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Thursday 8.3.2001
Study of Propaganda Revitalised
Tampere Short Film Festival will screen Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", a propagandistic documentary of the National Socialist Party convention in Nuremberg in 1934.
Propaganda, however, is not the monopoly of totalitarian states trying to influence their citizens. It is produced in democratic countries as well, says Heikki Luostarinen who's a professor at the University of Jyväskylä Department of Communication. Part of his research, for example, concentrates on the PR of the international coalition during the Persian Gulf War.
People today aren't any more immune to propaganda, says Luostarinen.
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According to Luostarinen, the questions posed by the PR work of the coalition forces were behind the revitalisation of the study of propaganda in the 1990's. But modern propaganda and the Study of Propaganda are firmly rooted in the trenches of the First World War.
"After WW I different countries took full notice of the different means for propaganda. The countries that took part in the war realised warfare cannot be successful without widespread support from their people. They needed ways to shape opinions and began funding the study of propaganda.
"Military research on propaganda was adapted to civilian use and became a general term, which was used for example in connection with the marketing of products. Up to the 1950's advertising was widely referred to as marketing propaganda.
"In the 1950's the word propaganda had a bad ring to it since it had strong connotations with totalitarian regimes.
"In the USA, for example, the use of the word was single-mindedly taken out of use. Their own Cold War PR was just neutrally 'dissemination of information', but what the Soviet Union produced was labelled propaganda."
Propaganda and Lies
Luostarinen thinks the notion of propaganda as mere lies is a delusion.
"It's not smart for propagandists to lie, because when they get caught their credibility is diminished.
"Propaganda works best when people use their own thinking and end up in the same conclusions with the propagandist."
We Are Not Immune
Luostarinen says that another common delusion would have modern people immune to the influence of propaganda. It's easy to think that people used to be naive and were more easily influenced by propaganda. But that's not true. He uses pictures of the Gulf War in British newspapers as an example. The photographers obviously had a hidden agenda. These kind of pictures in the newspapers can be used to influence opinions, says Luostarinen, who will shortly publish another book on propaganda.
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