Propaganda and Persuasion

Chapter 1 What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ From Persuasion?

15

communication of Liu's wife while warning her not to contact friends or the media. After she visited her husband in prison, she was placed under house arrest. It was inevitable that the news about the award would become public, so the Chinese government's official statement called it "blasphemy" (LaFraniere, 2010). Television transmission has crossed political boundaries to halt contain ment of information. As communist governments toppled in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, and Romania in 1989, the world saw dramatic evidence that propaganda cannot be contained for long where television exists. People living under the austere regime of East Germany received television from West Germany and saw consumer goods that were easily had and a lifestyle that was abundant rather than austere. Also, the technology of the portable video camera enabled amateurs to capture and display footage of the Czech police on the rampage, the massacre of Georgian demonstrators in Tiblisi, and the bloodbath in Tiananmen Square. When a communist government controlled Czechoslovakia, rebellious pro testors produced the "Video Journal" on home video cameras and sent it into Czech homes via rented satellite dishes. In Poland, Lech Walesa said that the underground Solidarity movement could not have succeeded without video. In Romania, while the crowds protested against Nicolae Ceau§escu, the television showed fear and doubt in his eyes and encouraged people to continue to fight against his regime despite his army's violence. Ironically, the center of the intense fighting between the army and Ceau§escu's loyalists was the Bucharest television station. For a time, the new govern ment was in residence there, making the television station the epicenter of the revolution and the seat of the provisional government. Propaganda itself, as a form of communication, is influenced by the tech nological devices for sending messages that are available in a given time. As technology advances, propagandists have more sophisticated tools at their service. ABC's Nightline reported in December 1991 the first recorded use of a fax machine for propaganda purposes. Leaflets describing how to prepare for a chemical warfare assault, presumably sent by the Hussein propa gandists, came through thousands of Kuwaiti fax machines. The Internet and satellites are major propaganda outlets for Al Qaeda, which reaches its followers in 68 countries. New technologies have also been a boon to pro testers resulting in cyber duels between autocratic governments and dissi dents. According to Navtej Dhillon, an analyst with the Brookings Institute, "The Internet has certainly broken 30 years of state control over what is seen and is unseen, what is visible versus invisible (Stelter & Stone, 2009). Young people have increasingly used the Internet to mobilize politically. Text-messaging was used to rally supporters in a popular political uprising