Propaganda, or is it?

Propaganda is the stuff of communism, Hitler, and terrorist groups, right? Wrong. I believed that propaganda was limited to these groups, that it was not something we experienced here in America. Now however, I'm starting to think many commercials and political campaigns use propaganda every day. After reading a PDF on the Read, Write, Think.org website (click the third link down), I've discovered how close persuasion and propaganda really can be and how prevalent it is in our society.

The website Propaganda Critic says, "propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques are regularly applied by politicians, advertisers, journalists, radio personalities, and others who are interested in influencing human behavior." This commercial is a public service announcement on wearing your seat belt. It shows a man in a car accident. The opening lines introduce the man and say he "didn't want to die, but he couldn't stop himself." It shows the accident step by step, shows his ribs breaking and puncturing his lungs. It then tells the audience what they can do to prevent this same thing from happening to them, "Think. Always wear a seat belt."

Some might argue that this is merely persuasion. According to Propaganda Critic however, this add uses a propaganda technique, namely the use of fear. It says, "There are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) a threat, 2) a specific recommendation about how the audience should behave, 3) audience perception that the recommendation will be effective in addressing the threat, and 4) audience perception that they are capable of performing the recommended behavior." Does the PSA include all of these four elements? The threat is the dying in a car accident. The recommendation is to wear your seat belt. It is believable that wearing a seat belt could have prevented the driver's death. The audience feels it is capable of using a seat belt. This is a successful use of the fear appeal.

Propaganda is also incredibly common in campaign commercials. I know this will be controversial, but I want to put forward two campaign commercials: one of President Obama and one of Senator John McCain. I'm not commenting on our current President, and I'm also not commenting on Senator McCain. In fact, these videos are not even from the same election. I'm just putting these forward as examples of propaganda techniques. One of the first examples these commercials use is the plain folk technique. Both Obama and McCain try to portray themselves as "plain folk." They try to make the voters believe they are just like them, that they've been in the voters' shoes.

Another propaganda technique they both use is Glittering Generalities. Some words used in these campaign videos are democracy, change, family, faith, courage, and strength.

"For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these virtue words "Glittering Generalities" in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways. This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words and beliefs of unsuspecting people."

These are emotionally charged words. They are used in order to, again, draw the voters closer to the candidates. Sometimes they can twist the truth simply by meaning different things to different people.

There are many other examples from just these two videos I could list, such as the bandwagon, transfer, and testimonial techniques. Yet these are just two campaign videos, and both are positive. What about the negative political videos? There has to be some obvious propaganda in the negative political ads. One side or the other cannot be telling the full truth if they contradict each other on so many levels. So while the average person believes propaganda does not exist in the American society, it is actually alive and well.