Propaganda
Propaganda can be characterized as any communication whose goal is simply to create or reinforce social capital. This is in contrast to instructional capital (wisdom, knowledge or training) which enables individual capital, that is, persons, to better act in one's own best interests. The test of quality for instruction is success at the task the individual wants to perform - evaluated from the individual's point of view or some broader social and/or ecological notion of truth.
Contents
test of success
Before we begin discussing how to test communication for truth or intent, it's important to point out that some of the most effective propaganda techniques work by misdirecting or distracting the public's finite attention away from important issues. It's important for the well-informed to read between the lines of the news and see what isn't being reported, or what is reported once, quietly, and not followed up. In an age of information overload, distraction techniques can be even more effective than active propaganda.
All active propaganda techniques, by contrast, can best be tested for quality by seeing if they tend the target to act in the best interests of the distributor of the propaganda (thus the term comes from the verb 'to propagate' imply distribution and mimicry, not dialogue). There is of course much crossover, as individual wisdom and 'best interests' certainly include at least basic ecological wisdom that must be shared by all one's neighbours - and one normally relies on social means to jointly comprehend and protect land or culture. Thus propaganda presents one point of view as if it were the best, or neutral point of view, which has been compiled from multiple point of view sources very "neutrally".
Religious, commercial and political advertising are the best known and most common examples. In these realms there is at least nominal choice, that is, moral, buying and voting decisions, that ultimately one makes from a menu of choices. Without the choice, there would be no need to influence choices. The primary means by which this is done is to alter the conceptual metaphors by which choices are researched, understood, made and evaluated after the fact. If regret can be induced for a "wrong choice", or anticipated before that choice happens, then, the choice can be influenced.
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's model of propaganda, and George Lakoff's related model of moral politics, are theories based on the principles of cognitive linguistics. Both rely to some degree on the theory of conceptual metaphor. Technically, the goal of propaganda is to alter the "mappings" made to a "target domain" (take "target" in a military sense here) to a "source domain" (take "source" in a religious sense here) in the listener's or reader's or viewer's mind. The most effective propaganda techniques vary based on the communication media employed, but the test of success does not:
Effective propaganda is characterized by a lack of effective challenge to it as a source of economic advantage. i.e. its compatibility with political economy. Are there other ways to characterize effective propaganda? Like for instance compatibility with a neutral point of view or natural point of view or religion?
temporal detection
Because the regret or lack of regret for believing in it must always be evaluated after the fact, as a backwards-looking measure, a successful shift in the political economy actually does have the effect of changing the neutral point of view and thus justifying even a belief in provable untruth. Thus the propaganda can alter the reality, and make itself 'no longer propaganda' or in the present tense 'not propaganda'.
Examples include:
- The Y2K panic, in which outrageous claims were made regardng the vulnerability of infrastructure to a cyber threat unintentionally created by programs taking shortcuts - proven false by the absolute lack of any incident traceable in January 2000 to any system that had not been altered, although there were very many of these, some identical to those that had been heavily modified. After September 11, 2001 these wasteful changes to code and over-spending on backup systems was justified in a totally new way - as a wise precautionary measure against terrorist attack.
- The coalition invasion of Iraq originally publicly 'motivated by' presence of weapons of mass destruction which were never found. The post-facto popular uprisings against both the Bath Party regime of Saddam Hussein and the US forces occupying Iraq became the new 'proof of a strong will for democracy' and a new means of justifing the action.
In general, propaganda can be detected by the fact that it changes before and after a critical event, whereas more honest instructional capital like medicine, science or any training manual should largely remain the same after the event as before. If there are big disparities, or if some "valuable lesson" or "wake-up call" has occurred, it means that what was provided before the fact was not really 'instruction' but 'guessing' - or - if there is no consistent explanation that survives - propaganda.
spatial detection
In addition to this 'temporal' means of detecting propaganda, there is also a 'spatial' means of detecting it - when it is true or not true based on where it is uttered or heard.
This method would apply when instructional capital applies in one place but not in another. For instance rural culture and urban culture vary, as Jane Jacobs observed, and rural cultures depend on the lifeways of the people living in them, as Joel Garreau and Winona LaDuke observe. Imperialism, usually spread by sea power, depends on one standardized set of instructions applying everywhere, e.g. as it does in a well-equipped and globe-ranging navy. However, ecological wisdom and local conditions vary, the crops and seeds and animals that thrive in one place die in another, and so the difference between "useful instruction" and "imperial propaganda" may well be ecological adaptation to local conditions, and respect for the culture that has already adapted its language and lifeways to that ecology in particular - expressing a so-called "land ethic".
However, unlike the 'temporal' definition which might allow for a convergence to instructions that remain the same before and after the fact, there seems to be no way to make ecologies or cultures sufficiently equal to each other that any instruction would absolutely apply across their borders. There are ways to make them become like each other, however, via some monoculture or suburban culture or urban culture that relies on some artificially-created infrastructural capital more than the pre-existing natural capital. This would seem to be related to the way that imperial cultures spread and eradicate local ones, e.g. as seen in the culture of golf which is associated with the English-speaking peoples and seems to express a dominator land ethic.
This spatial detection of propaganda is popular with opponents of globalization.
habitual detection
Finally, one must always be ready to rely on one's instincts as a guide to what is and is not propaganda, leading one to disastrous personal errors convenient to someone else. This requires active self-training in habits of rejecting a constant stream of misleading "reasons why" from "other places" whose rules and concept of reason must differ fr one's own.
If there is to be a single concept of truth that cannot be undone by analysis specific to each ecoregion, i.e. useful enough to read on the Internet in English, it must itself be subject to some biases of globalization: if it is written and read in English and thus relies on English dictionary and instruction, if it is accessible only to, and written by, those with some degree of electricity, telecommunication, and computer access, it has already become to some degree a form of pro-technology propaganda.
To balance this, some believe that a discipline of instilling habits that counter each of these global tendencies, with a bias to trust in the local, is the only way to assure a habitual detection of propaganda and an unerring taste for the truth. Starhawk and Winona LaDuke are advocates of this view, the latter remaining for instance at her home throughout the 1996 and 2000 Green Party of the United States campaigns of which she was the Vice-Presidential Candidate (running mate to Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader).
By such choices, it may be possible to instil in oneself a counterweight to the various temporal and spatial skews to cognition that arise from travel and the constant struggle to reconcile one's habitual behavior with that expected of us in new places. We accept instead in this view that we ourselves are the source of propaganda, and that media literacy can be turned to advantage:
- "Don't hate the media. Become the media." - Jello Biafra
- "...just as easily as that voice can compel us to act aginst our better nature, so, too, can it inspire us to build the kinds of structures that make positive impacts on society at large.
- "There is no 'they' who can reverse this process wihout our consent and participation. For without our complcity, they are powerless. Without us, they don't exist." - Douglas Rushkoff, Coercion (book)
The propaganda techniques are revealed mostly to enable the 'temporal' and 'instinctual' but not the 'spatial' (this being an Internet based service not balkanized by ecoregion) strategies. However, it would be useful to maintain the broader understanding of propaganda here for purposes of enabling those who follow the spatial/secession or strong habit strategies.