Samuel Spitale supplied his model of a crash course in media literacy, masking all the most important bullet factors of a semester-long school course in little underneath half an hour. Those attendees who had taken any mass communications class would acknowledge the historical past and tales behind the slide present infographics immediately. For people who didn’t, “Crash Course” would expose the myths behind a few of the extra common catchphrases and cleverly disguised publicity campaigns.
The Thursday afternoon panel was a part of the San Diego Public Library’s “Comic Conference for Educators & Librarian” sequence. And Spitale was on the library to advertise How To Win The War on Truth: An Illustrated Guide to How Mistruths are Sold, Why They Stick, and How to Reclaim Reality. The guide itself could possibly be the textbook for any mass communications course. It is a concise visible compendium that exposes the secrets and techniques of how firms and governmental entities form language to “get inside our brains to sway public opinion.” By the way in which, all that is referred to as propaganda. And it simply so occurs that the individuals who do that work of promoting concepts for monetary achieve are superb at it.
According to Spitale, the typical American encounters 4,000 to 10,000 media messages a day, and few of us can differentiate the information from all that noise.
“What was supposed to be the Information Age has instead become an age of information. From welfare queen to WMDs, climate change to critical race theory and the war on drugs to the war on Christmas, much of what Americans believe is more mistruth than truth, and that’s by design.”
Infographic-by-infographic taken from his guide, Spitale defined the rationale behind many common promoting, public relations, advertising, and branding campaigns. Take examples of propaganda campaigns that Americans settle for as fact:
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- A low-fat eating regimen is sweet for you (a sugar trade marketing campaign in the Sixties that tried to downplay the dangers of sugar and spotlight the hazards of fats)
- Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (advertising to promote Americans on the Iraq War)
- “Keep America Beautiful” anti-littering public service announcement (a public relations marketing campaign disguised as a non-profit; based in 1953 by the producers of Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Anheuser-Busch to persuade Americans that litter was a shopper use situation, not a packaging situation)
Afterwards, Spitale answered questions from attendees on easy methods to spot propaganda. Hopefully, attendees walked away with a greater understanding of how firms and authorities manipulate media for their very own monetary profit. After all, if it appears like propaganda, it most likely is.
Miss any of our earlier SDCC ’23 protection? Find all of it right here!
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