Sunday, November 05, 2006
Propaganda and Education
The topic of this blog posting is the pervasiveness of propaganda in contemporary America. Generally speaking, people exhibit a harsh reaction to the use of propaganda, for any purpose. Many would suggest that the dramatic rise in cynicism and the declining levels of political participation in this country can be partly attributed to an overall disgust with the government’s use of communication tactics saturated with propaganda.
In order to explain the phenomenon of propaganda, we must first define it. As usual, delineating the contours of propaganda, what circumstances fall within the penumbra of propaganda, is subject to heated debate among social scientists. Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, in his 2004 book, Politics and Propaganda: Weapons if Mass Seduction, does a nice job in his first chapter of identifying, at least, the elements necessary to generate propaganda. First, propaganda implies deception, either in the core message or in the way the message is presented. Multiple viewpoints or a complex treatment of issues are likewise unthinkable in a message of propaganda. Second, propaganda requires intention on the part of the purveyor as well as the intended response of the recipient. Is unintentional propaganda theoretically coherent? If the audience fails to recognize the underlying message of a piece of propaganda, is it still propaganda? O’Shaughnessy would answer negatively to both.
Persuasion through some form of deception or oversimplification is, to a significant degree, the foundation of our education system. Our teachers tell us that democracy is correct, our parents tell us that sugary cereals rot your teeth, and our religious leaders tell us that God rewards the righteous. Is this education, or indoctrination? I’m not suggesting that any of these traditional orthodoxies are untrue. Rather, I am suggesting that the manner in which we learn information as a child is a form of propaganda. Only a student of great intellectual integrity can hope to shuck off his/her educational baggage to investigate the truth, often in spite of external pressure to accept the status quo.
The topic of this blog posting is the pervasiveness of propaganda in contemporary America. Generally speaking, people exhibit a harsh reaction to the use of propaganda, for any purpose. Many would suggest that the dramatic rise in cynicism and the declining levels of political participation in this country can be partly attributed to an overall disgust with the government’s use of communication tactics saturated with propaganda.
In order to explain the phenomenon of propaganda, we must first define it. As usual, delineating the contours of propaganda, what circumstances fall within the penumbra of propaganda, is subject to heated debate among social scientists. Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, in his 2004 book, Politics and Propaganda: Weapons if Mass Seduction, does a nice job in his first chapter of identifying, at least, the elements necessary to generate propaganda. First, propaganda implies deception, either in the core message or in the way the message is presented. Multiple viewpoints or a complex treatment of issues are likewise unthinkable in a message of propaganda. Second, propaganda requires intention on the part of the purveyor as well as the intended response of the recipient. Is unintentional propaganda theoretically coherent? If the audience fails to recognize the underlying message of a piece of propaganda, is it still propaganda? O’Shaughnessy would answer negatively to both.
Persuasion through some form of deception or oversimplification is, to a significant degree, the foundation of our education system. Our teachers tell us that democracy is correct, our parents tell us that sugary cereals rot your teeth, and our religious leaders tell us that God rewards the righteous. Is this education, or indoctrination? I’m not suggesting that any of these traditional orthodoxies are untrue. Rather, I am suggesting that the manner in which we learn information as a child is a form of propaganda. Only a student of great intellectual integrity can hope to shuck off his/her educational baggage to investigate the truth, often in spite of external pressure to accept the status quo.
# posted by Jonathan Noble @ 3:19 PM 
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Good summary of some of the reading, but the task was also to identify an article in the foreign press to carve out the distinction between divergence of opinion/perspective and propaganda.
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