propaganda & propaganda tools

[الف نظامی]

​

A few questions we want to ask and answer based on this article are:​

• How does the Institute for Propaganda Analysis define propaganda?​
• What are the propaganda tools to look out for?​

How does the IPA define propaganda?​

Propaganda, defined by the IPA, means deliberately designing messages so that people will be influenced to think or act in predetermined ways, in ways the propagandist prefers. That is, it's an instrument of persuasion meant to get people to form rash judgments. Why rash? Because they're not based on rational thought or inquiry, just bald feeling. In this broad sense, you can see how advertising is "propagandistic," but properly understood, "propaganda" is a term usually reserved for those who wield it, or want to wield it, in an organized way for political purposes. Despite their similarities advertising and propaganda are different. There's a qualitative difference between using persuasion to get you to purchase a pair of jeans and using persuasion to get you to elect a person to office, to give that person enormous power. The difference is that the success or failure of the persuasion advertisers use will affect individuals, whereas political persuasion potentially affects millions. So, while some of the techniques are the same, the effects are not.​

​

​

What are the propaganda tools to be on the lookout for?​

The propaganda tools discussed in the IPA pamphlet are "NAME CALLING," "GLITTERING GENERALITIES," "TRANSFER," "TESTIMONIAL," "PLAIN FOLKS," "CARD STACKING," and "BAND WAGON." It would help to give some of these new names, I think.​

​

Name Calling:-​

Say something nasty about someone. Use broad strokes and never fill them in. Get your audience rushing to judgment without providing any evidence. "He's a pen-pushing bureaucrat." "He's a liberal." (That didn't used to be a bad name!) "He's a terrorist." (Ah, we don't want to admit it, but that's name calling. One person's terrorist is another person's "freedom fighter.")​

​

​

Glittering Generalities:​

Use virtue words. Use the same broad strokes, and never fill them in. Get your audience, once again, to rush to judgment without examining any evidence. "He's a good American." "We're for family values." Glittering generalities are feel-good words that will make people feel warm and fuzzy without making them think too hard, or think at all.​

​

​

Transfer​

To make something more palatable, set it next to something we like a lot. Get us to feel good about it by the power of association. "Transfer" that good feeling we have about this thing or idea to that thing (or idea). Get your audience to completely confuse the two as much as possible. (The flag = "America's New War." Several TV news stations have helped us associate our patriotism, our need to bond together, our team spirit, our rallying around the flag, with feeling okay about our "new war."​

​

​

Testimonial​

Display somebody whom a lot of people respect or idolize and ask them to take that person's word for it, whatever it is. ("Mayor Guilliani says he is definitely going to vote for so and so, so what do you think of that?")​

​

​

Plain Folks​

Go out and be among the people, doing and saying the things that ordinary people do. Talk like them. Dress like them. Eat like them. Laugh like them. Get the people to believe you are just like "one of them." Visit the factory and press some flesh with the machine operators if you really want their votes (and all the other working class folks out there watching on the evening news.)​

​

​

Card Stacking​

"Stack the cards" or "arrange the deck" of facts against the truth. Use under-emphasis and over-emphasis. Suppress facts that don't support your side. Dodge questions, avoid issues, evade facts. Even lie if you have to. Use censorship, distortion. Omit things. Offer false testimony. Create a diversion, raising new issues when you want something forgotten. Draw a red herring across the trail to keep nosy inquisitors off your trail. Make the unreal appear real and the real appear unreal. Encourage half-truth to masquerade as the whole truth. Use as much sham, hypocrisy, and effrontery as you can get away with! (Ask the American people and the rest of the global community to believe Iraq was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. without presenting credible evidence.)​

​

​

The Band Wagon​

Encourage everyone to conform, to follow the crowd, to join in the parade, to get that fellow feeling of belonging to the group. Hey, don't you know "everybody's doing it," so what's your problem? Get with the program! Hop on! Flatter and pander and play on people's prejudices, biases, convictions and ideals-work their emotions until they join. (Don't you support our war in Iraq yet? What do you mean you think this was the wrong war? That's not what all the rest of us good people think!)​

 

[نایاب]

محترم بھائی انگلش تو اتنی زیادہ سمجھ نہیں آتی مگر " پروپیگنڈا اور اس کے ٹولس " بارے پڑھتے ہی
کبھی بچپن کی پڑھی اک بات یاد آگئی ۔ شاید " گوئبلز " سے منسوب ہے کہ
" جھوٹ کو اتنی مرتبہ اتنے تواتر اور یقین کے ساتھ بولو کہ لوگ اسے سچ مان لیں "

 

[قیصرانی]

