Propaganda Is Never Pretty
Nov 12th, 2007 by Stephen
We see it all the time; propaganda for one cause or another.
Propaganda has a meaning, and it has a perception.
information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
In my opinion, this is a technically accurate description of the meaning of propaganda.
Perception is different. Perception is the widely accepted and most immediate understanding of the word. Here is a description of Propaganda from wikipedia.com which is a publicly maintained source of information, and further enforces the notion of perception over true meaning.
As defined by wikipedia.com…
Propaganda is a type of message aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of people. Often, instead of impartially providing information, propaganda can be deliberately misleading, or using logical fallacies, which, while sometimes convincing, are not necessarily valid.
Propaganda is used most heavily during times of political election. The examples are spread far and wide, they could even be described as easy to identify. However prevalent propaganda may be in the political arena, it is also heavily used in many other movements and ideologies.
This was forcibly brought to my attention just the other day. We all have seen these, and in my opinion, an individual who condones such propaganda as the example I am about to provide, are not much better than those politics who use propaganda as a way of winning the political race.
I stumbled upon this while logged into my Myspace account. It was a bulletin; take a moment to read the entire bulletin.
Those who spread these types of messages/advertisements (propaganda) fall into one of two categories.
- The type of person who creates the propaganda, and truly believes they are helping a cause.
- The type who obeys the included instructions out of guilt and fear they are not a “good person” by spreading awareness of this unfortunate issue.
No doubt child abuse is an abrasive atrocity, and one which permeates our society in the vilest of ways. It is also something that should be addressed, and awareness made.
It is not the message that I am apposed to. It is the method in which the message is propagated.
In a way, it’s a hypocritical approach to solving a problem.
These types of propaganda are designed to prey on the vulnerabilities of human nature. They attempt to spread a forced message.
They suggest that if you do not heed to their demands, you are yourself guilty of said crime; sounds a little abusive to me. In the act of digesting their message, you are basically turned into a psychological hostage. Granted, it’s on a small scale, but rape is still rape, even if it’s just a little bit of rape.
Shock advertising is a method of advertising which is designed to bring one out of their comfort zone. The idea being that the message being delivered will stay with you due to the emotional effect the accompanied media (in this case, imagery) have on you. Again, it is coupled with an attacking type of message. One which indicates you are an evil individual by ignoring its cause. As a viewer, you are again placed in a hostage situation. Either you give in and accept their message, if not; you are an evildoer and should be ashamed of yourself.
Is there a better approach to all this?
For starters, let’s stop with all this threatening nonsense. I did not repost the child abuse bulletin on Myspace, and much to my dismay, I still have a heart (note: it explicitly states that by not reposting the message, I have no heart, I can confirm this to be a lie).
If you really want to clear your conscience, get off your butt and go do something about the issue. It may seem that by spreading the propaganda that you are assisting the cause more than any other way. I disagree with this notion. I believe that by actually doing (get off the computer, go find a child, make a difference in their life) you will have better served the children.
I give an A+ for effort, but a D- for implementation. Now go plant a tree.
Title image used with permission (pending permission) and courtesy of Puder Cukier, check out the original here.
