G. Thompson
Engl 212 courses, and more generally composition courses (like others in the university) are not exclusively about what the course description says they are about. This looks in the course description like it's about writing, but it's not just that: it's about thinking, or more precisely, about expressing your thoughts on challenging subjects in ways which will be persuasive to an academic / educated audience. I'm a representative member of that audience, with some individual quirks and preferences, but you aren't writing this semester for me so much as for this more general audience.
For 212 we get to focus less than in 111 on the genre of academic essays (develop fluency, cultivate good composition habits, have a well-constructed thesis, write unified paragraphs, make good use of coherence devices, avoid betes noires in expression, observe conventions of format). Some of these we will return to, but not have much explicit instruction about--it's assumed that you passed 111 and are positioned to move on to higher-level rhetorical concerns (create a significant main claim, support that claim with evidence and arguments, evaluate your argument and sources, revise your prose for correctness and style, learn format requirements, and so on).
However, in this class or other classes and more generally as adults in the public sphere, writing is not done in a vacuum. Writing is done about something, and done for a specific purpose. Engl 212 won't be doing much with writing as self-expression except insofar as you are situating yourself in relation to a public concern. Self-expression has its place, and I would encourage everyone to keep a personal journal of your thoughts, just because that builds fluency and helps you to know yourself better. But that's not what we are doing here. I would not want you to take a required course and pay for three hours of tuition just so that you can have the fun of expressing yourself.
Engl 212 is about rhetoric, by which we mean the art and practice of persuasive communication (one definition among many). Rhetoric has become a devil-term because much persuasion in our public interactions is done illegitimately, and we will have a dual focus on it this semester--learning to make our own forms of persuasive writing legitimate, and learning to recognize and counter the illegitimate forms. These may work in the short term, for relatively superficial purposes such as buying a soft drink; but they are harmful in the long run to our abilities to think clearly for ourselves and express those thoughts persuasively for thoughtful audiences.
Discussion: write for 5 minutes in response. What interests you about the topic of propaganda?
There will probably be multiple occasions on which questions of this sort will arise:
Is X propaganda?
The X here might be the New York Times, Fox News, a religious publication, a statement by a government official, advertising, . . . To answer that question early in the semester would require us to be about six steps ahead of where we are right now. But let's see . . .
Start with one definition among several possible:
Propaganda is the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. (Jowett and O'Donnell)
Notice about this definition that 1) propaganda is intentional, 2) it involves perception, thought, and behavior, and 3) it's in someone else's interest, not (necessarily) yours.
In the manner of definitions, this is rather abstract. We will need to develop our thoughts as we go, but let's start with some tests:
There's a source, an audience, a message, a medium. Classically this is one-to-many, but with the internet there is also networked communication, many-to-many, which has the result of disguising the source.
We should be careful about mistaking the medium for the source. Media transmit, and may be neutral, interested, or a mixture of these.
Persuasion requires intention. Many entertainment texts, for example, reflect the writers' and directors' and actors' ideologies, but are intended for amusement rather than persuasion. Here as elsewhere there are large areas of ambiguity.
The definition above speaks to what we perceive, what we think, and how we act--any or all may be involved in persuasion through propaganda, and even presumably neutral texts do these-- in other words, not all persuasion is propaganda, though all propaganda is persuasive.
All of us attempt to shape others' perceptions, thoughts, and actions on our behalf daily, ranging from how we dress and speak to what we write and say. We would only call these propaganda if done on behalf of some cause in association with others--or else all of our interactions with others would be called propaganda, and there would be nothing to distinguish or discuss as illegitimate.
Here we come to the heart of the matter. Cui bono? Who benefits? It may not be immediately evident--in effective propaganda the benefit is likely to be disguised. But to qualify as propaganda, the message is all about the source, not the audience--though there is likely to be a pretense that it is in the audience's benefit.
Further considerations, not part of the definition:
Saying good things about an organization or purpose, so-called white propaganda, is done to benefit the source, not necessarily the audience. Much public relations takes this form. Be aware that true statements may be made selectively, leaving out key facts and context. Also, be aware that keywords may themselves have persuasive content.
Audiences are not neutral: a message that reinforces our beliefs will appear to be simply truthful, a matter of fact rather than persuasion. If it conflicts with our beliefs, even a statement of fact may strike us at first as propaganda.