محترم بھائی انگلش تو اتنی زیادہ سمجھ نہیں آتی مگر " پروپیگنڈا اور اس کے ٹولس " بارے پڑھتے ہی
کبھی بچپن کی پڑھی اک بات یاد آگئی ۔ شاید " گوئبلز " سے منسوب ہے کہ
" جھوٹ کو اتنی مرتبہ اتنے تواتر اور یقین کے ساتھ بولو کہ لوگ اسے سچ مان لیں "

میں نے ایک بات دیکھی ہے کہ جب بندہ جھوٹ کو سچ سمجھ کر بولتا ہے تو وہ حقیقی پروپیگنڈا ہے

 

[الف نظامی]

یہ مضمون اس لیے یہاں کاپی پیسٹ کیا گیا ہے تاکہ پروپگنڈا کا تجزیہ کرنے میں آسانی ہو۔

This famous pamphlet was composed in the 1930s to help people analyze the particular rhetorical devices that constitute "propaganda" in the hopes that such knowledge would help us hold politicians more accountable for the kinds of manipulations they tried to get away with. Powerful propaganda was in the air back then. Dangerous nationalists like Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, waiting there in the wings…. Would people in those societies have been as vulnerable, as gullible as they were if they'd had this kind of knowledge about how they were being manipulated? The writers of this pamphlet were attempting to inform their American readers about propaganda, in part, to protect them from being vulnerable to its effects.​

 

[arifkarim]

Public Relations is also a secret term for propaganda:​

As Harold Lasswell explained in 1928, "public relations" was a term used as a way of shielding the profession from the ill repute increasingly associated with the word "propaganda": "Propaganda has become an epithet of contempt and hate, and the propagandists have sought protective coloration in such names as 'public relations council,' 'specialist in public education,' 'public relations adviser.' "[13] In the 1930s Edward Bernays started the first vocational course in public relations.[14]​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations#Development_as_war-time_propaganda​

 

[الف نظامی]

study /analysis of writing style is also helpful in detection of propaganda​

as an example one can work on writing style of​

Fawad – Digital Outreach Team – US State Department​

to analysis us state department propaganda​

 

[محمد بلال اعظم]

اچھا ہے۔
لیکن مجھے اس لاجک کی سمجھ نہیں آئی۔
Say something nasty about someone. Use broad strokes and never fill them in. Get your audience rushing to judgment without providing any evidence. "He's a pen-pushing bureaucrat." "He's a liberal." (That didn't used to be a bad name!) "He's a terrorist." (Ah, we don't want to admit it, but that's name calling. One person's terrorist is another person's "freedom fighter.")
یہ کیا تُک ہے۔

 

[قیصرانی]

اچھا ہے۔
لیکن مجھے اس لاجک کی سمجھ نہیں آئی۔
Say something nasty about someone. Use broad strokes and never fill them in. Get your audience rushing to judgment without providing any evidence. "He's a pen-pushing bureaucrat." "He's a liberal." (That didn't used to be a bad name!) "He's a terrorist." (Ah, we don't want to admit it, but that's name calling. One person's terrorist is another person's "freedom fighter.")
یہ کیا تُک ہے۔

اگلے پر الزام تراشی کی جائے لیکن اس کی وضاحت نہ ہو۔ جیسے نواز شریف کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ موٹر وے پر اس نے کتنا کھایا۔ شہباز شریف کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ لیپ ٹاپ سکیم۔۔۔ بے نظیر کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ مسٹر ٹین پرسینٹ۔ زرداری کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ مسٹر ہنڈرڈ پرسنٹ

یعنی دوسرے پر الزام تراشی کرنا لیکن تفصیل کو گول کر دینا۔ الزام ایسا ہو کہ اگلے تفصیل کو بھول بھال کر دوسرے پر چڑھ دوڑیں۔ یعنی جذباتیت کا استعمال

اس کے علاوہ دوسروں کو ایسے القابات سے پکارنا جو بظاہر تو گالی نہ ہوں لیکن گالی کی نیت سے دیئے گئے ہوں۔ جیسا کہ "ملا"، "فوجی سوچ"، "اسٹیبلشمنٹ" وغیرہ

پس نوشت: انگریزی دھاگے میں اردو کو محض وضاحت کی نیت سے لکھا ہے

 

[محمد بلال اعظم]

اگلے پر الزام تراشی کی جائے لیکن اس کی وضاحت نہ ہو۔ جیسے نواز شریف کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ موٹر وے پر اس نے کتنا کھایا۔ شہباز شریف کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ لیپ ٹاپ سکیم۔۔۔ بے نظیر کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ مسٹر ٹین پرسینٹ۔ زرداری کرپٹ ہے۔ کیوں؟ مسٹر ہنڈرڈ پرسنٹ

