-oriented pedagogies to help reflect and make meaning. Layer these practices in different subjects being studied. No matter what the subject, Hobbs contends that propaganda can be richly explored.
• Reinforce basic media literacy education practices in the home. Have conversations about who is the author of this message, what is their purpose, when we're playing a game, when we're reading a picture book, when we're checking out the Facebook feed, and when we're talking with grandma on the Zoom. Who's the author, what's the purpose tends to be a really great way to help kids understand that messages are created by people who have motives and purposes.

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson, this is The Harvard EdCast.

Most of us hear the word propaganda and don't think about it as a modern occurrence. Professor Renee Hobbs says we encounter propaganda at least once an hour in the news, entertainment, social media, and more. She is an expert in digital and media literacy who's been studying propaganda for decades. She believes learning to identify and understand propaganda is crucial for our democracy and also in navigating the overwhelming digital world we live. Yet, propaganda is often missing from school curriculums or is taught in outdated ways. I wanted to know more about propaganda education, but first, I asked Renee what propaganda is today and how we encounter it.

Renee Hobbs: Many different forms of expression that your listeners encounter every single day can be understood as propaganda, even though we might use words like clickbait, sponsored content, memes, social media posts, personalized search, and many other practices. The definition of propaganda changes as society changes. I like to think about propaganda's essential elements as having to do with intentional and strategic influence of public opinion. That's a really broad definition, but it really fits the contemporary era where propaganda can be found in news and journalism, in advertising and public relations, in government, in entertainment, in information, and even in education.

Jill Anderson: Our society and our world and our technology are really good at creating intentional and non-intentional things that we cannot even differentiate what's real and what's not.

Renee Hobbs: Yeah, it turns out that we've known for a long time that you can bypass people's critical thinking by activating strong emotions and responding to audience's deepest hopes, fears, and dreams by simplifying information. In fact, simplifying information has kind of become essential in an age where there's so much information. To break through the clutter, you have to have a snappy headline, it has to be shorter. Concision is a value of journalism as you know, but those are also practices that can lead to the bypassing of critical thinking. In some ways, we now encounter a lot of different messages where our feelings are activated, where we think we know what the story is because it's got a simple headline and it somehow appeals to our core values so we accept it, but we don't engage in the practice of critically analyzing it. My work in propaganda is in relation to my passionate efforts to bring media literacy education into American elementary and secondary schools.

Jill Anderson: Tell me a little bit about how learning about propaganda is a way to navigate this complex media environment that we're all engaging in.

Renee Hobbs: One of the claims I make is the idea that propaganda is in the eye of the beholder, that you might see that funny comedy, the interview about the goofy journalists who are sent out to assassinate a world leader, you might see that as entertainment, but when I watch it, I see something that looks darkly, darkly like a form of imperialistic propaganda. To me, it looks awfully devious to have the good guys go out and commit a political assassination, even if it's done in a very, very humorous way.

When you start to learn about propaganda, you inevitably realize the value and the importance of multiperspectival thinking. The ability to think about a topic from a range of different points of view turns out to be incredibly powerful, to activate intellectual curiosity, to promote reasoning, to encourage genuine value judgements. But multiperspectival thinking is hard. Looking at propaganda creates these fun ways to recognize that messages can be understood in many different ways, there's no one right answer. That's partly why I think it's so exciting to study propaganda with students because the discovery that it's the active interpretation that creates the meaning, well, that's a huge aha for studying anything. Literature, science, mathematics, philosophy, the arts, everything hinges on that in some ways.

Jill Anderson: Where are we in terms of how, and if, this is actually being taught in schools?

Renee Hobbs: Well, here comes the bad news, Jill. I started doing my work in propaganda in 2007 when I had a consultancy with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They had a special exhibit at that time called The State of Deception, it was about the history of Nazi propaganda. They wanted to help people make connections between the past historical propaganda of the 20th century Germany and bring it into contemporary times.

That inquiry led me to ask the same question that you just posed to me, where is propaganda taught in American public schools? What I learned is that it's only taught in history class and it's only taught in the context of Nazi Germany. Sometimes, if you go to a very good school, you'll get a study of propaganda in the context of learning about World War II, but that's it. It's only studied as a historical topic.

