Propaganda (Chapter 3 & 4 + Architecture of Doom)

mass audience

could deliver a message to large, heterogeneous groups quickly.

'penny press'

"The penny press deliberately sought to cultivate the audience's
interest in local events and everyday occurrences."

Jacksonian democracy

1830s
clear populist sentiment

Michael Schudson (1978)

claims that the penny press was a response to the emergence of 'democratic market society' which had been created by that very mass democracy, along with a marketplace ideology and an urban society
"no place for social or intellectual deference..."

The public came to rely on the information supplied by the new newspapers:

1. there were few competing voices
2. those few other sources (e.g. book, newsletter) weren't as timely or
consistent
3. newspapers appealed to readers' biases; there was no pretense of
objectivity
4. supplied the continuous knowledge of the political system that was
required by a democratic political system
5. working- or middle-class readers didn't have newsgathering resources
newspapers provided
6. in addition to economic and political news, papers provided entertainment
& local news "that created a sense of social cohesion in an increasingly fragmented world."

media were now

"both collectors and disseminators of information, and this placed
them in a powerful position to act as the channel for all types of persuasive messages."

Media was seen as the principal source of ideas in this new society. There were various critiques of its power:

1.) media would cater to the lowest common denominator, leading to ‘cultural blandness’
2.) from socialist/communist perspective (gaining credence at 19th/20th turn-of-century) mass media were "the handmaidens of the capitalist system" [producing 'false consciousness']

Graham Wallas

"men [are] not entirely governed by reason but often act on 'affection and instinct' and that these could be deliberately aroused and directed in a way that would eventually lead to some course of action desired by the manipulator."

'enlightened discussion'

"[T]he major concern of the propaganda critique that emerged in the United States in the Progressive Era was for 'the implication for democratic social organization of the new marriage between private institutions and the emerging professions of mass communication.'”

Walter Lippmann

Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public
focused not on institutional manipulation, but on the ability of the public to make informed choice in a complex modern era.

John Dewey

The Public and Its Problems and Liberalism and Social Action (1935)
looked at the increasing complexity of social interaction as a result of
the rise of mass media

"Propaganda analysis was both an important journalistic and scholarly activity in the interwar period...analyzing the methods by which propagandists worked

often making this knowledge public in the hopes of affecting some type of reform."

Almost all forms of communication and entertainment came under critical examination as potential vehicles for propaganda:

movies; radio; newspapers; magazines; preaching; teaching; federal government propaganda activities

Harold D. Lasswell (political scientist)

concerned with developing a theoretical perspective of
propaganda and less interested in public policy...For Laswell, understanding and discerning patterns in the propaganda process would reveal its strategies and ultimate effectiveness.

Print Media

after civil war newspapers boomed, along with magazines
e.g. Saturday Evening Post had a huge circulation (read by 10 million per week) & was a prime purveyor of mass culture. Other, smaller publications had a large impact: Harper's Weekly; Atlantic Monthly; Nation; all greatly influenced public opinion. Magazines are a "personalized medium, creating strong reader identification"

era of yellow journalism

Joseph Pulitzer's World and William Randolph Hearst's Journal engaged in sensationalistic coverage of, and sometimes invention of, news stories (e.g. the sinking of the Maine, the Spanish-American War.)
This seemed to confirm the negative view of the propaganda power of the mass media press.

"This is equally true for the large newsmagazines such as Time and Newsweek, in which both the selection of the specific stories to be featured and the way those stories are treated can be considered to be propaganda."

e.g. buzz generated when Springsteen was featured on the covers of both Time and Newsweek

Books have a smaller circulation, but their capacity for in-depth development of ideas gives them a propagandistic impact which exceeds their proportional size

e.g. Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf (My Struggle)

'culture wars'

e.g Rush Limbaugh's I Told You So, William Bennett's The Book of Virtues, Alan Bloom's The Closing of The American Mind

Movies have

"the ability to evoke an immediate emotional response."
Movies..."present[ ] one set of values as the only viable set. Over a period of years, these values can both reflect and shape society's norms."

Early fears about the power of movies led to attacks against movies generally and Hollywood specifically;

these attacks were made by teachers, preachers, politicians--those who feared loss of control in setting the cultural, moral, political agenda.

During World War I, there were ongoing attempts to use the movies for propaganda were overly crude and direct

(allowing the audience, therefore, to see them as propaganda, and, thus, minimize their effectiveness.)

