LEAP 1

Propaganda can be seen through many channels of communication in our life. Sometimes you don’t even know that propaganda is present and might not think anything of it. The news is a great way for websites to promote their likings through certain articles. The most propaganda I see in the news is through websites from CNN and Fox News. I tend to see each of these websites taking sides in the political world and you can tell directly whose side they are on. CNN is notoriously known for being democratic and liberal while Fox News stays on the conservative and republican side of things. If you go on both of these websites, CNN will have an article about President Trump that will have a header that bashes him and the article will sound like he’s doing something wrong because of the political side they support. Then, when you go to Fox News’s website, they will have the same information in an article but present it in a totally different way that makes it sound good. The question then becomes who is right and where is the correct information. The answer is that the information is indeed correct but the reader must pick out the information not twisted to get the full story.

Propaganda plays a huge role in advertisement because companies can pay celebrities or big name corporations to help them promote their product. When I was younger I had bad acne and would always try to find new medicines to use to treat it but I could never find something that worked. One day I decided to try this stuff called “Proactiv Solution” because I saw hundreds of commercials on it with actors and actresses on it and assumed it had to be good. But, it was very expensive at the time so it was a big commitment to buy and my mom was skeptical. I thought to myself if it does what it says it should do I will finally get clear skin like in the picture below.

After I finally bought it, I used it for a couple months and of course, it didn’t work. This company made it seem like every single person who used it will get clear acne but in reality the “before” and “after” pictures are with people with light acne who it actually worked on. They used very good advertising and propaganda to display something that is not true for everyone. What this company did was a form of disinformation, which means the information, is used to be deliberately false or misleading (datasociety.net).

The entertainment industry is a major culprit of using propaganda to show off their new movies or music to grasp certain age group demographics. When I think of propaganda in entertainment I think about the movie “The Interview” staring James Franco and Seth Rogen. The movie is based on these two interviewers who host their own TV show and they have the opportunity to interview the leader of North Korea who everyone thinks is a bad man. When this movie came out Hollywood wanted to expose the negative things this leader was supposedly doing but in a movie sense so it does not seem actually true but in reality is actually what he is doing. An article written by BBC says, “The New York premiere of The Interview, a comedy about the assassination of North Korea's president, has been cancelled amid threats from hackers” (bbc.com). Hackers that are still unknown made it very clear that if this movie were released in theaters, it would be a very bad idea for the US to do. I believe this movie was a form of propaganda used to expose North Korea but in a way that was comical but actually had a real underlining meaning.

When I think of education in the world today, the first thing that pops into my mind is the cost of school and the debt you’ll be in after graduation. Schools are very good about giving kids student loans and make it sound good like, “You’ll only have to pay x amount of money for the next three years after college to pay off student loans” but what they don’t tell you is that that amount is basically how much you will be making a month from your job. Then it comes down to what bills come first to pay and how will they be split in order to pay them off in a timely manner. Attached is a link to Forbes, which posted a great article on why college is becoming such a scam: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0202/060.html#6b7765d156f9

One of the biggest forms of propaganda that I continue to think about on a daily basis and is a popular topic is raising the minimum wage in America. This has been a huge deal in our country because many people do want this change but I don’t think it’s necessary. The main reason the government tries to do this is because they get a rebate for this and of course, they make more money off of taxes. To them, it’s all about making more money and they don’t care about the affects it can cause on the country. The Washington Post wrote an article about how the American Government is trying to control what you think. They don’t actually mean control your mind but they want you to think what they’re doing is good and won’t have fallbacks. A quote from the article writes, “Raising the minimum wage, the Congressional Budget Office points out, will eliminate some jobs. Still, the government devotes a web page to the topic that proclaims, “See how raising the national minimum wage will benefit America’s workers.”” (washingtonpost.com). In two sentences’ the government has already contradicted itself. I work a slightly above minimum wage job but researched why raising the wage is a bad idea. My conclusion is that if we keep raising the minimum wage, inflation comes into play right after and doesn’t change anything. Your pay will increase but so will the gallon of milk you buy from the supermarket. I believe this a serious problem with our countries government because it only seems like they just want to make more and more money off of the people.

Activism is one of the most popular ways to express beliefs among individuals and groups in America. One of the most popular movements that are going on right now in our lives is the LGBTQ rights movement. Across the nation different groups who oppose this movement use propaganda to exploit these people and one of the major reasons is because of religion. People use the expression “Jesus said homosexuality is a sin” as a way to bash the LGBTQ movement. Then you have popular figures in the world that use propaganda to benefit themselves to make themselves look better. Before the election, Donald Trump gained some supporters through his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who tweeted, “I am proud to support my GBTQ friends and the LGBTQ Americans who have made immense contributions to our society and economy” (lifesitenews.com). The article also says that since she embraces both Orthodox Judaism, she should not be supporting the movement because he religion says not to. Many LGBTQ supporters were offended by her tweet because her father Donald Trump is notoriously known for being against the LGBTQ community. This goes to show that whatever the person behind the curtain says to do, these people do.

Works Cited

Jack, Caroline. “Lexicon of Lies: Terms for Problematic Information .” Data Society ,

datasociety.net/pubs/oh/DataAndSociety_LexiconofLies.pdf.

Kosar, Kevin. “How the American Government Is Trying to Control What You

Think.” The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/24/the-new-propaganda-how-the-american-government-is-trying-to-control-what-you-think/?utm_term=.d00ee5af90eb.

LaBarbera, P. (2017, June 5). Ivanka Trump's 'pride' tweets upset LGBT activists and

people of faith. Retrieved February 13, 2018, from https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ivanka-trumps-pride-tweets-upset-lgbt-activists-and-people-of-faith

“New York Premiere of Sony Film The Interview Cancelled.” BBC, 17 Dec. 2014,