That led me to wonder, well, why is propaganda not studied in English language arts, because it used to be. I discovered that back in the 1930s, English teachers were indeed teaching about propaganda, during the 1930s, as antisemitism was rising in the United States and as radio personalities were on the radio saying all manner of idiotic things, dangerous and idiotic things. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, in 1937, spent over a million dollars in 1930s money, with support from businessman, Edward Filene of Filene's Department Store. This was a really influential effort as this lesson plans and curriculum materials were brought into thousands and thousands of American high schools.

Many of the concepts that were introduced in the 1930s are the same concepts that are used in high schools today. For instance, if you look at an example of propaganda and you identify it as a glittering generality, or if you say, "Oh, it looks like they want everybody to do it. Everybody's doing it, so you should too," that's called the bandwagon effect. Well, those concepts are 70 years old and they were designed for radio, to analyze radio and news media.

That led me to wonder what happened. It turned out that right around the time of the 1990s, there was a little bit of attention to persuasive genres, studying persuasive genres in English class, but then along came the Common Core State Standards. The Common Core State Standards shifted the way English teachers thought about the relationship between logos, pathos, and ethos. The Common Core Standards redefined persuasion as argumentation and said that the only legitimate form of persuasion to study in schools was the logical kind, the one with reasoning and evidence and arguments. The other kind of persuasion, the one that activated strong feelings, the one that tapped into your deepest hopes, fears and dreams, the one that attacks opponents, well, that's not the kind of persuasive content you study in schools. Common Core State Standards redefined what counts as persuasion, and therefore, only a very narrow band of persuasive texts were studied.

A scholar named David Fleming wrote a really powerful essay tracing this historical trajectory in a publication for English educators. I found it very compelling because, essentially, conflating argumentation and propaganda, conflating argumentation as the only form of persuasive discourse leaves kids at a real disadvantage, given that most of the persuasive messaging they encounter in the world outside of school, well, it isn't logical at all. It's emotional, it's based on the credibility and character of the speaker. So kids end up with a real deficit in their understanding right now.

Jill Anderson: Are you actually seeing some restoration of this back into the curriculum in places or-

Renee Hobbs: Oh, absolutely. In fact, one of the most important moves happened in the National Council of Teachers of English, the national membership organization for English educators with more than 25,000 members. In 2019, they issued a really important resolution. It was called the Resolution on English Education for Critical Literacy in Politics. This is a formal statement approved by the NCTE membership that says, unfortunately, this post-truth society, which is characterized by the routine use of political lying, where we come to accept as routine lies that are not condemned, if we're living in a society where that's our reality, then we need to be able to interrogate the new types of texts that are circulating in culture. They offer a set of resolutions that suggest that students be able to learn to analyze and evaluate sophisticated persuasive techniques in all texts, genres, and types of media, and that they resist attempts to influence discussion through falsehoods or through stereotypes or attempts to shame or silence, that they recognize what are the forms of deliberative dialogue that promote democratic practice and what are the forms of communication and expression that shut them down.

This, I think, is issuing in a little bit of a call to action as English teachers take up the challenge. Of course it is a challenge, Jill, because, well, bringing controversial texts into the classroom for discussion can be challenging for teachers, in this culture where some teachers have gotten criticized for bringing in the New York Times. Imagine that. It takes courage and good pedagogical strategy to teach about propaganda in the climate of polarization that we are now living in.

Jill Anderson: For a lot of teachers, I imagine it's challenging to know how to handle this. Also, you have the challenge of adults struggling themselves with navigating these issues as well. What do you recommend for teachers who are feeling a little bit scared to do this on how to take those steps without maybe losing their jobs.

Renee Hobbs: Right.

Jill Anderson: Or getting that angry letter from a parent or email or something.

