Submitted 9 months ago by nodsocket@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Isn’t propaganda just a form of persuasion? What about propaganda separates it from advertising or interpersonal communication?
its a disingenuous form of persuasion.
youre explicitly leaving out facts or distorting the argument to your case. so its lie by omission at best, and outright lying at worst.
Don’t most forms of persuasion leave out inconvenient facts or distort the argument to their case?
no
Some, not most. Propaganda and advertising are one sided conversations - you either see through the bullshit, or you find yourself agreeing with it.
Effective and rational persuasion involves a back and forth conversation, which is far too time consuming for practically anyone to bother with these days. Since everyone has to have an opinion on everything, they’ll usually find someone saying what sounds right to them and recite the same talking points. When you’re engaging in that sort of persuasion, you don’t really need to worry about giant holes in your arguments.
often it is better to directly acknowledge where your side has trouble. You can then address those areas on your terms before they find out, possibly from a source that won't show you why your side is better despite those issues.
What about propaganda separates it from advertising or interpersonal communication?
The degree of lie and power.
Advertisements can be misleading, but if they go too far can be subject to false advertisement. No such check is there for a government participating in propaganda. That government also has the ability to wage war and oppress people rather than just sell products.
Propaganda can also be a label applied to 1) true information presented in a certain way, and 2) the same types of information presented about subjects other than the government.
I’ll leave others to address point 1, but I think point 2 is interesting. Propaganda can be about economic systems, for example, such as capitalism, which exists outside the realm of government. Propaganda can be about industries, for example when the oil industry tries to mislead us about global warming. I think the common theme is that propaganda has to be about broad, powerful systems having, as you pointed out, serious consequences when they tell you something.
That’s an interesting take. It’s the lack of regulations that separates propaganda.
I also don’t think it’s like a bright line that propaganda is necessarily the worst form of dishonesty. The subject matter and intent is huge. If a US president runs ads with cherry picked economy data, you could argue that’s propaganda. But that isn’t necessarily worse than say a Pharma exec who pushes through a misleading advertises a potentially harmful drug. The exec could potentially get in trouble for this, but you could easily argue his actions were worse.
The potential harm is generally pretty high when we think of propaganda. As governments willing to participate in more flagrant propaganda are likely going to be willing to participate in other unsavory behavior. And use propaganda to affect it.
It’s not just persuasion, it’s disingenuous persuasion. It’s persuasion with a hidden agenda.
So, if I were to tell you apples were better than oranges because they have more fiber, that’s a persuasion and it’s objectively true (5g vs. 3g).
If I were to tell you that apples were better than oranges because some oranges contain parasitic wasps and you can’t tell which ones do and which ones don’t until you open one.
Well, that’s disingenous. And if it turned out I worked for the Washington Apple Commission, and did not disclose that, that would be propaganda.
Propaganda does not have to have a hidden agenda. Literally the "I want you" uncle Sam poster is propaganda. That agenda was pretty obvious, there was no question who was behind it and it was pretty clear why it was commissioned in the first place.
There has been propaganda encouraging car-pooling, reusing materials, conserving electricity, promoting employment etc, and many of them even had credits as to who the message was coming from.
Propaganda is not inherently evil, but it's important to understand the context and where it's coming from.
Most propaganda is clear and direct about what it is.
This reminds me of the same issue with the term “discriminate”. Discrimination is an important, good thing to be able to do. You look at a traffic light and you should hopefully discriminate between the red and green colors.
People have started using is generally to mean racial discrimination in a bad context. So now, a lot of people understand “discrimination” to mean “racism” or “sexism”.
That’s because the definition of discrimination you’re talking about is not the main definition of the word, and is not a good fit for the use you’re describing.
The word you’re looking for is differentiate.
intransitive verb To make a clear distinction; distinguish. “discriminate among the options available.”
To make distinctions on the basis of class or category without regard to individual merit, especially to show prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or a similar social factor. “was accused of discriminating against women; discriminated in favor of his cronies.”
To perceive or notice the distinguishing features of; recognize as distinct. “unable to discriminate colors.”
Seems like it’s primary use is to distinguish between things.
