• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    I think part of it’s that not all propaganda is bad.

    There’s probably a term for it, but I’d draw a distinction between “opinion” propaganda and “aspirational” propaganda.

    One tries to change your opinion of something, like “cops are good noble and always do the right thing”.
    The other encourages the viewer to live up to some ideal. It’s entirely possible for that ideal to also not be great, but even then “I should be” is better than “they are”.

    A lot of PSAs and things from the ad council fall in the later category. Like the billboards that basically say “real men are present and emotionally available fathers to their children” or "good parents teach their kids healthy diet and exercise by example”.
    They’re openly cases of the government trying to change public opinions or attitudes (which arguably makes them better examples of propaganda than a lot of commercial television), but they don’t feel as objectionable.

    “This honest and kind man who always tries to do good and help those around him to the point that it overshadows him being a physically perfect human is the embodiment of the emblematic American man” is more in that aspirational category.

    • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      “Propaganda” comes from “propagate”, so the word inherently isn’t bad. The suffix “anda” basically means “thing of”, so in a literal sense, “propaganda” is any “object of propagation”, although this reading of etymology isn’t widely circulated.

      Propaganda is thus inherently a very all-encompassing term. Any poster, flyer or brochure is propaganda, whether it advertizes a product, service, lost cat, or wants you to join the army. Anything “mass media” is propaganda. Anything spreading “a message” that is meant for wider propagation, regardless of the message content is propaganda.

      At least that’s according to my rudimentary knowledge of high school latin. There’s the more “mainstream”, “official” etymology on Wiktionary: the word was first used in the name of an old Catholic Church department from Latin times for “spreading the faith”, so that’s where the more loaded use and connotation comes from. However, I doubt that this department name is the first ever use of the ablative feminine gerund form of the verb propagate. That’s like saying the first use of the term “World health” is in the name World Health Orgsnization. If anything, someone had to discuss the name beforehand.

      So, there’s this Overton window-esque aspect to the word.

      Wikipedia has a good overview of propaganda, although it is itself loaded onto the “must be loaded (i.e. what you called ‘bad’ propaganda)” definition of propaganda. And they like usibn the word “loaded” a lot.