یعنی دوسرے پر الزام تراشی کرنا لیکن تفصیل کو گول کر دینا۔ الزام ایسا ہو کہ اگلے تفصیل کو بھول بھال کر دوسرے پر چڑھ دوڑیں۔ یعنی جذباتیت کا استعمال

اس کے علاوہ دوسروں کو ایسے القابات سے پکارنا جو بظاہر تو گالی نہ ہوں لیکن گالی کی نیت سے دیئے گئے ہوں۔ جیسا کہ "ملا"، "فوجی سوچ"، "اسٹیبلشمنٹ" وغیرہ

پس نوشت: انگریزی دھاگے میں اردو کو محض وضاحت کی نیت سے لکھا ہے

میں مفہوم سمجھنے سے قاصرتھا۔ آپ نے سمجھا دیا۔
یہ تو اچھا ہے۔
اس کی تو اشد ضرورت ہے۔

 

[نیرنگ خیال]

الف نظامی بھائی معذرت میں نے ادھر پوسٹ کر دیا۔ اس سوال کا جواب ادھر دے دیجیئے۔ یہ متعلقہ موضوع ہے۔

 

[الف نظامی]

50 Types of Propaganda​

 

[الف نظامی]

Propaganda Techniques
Assertion:
Assertion is commonly used in advertising and modern propaganda. An assertion is an enthusiastic or energetic statement presented as a fact, although it is not necessarily true. They often imply that the statement requires no explanation or back up, but that it should merely be accepted without question. Examples of assertion, although somewhat scarce in wartime propaganda, can be found often in modern advertising propaganda. Any time an advertiser states that their product is the best without providing evidence for this, they are using an assertion. The subject, ideally, should simply agree to the statement without searching for additional information or reasoning. Assertions, although usually simple to spot, are often dangerous forms of propaganda because they often include falsehoods or lies.

Bandwagon:

Bandwagon is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime and plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is also one of the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. Bandwagon is an appeal to the subject to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that victory is inevitable and defeat impossible. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in. However, in modern propaganda, bandwagon has taken a new twist. The subject is to be convinced by the propaganda that since everyone else is doing it, they will be left out if they do not. This is, effectively, the opposite of the other type of bandwagon, but usually provokes the same results. Subjects of bandwagon are compelled to join in because everyone else is doing so as well. When confronted with bandwagon propaganda, we should weigh the pros and cons of joining in independently from the amount of people who have already joined, and, as with most types of propaganda, we should seek more information.

Card stacking:

Card stacking, or selective omission, is one of the seven techniques identified by the IPA, or Institute for Propaganda Analysis. It involves only presenting information that is positive to an idea or proposal and omitting information contrary to it. Card stacking is used in almost all forms of propaganda, and is extremely effective in convincing the public. Although the majority of information presented by the card stacking approach is true, it is dangerous because it omits important information. The best way to deal with card stacking is to get more information.

Glittering Generalities:

Glittering generalities was one of the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. It also occurs very often in politics and political propaganda. Glittering generalities are words that have different positive meaning for individual subjects, but are linked to highly valued concepts. When these words are used, they demand approval without thinking, simply because such an important concept is involved. For example, when a person is asked to do something in "defense of democracy" they are more likely to agree. The concept of democracy has a positive connotation to them because it is linked to a concept that they value. Words often used as glittering generalities are honor, glory, love of country, and especially in the United States, freedom. When coming across with glittering generalities, we should especially consider the merits of the idea itself when separated from specific words.

Lesser of Two Evils:

The "lesser of two evils" technique tries to convince us of an idea or proposal by presenting it as the least offensive option. This technique is often implemented during wartime to convince people of the need for sacrifices or to justify difficult decisions. This technique is often accompanied by adding blame on an enemy country or political group. One idea or proposal is often depicted as one of the only options or paths. When confronted with this technique, the subject should consider the value of any proposal independently of those it is being compared with.

Name Calling:

Name calling occurs often in politics and wartime scenarios, but very seldom in advertising. It is another of the seven main techniques designated by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. It is the use of derogatory language or words that carry a negative connotation when describing an enemy. The propaganda attempts to arouse prejudice among the public by labeling the target something that the public dislikes. Often, name calling is employed using sarcasm and ridicule, and shows up often in political cartoons or writings. When examining name calling propaganda, we should attempt to separate our feelings about the name and our feelings about the actual idea or proposal.

