orz wrote:And so begins another insular internet fandom... insulated from "mean" sceptics and trolls and logic... sailing off from reality into the groupthink normalisation of absurd ideas... into inpenetrable insider jargon... into fierce flame wars between sub-sub-sub-factions of the original group...
That is the danger. We need to be reminded of that. Thanks.
Why is it not good enough to simply research propaganda in the media without doing so under a contrived banner of "Keyword Hijacking"? Why start from a flawed premise and work backwards?
It is the objective evidence I saw in a controlled and disciplined environment that is the foundation for my interest. So for me, the premise - that there is a specific and discrete technique in operation within the broader subject area of propaganda in the media that is significant and being overlooked - is not flawed.
Certainly we are a long way from fully understanding propaganda in the media, and it is also certain that we have difficulty in seeing the full effects of the propaganda on ourselves and our conversations do tend to run in the same unproductive circles, so for those reasons I am willing to stretch a little and apply some creativity and some new ways of looking at things, even if they are intuitive and improvable at this point.
I am not trying to promote the concept of keyword hijacking, by the way. I want to find out one way or the other what the truth is. In some ways, I hope I am wrong.
By way of establishing some context, I am excerpting a few paragraphs from an essay on the effect of advertising that bears on this discussion. If it is in fact true that those who imagine themselves to be the least effected by advertising, or propaganda, are the most vulnerable to it, it logically follows that people would be emotionally invested in their self-image of being too independent and intelligent to "fall for" any of it. This could well be true to some extent for all of us. If it is true, then we are trying to look into our own blind spots. That justifies creative experimentation and flexibility in our approaches to this subject.
The Language of Advertising Claims
by Jeffrey Schrank
Students, and many teachers, are
notorious believers in their immunity to advertising. These naive inhabitants of consumerland believe that advertising is childish, dumb, a bunch of lies, and influences only the vast hordes of the less sophisticated. Their own purchases are made purely on the basis of value and desire, with advertising playing only a minor supporting role. They know about Vance Packard and his "hidden persuaders" and the adwriter's psychosell and bag of persuasive magic. They are not impressed.
Advertisers know better. Although few people admit to being greatly influenced by ads, surveys and sales figures show that a well-designed advertising campaign has dramatic effects. A logical conclusion is that
advertising works below the level of conscious awareness and it works even on those who claim immunity to its message. Ads are designed to have an effect while being laughed at, belittled, and all but ignored.
A person unaware of advertising's claim on him or her is precisely the one most defenseless against the adwriter's attack. Advertisers delight in an audience which believes ads to be harmless nonsense, for such an audience is rendered defenseless by its belief that there is no attack taking place. The purpose of a classroom study of advertising is to raise the level of awareness about the persuasive techniques used in ads. One way to do this is to analyze ads in microscopic detail. Ads can be studied to detect their psychological hooks, they can be used to gauge values and hidden desires of the common person, they can be studied for their use of symbols, color, and imagery. But perhaps the simplest and most direct way to study ads is through an analysis of the language of the advertising claim. The "claim" is the verbal or print part of an ad that makes some claim of superiority for the product being advertised. After studying claims, students should be able to recognize those that are misleading and accept as useful information those that are true. A few of these claims are downright lies, some are honest statements about a truly superior product, but most fit into the category of neither bold lies nor helpful consumer information. They balance on the narrow line between truth and falsehood by a careful choice of words.
The Language of Advertising Claims