Propaganda In The Mondale-Ferraro Campaign

In her essay, “Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled”, author Donna Woolfolk Cross explains the different types of propaganda and how it is used in the United States. The essay was first published in Speaking of Words: A Language Reader (1977). Cross defines propaganda as “simply a means of persuasion and so it can be put to work for good causes as well as bad” (247). In her article she discusses how propaganda works and explains how propaganda is used with thirteen different devices to manipulate people’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas. She uses this essay as an informative piece, giving advice on how not to be manipulated by propaganda.

The argument that Reagan should serve his second term as president is effective because logos, ethos, and pathos, are each used efficiently in the commercial. Logos, ethos, and pathos helped in explaining Reagan's successes in first presidency which were reflected throughout the commercial. The argument caused the audience to wipe out the consideration of voting for another president because of all the positive outcomes in his first presidency. This commercial is famous and was seen by countless amounts of Americans, but it was not the deciding factor for the election. The reputation Reagan had from his first presidency and attacking his opponent, Walter Mondale, for being a "free-spending Democrat" gave Reagan the advantage in the election. Reagan ended up winning with 49 states, 58.8% of the popular vote, and 525 electoral votes (Tuesday Team,

Propaganda is used everywhere in life and books. It has such a complex meaning under what the people or it is saying. In Animal Farm, The Wave, and Night propaganda is used to describe what life was like for all the people in that time and how crucial survival was and how to not get outcasted.

The most basic definition of propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc (Propaganda).Anything that falls under misleading or biased falls into this category as well, including promotions that one doesn’t view as deceitful. Propaganda in United States’ history dates back as early as the Revolutionary War, but most Americans would argue that propaganda is of the past. Propaganda is alive and well, living in campaign platforms, advertisements, and news channels, attempting to contort their audience’s thoughts to mimic their own.

Ever since its birth as a country in 1776, the United States of America has been a country surrounded by a certain aura that is not shared by other countries throughout the world. The country is one that was born out of a struggle and revolution, which has helped shape the character of its citizens and its national identity. Throughout the various wars the country has fought, such as the war of 1812, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War, propaganda has played an important role in influencing the people of America. The government of the United States has effectively used propaganda over the centuries to generate funds for war or relief efforts, save resources for war efforts, to get out and work or to possibly sway the minds of its citizens towards particular political ideals. Propaganda throughout the history of the United States, and throughout the world, have had various themes such as slandering an enemy as seen in anti-German, Italian, and Japanese propaganda in World War 2, or the opposite when trying to gain support for an ally. The main purpose of propaganda throughout history has been to persuade people to buy into or follow a set of ideals set out by whoever created the propaganda. Propaganda has played a large part in shaping the understanding of the United States by causing its citizens to buy into the beliefs of the government, which is a large reason why the country was able to become the great nation that it is today.

Both negative and positive, propaganda affects our lives daily sometimes without us even acknowledging that it exists. The main goal of propaganda is trying to sell your product or idea to other people, one major form of Propaganda occurs in the news. Propaganda is used for companies and trend setters who want to get their products and ideas out in the world so that they could potentially become popular. Smart propagandists discovered that to create the best propaganda, the viewer must not even realize that the product or idea is being sold to them. Propaganda creates an extremely large impact on us and is sometimes mistaken for being “just another advertisement” when they actually change the way we live our lives.

From the perspective of a candidate, the main goal of a political campaign is to win votes. Politicians use campaign propaganda to help achieve that goal. There are six primary strategies used in campaign propaganda: stacking the deck; testimonials/endorsements; plain folks; negative ads; glittering generalities; and guilt by association/coat-tailing. A campaign is measured by its effectiveness, whether it is informative, and if it is ethical.

All seven forms of propaganda were displayed during the elections, and most commonly during the speeches. The most used form of propaganda was glittering generalities. This was also the most successful because the public was not attentive as to how these promises were gonna be made. An example of glittering generalities being used from the Republican side is, “We are going to build a wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it” (Trump). An example of glittering generalities from the Democratic side is, “Let’s make sure nobody who works full time in America has to live in poverty” (Clinton).

During the election between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater, there was tension due to the Cold War. Goldwater supported the use of nuclear weapons while others did not agree. Johnson used some of Goldwater’s statements against him to persuade the voters that his intentions for this country were menacing. The advertisement illustrated how the United States would look promoting nuclear weapons, if his opponent was president. This became a focused attack towards Goldwater. Audiences possibly viewed him as a threat and panicked that it would result to violence and more wars. This clip can possibly be the reason why Johnson won the election, seeing that he gave misleading information on his fellow candidate. The advertisement was quick and

He was named the “teflon president” because no bad image could stick to him and was often said to be cheerfully ignorant of domestic and foreign policy. Reagan articulated foreign policy in terms of good and bad. Good were America and its allies, as well as the “freedom fighters” in Latin America and Afghanistan. Bad were the Communists (except China) and terrorists. The introduction of Reaganomics brought many new ideas into circulation. Reagan promised to stimulate production, reduce inflation, cut taxes, and balance federal budget. He claimed that targeting corporate producers and giving them incentives would flood the market with consumer

While propaganda has been around for almost a thousand years, only recently within the (last 100 years), and with the advent of technologies, that allows us to spread information to a mass group, has it evolved to a scientific process capable of influencing a whole nation of people. While propaganda is most evident in times of war as in the arts (paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, television shows, and websites), it is constantly being used as a political and social way to influence people's attitudes. This is currently evident with the election commercials on TV, where the candidates are using propaganda techniques to elevate themselves above their competitor. Another place propaganda is being exploited is the use of the media in its portrayal of countries that have nuclear

As a class, we’ve been discussing propaganda for a while now and it’s made me realize how much media influences society and how much of it is targeted towards teens, or a younger audience. In fact, we learned in class that teens are exposed to an estimated 3,000 ads per day. However, there’s a lot more propaganda other than which is obviously seen in ads and commercials, such as in cartoons. In previous weeks, we’ve looked at forms of propaganda in magazine ads and how they use celebrities, statistics, or other techniques to influence its audience. When watching the clips, I noticed how propaganda as film has a lot more impact than just a single image.

Propaganda is used in controversial matters, but it is also used to promote things that are generally acceptable. For both those purposes propaganda can be expressed in different forms such as, exhibits, drawings, goal-pictures, graphs, parades, songs and many more. Propaganda can be found concealed or open, emotional or containing logical appeals to reason, or in combination (Casey,

First, one must define propaganda and since many have done so already, I shall use the Sheryl Ross model. Her model defines propaganda as “an epistemically defective message designed with the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause.”

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down