Propaganda & Mass Persuasion: Time for an offensive

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Time for an offensive

This article is very interesting and rings true. The author of this piece is unknown but he has a very powerful message for propagandists during war time. Tell the truth. For instance, during wartime many reporters like to produce things called "scarelines" in order to sell papers. These usually involved exagerations. This author argues that an overuseage of these couldlead to mistrust by the leader. He aruges it seems fake and forced. He states this clearly when he writes,
"Let's quit saying 'these are dangerous times.' Let's not preface our writing orour thinking by such references as 'this critical and uncertain period."

I happen to agree with this statement and although I don't think it would work at first, I think it would build a trust with the media from the public that is not seem much in these days.

1 Comments:

Blogger A. Mattson said...

A good choice of articles.

This is an interesting point. No one type of appeal is sufficient. Any approach if over-used will become ineffective. Scares must be balanced with positive appeals to ideals. Striking the balance and maintaining the crediblity of the propagandist is key, so too much exaggeration is risky. This is a good example of how the sophistication of the advertising industry was indispensible to wartime propaganda.

4/11/2007 9:50 PM  

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