Blog 8 - Propaganda

Blog 8 - Propaganda

Julia Carey

Propaganda is when information is misleading or biased to promote a particular side of the government. When thinking of propaganda, images from World War 1 come to mind. Little did you know, there have been so many other examples, especially recently. This is an example from the US during WWI. This is a poster from the time to convince men to join the army. On the poster, it states “I want you” with Uncle Sam pointing. Uncle Sam was a fictional character made to embody a patriotic American. 

Recent Propaganda:

1. As I said before, there have been many types of propaganda recently. During Covid-19, there was an artist who was inspired by the war propaganda and created a poster. This poster states that people should “stay in” during this hard time of sickness. When the artist made the poster, she wanted people to stay in and stay safe. During this time in the US, many people were against that and did not want to stay in leading people to have issues with the posters.

 

2. Another recent example of propaganda in the US is from the debate for abortion rights. This poster is siding with the “pro-choice” side of the debate, stating to get their laws off women's bodies. As this is a heavily debated topic, lots of people see this and have issues with it but others agree. This poster wants to create a sense of anger in women that the people who make the laws about their bodies are not the same as them. Lots of women support this idea because women in history have worked so hard to create equal rights and recently, they feel that they are being taken away. 

 

3. My last example of recent propaganda recently is a poster made to, essentially, make fun of Trump. This poster is a picture of Trump with a clown nose and calls him a “joke”. People who do not agree with the way Trump goes about doing things or what he believes support posters like these. These can influence people to side with people who agree with this matter but it can also anger the people who agree with him. 

How Does This Affect Us?

Lots of things are heavily influenced by different beliefs and the government. It can be a news channel, a blog, or anything on the internet that could be influenced. This affects us in many ways. It can influence the way people think, making there very big debates and misinformation. Lots of people like to believe that they have the right answer to everything even when they don’t know everything about the topic. When looking at these examples of propaganda, I think it is interesting how these can easily influence the way people view different topics. They all have something similar - haters. If someone posted this and someone saw that they got hate for it, they could be scared to agree with the post because they don’t want to get hate back. It can greatly influence the way people think of a topic, maybe even changing it fully. Propaganda comes with a lot of name-calling, as seen in the poster of Trump. After learning more about this, I have learned that propaganda can be both positive and negative things.