Propaganda and Persuasion

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Propaganda and Persuasion

Resonance A persuader who is well prepared knows the audience. Anchors can be dis covered from knowledge of the audience members' affiliation with groups as well as from insight into their beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors. Because these categories constitute important attributes of the audience, they can be used to motivate the audience to accept the purpose of the persuader. Both persuasion and propaganda tend to produce messages of resonance; that is, the recipients do not perceive the themes of messages to be imposed on them from an outside authority to which they are required or committed to defer. Rather, the recipients perceive the anchors on which the message is based as coming from within themselves. Paul Kecskemeti (1973) defined the propagandist's ideal role in relation to the recipient of the message as that of an alter ego: "Someone giving expression to the recipient's own concerns, tensions, aspirations, and hopes. . . . Thus, propaganda . . . denies all distance between the source and the audience: the propaganda voices the propagandee's own feelings" (p. 864). Nazi propaganda relied on resonance by representing legends of the past, familiar music, and street theater in its propaganda. There was a bizarre play performed for German railroad workers in 1933. Hitler was compared to Jesus Christ in a Christmas nativity play. The performers, dressed as crusaders, acted out the struggle of light and darkness while Stormtroopers marched to the nativity scene carrying swastika flags. An announcer spoke over a loudspeaker: "God sent us a savior at the moment of our deepest despair; our Fuhrer and our wonderful Stormtroopers" (Clark, 1997, p. 52). Identification must take place between the persuader and the persuadee in persuasive communication. Common sensations, concepts, images, and ideas that make them feel as one are shared. A persuader analyzes an audience to be able to express its members' needs, desires, personal and social beliefs, attitudes, and values, as well as their attitudes and concerns about the social outcome of the persuasive situation. The persuader is a voice from without, speaking the language of the audience members' voices within. Yet, persuasive communication may be dialectic in nature and preclude homoge neity. Conversely, the propaganda message is more often homogeneous because it is more likely to be sent to a mass audience than to one person in an interpersonal setting. Exceptions to this exist, of course, when the propa gandist works one-on-one with various subjects.

Persuasion Seeks Voluntary Change In general, practitioners of persuasion assume that the audience has access to information about the other side of a controversial issue as well as