Pinpointing the Enemy:

Pinpointing the enemy is used extremely often during wartime, and also in political campaigns and debates. This is an attempt to simplify a complex situation by presenting one specific group or person as the enemy. Although there may be other factors involved the subject is urged to simply view the situation in terms of clear-cut right and wrong. When coming in contact with this technique, the subject should attempt to consider all other factors tied into the situation. As with almost all propaganda techniques, the subject should attempt to find more information on the topic. An informed person is much less susceptible to this sort of propaganda.

Plain Folks:

The plain folks propaganda technique was another of the seven main techniques identified by the IPA, or Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The plain folks device is an attempt by the propagandist to convince the public that his views reflect those of the common person and that they are also working for the benefit of the common person. The propagandist will often attempt to use the accent of a specific audience as well as using specific idioms or jokes. Also, the propagandist, especially during speeches, may attempt to increase the illusion through imperfect pronunciation, stuttering, and a more limited vocabulary. Errors such as these help add to the impression of sincerity and spontaneity. This technique is usually most effective when used with glittering generalities, in an attempt to convince the public that the propagandist views about highly valued ideas are similar to their own and therefore more valid. When confronted by this type of propaganda, the subject should consider the proposals and ideas separately from the personality of the presenter.

Simplification (Stereotyping):

Simplification is extremely similar to pinpointing the enemy, in that it often reduces a complex situation to a clear-cut choice involving good and evil. This technique is often useful in swaying uneducated audiences. When faced with simplification, it is often useful to examine other factors and pieces of the proposal or idea, and, as with all other forms of propaganda, it is essential to get more information.

Testimonials:

Testimonials are another of the seven main forms of propaganda identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis. Testimonials are quotations or endorsements, in or out of context, which attempt to connect a famous or respectable person with a product or item. Testimonials are very closely connected to the transfer technique, in that an attempt is made to connect an agreeable person to another item. Testimonials are often used in advertising and political campaigns. When coming across testimonials, the subject should consider the merits of the item or proposal independently of the person of organization giving the testimonial.

Transfer:

Transfer is another of the seven main propaganda terms first used by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. Transfer is often used in politics and during wartime. It is an attempt to make the subject view a certain item in the same way as they view another item, to link the two in the subjects mind. Although this technique is often used to transfer negative feelings for one object to another, it can also be used in positive ways. By linking an item to something the subject respects or enjoys, positive feelings can be generated for it. However, in politics, transfer is most often used to transfer blame or bad feelings from one politician to another of his friends or party members, or even to the party itself. When confronted with propaganda using the transfer technique, we should question the merits or problems of the proposal or idea independently of convictions about other objects or proposals.​

 

[الف نظامی]

ٹیگ:

 

[قیصرانی]

الف نظامی لگے ہاتھوں ترجمہ بھی کرتے جائیے

 

[تلمیذ]

منصور صاحب ذاتی مکالمہ ملاحظہ کریں۔

 

[سید ذیشان]

اچھی معلوماتی تحریر ہے۔ ٹیگ کرنے کے لئے شکریہ نظامی بھائی۔

بس ایک بات کہتا چلوں کہ پروپیگنڈا مثبت بھی ہو سکتا ہے اور منفی بھی۔ عام طور پر ہم لوگ "پروپیگنڈا" اور "جھوٹا پروپیگنڈا" کو خلط ملط کر دیتے ہیں۔ اس کا قریب ترین اردو ترجمہ میرے خیال میں "چرچہ" ہو گا۔ یہ تحریر زیادہ تر منفی پروپیگنڈا کے بارے میں لکھی گئی ہے۔

 

[الف نظامی]

شکریہ سید ذیشان
یہ پوسٹ منفی پروپگنڈا کی شناخت کرنے کی غرض سے لکھی گئی ہے تا کہ اراکینِ محفل منفی پروپگنڈا پر مبنی مواد کا تجزیہ و شناخت کر سکیں۔
مزید:
”وہ“ نفسیاتی و نظریاتی تخریب کاری و سازش کے بہت ماہر ہیں۔ سونے پر سہاگہ یہ کہ ہمارے لوگوں کی اکثریت صرف جذباتی۔ ”وہ“ باتیں بڑے خوبصورت غلاف میں لپیٹ کر سناتے ہیں اور ہمارے لوگ بغیر سوچے سمجھے جذبات کی رو میں بہہ کر ”ان“ کے ہاتھوں استعمال ہو جاتے ہیں یا کم از کم ”ان“ کا کام آسان کر دیتے ہیں۔

 

[قیصرانی]

منصور صاحب ذاتی مکالمہ ملاحظہ کریں۔

بہت شکریہ جناب

 

[الف نظامی]

برائے ملاحظہ لئیق احمد
" "پروپگنڈا پوسٹ" کی شناخت ، جانچ کرنے کا عمل" جاننا چاہیں گے

 

[الف نظامی]

باز گشت!