Propaganda- Method of manipulation

In a world based on globalization, the ideological, political and economical interests seem to be more and more evident and this peculiar aspect is reflected by propaganda. Although propaganda has never had the same role and importance like the military force, over the time, it seemed it had played a very significant role in war, negotiations and strategies.It can be used as a political warfare. Propaganda aimes to influence the attitude of a community. An industry leader during the `30 said propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government. Propaganda is a form of communication that is hard to define because the exact meaning is debated. Some belive that propaganda refers at any persuasive communication and others that it reflects the political transformations. What is certune is that propaganda makes an appeal to the emotional side of people and not the intellect. In my opinion propaganda is a form of persuation that aimes to reach a specified target`s emotional side, in order to keep under the psychological resistance. But what are propaganda`s techniques and what are they used for? The used techniques are in fact methods utilized to reach the main goal which is to manipulate the emotional side. The name calling technique is usually used in politics and wartime strategies and aimes to label a negative connotation to the enemy. The transfer technique was first use in 1938 by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis. It`s also used in the same domains like the name calling and it refers to transferring the positive prestige from a symbol to another( symbol, person, etc.) Assertion is used in modern propaganda and it is a positive statemen that it is not necessary true. Card stacking means omitting some information and selecting only the positive aspects. Lesser of two evils technique has an important use in wartime in convinceing people for the need of sacrifice. Pinpointing the enemy refers to clear-cuting right and wrong by simplifying and presenting one specific group or person as the enemy. Bandwagon is the most commun technique used in war and peace time and also in advertising. The technique makes the target to follow the crowd because others are doing it. Glittering generality is a very interesting technique which uses words that have a positive connotation in the human minde in order to

manipulate. Testimonials aimes to connect a famos person to an object. The plain folks means that the propagandist aimes to convince that his ideas are those of a common person. All these methods are used to manipulate but is it a good and constructive manipulation or not? In order to answer these question we have to understand the evolution of the propaganda`s instrumests. The difficulty of defining propaganda is such that it is often tempting to look for its origins in ancient and medieval cultures. For example, it might be claimed that Plato's Republic is propaganda for or against the state. Propaganda appears to have been used even in ancient India. In the Arthashastra, Chanakya speakes about propaganda in detail inspireing his student Maurya in using in warfare and foundingthe Maurya Empire. Although propaganda has existed even in the ancient Greece, the evolution of media made it more useful. Propaganda started to be associated with negative attributes in the 19th century along with the Catholic and Protestant churches. A very important role in the evolution of propaganda had the invention of the printing press which made the production of books and posters to be more easy to achive. During The First World War the most eficiant and persuasive propaganda it was considered to be the mass production of posters. It seemed to be more efficient than oral communication. In achieving the war goals, there where used conventional visual codes already present in mass culture.The graphic design of that times had a sicnificant role to the evolution of the war. They illustrated recruitment posters presentated like advertisements and movie posters to attract and motivate the viewer.The design concepts reflects the country`s belifes and concepts.The Allies posters were radically different than the Central Powers. The Central Powers continued the clarity of Plakatstil style, trying to integrate the image and words with simplicity. The Allies instead, had a more illustrative approach with direct image, not symbolic like The Central Power`s posters. In England propaganda was made by posters that protected the family`s traditional values. The most efficient and imitated poster was the one that presents the british Secretary Leete pointing to the viewer representing a campain of recruitment. The United States took the poster and redesigned it making it the most popular war poster of all times and the most used being made in 1 million exemplars.It had the same role: to recruit. James Flagg represented in this poster the baseline American propaganda concept which is the orientation to patriotism. Julius Klinger, german propagandist designer, said that the best war poster that The United States has is the national

