|
|
|
Mass media: Political propaganda and persuasion
|
|||
|
Mass media: Political propaganda and persuasion
|
If you think you already know what propaganda is and don't need any formal definition, that's OK with me. However, there have been numerous attempts made to distinguish propaganda from, say, 'information' or 'advertising' or 'public relations', so I'll take a look at a few of them here. If you want to skip them, fine.
Here's a definition provided by Qualter:
Propaganda is ... the deliberate attempt by some individual or group to form, control, or alter the attitudes of other groups by the use of instruments of communication, with the intention that in any given situation the reaction of those so influenced will be that desired by the propagandist.
Qualter (1962) in Taylor (1979)
The reference to 'instruments of communication' may, however, be too limiting, as Taylor (1979) points out, if that is taken to refer solely to the mass media. It would exclude statues, coinage, naming streets or special days after people and so on and would also exclude the interpersonal communication of wearing a badge or uniform, giving a particular form of greeting etc. The kind of thing which Taylor is talking about can readily be found in Britain:
Taylor emphasizes that propaganda operates through the transmission of ideas and values. It may be possible for those in power to achieve the behaviour they want through the use of rewards and punishments - higher office for some, a beating up for others - and certainly behaviourist learning theory shows that that can be highly effective and certainly these two elements were used by the Nazis and the Soviets: the order of Lenin for the ideologically sound and Siberia for the suspect. Indeed, even Siberia for some of the ideologically sound on a fairly random basis, just to encourage everyone to shut up and keep their heads down. However, although such methods may have helped those régimes to achieve their desired ends, the study of propaganda is not primarily concerned with them. Taylor (1979) offers the following from Fraser (1957) to underline the distinction:
The central element in propagandist inducements, as opposed to compulsion on the one side and payment, or bribery on the other, is that they depend on 'communication' rather than concrete penalties or rewards. To affect a donkey's behaviour by whipping it is not propaganda, nor i plying it with carrots. But if its owner shouts at it in a threatening manner, or tries to coax it with winning words or noises, then the word begins to become appropriate.
To summarize, propaganda
This may strike you as missing the important issue of bias. You may consider that propaganda necessarily presents a biased view of reality and that government propaganda is therefore something restricted to Iraq, Cuba, North Korea and so on. I think certainly that the issue of bias is an important one (though it is fraught with difficulty as soon as one attempts to distinguish 'real' reality from represented reality), but consider the way, for example, that the British government introduced the Poll Tax. They attempted to encourage public acceptance by press releases, circulars to local councils and newspapers, a barrage of television appearances by government ministers, leaflets to every household in the land. All of these attempted to explain why the Poll Tax would be a 'fairer' system. The Register of Electors could be used to trace defaulters, with the result that the only sure way to avoid the Poll Tax was to forfeit the right to vote. Massive state coercion was used against those who refused to pay: court summonses, seizure of property, fines, imprisonment. Public expressions of anger were met with the 'repressive state apparatus' in the form of riot police. So, even, if we insist that a definition of propaganda must include bias, it is clearly not absent from our own government communications. Indeed, it is perhaps a tribute to the success of democratic governments' propaganda that we naturally tend to associate propaganda with totalitarian regimes.
In what follows we shall be considering the media of the III Reich as the prime example of successful political propaganda in this century. However in your research into propaganda you should not restrict yourself to the consideration of media content only. You will need also to consider such factors as social influence, Hovland's research into persuasion generally etc. and I have provided links to such subjects at the foot of each page.
In the meantime you might like to bear in mind the basic principles suggested by Cartwright if a campaign is to change behaviour:
Cartwright (1949)
memetics
consistency theory
social influence
persuasion
advertising
Propaganda links at
Andrew Johnson's Mania Web
Phillip Taylor's
links to Information Warfare resources
Propaganda and
Psychological Warfare Studies
Propaganda Analysis Home
Page
|