what is propaganda?
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What is Propaganda?. Politics and Aesthetics Week 6 Lecture 1. Understand the classic and evolving definitions of propaganda Decipher fallacies in arguments, looking at how some questions can bear very confusing and irrelevant answers - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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What is Propaganda?
Politics and AestheticsWeek 6 Lecture 1
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• Understand the classic and evolving definitions of propaganda
• Decipher fallacies in arguments, looking at how some questions can bear very confusing and irrelevant answers
• Understand techniques of political communication in national and international politics
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To Propagate
• To make many plants from one original plant, the gardener snips off a plants shoots and puts them in the ground nearby. They grow into new plants. This is propagation.
• Hence, to propagate ideas, we use propaganda.• Propaganda is often used as a pejorative term:
at is simplest level, though, it means to spread ideas.
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How Do We Define Propaganda? Part I
• Wait, isn’t rhetoric about propagating ideas?• Isn’t everything potentially about propagating ideas? (And
thus, all media?)• How do we define propaganda as different?• A partial rhetoric (Bryant, 1953)• An unethical rhetoric.• Rhetoric is about reason and argument – hence all the
rhetorical fallacies we noted in the last lecture fall outside rhetoric.
• Propaganda is something more than just persuasion, but something less than coercion or force.
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Bryant’s “Spectrum of Influence”
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Rhetoric Propaganda
Who is the audience? A person worthy of equal respect
A target or recipient of information
What kind of choice is being argued for?
A significant, informed choice A Limited Choice because audience will not be fully informed
What is the desired response? Thinking, reasoning Reactionary, taking action quickly.
What are the appropriate means?
Reason is primary: supported with logical and emotional appeals
Emotional appeal is primary
How does the communicator see himself/herself?
A co-participant, part of a dialogue
More important and above others.
Adapted from Bennett and O’Rourke, a “Prolegomenon to the Future study of Rhetoric and Propaganda” in Jowett and O’Donnel, Eds, “Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion.” Sage, London. 2006.
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Definitions of Propaganda – Jacques Ellul
• “The aim of modern propaganda is no longer to modify ideas but to provoke action. It is no longer to change adherence to a doctrine, but to make the individual cling irrationally to a process of action…it is no longer to transform an opinion, but to arouse an active and mythical belief.” (Jacques Ellul)
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Jacques Ellul
• “The propagandist does not normally address the individual’s intelligence, for the process of intellectual persuasion is long and uncertain…” (16)
• Rather, the propagandist appeals to…emotion.
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Jacques Ellul
• Ellul distinguishes between political propaganda and sociological propaganda.
• Political Propaganda is what we will talk about today: much of it is quite obvious. Campaign ads. War propaganda, etc. But in coming weeks, and a little bit today, we will talk about
• Sociological Propaganda: “the means by which any society seeks to integrate…individuals and unify its members.” eg: religion, advertising itself, some would include ‘news’, public service announcements..
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Is this propaganda?
• Social Propaganda? Educational film from 1958 in the United States about Popularity from Coronet Films, would be shown in school: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqpe7Y_6rmQ
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Propaganda in Politics - Methods
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• White Propaganda: From a known source. The audience is aware of the political “angle” of the media.
• Black Propaganda: From an unidentified or mis-identified source. Could be one side posing as another. The audience is deliberately confused as to the political “angle”.
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Examples of Propaganda in International Politics
• Black Propaganda (source is meant to be unclear):– Soviet government paid an academic to write a paper suggesting
HIV/AIDS had been developed in a secret plot by the American government.
• Grey Propaganda: (agenda is somewhat transparent) – A news service that appears independent but is government run
and partially political in content.• White propaganda: (source is clear as is message) hosting
the Olympics– [Opening Ceremony Beijing 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUy9OgRRXnw ] Transparent, people know where its coming from.
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Techniques• Focusing on some things and not
others.– Ex. During first war in Iraq, the US
wanted Iraqis to believe that they would invade through Kuwait.
– “Public affairs officers carefully drew the media’s attention to Marine exercises in the area.”
– Forces actually came in from the West across the desert as had been planned.
– Pentagon official: “We told no lies…The reporters wanted to believe what they saw and simply did not ask the right questions. More fool them.”
Macdonald, 11.
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• Staging a photograph or a film.– Civil War photographs– 1898 – Battle of Manila Bay
shown in movie theater news reels filmed in a bathtub.
– Pancho Villa, Mexican revolutionary, “sold film rights to his battles…scheduled executions for the camera…restaged battles after the fighting had ended…”
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• Staging a Film or Photograph
• 1944 – “The Fuehrer Gives the Jews a City” created for neutral states to show that relocated Jews were living happily (which was obviously not the case).
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sD90XrGe6E&feature=related
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• Altering a photograph or film.– Iranian Missiles (2008)
Source: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/
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• Altering a photograph or film:– 2004, Bush Campaign Ad
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/photo_database/chronological/P90/
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• Altering a photograph or film:– Gorbacev’s birthmark
On the left, the leader’s natural birthmark. Didn’t always appear on his official portraits, right.