The Committee on Public
Information (CPI)

the propaganda agency for the war -- collaborated with Hollywood in
creating patriotic films.

Another problem in using films as propaganda

"Audiences were so used to seeing commercial escapist material that getting them to view anything that appeared to be educational
was extremely difficult...If audiences were being propagandized, then it was under the guise of entertainment..."

philanthropic Payne Fund

gave $200,000 to the Motion Picture Research Council to research the influence of movies
"Reverend William Short, the man most responsible for setting up the studies, wanted scientific evidence he could use to foster his campaign to place the motion picture industry under a more stringent form of social control."

Soviet filmmakers developed the montage

"in which various film images were juxtaposed to create a
specific response from the viewer." (This was used to great effect by Sergei Eisenstein in Battleship Potemkin. With Stalin came socialist realism -- aim of which was to glorify the Soviet state.

Hollywood never

"lent itself to overt propaganda on any grand scale," but the industry
has on occasion used its means to "promote a specific idea."

more than six years after Hitler came to power, Confessions of A Nazi Spy was released, and a spate of similar films followed.

these were known as 'preparedness films', and they greatly
agitated those who wanted the U.S. to keep clear of the conflict raging overseas.

Occasional commercial films propagandize in the sense that they
espouse a particular point of view about a controversial subject

e.g. The China Syndrome; Missing (overthrow Chilean government); Oliver Stone's Nixon, JFK, Natural Born Killers [compare these to Top Gun, which is cited as "an ideology...[which can] result[ ] ;ins specific behaviors" --uptick in applicant in naval recruitment centers.]

[Movies'] use as a propaganda vehicle is severely restricted by several factors:

1. public used to high-budget production values
2. public expects stars in fictional stories (little acceptance of anything else.)
3. it's hard to break into the distribution system
4. video's lower cost makes it a more attractive propaganda vehicle

white propaganda

(source is known; audience expects different [political] viewpoints, unlike with movies.)

U.S. began the Voice of America

under the guidance of the Office of War Information (OWI).

There are several kinds of international broadcasting systems:

1. national broadcasting organizations (state funded or supported by politically or religiously active citizens) - this is of the most importance for propaganda
2. commercial shortwave stations; many of which feature music (some propaganda role in the international transmission of popular culture)
3. groups promulgating various Christian doctrines (Vatican Radio, Adventist World radio, World Radio Gospel Hour (also some stations with Islamic broadcasts)

Most shortwave sets

used by those outside of the U.S

BBC

had a reputation for being fair and unbiased

VOA

has a fairly good reputation in this regard as well (it stimulates domestic political battle when the VOA or similar outlets are attempted to be used for more partisan purposes.)

U.S government international broadcast services under

Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) and created the
International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)

Radio Marti

began broadcasting into Cuba on May 20, 1985. The FCC shut down clandestine stations transmitting toward Cuba; Radio Marti was intended to fill the vacuum with a more formally controlled entity. The Cuban expatriate community in Cuba pushes for an aggressive attempt to foment revolution in Cuba; there is an ongoing power struggle for ideological control of Radio Marti.

propaganda function of news reporting

Developing nations complain that Western news outlets, which furnish programming to the entire world (e.g. CNN) provide a distorted image of other parts of the world and contribute to an imbalance of the free
flow of information worldwide.

'shorthand nature'

its lack of context and depth of analysis. Images telegraph certain ideas, in which are embedded certain cultural assumptions.

CNN emerged in the Gulf War (I) as a major player in disseminating news.

conflict also raised questions about the relationship between the media and the military. The instantaneous nature of the coverage led to new restrictions on the press. 'Pool reporting' was instituted; only a select handful of reporters were granted access to the battle site, with other relying on these few for their own reports

advertising

a series of appeals, symbols, and statements deliberately designed to influence the receiver of the message toward the point of view desired by the communicator and to act in some specific way as a result of receiving the message.
"[A]vertising is not always in the best interest of the receiver."

Vance Packard

The Hidden Persuaders (1958) kicked-off a debate about advertising, linking the negative concept of propaganda with advertising. Because of this book and that debate, there was great interest in motivational research (used in-depth interviews to understand the psychological basis for consuming) and subliminal advertising (embedding verbal or visual messages below the level of conscious awareness.

