Monday, February 4, 2013

Persuation and Propaganda

Persuasion is the influence of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations, or behaviors. Persuasion is a process aimed at changing a person's (or a group's) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination thereof.

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument. Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.

Where do you encounter persuasion and propaganda in our daily lives?
We encounter persuasion and propaganda in our daily lives. We see propaganda all the time, like on super markets, TV, newspapers, internet, etc but, could this affect our judgement? Because if we think about it, propaganda is always positioned to only one side of an argument. We can't obtain full information on a propaganda because it is only presented, based on the facts in a positive way. In many ways, propaganda and persuasion is closely related by the fact that persuasion comes out from propaganda. The purpose of propaganda is to persuade the audience and in order to success, influence of beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motivations and behaviours are needed.


Several tactics are being used in an advertisement in order to capture the audience attention to its maximum potential. One way would be to shockvertise which audience can't deny ignoring it. The image is just so shocking that the audience tries to question themselves towards the purpose or the value of the image. This is a great way of advertising because the world we live in these days, it is hardly rare that people actually pay attention to the advertisements due to excessive advertisements around the world. To take an example, the United Colors of Benetton used this method of advertising and indeed, it caught way more attention than the normal advertisements. 
Language is very important in order to persuade someone. No one is going to buy the product just by putting "buy it, its good". Tactics used in language would be repeated affirmation which signifies repetition of key points until they are drummed into the mind of the audience such as, "Education, education, education" and "New labour, new danger". These are catchy slogans and are very easily remembered and repeated, stuck on people's head just like catchy music lyrics do. It is important that a small text from the persuasion creates an impact to the mind, the more impact, the longer it would stay.
Emotion is very important when trying to persuade someone. It is way different to persuade with an exciting tone, smile face rather than boring tone and boring face. It gets the audience more confident attracted to their emotion. 

As soon you walk into a shop or store, you hear music. But most often, music isn't just there for decoration or to entertain. It's actually to manipulate your sense perceptions. It is designed to create the appropriate mood to make you want to buy the products. Persuasion often depends on influencing what we absorb from the mass of sensory information in our environment. Most shops tends to be colorful, most shops smell good. These factors can easily manipulate the buyers to buy more products.

In conclusion, many of these tactics are used all the time and we're very often persuaded. We are currently blinded by the truth behind these propaganda and has corroded our minds. It also affects our way of thinking which these propaganda or advertisement is very biased and used for benefits or money.