Before the more modern definition took hold propaganda was not a term that held any real negative connotations. It was really just like marketing or evangelising, a behavior or product which uses various methods to change opinions. The big problem is when you have political or corporate powers using these tools to change opinion about something in a way that degrades democracy or causes harm.
For example, oil companies stand to benefit from people being uncertain about the science, so when they engage in propaganda they are trying to inject doubt where there is none and to do so in a way that will benefit them in the short term. This will cause massive harm in the future, potentially leading to a significant number of wars and a staggerig death toll, but that is not part of their consideration.
Another example is alt med. When someone claims that their pill can make your brain work better and will also boost your sexual performance all while protecting you from the dangers they just told you about they obviously stand to benefit from you believing them. They create the need and then offer the solution. Alex Jones is a good example of this. He tells you that the global elite are planning nuclear war, then in the next ad break tells you about iodine for radiation exposure.
So why is propaganda frowned on? It is more like propaganda is the label we give to marketing or evangelising that we consider worthy of frowning. Someone in another countries may sort different things into evangelising, marketing, and propaganda categories but they will do so based on their understanding of the world and you will likely agree with most of their sorting. Almost everyone thinks that Nazis are bad and put their marketing in the propaganda bucket.
Marketing and evangelism are fucking terrible too while we are at it
Propaganda has always held an aspect of dishonesty, though, either subtle or egregious. It’s never been looked at as more than a tool- like how the Roman historiographers used it to paint thei lr neighbors as barbarians.
It’s because propaganda is by definition false. It’s purposely misleading information intended to control people. There’s not really any way to put a positive spin on that
Not all propaganda is false, sometimes propaganda uses facts to persuade. All forms of persuasion involve controlling others, but for some reason propaganda is the most taboo.
All forms of persuasion involve controlling others, but for some reason propaganda is the most taboo.
That’s not true. Persuasive dialogue allows others to make their own choices. The persuader’s job is to get the person with the decision to choose the desired option. In this sense, persuasion preserves the autonomy of the other and, more importantly, respects them enough to reason with them.
Propaganda largely does not do that.
Fox News is basically a propaganda factory, so it’s my go-to example. Look at how they talk about the border situation: it’s an invasion, a crisis. That’s not bad, per se, but there’s no discussion about how the problem came to be in the first place. It’s here’s an urgent problem that’s a direct threat to you, and here’s the specific thing we should do about it. Propaganda of an urgent nature is an underhanded technique because it precludes other feasible solutions.
Similarly, propaganda that persuades by omitting important facts also doesn’t give the audience a chance to reason through the problem and respect their right to choose among the feasible options if that information were included.
That’s why propaganda is often considered coercive and controlling while persuasion generally is not.
If the information were true then it wouldn’t be propaganda anymore, it would just be facts. Propaganda is a negative word intended to alert people to misinformation
I like propaganda like this.
youtu.be/IWAf3dQxAfQ?feature=shared
A lot of cool art has been made as propaganda. Let them cook.
Not all propaganda involves lying.
Dictionaries seem to disagree with your definition.
Wiktionary suggests lying isn’t necessary:
Biased communication aimed to influence an audience to further an agenda, encourage a particular perception or provoke an emotional response
It’s very similar to the OED definition returned from Google.
Can you show me?
the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions
The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a particular cause or point of view, often a political agenda. Also: information disseminated in this way; the means or media by which such ideas are disseminated. Cf. black propaganda n.
Propaganda is information, often inaccurate information, that a political organization publishes or broadcasts in order to influence people.
Point being, even if it’s not necessarily all lies how do you know you’re not being lied to or mislead when most propaganda are, by definition, lies and half-truths? I don’t trust any sort of propaganda because chances are I’m being lied to.
People use words in different ways. You will find varying definitions of propaganda. Some people will call any information produced by a government propaganda. Some people will only call that information propaganda if it appears to have a notable bias. Some will only call the info propaganda if it contains outright lies.
You seem to want to define propaganda as any information produced by a government designed to pursuance people of something. Most people are not going to be against that kind of information (or at least not strongly against it). I’m pretty sure most people that say they are against propaganda view propaganda as information that is misleading or an outright lie.