Michael Schudson

Advertising: The Uneasy Persuasion (1984) - "suggests that advertising in the capitalist system performs the same function as the poster art of authoritarian Socialism (healthy men and women working in the fields and factories, affirming the joys of Socialism.)
It validates the whole system-individualism, pursuit of materialist prosperity.

Jib Fowles

Advertising and Popular Culture (1997) - ads enter of web of 'intertextual relationships.' They don't stand alone, but are experienced and perceived within the context of other ads, other texts (films, popular music, TV, political events, etc.) \
Advertising appears to be inseparable from a capitalist economic system, but is seems to
"result[] in a public that is increasingly ill-informed to make important social and political
decisions on a rational basis, but that is instead, becoming more reliant on the sophisticated
manipulation of images and symbols."

The internet can also carry 'positive' propaganda

e.g health information

Propaganda World War I

The Committee on Public Information (CPI), headed by George Creel,
had to 'sell the war to America.'
"Creel established the Division of Labor Publications, w/ former
labor organizer Robert Maisel as its head" to produce publications for American labor.
Both sides in the war circulated both white and black propaganda.
i.e. the Allies deliberately mistranslated kadaver (refers only to animal corpses) to
indicate that the Germans boiled the corpses of their soldiers to produce fats

Harold Lasswell

Propaganda Techniques in The World War (1927)
based his work on a stimulus-response model, seeing human responses as uniform and immediate. This is also known as the "magic bullet" or "hypodermic needle" theory, which was based largely on assumptions about human nature rather than on empirical research.
"limited effects" models were more accurate

Social psychology (the study of attitudes)

The media industries funded much of this research; applied research was the goal of industrial and government institutions:
Rogers (1994), "private foundations and the federal government were more eager to support research that was useful to policymakers but did not raise troubling questions about the interests and motives of the persuaders."
Simpson (1994), "sponsorship can, however, underwrite the articulation, elaboration, and
development of a favored set of preconceptions, and in that way improve its competitive position in ongoing rivalries with alternative constructions of academic reality."

the study of attitudes

defining attitudes and operationally measuring them

Likert scale

an attitude measuring tool consisting of categories indicating attitude strength on a 5-point scale ranging from 'strongly approve' to 'strongly disapprove.'

Bogardus and Thurstone scales

weight a series of attitudinal statements of
equal intervals

semantic differential developed by Osgood

focuses on the meaning that people give to a word or concept by rating a concept on a scale of verbal
opposites.

Paul Lazarsfeld

produced a state-of-the-art review of research at the time. Lazarsfeld himself utilized a scientific approach of the Vienna Circle - European positivism.

Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer

These scholars were concerned with the
values and ideological images reflected in media content. Less concerned with immediate effects, they addressed the more subtle and long-term implications of the underlying structure and the implicit themes in the media." [This approach is more in line with the cultural studies approach of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall which is
discussed later in the chapter.]

Laswell developed a model of communication which guided his studies:

who says what to whom in what channel with what effects?

Lazarsfeld developed the two-step flow model

later changed to a multi-step flow model) which suggested that the effects of media messages were influenced by opinion leaders. He also concluded that political campaigns are more effective in activating or reinforcing attitudes rather than in changing attitudes.

Kurt Lewin

developed the idea of the gatekeeper who controls the flow of information. It was proposed that the media serve such a gatekeeping function.

Carl Hovland

'Yale approach'
is team investigated the effects of variables in persuasion: source credibility; personality traits; susceptibility to persuasion; ordering of arguments
(primacy-recency); explicit vs. implicit conclusions; fear appeals (weak fear appeals seemed to be more effective; for the next three decades, there were differing results in studies on fear appeals.)

consistency theory

"All consistency theories are based on the belief that people need to be consistent, or at lest to perceive themselves as consistent. The human tendency is toward balance..."homeostasis."

Leon Festinger

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957)
Once one commits to a decision, some inconsistency between attitude and behavior would lead one to cognitive dissonance which would be alleviated by rationalization, avoidance or seeking new support. "If the discrepancy between the commitment and the inconsistent act is high,
change will occur."

Theory of Exposure Learning

more people are exposed to an idea, the more they are apt to accept it. This may be owing to the fact that there is comfort in familiarity. Frequent exposure to a message may intensify both preexistent positive and negative attitudes.

