Understanding Propaganda

[Insider]

there are so many suggestions on what we need to do since the election. my humble suggestion is that we get some serious students of propaganda working for us. whether we use those tools or not, we had better get real smart on how the bush/rove machine (by way of the mass media machine) is using it. we may even be able to eventually get ahead one or two steps. didn't he start his term spouting about "transparency"? we need to smoke 'em out. take their tactics out of the dark and into the light.

review the year leading up to election day. see how many obvious bush/rove tactics fit the techniques, nevermind the subtle ones.

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis
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This site is inspired by the pioneering work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA). In 1937, the IPA was created to educate the American public about the widespread nature of political propaganda. Composed of social scientists and journalists, the IPA published a series of books, including:
The Fine Art of Propaganda
Propaganda Analysis
Group Leader's Guide to Propaganda Analysis
Propaganda: How To Recognize and Deal With It
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The IPA is best-known for identifying the seven basic propaganda devices: Name-Calling, Glittering Generality, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Band Wagon. According to the authors of a recent book on propaganda, "these seven devices have been repeated so frequently in lectures, articles, and textbooks ever since that they have become virtually synonymous with the practice and analysis of propaganda in all of its aspects." (Combs and Nimmo, 1993)
http://www.propagandacritic.com


Propaganda techniques

Propagandists use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the truth. Often these techniques rely on some element of censorship or manipulation, either omitting significant information or distorting it. They are indistinguishable except in degree from the persuasion techniques employed in social, religious and commercial affairs. Recently persuasion technology has come into common use, in all styles from digital image alteration to persuasive presentation and persistent telemarketing based on repetition, making these techniques impossible to avoid.
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Propaganda_techniques


PROPAGANDA MEDIA

Propaganda Media are categorized by methods of dissemination: face-to-face (interpersonal), audiovisual, audio, and visual.

Face-to-face (interpersonal) communication is the most effective means of transmitting a persuasive message. It is employed in rallies, rumor campaigns, group discussions, lectures, show-and-tell demonstrations, social organizations, social activities, entertainment, and individual person-to-person contact, all providing a participating experience for the individual or group to recall later.

Audiovisual media such as television, electronic tape recordings, and sound motion pictures are the second most effective means of communication available to the psychological operator. Effectiveness is based on seeing and hearing the persuasive message. These media are an excellent means of transmitting persuasive messages and eliciting a high degree of recall.

Audio media (loudspeakers and radio) lend themselves to the transmission of brief, simple messages and to personalization by use of the human voice. They require little or no effort by the audience, and generally, they have more appeal than visual media. Also, the barrier of illiteracy may be more easily overcome with audio media than with visual media (printed material).

Visual media can transmit long, complex material. Animated or still cartoons may be used to convey themes to illiterate and preliterate target audiences. Visual media generally have the least amount of popular appeal.

Themes are reinforced and the target audience given broad coverage by using several media to deliver the same basic message. For example, radio and television can augment leaflets; face-to-face communication can support newspaper circulation.
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm33-1/fm33-1m.htm


Answer the &$%#* Question!
Ever Wonder Why They Won’t? They’ve Been Media-Trained. And the Public Is the Loser
BY TRUDY LIEBERMAN

Last July, just as the weapons inspector David Kay was about to brief a congressional committee on what he had found in Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appeared on Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour.

The host, Gwen Ifill, asked whether Kay had given the president new information. Rice said the president told Kay to take his time, search in a comprehensive way, in a way that makes the case and looks at all the evidence and tells us the truth. She added that the president wanted Kay to know that we are patient in finding out. She did not answer the question.

Ifill tried again. “So David Kay did not bring the president new information about new discoveries at that meeting yesterday?” Ifill asked. Rice wouldn’t budge. “I think that there is a danger in taking a little piece of evidence here, a little piece of evidence there. He is a very respected and capable weapons inspector. He knows how to read the Iraqi programs.” Although Rice had avoided the follow-up, Ifill let her continue with the administration’s pitch for war, laced with such phrases as “brutal dictator” and “ideologies of hatred.”

The interview served up no new evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and the exchange between Ifill and Rice illustrated what a CBS correspondent, Steve Hartman, calls the “orchestrated dance where nobody gets at the truth.” It’s a dance choreographed by media trainers on the one hand and by unwritten and unspoken rules of acceptable journalistic behavior on the other. Television guests tiptoe around the questions while interviewers either lose control or throw out softballs aimed at making sure their subjects will want to come back. Media training, a competitive and growing industry, teaches people all the fancy steps they need to answer the questions they want to answer, not those of an inquisitive reporter. The result: in too many cases, interviews become excuses to practice public relations, and instead of shedding light, they cloud public discourse. The captive public sits and watches the waltz glide by.
http://cjr.org/issues/2004/1/question-lieberman.asp?printerfriendly=yes

[Goathead]

1. Brain washing technique

Check out:
http://www.rickross.com/
Rick Ross started the Cult Awareness Network and ran it until The Church of Scientology sued him and won the rights to 'The Cult Awareness Network' Now they run that site to dispel any notion that Scientology is a cult. Truly bizarre. Rick Ross has plenty of stuff on his website about how to recognize brain washing technique and mind control.