Peace Journalism Session 4 PDF

Peace Journalism ================ Session 4 ========= Samuel Kochomay =============== Nairobi Campus, =============== Mount Kenya University ====================== **Lecture outline** - **Propaganda and media strategies** - **Globalization of conflict** **PROPAGANDA AND MEDIA STRAGEGIES*...

Peace Journalism ================ Session 4 ========= Samuel Kochomay =============== Nairobi Campus, =============== Mount Kenya University ====================== **Lecture outline** - **Propaganda and media strategies** - **Globalization of conflict** **PROPAGANDA AND MEDIA STRAGEGIES** **Defining propaganda** 1. **Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist (Jowett & O'Donnell, 2005).** 2. **a deliberate endeavour to manipulate the thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and behaviour of a group of people to achieve a desired response.** **Propaganda:** - **is a specific type of message presentation, aimed at serving an agenda.** - **Even if the message conveys true information, it may be partisan and fail to paint a complete picture.** - **Propaganda thus is a communication designed for mobilizing and influencing perceptions, behaviour and actions.** **Characteristics of propaganda** 1. **Propaganda is ideological - It tries to sell a belief system or dogma. Propaganda can be religious, political, or economic.** 2. **Propaganda uses mass media - Media used in the propaganda process include speeches; documentary films, TV programs, and radio shows; posters and billboards; and mass mailings.** 3. **Propaganda conceals - the following is concealed from the target audience: (1) the source of the communication, (2) the source's goal, (3) the other side of the story, (4) the techniques being used by the source in sending the message, and (5) the results of the propaganda if successful.** 4. **Propaganda aims at uniformity - seeks commonality in the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of its receivers.** 5. **Propaganda circumvents the reasoning process - propaganda appeals to the hearts not the minds of the audience. To bypass logical thinking, propaganda uses biased information that stirs up audience emotions and "forces" the audience to the opinion or conclusion of the propagandist.** 6. **Relies on ethically suspect methods of influence (deception, distortion, misrepresentation)** 7. **Simplifies complex issues or ideas** **Origin of the term propaganda** - **Its use traced to 15th Century BC.** - **Behistun Inscription - from around 515 BCE, details Darius I's ascent to the Persian throne and is considered an early example of propaganda.** - **Themistocles, Greek commander used propaganda to delay the action of--and defeat--his enemy, Xerxes, in 480 BC.** - **Alexander put his image on coins, monuments, and statues as a form of propaganda.** - **Roman emperor Julius Caesar was considered quite adept at propaganda, as were many prominent Romans.** - **Catholic church - It was the Catholic Church that both formalized the use of propaganda and coined the word itself.** - **Pope Urban II used propaganda to generate support for the Crusades.** - **Later, propaganda would become a powerful tool for both Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. Thanks to the printing press, propaganda could be disseminated to a much wider audience.** - **in 1622 Pope Gregory XV established the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for Propagating the Faith) for the purpose of promoting the faith in non-Catholic countries.** - **The group's name was often informally shortened to "propaganda," it has stuck.** **\*Read the rest of the history** **Objectives of Propaganda** 1. **Mobilize hatred against the enemy** 2. **Preserve the friendship of allies** 3. **The preserve the friendship and if possible to procure cooperation of the neutrals** 4. **to demoralize the enemy** 5. **Recruitment of soldiers -- either by draft or voluntary enlistment 6) financing the war -- war bonds or new taxes** 6. **Eliminating dissent -- unifying country behind the war effort** 7. **Conservation of resources - food, oil, steel (things necessary in war) 9) home front -- participation in organization to support war** **Propaganda Media** 1. **Theatre. Theatre has been used as a means of influencing public opinion since antiquity, with Greek playwrights in particular promoting certain ideals in their plays. Contemporary application: agitprop (agitation propaganda) is a phenomenon of the modern era, originating in the Soviet Union, and can be defined as the use of propaganda (particularly in theatre) in order to agitate an audience into actively pursuing a particular agenda. Trotsky famously used an agitprop train toured the country following the Russian Revolution, performing various plays in order to promote Communist ideals among the population.