This impossible-to-digest dish with its deluge of news items focusing on daily disasters and conflicts is whipped up with sensationalism and topped with fear-inducing language and insinuation. Served continuously in huge portions – overwhelm guaranteed.

Propaganda raw red meat is a dish that you need to avoid!

Nowadays, propaganda is everywhere; it is adopted by governments, corporations, and not profit to manage attitudes, values, and knowledge. It appeals to emotions through psychological manipulation, and it can be beneficial or most cases, harmful. According to Benkler et al. (2018), propaganda is the “Communication designed to manipulate a target population by affecting its beliefs, attitudes, or preferences in order to obtain behaviour compliant with political goals of the propagandist”.

Specifically, it mediates conflicts, manipulates relationships, and creates isolation and negative feelings. Propaganda usually contains fake news that aims to influence and mislead the general public. Especially, participatory propaganda socializes conflicts and makes them part of everyday life. Even though freedom of expression is considered a fundamental human right, propaganda should be labeled as inappropriate speech for a democratic nation. According to Freedom House, “governments around the world are increasingly using social media to manipulate elections and monitor their citizens, tilting the technology toward digital authoritarianism”. Through propaganda, they disseminate false content for their own political benefit and manipulate public opinion to gain more power.

What are some common examples of propaganda?

Some examples…