Social Judgement Theory

"A linear scale is used to determine a subject's latitude of acceptance, rejection, or noncommitment. If a subject's perception of a message falls within the latitude of acceptance, she or he tends to perceive the message closer to her or his position that it actually is, which results in an assimilation effect. If the message lies in the latitude of rejection, it will be perceived much farther from the person's position that it actually is, which produces contrast effects"

Resistance to Persuasion

McGuire - inoculation theory -analogous to physical immunization against disease
If one is given either supportive statements or refutational arguments, then one is better able to provide counter arguments and defenses against attacks on cultural beliefs.

McGuire's Model of Persuasion

emphasized the processes of persuasion:
attention; comprehension; yielding; retention; action. Other researchers (Zimbardo and Leippe) added exposure at the beginning and replaced action with translation of attitude to behavior.

Diffusion of Innovations

The diffusion process (how a media
message ultimately produces an effect) is complex and is a combination of mass and interpersonal communication. It may take years for an idea to have an impact.

elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion

"[I]f a person does not care about a topic, she or he is not likely to expend much energy to process the information in the message. Such a person can be expected to rely on extra-message peripheral cues,
such as the attractiveness of the persuader or the persuader's credibility. Conversely, if the persuadee cares about the topic at hand in a personal way, she or he is likely to devote great energy to process the message content."

Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM)

describes two routes to persuasion: systematic processing whereby a person scrutinizes a message, carefully thinking about it, and heuristic processing in which a person relies on cues such as how likeable or influential the persuader is.

Ajzen and Fishbein

model of reasoned action - measures the strength of
intentions to perform behaviors with strong predictive results. "When people are truly
committed to an attitude, it is more likely that behavior consistency will occur."

Bandura

theory of observational learning - "links behavior and behavior change to modeling that people observe in their homes, among their peers and in the mass
media...modeling influences produce new behaviors because they give people new information about how to behave.
Four processes in this model:
attentional processes (a modeled behavior has to be attended to and then subsequently related to)
retention processes (what has been observed has to be retained in the memory)
motor-production processes (convert symbolic forms into appropriate action)
motivational processes (actual performance requires motivation provided by observation of the positive consequences associated with the new
behavior.)

Maxwell and Schmnitt (1967)

list of strategies for persuasion that focus on
persuadee outcome (16 compliance-gaining strategies). Other research has shown that
"inherent in a successful compliance-gaining attempt is the persuader's power. One
compliance-gaining tactic is low-balling (much like bait-and-switch.)

self-attribution research

When subjects believe that the cause of a given
behavior is derived from an attitude, they will consequently adopt that attitude."
i.e. "once recruits finds themselves acting like Moonies and enjoying it, they may infer from their behavior that they also like and endorse Moonie
ideas."

1968

LBJ created the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, which issued Violence and The Media, concluding violence not only was a predominant characteristic on television but also was way out of proportion in comparison to actual violence in the real world.

1969

Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior -concluded that viewing violent entertainment increases the likelihood of subsequent aggressive behavior

Albert Bandura and Leonard Berkowitz

conducted some of the above studies - provided 'more tempered' conclusions. "[T]hey made no claim to any situation outside the laboratory. They did find, however, that television violence could incite violent
behavior in viewers." However, they acknowledged that other factors (beside media violence) could influence whether violent behavior would be manifest.

Dubrow and Miller

found that children commit to memory scripts for
behavior that are learned from observation and from their own behavior. They speculated that if a child has more violent scripts than nonviolent ones, she or he may access a violent script to use in a social interaction. They also recognized that other environmental, familial, and individual personality traits are potential contributors to behavior as well.

Cultivation studies

George Gerbner and associates - (1979) - "[O]ne correlate of television viewing is a heightened and unequal sense of danger and risk in a mean and selfish world." Television violence "may produce an increasing dependence on the exercise of authoritarian power in society."

Prosocial Behaviors and Television

Some positive (prosocial) behaviors may result from TV viewing (of programs such as Mr. Rogers.) Lowery and DeFleur - TV is "a major source of observational learning for millions of people."

agenda-setting

news media don't tell people what to think, but what to think about, and in so doing they serve a gatekeeping function.

spiral of silence

people supporting popular opinions and suppressing unpopular ones to avoid social isolation." Critics of this theory point out that "dissent, if valued in a
free society, makes social isolation unlikely."

