Premium Essay

Propganda

In: Social Issues

Submitted By kpg0731
Words 1235
Pages 5
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare. While the term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and nationalistic examples, propaganda in its original sense is neutral. It may also be construed to refer to uses which are generally held to be somewhat benign or inoffensive, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging persons to report crimes to the police, among others. Propaganda was not invented by the Americans. It began with the Roman Catholic Committee for the Propagation of the Faith, an order of the church which was established by a papal bull in 1622. (Baran & Davis, 2013). Throughout the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of propaganda was debated as to whether or not it was a good or bad form of communication that could be corrupted. The ultimate goal of propagandists became the way to change how people act and to leave them believing that their newly adopted behaviors are their own. They did not want people to realize that they were being manipulated in any way. There are quite a few strengths of the propaganda theory. The first strength being that it is the first systematic mass communication theory. No other

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