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• Photomontage
John Kerry supposedly next to anti-War activist Jane Fonda at a rally.
John Kerry, alone at a podium
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• Photomontage– University alters photo to make it more “diverse”
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• Photomontage – journalist alters photo for a better shot– -jour
This photograph was published in the LA Times. The photographer was ultimately fired.
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Propaganda in War
• In a war incited in the media, should people fight back with the media?
• Case Study: Rwanda in 1994• Rwandan genocide incited over the radio.• Extremist seized an FM radio station, the RTLM (Free
Radio-Television of the Thousand Hills)– Incited violence against Tutsis, and also urged Hutus to
flee their homes.– This meant thousands of people panicked, living in
refugee camps.
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• Radio was key in spreading the word – why didn’t anyone “counterattack” with radio?– UNAMIR’s head in the region, Canadian Major General
R.A. Dallaire, wrote: • “These broadcasts were …responsible for spreading panic…and
should have been jammed. The United Nations should have aired counter broadcasts to give the population a clear account of what was actually happening…yet…no country came forward to offer jamming or broadcasting assets.
• It later turned out the broadcasts were coming from one Radio transmitter in the back of someone’s Toyota – it could’ve easily been destroyed, but wasn’t.
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Propaganda and Aesthetics
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How Do We Define Propaganda, Part II
• How do we account for propaganda that is also art?
• Sharon Tuttle Ross’ “Epistemic Merit Model”• She defines propaganda as– “an epistemically defective message used with
the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause” (Tuttle 2003, 10)
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1. An Epistemically Defective Message ARGUMENT is illogical, commits a rhetorical error of some kind.
2. Used with the intention to persuade INTENT is to convince someone of something
3. A socially significant group of people AUDIENCE is an important group of some kind. (I can’t create propaganda for an audience of just my Mother.)
4. On behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause.
PRODUCER is politically oriented.
Adapted from Sharon Tuttle Ross.
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• Tuttle: “Messages presented through works of art…are not in the form of an argument but rather made through the use of icons, symbols, and metaphors.” (Tuttle 12)
• It’s critical to realize that art can be a source of knowledge and a source of misinformation at the same time.
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Art and Propaganda Have a Long History Together
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The Line Between Propaganda and Art?A US Newsreel, some Soviet Caroons, and The Triumph of the Will
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US Propaganda Newsreels
• Political Propaganda US Propaganda Newsreel (1962) The Berlin Wall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9mWgqYBZos
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Soviet Propaganda Cartoons
• Black and White (1934) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7qiVMgom8g&p=37B751CC04FB3666
• Ave Maria (1960s) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lMhOtp62xc&p=37B751CC04FB3666
• Mister Twister (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4gUI9VUi4k )
• Which is your favorite and why?
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Triumph of the Will
• Film by Leni Riefenstahl• Chronicles the 1934 Nazi
Party Congress in Nuremberg• Released in 1935• Film won many awards at the
time.
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• Director Riefenstahl later said in an interview:– “My first reaction was to say that I did not know anything
about the way such a thing worked or the organization of the Party, so that I would obviously photograph all the wrong things and please nobody - even supposing that I could make a documentary, which I had never yet done. Hitler said that this was exactly why he wanted me to do it: because anyone who knew all about the relative importance of the various people and groups and so on might make a film that would be pedantically accurate, but this was not what he wanted. He wanted a film showing the Congress through a non-expert eye, selecting just what was most artistically satisfying - in terms of spectacle, I suppose you might say. He wanted a film which would move, appeal to, impress an audience which was not necessarily interested in politics.”
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• Film focuses on Hitler as leader.• People of Germany are an “undifferentiated mass
enthusiastically supporting the state.”• Through various symbols in the film Hitler becomes Germany.
• Uniting the people.• Film never addresses Hitler’s attitude toward
Jews nor the lebensraum push for territory in the East.
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• Opening sequence (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcFuHGHfYwE )to around minute 10.– Shots of the city: what do you notice about it?– What kind of people are shown
• 14:30- Morning in Tent City (about 5 Minutes)• 65:00 Tribute to War Dead• 1:30:01 – END Final Squence
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• Do You Believe Ms. Reifenstahl?– "If you see this film again today you ascertain that it doesn't
contain a single reconstructed scene. Everything in it is true. And it contains no tendentious commentary at all. It is history. A pure historical film... it is film-vérité. It reflects the truth that was then in 1934, history. It is therefore a documentary. Not a propaganda film. Oh! I know very well what propaganda is. That consists of recreating events in order to illustrate a thesis, or, in the face of certain events, to let one thing go in order to accentuate another. I found myself, me, at the heart of an event which was the reality of a certain time and a certain place. My film is composed of what stemmed from that.”