** 2. **Radio. Radio was the cheapest form of entertainment, and it was the most popular medium during World War II. The accessibility and availability meant it fueled propaganda and could reach a large number of citizens. Radio helped entertain and inform the population, encouraging citizens to join in the war effort. As a propaganda medium, Voice of America reaches 80 languages and Radio Mosco reaches 70 languages...** 3. **Television - an avenue for political parties to campaign for voters and sitcoms.** 4. **Film - During the outbreak of world war II, British used feature films, documentaries and cartoons to show British Life and Character and the need for sacrifice to win the war.** 5. **Internet and Propaganda - propaganda has expanded from the sole use of posters and text to incorporate websites and social media.** - **use of online advertisements is also common, with many 'pop-ups' or flashing images used to catch the user's attention.** - **Engaging in social media, promoting ideas from politicians, intellectuals, friends, musicians or corporations through likes, shares, tweets and more, we are promoting information and attempting to influence how people think about these things.** - **Whenever we post an opinion on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site, we are issuing propaganda, a piece of information designed to make those who read it think about an issue or behave in a certain way. This has been exploited by corporations and explains their active social media presence.** **Propaganda users** - **military,** - **media,** - **advertisers,** - **politicians** - **Others\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_** **How Propaganda Machine Works** - **The creation of an image of the mystical 'they' or enemies.** - **Inclusion of religion.** - **Pollution or saturation of all possible channels of information with own truth.** - **Projection of bad deeds onto the opponent or application of own faults to the others. Rewriting of history or interpretation of historical events in a favorable light.** - **Propaganda uses confusion or an attack on the opponent which cannot be refuted by counterarguments.** - **Propaganda unavoidably employs populism - the society is told what it wants to hear.** - **Finding the scapegoat.** - **Everything is crowned by purposeful confusion of meanings.** **Propaganda Devices** 1. **Name Calling: Give an idea a bad label e.g. Kibaki's reference to opponents as daydreamers, miujiza. The labeling of things e.g. war lord etc., freedom fighter, terrorist, communist, bandits etc.** 2. **Glittering Generality: Associating something with a virtue word without examining the details or evidence. This device is used in contexts of Politics and business as well as in international relations.** 3. **Transfer: carry the authority, sanction, and prestige of something respected and revered to something else in order to make the latter more acceptable. It works through the process of association i.e. admiration by association e.g. Baba(RAO), "...imara kama simba".** 4. **Testimonials: get some respected or hated person say that something is either good or bad.** 5. **Plain Folks: speaker attempts to convince his audience that he and his ideas are good because they are of the people.** 6. **Card Stacking: selection, use of facts or falsehoods to give either the best or worst scenario:** - **Select the points that support an idea and ignore those that contradict** - **The selected arguments can be true or false** - **But focus only on true arguments that support your position e.g. the power advertisement with a woman from the slums** - **Band wagon: everybody is doing it (e.g. size of crowds in a campaign)** **GLOBALIZATION OF CONFLICT** **Globalization has been defined as:** - **\"The inexorable integration of markets, nation-states, and technologies...in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.... The spread of free-market capitalism to virtually every country in the world" (Friedman, 2004, p. 7).** - **"The compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole.... concrete global interdependence and consciousness of the global whole in the twentieth century\" (Robertson,1992, p. 8).** - **\"The historical transformation constituted by the sum of particular forms and instances of.... making or being made global (i) by the active dissemination of practices, values, technology and other human products throughout the globe (ii) when global practices and so on exercise an increasing influence over people\'s lives (iii) when the globe serves as a focus for, or a premise in shaping, human activities\" (Albrow, 1996, p. 88).