HAMLETMACHINE

"I am Ophelia. the one the river didnt keep. the woman dangling from the rope. the woman with thE arteries cut open. the woman with the overdoes. snow on her lips"

political science

this is my latest group assignment which is not yet completed and certified by my lecturer.. so, if you want to take it as a reference, do think 100 and million times.. haha. Im just about to learn to write!

INTRODUCTION

There are no exception from receiving and giving out interesting quotes attached to certain events or mission in order to portray the significance of the object. These simple but linguistically bombastic quotes are expected to influence and pursue a heterogeneous and wide range of people to reach a group of targeted people into supporting the entrepreneur’s product or towards certain objective. One side of party may influence people by lashing out propaganda, taglines, mottos, slogans, and all sorts of image to attract supporters inside or outside the country itself. However, some are expected to be true, but some are not even true. This is because of the main objective of those quote is to persuade and influence people. MalaysiaToday.net (2010) reported that Malaysia is now practicing the maxim: ‘If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it’. This description is due to a report by Sin Chew entitled ‘The Malaysian Dilemma’ , about the proposal of removing subsidies. [1]

Our main focus in this paper is the study of Propaganda. Propaganda is accepted to be a medium in influencing people’s mind on certain ideology or movement for several of reasons. This process of influencing people is done worldwide throughout the globe prompted by personnel interest. It is believed that the importance of propaganda was emphasized by V. I. Lenin who led the revolution that established Communist control of Russia in the early 1900’s. He also differentiates between two types of persuasion; propaganda and agitation. Lenin viewed propaganda as “the use of historical and scientific arguments to convince the well educated minority”. Agitation is then defined as “The use of half-truths and slogans to arouse the masses, whom he considered incapable of understanding complicated ideas”.[2] By tradition, an agitprop unit - the mixture of agitation and propaganda, is formed under every communist party. Here, we can see that persuasion exist in two ways, and with different approach but on the same objective: to pursue.

Propaganda is made by undergoing planning process based upon “Psychological Operations Field Manual No.33-1” and “Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Media Subcourse PO-0816”.[3] Planning process is a continuous process of requiring imagination of any circumstances affecting the psychological objective, and must be flexible.[4] The steps that are taken into consideration in the planning process is; realistic objectives that can be achieved within policy limitation, analysis of the existing military and political situation, sources of information, delineation of the target and its accessibility, themes to be used to achieve PSYOP objectives, themes to be avoided, media to be employed and also the formal staffing and coordination required to effect the plan. All of the above sequences are important towards deciding propaganda.

In order to increase our understanding on propaganda, there are several aspects to be highlighted and taken into consideration in this paper. The aspects are the techniques of propaganda, the advantages and disadvantages of propaganda, examples of case study and also the most important part is: Propaganda from Islamic perspective. Let us discover the world behind propaganda.

DEFINITION

As defined in The World Book Multimedia Encyclopaedia (2000), “Propaganda is one-sided communication designed to influence people's thinking and actions.”[5] That means, a propagandist design a slogan in the purpose to influence people towards certain issue. The various types of medium used in influencing people in an election might also be propaganda depending on its method of persuasion.

TECHNIQUES

In order to deliver the message of the propaganda itself, propagandist use various techniques to make it possible to gain people’s trust. People place most trust in scholars who have similar ideas with them. [6] Therefore, it is possible to influence people effectively if the propagandist agrees with what people already believe instead of introducing new once. The techniques that are still believed to be used until now are:

1. Simplicity and repetition.

A flexible and a dynamic propaganda are those which can be repeated over and over again, simple, and easy to be understood. This can be seen in what have been introduces by our current Prime Minister. The slogan “1 Malaysia” is comprehensive, yet short that can be repeated again and again until people start using it as “Salam Satu Malaysia” to open a ceremony that has different background of people.

2. The use of symbols.

The use of some symbols may arouse the effect of propaganda. The background sensation and the propaganda’s slogan work together to influence people’s mind and perception. No matter it is an object or colour, it will gives more influence than nothing. For example, in Islam, Green symbolizes the religion. When a poster is done with the background colour of green, for Islamic propaganda, it gives more meaningful influence than using yellow as the attention getter. This is because according to a research that has came out with result that culturally, ‘the symbolism and psychology of a specific colour is subjective and subject to a wide variety of differences’.[7]

3. Distortion and concealment

This happens when a propagandist exaggerate or over highlight some important facts that gives positive impact to the society to conceal other faults that can destroy the people’s trust open them.

4. Lying

Lying is rarely used in spreading propaganda to avoid being dumped by the audience if they get caught. However, some may use this technique in order to control and shape the public beliefs and actions.

5. Censorship

This is the most common type of technique used because usually mass media is controlled by the government. Whoever opposed them will be hunted and silenced. This also happens in Malaysia where the primary television is controlled by the government and nearly all the news are about the development of the government and not the opposition.

6. Name- Calling

This technique is done by relating an emotion and symbol to a person or country. If it is done to influence people to hate the enemy, it usually added with blame or can carries negative connotations towards people.

7. Glittering Generality

This technique is using the same concept with name-calling. The difference is that it is not attached by names, but with idea or policy. For example: “free world”.

8. Transfer

Transfer here is regarding our interest. Even though , we are not supporting an ideology, but if the opponent is spreading it’s propaganda, we eill propose another slogan to hate or avoid the opponent’s slogan.

9. Plain folks

Propagandist tries to be in contact with the targeted audience by using jargon, slangs, accents and idiomatic expression.

10. Selection

Propagandist present selected facts to prove their success and that they are capable to govern and receive the trust from people. This is maybe due to the short- term achievement that is included in one of their plan.

11. Bandwagon

Bandwagon is a term used when only one minor segment is involved, and it is considered all is involved. For example, the quote “the whole worlds know that…” In reality, the whole world do not know that but it is only a big number from the minority.

12. Frustration scapegoat

A scapegoat is used to create hatred among the masses. For example: Adolf Hitler used Jews as a scapegoat to gain support to be empowering for the sake of fighting the Jews.

13. Fear

Propagandist acts as a solution and a guarantor when they raise issues of rights and welfare of the people.

However, among all that are listed above, there are only seven main techniques indentified by the IPA (Institute for Propaganda Analysis) which are Assertion, Bandwagon, Card stacking, Name Calling, Pinpointing the Enemy, Plain Folks, Simplification Stereotyping) and Testimonials. [8]Even though the terms are not the same, but the meaning is identical for one or two terms.

************** still not good in citing references

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[1] On the report related to subsidies, see http://www.malaysia-today.net on Propaganda - Malaysian Style, Saturday, 29 May 2010 by admin-s

[2] To know more on Lenin views, see http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/727/propaganda.pdf

[3] See http://www.psywarrior.com/propplan.html for further explanation

[4] Ibid.

[5] The World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia. Propaganda, 2000. Web. 23 March. 2011.

[6] ibid

[7] For further explanation, see Natural Color System. Color Psychology and Symbolism, 2011.Web. 23 March 2011.

[8] For further explanation, see ORACLE Think Quest. Propaganda Techniques. 2001. Web. 23 March. 2011.