Renee Hobbs: Right. There are 70 stories in this book of educators that I've interviewed or met or read about their work who are doing propaganda education in really simple and innovative ways. Like the art teacher at Charlemont Academy, who has her students create lithograph posters as they learn to create propaganda as a means to begin thinking about how propaganda works, why it works, what its visual appeal is, and how it persuades. Or the school library media specialist from Deerfield, Massachusetts, who introduces teaching about propaganda by using one of the Mo Willems books, Pigeon Wants a Puppy. Pigeon is so trying to get a puppy that sometimes he persuades with facts and sometimes he persuades with feelings. Even young children, as young as five or six years old, can understand the different ways that people try to influence each other to get what they want.

Jill Anderson: As a parent, it's hard for me to imagine introducing some of these concepts to a young child. What can parents and caregivers do at home to help teach their children about this?

Renee Hobbs: I think basic media literacy education is a perfect way to engage in these practices in the home. We generally say to parents, "Look, there are so many opportunities to have conversations about who is the author of this message, what is their purpose," when we're playing a game, when we're reading a picture book, when we're checking out the Facebook feed, and when we're talking with grandma on the Zoom. Who's the author, what's the purpose tends to be a really great way to help kids understand that messages are created by people who have motives and purposes.

It's harder and harder for parents to engage in co-viewing practices because kids now have their own devices very early, we're all in a very hyper specialized way, but the idea of reflecting on our pleasures and noticing what attracts and holds our attention. Even young children can begin to say, "I like this game because it does X, Y, and Z." A kid who can come up with a sentence like that is more media literate than a kid who says, "I like it because it's funny." The idea of helping kids build the practice of reasoning about one's pleasures and choices and preferences, this is a very simple way to introduce media literacy in the home. Jill, I'm guessing that you do that all the time with your kid, right?

Jill Anderson: I have to say yes, of course.

Renee Hobbs: Yes, because as a trained media professional, you've internalized media literacy. Of course you think about the purpose, the author, and the point of view, but not everybody does.

Jill Anderson: I mean, on some level we do at home. I think we do a lot of discussions about commercials in my house, even though in a lot of ways it's always subtly there in some way, advertising.

Renee Hobbs: I'm so glad you're talking about that, Jill, because in fact, that is the best way to introduce propaganda education to young children. Learning about advertising is a developmentally-appropriate set of knowledge and skills for children in the elementary grades. You don't want to introduce young children to disinformation and harmful propaganda, but you sure do want to help them recognize how advertising persuades, right?

Jill Anderson: Right.

Renee Hobbs: You also want to talk about how activists use images and symbols and emotional appeals to persuade. I mean, Greta Thunberg is perhaps the most famous teenage propagandist of all time and she's brilliant at it, but let's be clear, it's a form of beneficial propaganda. Her efforts to hold us grown-ups accountable to the devastation of our ecological destruction is argued beautifully as she uses reasoning and evidence and facts, but as she uses the power of emotional appeals and her character, she's a very effective propagandist. I think right now, many young people who are looking to make change, make a difference, fix some of the many, many issues and challenges we face in society, I think they well understand the value of positive propaganda to address those big social challenges.

Jill Anderson: I'm glad you mentioned her as an example, because I think a lot of us, myself included, come from that lens of looking at propaganda solely as a bad thing because a lot of us learn it that way. You have said that this is propaganda doesn't have to be something that's negative.

Renee Hobbs: Propaganda is an essential part of the democratic process. Propaganda is how citizens use the power of communication and information to make a difference in the world. We couldn't have free and fair elections if we didn't have election propaganda, because people make decisions about who their leaders are based on logos, ethos, and pathos. Once you open up your thinking beyond thinking of propaganda as a smear word, you discover how relevant it is to every aspect of our social, political, cultural, educational lives.

Jill Anderson: But I think there's so many people right now looking at the world, thinking we've got all these threats of fake news that get thrown out there and growing conspiracies, and we're very divided. Propaganda education is one way to help us better understand that and maybe close the divide?

Renee Hobbs: Propaganda is both the cause and the cure for what ails us in society. Propaganda has helped to widen the polarization and the strategy of attacking opponents is really good at that, right?

Jill Anderson: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Renee Hobbs: You create an us versus them feeling, you reinforce tribalism, and all of a sudden people see each other as enemies to be feared. But propaganda is also the only way that we come together as a society. It's the one way that we are induced to act together. Good propaganda can help us recognize the similarities that exist between us, the common values that bind us together as a people, and the deeper truths, the emotional and moral truths, that all human beings share.