flag. This kind of propaganda is based of the transfer technique which I mentioned before. Also based on this technique, The First World War used some slogans that made reference to religion. The British propaganda slogan was For God, for King and Country, germans using the slogan Gott mit uns. Those propagandist symbols produced a reaction that generated emotion and the techniques of propaganda mobilized and gave the nations strength and hope and can be considered to be part of the good propaganda. In regard of understanding better the german propaganda of that times we can not omit the importance of a man that influenced the history. Joseph Goebbeles was the minister of propaganda in the Nazi Party period. Adolf Hitler rise to power is due to Goebbeles techniques and studies of emotions and mass psychology. As Reichsminister for Propaganda and National Enlightenment he was given the complete power over the media communications and also over the contry`s culture. He had a big influence on the propaganda against Jews. His devotion to Hitler remained until the end, Goebbeles commiting suicide. His intelligence is reflected by the propaganda principles that he created like: propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority, propaganda must affect the enemy's policy and action, propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level, propaganda must reinforce anxiety concerning the consequences of defeat, propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration, propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred, a propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness. He used propaganda like a weapon of war. All this belives helped Hitler to rise but also to fall. After The First World War, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf ( My Struggle), two chapters being about propaganda. He wrote that the psyche of the masses is not receptive to anything that is weak. From the view point of war atrocities this propaganda have made a lot of damage but trying to analise in other terms, they helped. For example in The United States, Hitler helped the civic education more than any American because he made America to self-analysis about their democracy. Until then, they took for granted their democracy and that made them look back upon their firts democratic principles. An exemple of assertion propaganda technique in Romania among The World War II was the revealing of the Romanian authorities of the pictures of the Romanian planes flying over the

sovietic territory. In reality the planes were photographed over Ploiesti City and the misleading had a positive impact. The aparition of the radio have had a great contribution in making propaganda more powerful. The radio`s great quality in communicating orally with a large number of people in the same time had a great influence on propaganda. It was most used during The Cold War. The C.I.A. made grey propaganda( without any identifiable source or author) news in Estern Europe and The Soviet Union by supporting Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Based on the Nikola Tesla`s belives of radio waves, The Unitet States and Russia developed a powerful technology like HAARP(High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) and GWEN (Ground Wave Emergency Network) which can control: the weather, the mind, behavior and mood. The invention of the radio generated the beginning of advertising as we know it today, which is another form of propaganda.Nowadays propaganda is associated with advertising, brainwashing, considered to be deliberate manipulation. An significant exemple of The Unitet States misleading propaganda was during the Iraq War. The Iraqian propaganda was based on graffiti slogans on walls, flyers, articles.They managed to create an arabic television to inform people about the American`s propaganda about the war. The American motive of war was itself a propaganda because the United States Government said that the main motive of war was the possibility of iraqian attack with bacteriological and chemical weapons, motive that was untrue. Advertising as well as movies, images, and graphic designs can entertain but also they can lead into negative and cold attitudes over an created enemy.Is it propaganda nowadays mostly negative and bad for the masses? In my opinion, good, positive propaganda it`s made at small dimentions. The real, big subjects have a very manipulative propaganda with high level purposes that in the most of the cases aren`t ment to be positive. An example of good propaganda can be the statement that Prince Charles made in The Financial Times about Romania, statement that contributed to Romania image and credibility. Newspapers can in many cases become the tools of governments, political movements. The corporations have good ties with politics. The most utilized technique of propaganda used in media press is the suppression of news.These technique is motivated by the journalists with the fact that they select what they think that is of mass interest.

In the exemples mentioned before we can observe that a great fact that makes propaganda most efficient is the ground that sustains it. For it to grow, it has to have a solid social context . These conditions that appears stimulates some feelings from which the propagandist can benefit. In an age where we are manipulated by propaganda , it has a big importance to understand the effects. I belive this mediatic propaganda aimes by it`s subjects to create medium to low-level intelligence population because is more easy to manipulate and manage them. To sum up, although the present world propaganda has a negative connotation, propaganda is not a bad manipulating thing. It forms and changes opinions. If we identify the purpose of the propaganda, we can decide on our own if we agree or not with it.