Slogans take their meaning from what precedes and what follows. "America first" may sound like a simple patriotic statement, outside of its historical context (attempts by isolationists to keep the United States out siding with England in the war against Nazi Germany; subsequently identified with pro-Nazi and racist sentiments).
One key test for propaganda is whether it attempts to limit competing messages. In a totalitarian society this can be done through censorship and intimidation. In more democratic societies a more usual tactic is to say "don't listen to them--it's propaganda."
Dispassionate discussion about abortion is next to impossible because of the choice of terms: pro-life and pro-choice both carry emotional freight.
I don't know if it's your good or bad fortune that I'm just finishing my year-long sabbatical. Sabbaticals are ways for faculty to step back from the day-to-day and focus on a research topic, with the expectation that it will carry over into our teaching. Sometimes the topics are more distant and abstruse, sometimes they are closer at hand: I decided for mine to look at critical thinking, a concern which surfaces periodically both inside and outside of universities: why is it that people make decisions against their own interests, or fail to think things through?
The textbooks I looked at in connection with critical thinking are essentially based in informal logic. They assume that their audience wants to improve in the understanding of logic, and structure the discussion around good reasoning, logical traps, and so on. One failing I found comes in our failing to use critical thinking to make decisions. Take buying a car, for instance: logic would suggest that I need to plan on the basis of the uses I have for a car (mainly commuting, but with occasional cross-country trips); fuel economy and comfort would be important considerations, along with affordability. But how do the car companies try to sell cars? Through emotional appeals--buy a convertible and get out onto the open road! Ever see a car commercial with the driver stuck in traffic? My sister in Oklahoma drives a GMC Yukon which seats seven people--because she has three grandkids there and two more in Dallas. How much of her driving requires seating seven people? But she likes having a lot of metal around her . . . I haven't made much headway in our conversations.
It's not all on us as the audience: a further, more crucial reason why we don't all do better at critical thinking is that we are relying on bad information: some of what we read and hear is disinterested, but much is presented so as to be persuasive, in the interests of those doing the persuading rather than in either our individual interests or the overall collective interests. That gets us into the area of propaganda--one definition is this, from Jowett and O'Donnell:
Propaganda is the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.
To unpack this a little--1) propaganda is intentional, 2) it involves perception, thought, and behavior, and 3) it's in someone else's interest, not (necessarily) yours. These interests may coincide, but more likely you are being influenced to bring your own interests in line with theirs. Propaganda necessarily involves manipulation, and one reason to study it is to develop some resistance to being manipulated. Because critical thinking has to be thinking about something, we may as well make this the topic for the semester's work: what is the extent to which propaganda shapes our understanding and communication.
I have yet to meet anyone who admits to having his/her decisions and thoughts substantially influenced by propaganda. That explains other people's actions, but not mine. So subtopics this semester will be why we are vulnerable to propaganda, why it is often in our best interest to resist its appeal, how we can improve in critical thinking as a means of resistance.
Before we go further, we need to address the problem of subjectivity. All of us are much more likely to object to a communication as propaganda if it attacks our interests or our tribe, or furthers those of an opposing tribe. This isn't always a matter of intent--we simply don't perceive it because of cognitive bias. I'm assuming that we have a mixture of political interests in this class, and I should be up-front in saying that, like 85% of university faculty, I am not a Trump supporter. But I am making an effort to present materials and examples this term impartially, and that certainly extends to evaluation.
You do not have this obligation. You can be as partisan as you like, as free speech is a cardinal principle of academic discourse. However, you should expect to be challenged to support your arguments, and this applies to sources of political discourse. There is a lot of "fake news"--by which I mean made-up anecdotes and stories, false statements circulated as fact. "Fake news" does not apply to a story I happen to disagree with, or even one which is colored somewhat--in other words, we should reserve the label of fake news for demonstrably false claims, an area distinct from propaganda. (All fake news is propaganda, but not all propaganda is fake news.)
Sequence of topics this semester:
Essay #1: How can a photograph or image be untrue? For this assignment, find an image (still or video) which you regard as untrue. Reproduce the image for your paper, describe it verbally, and then discuss why it is in some way deceptive (500 words).