When you hear “propaganda,” you might have an instinctive reaction to dismiss anything related to it because it’s probably all lies…right?
This is a common misconception that propaganda is just “inflammatory speech or writing that has no basis in fact.” The truth is that propaganda can be based in facts, but the difference is how the message is constructed to provoke a desired response — often intentionally spread in a misleading way to promote a political cause or certain perspective. Now with AI’s image generation capabilities, twisting rhetoric into radicalization has never been easier.
One of the most well-known propaganda posters in American history that was first used for recruitment in WW1 (1917): Uncle Sam’s “I Want You for US Army.”
It’s everywhere you look. Propaganda isn’t just for politics, it’s also the incessant advertising and influence coming from tech giants and corporations vying for your attention and wallet.
An example of corporate propaganda is normalizing the idea that “overtime” is equal to “dedication” or “passion.” In a recent viral post, a Dutch worker shared their experience of rebutting his American boss that criticized him for clocking off work on time. What the American boss framed as “going the extra mile” for growth, the Dutch worker countered as “inefficient.” This truly reflects the attitudes towards work culture between Europe and America, and the corporate propaganda that US tech giants have spread to promote this “hustle culture” and toxic work environment.
The typical American has gone from seeing about 500 ads each day in the 1970s to up to 10,000 today.
It’s not a secret that many of the largest tech giants have their reaches in the government, trying to exert their influence to cut down regulations. But did you know that they’re powerful enough to even sway presidential elections?
Facebook is often at the forefront of these propaganda campaigns. One of them being Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, weaponizing Facebook’s power as a tool to sow discord and tip election favor towards Donald Trump (against Hillary Clinton).
Some of the many ad campaigns and propaganda efforts run by Russians to tilt favor towards Trump’s victory in 2016.
On top of foreign influences trying to spread propaganda to the American masses, domestic influences like the collusion of tech giants and Trump’s election team enable the manipulation of millions of Americans.
Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm at that time headed by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon, was found to have exploited millions of Facebook users by harvesting their data and then creating system that could target individual voters with personalized, political ads. This firm along with Trump’s election team essentially created “a tool of psychological warfare” to manipulate American voters with targeted Facebook ads.
This scandal speaks to how large an influence social media can have on politics and national events — especially how concerningly easy it is for executives to infiltrate into the daily lives of the American people, exploiting their personal data to push political narratives.
Recently, propaganda has evolved from advertisements concentrated in older Facebook groups to national memes: memetic warfare has quickly carved itself a place in the shaping politics and how information is being disseminated. The White House’s social media team has quickly jumped on this bandwagon of meme formats to weaponize social media.