When most American people think of propaganda, it is usually associated with times of war, especially World War I and World War II, but propaganda can be seen all around us everyday. Propaganda is defined as the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or person or ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause. It can have positive and negative implications depending on the cause or institution it is encouraging or supporting.
The word propaganda itself has a somewhat negative connotation to it. In the past, it has been extremely sexist and racist to persuade society to think a certain way or support a certain group. All propaganda is intentional. It can rely on manipulation through misleading information. In the past, propaganda has been used to unite a nation during war times, depending on how one feels towards the war, this can be a positive or negative thing. Bringing a nation together to fight against a common enemy can benefit the nation and strengthen patriotism, but it can also persuade society to believe bias or distorted information.
Not all propaganda is bad. Propaganda is created to affect society as a whole as it works to change people's ways of thinking and acting. It can shape opinions and behavior. The World War I Uncle Sam recruitment poster (pictured above) and the World War II Rosie the riveter poster (pictured above) are two of the most influential pieces of propaganda in American history. They encouraged men to join the war and encouraged women to be confident in taking the jobs of men while they were away. These examples of propaganda were not necessarily negative as they were an unforgettable call to action. The danger of propaganda begins when competing voices are silenced.
One of the most cruel and manipulative uses of propaganda was during the holocaust (pictured above). Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used propaganda to persuade the German citizens that the Jewish people of Germany were below everyone else and needed to be taken away. Nazi propagandists strategies from Communists and Italian Fascists political campaigns "to win public support and wage war." Once they gained power, they used propaganda as "a weapon of terror and media manipulation." They united the German people around Hitler as their leader and used the propaganda to "facilitate aggression, mass murder, and genocide."
Propaganda is created to appeal to certain segments of society or society as a whole, almost like advertisements. The institution knows the their intended audience and created the propaganda to appeal to them the most. Recruitment posters appealed to young men of the time, rationing posters mainly just appealed to women because that's who it pertained to. The propaganda directs the visual aid or information to the intended audience they want to persuade. It can affect different social classes differently as the lower classes do not have money to help the institutions creating the propaganda, while the upper classes do. "The average person stands little chance anymore. The poor and the weak don’t stand any chance. We have become a nation of the misinformed blindly basing our life decisions on the incessant blatherings of moral monsters with a desire for only money and power."
Public health campaigns and elections utilize propaganda today. Modern propaganda draws upon techniques and strategies used in advertising, public relations, communications, and mass psychology. It "simplifies complicated issues for popular consumption." It is always biased, and it is "geared to achieving a particular end." Propaganda employs symbols, in written, musical, or visual forms, and "plays upon and channels complex human emotions towards a desired goal." Propaganda, of course, is not always successful. Its effectiveness depends on many different factors, including the receptivity of an audience to the message and a favorable social context. Propaganda is still all around us today even though we are not in a time of war on our land. The biggest example of our generation is propaganda pertaining to COVID-19. Many artists around the world even drew inspirations from old war time propaganda posters to create a call to action like the one pictured above. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are faced with propaganda everyday. Modern technology has made it even easier to reach our generation and persuade our thoughts and actions for their benefit.
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