Propaganda Study - The Seven Signals. Dive! Dive! And More As They Emerge.

Propaganda components - The Basic Seven.



This topic is updated from time to time as new techniques are spotted. Those are at the end: Propaganda by Swiftboating, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) and now in 2008, propaganda by Subtext, in ads, saying the unsayable, and getting the message across strongly nonetheless.



Start your own education with the classics -- //www.propagandacritic.com/. The lists are laid out clearly there, and date from 1937 or so.



Other propaganda components have emerged since then, listed at the end here as they show their teeth.



The site, with its basic 7, stems from the work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis 1937, organized to alert the American Public about propaganda techniques. Look up from that site, at //www.propagandacritic.com/ the techniques being used at that time by other governments, and our own, since World War I.



Then join us in a round of "you know."



You know it's propaganda when you hear, and this is their list:



1. "Name-calling" - see Name-calling as propaganda technique. Examples: Yale frat boys (losing when it comes to competition on merit?) resort to calling Yale women students "sluts", see Yale Frat Boys. See also the n word, b word, any ethnic characterization word, etc.



2. "Glittering Generalities" - see Glittering Generalities as propaganda technique. War critics are unpatriotic.



3. "Transfer" - see Transfer - appeal to the positive emotion connected to an earlier circumstance to a new one by claiming association. Propaganda technique. Nine-eleven.



4. "Testimonial" - see Testimonial as propaganda technique. Endorsements.



5. "Plain folks" - see Plain Folks appeals as propaganda technique. Like the photos of people in the diner with the candidate.



6. "Card-stacking" - see Putting your people in decision-making positions, then touting their decisions.



7. "Bandwagon " - see Bandwagon. appeals as propaganda technique.



These titles are from the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (see overview at Propaganda Critic at //www.propagandacritic.com/) and as repeated in other sites here.

://www.csoonline.com/glossary/term.cfm?ID=1223

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The 20th-21st Centuries; Amended List. Growing and limited only by the imaginations, more sophistocated techinques, and machinations of the persuaders.



Now: add



8. "FUD" for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - the phrase coined in the 1970's by IBM in order to undermine the work of a competitor. See Joy of Equivocating, FUD - Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. See also ://www.csoonline.com/glossary/term.cfm?ID=1223. FUD depends on emotion for a sales decision, to make it or prevent it - an embodiment of the concept we now call "Emoticon Dominance," see Joy of Equivocating, Emoticon Dominance, Legend Superseding Facts. And Joy of Equivocating: Preparing for Ongoing Equivoction -Spotting FUD; Joy of Equivocating">Joy of Equivocating: FUD - The Three Swords of the Manipulator;



9. The Swiftboat Effect. See Hello Fodder, Propaganda Technique, Swiftboat Effect. Take one idea, distort it out of its context, conceal or deny contrary facts, and press your skewed conclusion until someone buys it.



Swiftboating can be by literalism, ignoring the "figure of speech" context and complaining that a rhetorical exaggeration should be taken literally, or by other mispresentation.



Look up figures of speech at ://www.nipissingu.ca/faculty/williams/figofspe.htm so you can spot them, and defend against the propagandists.



10. Propaganda by Subtext. Here we refer, in 2008, to the ads that use imagery and words that evoke messages geared to associate a negative, or a fearful, to an otherwise ordinary message. Take, for example, putting Barack Obama in the same commercial with white gorgeous (at least, cute) young women known for flaunting bods. The verbal message is neutal and not sexual - Obama is just a celebrity as they are celebrities. But take away the sound, and the nonverbal message is black man and white young women, and this needs to stop. Or, Barack Obama with words on the ad that are evocative of all the anti-Christ and novels about that - watch out, here he is. Yet, it is deniable. Those words and specific associations are not made. Just impled, hit you in the face, suggested and even the illustrations match. Eminent propaganda, Propaganda by subtext, just below conscious, but effective because it is below the radar. .



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Your job if you are a thinking citizen.



Fix. Fix the list. Fix it in your head. Fix one on every wall, in every schoolroom, home, bus, subway, airport, slipouts in magazines, wallet-size cards, TV, and any electronic device, over which words lure us in like carnivorous plants.



Reading list. Other sites on the topic: See ://changingminds.org/techniques/propaganda/propaganda_history.htm.



"Response-ible Rhetorics: Exploring Rhetoric and Responsible Action," at //mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/index.html. George Mason University people, Andy McDonald and Lene Palmer, put out this website analyzing propaganda. George Mason U. is at Fairfax, VA .



Find sections including Roots of Propaganda, and its Rise, Purpose and Techniques. There is a bibliography there, and reference to the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the founder Edward Filene, and Filene's basic categorization of propaganda into these basics. See ://mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Propaganda%20Techniques.html



Additional techniques listed at the site, and from the Institute: see ://mason.gmu.edu/~amcdonal/Other%20Techniques.htmlPropaganda.



Sales. Propaganda is catchy. It gets remembered; and passed on. So watch those emails and weed them out.



Ideas, things, relationships. Public relations and communications techniquess geared to persuade you, by keeping you from thinking further. Our little personal emoticons, see http://www.emoticon.com/, get so swept up that we don't bother to think past the visceral response.