Sandra Ball-Rokeach

dependency theory - "explains why people are reliant on the media to set the agenda for public discussion. In a complex society with a proliferation of information, people rely on the media for information about that which they do not have immediate knowledge...[H]owever...people do not use the media separately from other social influences..." "[D]ependency theory encompasses the interactive nature of media, audience, and society..."

three types of social effects:

cognitive effects; affective effects; behavioral effects

uses and gratifications theory

"focuses on what the receiver does with the
media." "[T]he user of media is responsible for choosing media to meet psychological
and sociological needs."

Rubin and Windahl

uses and dependency theory -recognizes that
dependency theory and uses and gratifications theory aren't contradictory but are herein combined. "This model shows societal systems and media systems interacting with audiences to create needs in individuals. The needs influence the individual to choose both media and nonmedia sources or gratification, which subsequently leads to
dependencies on the sources."

cultural study of communication

Raymond Williams - "proposed that
communication be studied as a set of practices, conventions, and forms through which a
shared culture is created, modified, and transformed."

Stuart Hall

'hails' a person...To respond to the hail, the person recognizes the social position that has been
constructed by the message, and if the response is cooperative, the position has been adopted...If the viewers accept the position of the program, then they constitute themselves as subjects in an ideological definition that the program proposes

three social positions:

dominant; oppositional; negotiated (although he
speculated that there could be multiple positions.)

collective memory

"the ways group, institutional, and cultural recollections of the past shape people's actions in the present" (such as through songs, ceremonies, rituals, films, TV, etc.) Can include white, gray or black propaganda.

a few generalizations can be made:

1.) Communication effects are the greatest where the message is in line with existing opinions, beliefs, and dispositions of the receivers
2.) When change does occur, it does so as the result of a multitude of factors, including the mass media, socially contextual conditions, group
interaction, the presence and influence of opinion leaders, and the perceived credibility of the source or sources of the message.
3.) The consistency of attitudes and behaviors gives a propagandist the advantage. If a propagandist can get people to agree with her or him on one or two issues, then their opinion toward her or him may become
favorable.
4.) People can appear to accept an idea publicly without private acceptance.
5.) The greater the monopoly of the communication source., the greater the
effect.

Nazis utilized banners and parades

way reminiscent of the Roman Empire (with its 'triumphal processions.')

Failed artists were characteristic of the leaders of the Third Reich

Hitler himself was a 'failed artist.'

Hitler had three fixations:

1.) Linz, his hometown 2.) antiquity (Greece, Rome)
3.) Wagner (Hitler said, "Whoever would know Nazism must first know
Wagner.")

Themes found in Wagner which were borrowed by Hitler:

a.) art as the basis of a new civilization b.) an artist-prince rising as leader c.) anti-Semitism d.) an emphasis on 'pure blood' or racial purity.

Hitler created Nazi 'props'

including uniforms, flags and standards

Hitler organized Nazi mass gatherings with himself as the director and set designer.

These mass gatherings (such as those at Nuremburg) played into the idea of one,
unified German 'volk' which would be the foundation of German purity ('one
body.')

In 1933, a series of exhibitions of 'degenerate art' was staged.

The exhibited works were then destroyed as a warning to those who would contemplate
continuing on that artistic path. Cultural degeneration and decay were seen as a
primary threat to Germany. The Nazis decried 'cultural Bolshevism', portraying 'the Jew' as the ringleader

"The Exhibit of Life,"

he physician was portrayed as the vanguard of race purity, standing against 'the Jew,' race-mixing and degeneration. Aesthetic problems became medical ones (which would ultimately lead to genocide.) The physician was presented as administering to the corpus of the German race rather than as treating the individual. His was a vital role in the
creation of the 'New German Man.'

Laws put in place

marriage between Germans and Jews is outlawed
allowing the forced sterilization of the insane and 'hereditarily tainted.'
Hitler confides in his top doctor his desire to liquidate the terminally ill

The House of German Art

first exhibit featured items hand-picked by Hitler (who intervened when the choices of a panel of judges selected by him had displeased him.) Hitler saw himself as moving "against the rearguard of disintegration of German art." The day after this exhibit opened, there was yet another exhibit mounted which featured 'degenerate art.'

'The Beauty of Labor'

campaign to beautify the workplace (primarily factories.)
lead to a liberation of the worker through cleanliness, allowing the worker to escape the confines of his class, and render class conflict unnecessary (thus, destroying the motivational rationale of the hated Communists.)