The problem here seems to be that you have taken the stance that propaganda simply means “persuasion”.
To me I think it has to do with propaganda being dishonest about being propaganda. Regardless of whether or not the content is disingenuous, propaganda often is presented as not propaganda, and that sets people up to have a bad impression right from the get-go.
Propaganda is by definition misleading and political in nature. It can lead to policies that can make life very bad for a lot of people (see Nazi propaganda).
A misleading, nonpolitical ad, may make you waste money, but it’s unlikely to lead to police rounding up foreigners in the night. Dishonest interpersonal communications will make you lose friends but it (generally) doesn’t set political policy.
Thats not to say that advertisements can’t be dangerous, but at least they’re regulated to limit potential damage. Anyone can push any political statement as fact and get away with it as long as it doesn’t piss off the wrong people too much.
Becsuse people are always angry at it.
Its comparison to ad campaigns is a good one, and they are both considered bad for the same reasons: Manipulating people via selective facts, twisted facts or outright lies.
Propaganda, however, is by definition related to conflicts. This means all propaganda has opponents who eagerly seek out to point out and destroy it.
If a newspaper in New York City put a huge page about McDonald’s being an amazing place to work, you would not expect people to yell “that’s ADVERTISEMENT” and form gangs to go destroy all the issues for sale.
If a newspaper in New York City put a huge page about how honorable and valiant the Russian soldiers are in defending Ukraine against Western degenerates, you would have furious people calling it “PROPAGANDA!” and trying really really hard to get rid of it and punish the people publishing it.
I think it’s more about who is lying. We want our governments to be honest with us, because they have so much power over us.
Unlike other advertisers, governments have effectively unlimited budgets and can use force to suppress other narratives.
Similarly, we trust our governments. A great example is the whole weapons-of-mass-destruction/uranium lie perpetrated by the US government (or just the Oval Office?) before the Second Gulf War. The Washington press and most of the US public trusted the government and accepted the lie. We believe in our leaders and institutions, and think they’re above those kind of lies.
I think it’s generally that propaganda is pushed by big organizations, and there’s no room for rebuttal. You’d be talking to a brick wall. A brick wall with a propaganda poster on it.
Personal persuasion can be just as villainized when politics are involved. Try talking to a lefty in support of Trump or to a righty in support of CRT and you’ll see.
Advertisements are a special case. Nearly universally hated, but not seen as so evil because they’re just after your money to buy a product, not your loyalty to some cause.
It isn’t frowned upon when we’re selling a product. But we call it “advertising” then.
On second thought, everybody hates advertising too. Except for the people who like it.
But to answer your question, it’s frowned upon because it’s disrespectful.
It kind of depends on the context it’s used in. The common meaning has also changed over time. All government press releases could be considered propaganda and they generally aren’t frowned upon. Having a Ministry of Propaganada used to be common until the word gained a negative connotation.
News propaganda is frowned upon because it’s fundamentally dishonest, even if individual stories are true. It’s masquerading as an attempt to discover truth through fact-finding when in reality it’s disseminating received “truth” through an authority. If, for example, the Russian government wants to spread a false story through RT, it doesn’t matter the size of your mountain of facts negating it, you cannot overturn received truth at RT. It’s not easy, and is often impossible, to discern between discovered and received ‘truth’ from propaganda networks.
Nice try. You won’t fool me with your pro-propaganda propaganda.
The implication is that propaganda is either a lie, a twisting of the truth or selective facts.
But isn’t any form of persuasion going to involve selective facts?
Facts only compel the intelligent.
Being able to compel the masses requires charisma.
So intellectuals lambast the use of propaganda because from their perspective, only facts should be so compelling.
Seeing a method work on others that wouldn’t work on the self causes an internal alarm bell.
fleabomber@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Because most folks don’t like being manipulated?
sbv@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I think this is a big part of it. We expect companies to lie in their advertisements, but we trust our government institutions, so government propaganda feels like a betrayal of trust.
treadful@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Especially by the people we’re supposed to be represented by.
Manufactured consent involves turning around the democratic process.
Sorgan71@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Well i hope you dont like marketing or any story that has a moral or message.