By Renee Hobbs
Media Literacy IN ACTION
Questioning the Media
2nd
Edition
CHAPTER 5
What is the difference between advertising, public relations, and propaganda?
Learning Outcomes
1. Understand the similarities and differences between advertising,
public relations, and propaganda
2. Appreciate how advertising is regulated in countries around
the world
3. Recognize how propaganda can lead people to bypass critical
thinking
4. Consider the reasons for the blurring of journalism and public
relations
5. Reflect on spin as a duel of interpretations in the construction of social reality
The blurry lines between advertising, public relations, and propaganda create opportunities and challenges for media consumers and creators
MEDIA LITERACY LEARNING MODEL
KEY IDEAS FROM CHAPTER 5
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​Advertising, public relations, and propaganda are three forms of persuasion in the public sphere that are used to control and shape people’s knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior for power and/or profit.
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Advertising uses symbolism to create emotional links between products and feelings, and mobile phones make it easy to customize advertising directly to individuals, engaging them while collecting detailed information about their behavior.
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children are particularly vulnerable to unhealthy food ads, they need help from parents and teachers to understand how advertising works. Around the world, countries regulate advertising to children, but the U.S. protects commercial speech under the First Amendment.
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Most people think they are immune from advertising, but recognize that sexism is common in advertising. As influencer marketing has grown in dominance, the FTC has created guidelines to prevent false advertising on social media.
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Propaganda takes many forms and because it activates strong emotion, simplifies ideas, attacks opponents, and appeals to people’s deepest values. It may be beneficial or harmful and it is essential to the practice of democratic self-governance. The blurring of advertising, PR and propaganda is most evident in the political campaign process, where demagogues can use language in ways that increases distrust and hate.​
I'M AN ORIGINAL CATCHPHRASE
Make a Video to Comment
on Propaganda
​Explore the Mind Over Media Propaganda Gallery, an online platform which includes a gallery of thousands of examples of contemporary propaganda from all over the world. If you like, you can upload an example of advertising, propaganda, or PR from your own social media feed to the website.
After selecting a specific example that interests you, work individually or with a partner to discuss the following questions:
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The Message: What is the content of the information and ideas being expressed?
Techniques: What symbols and rhetorical strategies are used to attract audience attention
and activate emotional responses?
Environment and Context: Where, when, and how do people usually encounter this
message?
Means of Communication and Format: What is the genre of the message and how does this
particular form influence audiences?
Audience Receptivity: How are people likely to think and feel about the message and how
free they are to accept or reject it?
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After analyzing an example of propaganda, put your ideas together in a short video commentary presentation, using Adobe Spark, a free media production tool that enables users to use text, images, spoken language, and music to create moving image media.
BENEFITS AND HARMS OF
THE PERSUASIVE GENRES ​​
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After reading this chapter, reflect on the ideas you encountered, integrating them with your experiences with advertising, propaganda, and PR. Then respond to the following two questions by composing a Flipgrid reflection:
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• How are advertising, propaganda, and PR beneficial for society?
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• How are advertising, propaganda, and PR harmful for society?
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Make an informal extemporaneous response to share your views, offering description and examples, and using reasoning and evidence to support your top three choices. You can also view and respond to comments by other people who have offered their thoughtful reflections on this question.
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TRY CULTURE JAMMING
Culture jamming is a form of persuasion that is designed to disrupt people’s “ordinary” interpretations of media messages. Engage in culture jamming by taking an already widely recognizable meme or popular culture image and tweaking it, modifying it in some way to transmit a new message. Try to create something that makes people think in new ways about the meme or image that you are mimicking. Post the meme on your social media and observe how people respond.
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ROLAND BARTHES
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
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--Roland Barthes, 1975
Learn more about how Roland Barthes influenced media literacy educators, researchers & activists
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