Propaganda is any media text which seeks openly to persuade an audience of the validity of particular beliefs or actions (Branston and Stafford 547).  Propaganda is used during wartime and peacetime by both governmental and private organizations. It was used extensively during both WWI and WWII and reached new heights of effectiveness during the Cold War.                           

Religions propagandize regularly in an effort to win new adherents while secular organizations with agendas both social and political spend much time and effort propagating their message. Propaganda includes posters, slogans, songs, billboards, leaflets, electronic, transmissions, podcasts, radio, television, web sites and others. Advertising is one of the most pervasive forms of propaganda and many of the techniques used in modern communication have been invented by the advertising industry in order to spread the messages  advertisers use to sell their products (Block 679).

 

Propaganda consists of several different methodologies:

o      Name-Calling—Shortcutting discussion by giving an idea a bad label.

o      Glittering Generality—Doing so by associating an idea with a “virtue word” in order to make us accept and approve the proposal without examining     

        the evidence further

o      Transfer—Carrying the authority, sanction, and prestige of a respected institution over to something else, in order to make it more or less readily 

        acceptable.   

o      Testimonial—Having some respected or hated person say that the idea, product, person, or program is good or bad.

o      Plain Folks—Speaker attempts to convince his audience that he and his ideas are good because they are “of the people”.

o      Band Wagon –Identifying members of the audience with the group “now on the bandwagon” (Lee 132-135).

 

 

Posters are a very popular form of propaganda that have been used to great effect .  Below are some examples from the Twentieth Century.

Artist: Glenn Grothe

Year: 1942

This poster used the image of a German soldier to heighten war fervor and to remind people of the necessity of not discussing sensitive information.

Artist: Weimer Pursell

Year: 1943

This poster was used during World War II to convince people to conserve gas by implying that riding alone was tantamount to helping Germany.

 

Alfredo Rostgaard, 1969

Christ guerrilla

This poster depicts Jesus as a freedom fighter, a tactic used during the struggle against colonialism during the middle of the Twentieth Century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

c.2008 by James E.  Fraley