Propaganda

This week our blogging assignment was to comment on the handout we received in class, "Emotional Language: Propaganda". This handout detailed what propaganda is and gave examples of how people use it. The author defines propaganda as "a form of persuasion... that appeals to our emotions rather than to our reason". In other words propaganda appeals to pathos rather than logos.

When I hear the term "propaganda" I tend to think of the Nazis, or Stalinist Russia, or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four (one of my favorite books, by the way). I think of dangerous, manipulative lies and a mob mentality. But the author of this handout stresses that while those are definitely kinds of propaganda, it's not the only kind, and that propaganda itself isn't evil, it's just another emotional appeal. But he cautions us to "know propaganda for what it is" and to "not allow ourselves to be manipulated by it". For example, if we go to a political rally knowing that the speeches we're about to hear could contain propagandist messages (and many politicians do use propaganda) we can allow ourselves to have a clear head and not get sucked into it.