The original meaning of the word propaganda, remember, is in spreading the gospel of love and forgiveness. We're going to need a heck of a lot of love and forgiveness if we're going to move forward. The cure for polarization is going to have to involve a great bit of critical thinking and an awful lot of love and forgiveness, because the way love and forgiveness come into cure us from this disease of polarization is if I'm willing to acknowledge that my understanding of the world is selective and incomplete, I don't have the whole story. I can't state for certain what is capital T truth, and I'm not going to find it through fact checking or experts or any of that. It's going to be a collaborative enterprise. I'm going to need a little help from my friends. The intellectual humility of acknowledging that we need each other to come to consensus, it's actually really liberating.

Jill Anderson: Yeah, and it sounds like everybody could benefit from having some propaganda education because this is only going to probably get more complex as media continues to evolve.

Renee Hobbs: Yeah, and at the same time, I would say that the pedagogies for teaching propaganda are not brand new pedagogies that you've never heard of, right?

Renee Hobbs: It's basically this practice of being metacognitive about how you interpret messages and being mindful and strategic in reflecting on the meaning making that you're doing. The pedagogies are very familiar, they're inquiry-oriented, they're rooted in reflection and meaning making, so it's not that hard to include them, to layer them into your science class. If you're studying the environment, you should darn well be studying environmental propaganda. If you're studying literature, you should be looking at language as propaganda. If you're studying art, Banksy is a must. You have to study art as propaganda.

Propaganda fits across the curriculum everywhere, with pedagogies that are familiar to teachers. All those great teachers that I found who were doing it made me realize that if we change our attitude about propaganda, we can in fact have a big influence in bringing media literacy competencies to all Americans.

Jill Anderson: Professor Renee Hobbs is the founder and director of the Media Education Lab at the University of Rhode Island. She's the author of numerous books about media literacy, including Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age.

I'm Jill Anderson. This is The Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

Hobbs' new book, Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age is the winner of the AAP PROSE Award for Excellence in Social Sciences for 2021. She also created a variety of digital resources to accompany the book , including the Propaganda Gallery, a crowdsourced collection of over 3,500 examples of contemporary propaganda suitable for educational use.

An education podcast that keeps the focus simple: what makes a difference for learners, educators, parents, and communities

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The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies

Jonathan Auerbach, University of Maryland

Russ Castronovo is Dorothy Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of three books: Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom; Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States; and Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era. He is also editor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics (with Dana Nelson) and States of Emergency: The Object of American Studies (with Susan Gillman).

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This handbook includes 23 essays by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines, divided into three sections: (1) Histories and Nationalities, (2) Institutions and Practices, and (3) Theories and Methodologies. In addition to dealing with the thorny question of definition, the handbook takes up an expansive set of assumptions and a full range of approaches that move propaganda beyond political campaigns and warfare to examine a wide array of cultural contexts and practices.

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Techniques Used In World War II Propaganda | Assignment Help

Propaganda is a form of communication technique used to convince the audience of the authenticity of specific arguments. Propaganda can instill political bias, national pride, and hatred for an adversary. During WWII, the primary function of propaganda was to enrage the general population while instilling a sense of patriotism in them. America was the primary nation to employ excessive propaganda for war-related purposes. It primarily had a positive impact on people’s mindsets about the battle.

During WWII, posters were an essential means of disseminating propaganda. Government leaders and private organizations used coloured posters to portray either the heroism of the soldiers or the evil behaviour of the opponent. Additionally, some advertisements were created to encourage people to save assets for a better cause. Unlike the other countries, the posters from the United States were mainly concerned with depicting soldiers as the primary driving force behind war successes. These efforts influenced and enlisted many young people to fight for a better life.

Advertisements and comic books were also altered for propaganda purposes. Businesses started to include war-related imagery in their advertisements. Numerous companies illustrated were attempting to reduce their reliance on raw resources. They were assisting the nation by conserving resources in this manner. In the form of satire, comic books also depicted patriotism and the evil nature of the enemy. During WWII, radio was among the most widely used modes of communication. It also served as a means of disseminating propaganda. On the radio, uplifting speeches were streamed live. Radio stations frequently played songs about the war. Political leaders used airwaves to address the nation. For instance, Roosevelt’s speeches to unite people were telecast on radio shows.