** **Dimensions/facets of globalization** - **Technological: it, biomedical, green, robotics** - **Population: growth, aging, youth bulge, women, labor, migration Economic: commercial, industrial, communications, services** - **Financial: investments, banking, exchange rates, black markets, money laundering** - **Cultural: ideational, ideological, educational, civilization, pop culture** - **Political: democratic, multinational organizations, international law and regimes, rule of law, civil society** - **Military/security: nuclear proliferation, alliances, rising powers Environmental: global warming, bio-diversity, deforestation** - **Health: pandemics, potable water, AIDS/HIV, malaria** - **Resources: water, food and agriculture, energy and fuels, minerals Terrorism: Islamist-extremist, other religious, ethnic, national,** - **Crime: organized crime, drug trafficking, piracy, trafficking in persons, conflict diamonds** **Perspectives on the impact of globalization on groups and societies** **Two perspective: First is that globalization undermines diversity and the second being anti-thesis of the first perspective suggesting that globalization fosters diversity.** **Arguments that globalization undermines diversity:** - ***Coca-colanization* - globalization leads to promotion of consumerist culture by multinational corporations which exploit basic material desires and in the process create similar lifestyles.** - ***Imperialism -* western ideals are falsely established as universal and overriding local traditions.** - ***McDonaldization -* notion that modern institutions have an inherently rationalizing thrust, making all human practices more efficient, controllable, and predictable, e.g. spread of fast food** - ***Americanization* - the US exerts hegemonic influence in promoting its values and habits through popular culture and the news media as processes undermining diversity,** **Arguments that globalization as fostering diversity:** - ***Pluralisation -* that globalization leads to pluralisation. It argues that interaction across boundaries leads to the mixing of cultures in particular places and practice.** - ***Differentiation occurs* - cultural flows occur differently in different spheres and may originate in many places.** - ***Contestation --* that contestation process produce diversity since integration and the spread of ideas and images provoke reactions and resistance.** - ***glocalization -* global norms or practices are interpreted differently according to local tradition.** - ***Institutionalization -* that diversity is promoted through states, international organizations and movements.** **Threats to peace and security in contemporary world** 1. **Socioeconomic threats: poverty, infectious disease and environmental degradation** 2. **Inter-state conflict** 3. **Internal conflict: civil war, genocide and other large-scale atrocities** 4. **Proliferation and possible use of weapons of mass destruction nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological** 5. **Terrorism** 6. **Transnational organized crime e.g. human trafficking** **Nexus between global and domestic conflict** - **Conflict has changed hugely in the last 25-30 years as global communities have changed.** - **The separation between local and global conflict has been blurred as both interact heavily, without a defining barrier and sometimes without warning.** - **Demonstrations that that occurred throughout the Middle East when the Muslim community was offended by cartoons which appeared in some newspapers in Norway and Denmark1. The demonstrations were widespread, often violent and intense involving many Muslim population groups.** - **The target was localised within the readership areas of the newspapers of 5000 readers but reaction and counter reactions was global (see comic journal**[^1^](#fn1){#fnref1.footnote-ref}**.** - **Today, we live in multi-cultured societies partly resulting from immigration** - **Societies across the globe have increasingly become interconnected thus increasing information exchange - If a single ethnic group is upset by an action in one country, it may not any longer be contained within that country as social media, and information exchange can share the story world-wide in real time, often causing inflammatory responses.** - **In contemporary reality, conflict is both local and global - small local conflicts has the capacity to cause a response in other parts of the globe and conflicts that once seemed to only occur in far-away places now cause conflict at home.** **It is often hard to draw a line between global and internal/domestic conflicts within nations -- there is a tendency toward globalization of conflict:** a. **Internal conflicts are more likely to have international implications. Domestic conflicts either disrupt interests (natural resources) or various global powers and their allies or the conflict and conflict actors violate international norms of war e.g. human rights.** b. **International developments tend to have more rapid and significant impact on internal situations** **Case Studies of Globalization of conflict: Syrian-Isis conflict; Terrorism, Somalia etc.** ::: {.section.footnotes} ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. ::: {#fn1} [↩](#fnref1){.footnote-back} ::: :::