Propaganda & Persuasion

What is the difference between propaganda and persuasion?

Propaganda: a form of communication that attempts to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. Employees persuasive strategies, but differs in purpose.

Persuasion: interactive and attempts to satisfy the needs of both the persuader and the persuadee.

(1, 2) Because both persuader and persuadee stand to have their needs fulfilled, persuasion is regarded as more mutually satisfying than propaganda. (38)

White Propaganda

Comes from a source that is identified correctly, and the information in the message tends to be accurate. (20)

Black Propaganda

The source is concealed, or credited to a false authority and spreads lies, fabrications, and deceptions. (21)

The success or failure of black propaganda depends on the receiver's willingness to accept the credibility of the source and the content of the message. (24)

Grey Propaganda

In between white and black propaganda. The source may or may not be correctly identified, and the accuracy of the information is uncertain. (24)

Disinformation

Covert and contains false information. Can be considered black propaganda.

Disinformation is made up of news stories deliberately designed to weaken adversaries and planted in newspapers by journalists who are really secret agents of a foriegn country. The stories are passed off as real and from credible sources. (28)

Deflective Source Model

In regards to misinformation, the propagandist (P) creates a deflective source (P1) to appear as the source of message. The receiver perceives the information as coming directly from P1 and does not associate it with the original propagandist (P) (29-30)

Legitimating Source Model

In regards to misinformation, the propagandist secretly places the original message (M1) in a legitimating source (P2). This message (now M2), as interpreted by P2, is picked up by the propagandist (P) and communicated to the receiver (R) in the form M3, as having come from P2.

This legitimates the message and at the same time dissociates the propagandist (P) from the origination. (30-31)

Facilitative Communication / Subpropaganda

The propagandist's task is to spread an unfamiliar doctrine, for which a considerable period of time is needed to build a frame of mind in the audience toward acceptance of the doctrine. To gain the target audience's favor, various stimuli are used to arouse the attention of the audience and the related encoders and agents who mediate communication.

Examples: financial aid, press releases, newscasts, films, etc. (31)

Facilitative communication itself may not be propaganda, bur it is communication designed to render a positive attitude toward a potential propagandist. (32)

Response-shaping Persuasion

Similar to learning, the persuader is a teacher and the audience is a student. Persuader attempts to shape the response of an audience by teaching it how to behave and offer positive reinforcement for learning. (38)

Response-reinforcing Persuasion

Persuader reinforces existing attitudes. (38-39)

Response-changing Persuasion

Most difficult kind of persuasion. Involves asking people to switch from one attitude to another, to go from a neutral position to a positive or negative one, to change behavior, or to adopt a new behavior.

People are reluctant to change, persuader has to relate the change to something to the persuader already believes--an anchor. (39)

Belief

A perceived link between any two aspects of a person's world. Expresses a relationship between two things or a thing and a characteristic of that thing. (39)

Value

- A special kind of belief that endures and is not likely to change.

- A belief that is prescriptive and a guideline for a person's behavior.

- Can be standard for behavior (honesty, sensitivity) or a desired end (success, power).

- Concepts of right and wrong, good and bad, or desirable or undesirable. (39-40)wq

Attitude

A readiness to respond to an idea, an object, or a course of action. It is an internal state of feeling toward, or an evaluative response to, an idea, person, or object. (41)

Group Norms

Beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors derived from membership in groups. Group norms can be used as anchors because people have a tendency to conform to the norms of the group to which they belong. (42)

Resonance

When the recipients do not perceive the themes of a message to be imposed on them from an outside authority to which they are required or committed to defer. (43)

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. (162)

Social Judgement Theory

Consists of intensity, which develops the concept of the direction of an attitude (like-dislike) but also examines the level of ego-involvement. Ego involvement is the degree of involvement of a person in, and how the person's life is affected by, and issue. (194)

Diffusion of Innovations

A complex process in which mass media, including the Internet, may stimulate change, but interpersonal networks are crucial to the process. Persuasion is diffused through social networks to influence your behavior.

(195)

Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion

Examines centralized processing of information for attitude formation on the basis of a person's motivation to do, as well as the person's abilities to engage in message- and issue-related thinking.

Motivation is related to attentional factors, message quality, a person's involvement in the issue, and a person's ability to process argument. (196)

Model of Reasoned Action

Measures the strength of intentions to perform behaviors with strong predictive results.

Determinants of intentions in relation to attitudes:

1. the attitude toward the relevant behavior is based on beliefs regarding the behavior and its likely outcome.

2. The approval or disapproval of significant people, which are attitudes or subjective norms, toward the desired behavior will be taken into consideration. (197)

Bandura's 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. Consists of:

1. Attentional processes: a modeled behavior has to be attended to and then subsequently related to.

2. Retention processes: what has been observed has to be retained in memory.

3. Motor production processes: production processes have to be activated, for they convert symbolic forms into appropriate actions.

4. Motivational processes: the actual performance of the model behavior requires motivation to do so. (198)

Lowballing

Compliance-gaining technique. Someone agrees to a very attractive transaction, and then, on the basis of some excuse, changing the deal so that it costs more. Since the other person has become committed to the deal, they accept. (199-200)

Self-Attribution Research

When people believe that the cause of a given behavior is derived from an attitude, they will consequently adopt that attitude. People often use their perceived behavior to discover their attitudes.

"My heart is beating fast, so I must like this!" (200)

Spiral of Silence

When people support popular opinions presented in the media and suppress unpopular ones to avoid social isolation.

Assumptions: 1. society threatens deviant individuals with isolation 2. individuals fear isolation continiously 3. this fear of isolation causes people to asses the climate of opinion at all times 4. the results of this assessment affect behavior in public, especially the open expression or concealment of opinion. (205)

Culture

Practices and customs, languages, beliefs, forms of representation, and a system of formal and informal rules that tell people how to behave most of the time. Enables people to make sense of their world through a certain amount of shared meanings and recognize different meanings. (210)

Polysemy

Multiple meanings from a symbol. Various individuals incorporate their own experiences, lifestyles, values, and other cultural practices into their interpretations of a symbol. People bring to their understanding of cultural artifacts (images, architecture, literature, etc.) other aspects of their culture that links the artifact to a recognizable context. This enables a person to make sense of an expression or representation. (210-211)

Collective Memory

The ways group. institutional, and cultural recollections of the past shape people's actions in the present.

Formed by folklore, holidays, stories, songs, rituals,

ceremonies, museum displays, monuments, paintings, cartoons, films, television programs, and Internet images and texts. (214-215)

Integration Propaganda

Attempts to maintain the positions and interests represented by "officials" who sponsor and sanction the propaganda messages. (315)

Agitation Propaganda

Seeks to arouse people to participate in or support a cause. It attempts to arouse people from apathy by gibing them feasible actions to carry out. (315)

ethos

credibility

pathos

emotional appeal

logos

reasoning and arguments

attributive behavior

a cognitive process focused on explaining the causes of behavior

affective behavior

the emotional, feeling-based reactions to situations

demagogue

demo = “the people”, leader of the mob or state