While most propaganda aimed to instill nationalistic pride, several had racialist undertones. Why We Fight , a sequence of seven movies directed by Frank Capra, portrayed Germany, Italy, and Japan as countries of cold-hearted killers. As World War II proceeded, the O.W.I. gained a foothold in Hollywood, producing patriotic movies. Even animated characters joined the bandwagon. The war, films, and cartoons all played a role in keeping Americans concentrated on the war while entertaining them. Overall, American propaganda used various methods to spread a sense of nationalism among people during WWII effectively.

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Propaganda Techniques in Advertising Essay

Propaganda and advertising have many similarities. Both rely on mass media in order to be effective and are typically utilized to control behavioral patterns of others. However, while propaganda may serve different purposes, such as promoting various political and religious goals, advertising has only one purpose in mind – to increase sales. As such, advertising could be considered a subdivision of propaganda.

For a hypothetical scenario, we could take an advertising campaign for chewing gum. Chewing gums are typically sold in convenience stores, where they are usually found next to the cashier’s stand. All chewing gums are placed together, meaning a direct competition between various brands. As it stands, the most popular brands are Dirol, Stimorol, and various types of Wrigley’s chewing gums, such as Doublemint. A new brand of chewing gum, if placed next to these giants, would not stand a chance, even if its qualities were similar or even above the norm. The majority of customers are going to buy familiar brands and avoid unusual or new gums unless something catches their attention, or the price is significantly low.

In order to even the playing field, a strong advertising campaign is necessary. In order to be successful and reach out large numbers of potential customers, it has to utilize all available media outlets, such as TV, Radio, visual advertisements, and internet social media. The end goal is to solidify the brand in the subconscious mind of the buyers, in order for it to be able to compete with other brands.

One of the simplest and most widespread propaganda methods to be used in advertising is repetition. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who is heralded as the father of modern propaganda, used to say that a lie repeated 1000 times becomes the truth. In advertiser language, that transforms into a saying that even bad advertising is still beneficial in the long run. Exposing potential customers to all manners of advertising on a regular basis would make them more familiar with the brand.

Another effective propaganda technique is the use of loaded language in order to promote claims associated with the brand. Many gums use words like “Ultra-fresh,” “Double-mint,” and “Arctic Breeze” in order to sell themselves. However, these words have been overused to the point nobody pays attention to them anymore. Our brand of chewing gum can advertise through other means. The selling point would not emphasize its taste, as by now everybody knows that most gums taste the same. Using a different set of slogans like “Comfortable, stylish wrapper,” “The gum for cool people,” and similar techniques might attract attention due to being alluring and unique at the same time.

Lastly, in order to reinforce the slogans, the advertising campaign can use associative projection techniques in order to solidify the relationship between the gum and perceived status of using it. Having successful people, movie stars, sportsmen, and other noteworthy personas advertise the gum as their brand of choice would make customers think they would also be successful if they emulate consumer habits of these people. This kind of advertising solicits an emotional response, meaning that any claims used in advertisements would be viewed as more credible.

The design of the gum package should correspond to the goals mentioned above. To stand out, the gum would have a dark mated wrapper with etched letters and stripes of contrasting color, such as blue, green, red, yellow, or orange. Such a wrapper would look more expensive and attractive compared to the majority of the brands, and resonate well with the advertising techniques chosen above.

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IvyPanda. (2020, September 15). Propaganda Techniques in Advertising. https://ivypanda.com/essays/propaganda-techniques-in-advertising/

"Propaganda Techniques in Advertising." IvyPanda , 15 Sept. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/propaganda-techniques-in-advertising/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Propaganda Techniques in Advertising'. 15 September.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Propaganda Techniques in Advertising." September 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/propaganda-techniques-in-advertising/.

1. IvyPanda . "Propaganda Techniques in Advertising." September 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/propaganda-techniques-in-advertising/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Propaganda Techniques in Advertising." September 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/propaganda-techniques-in-advertising/.

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