General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Studies show that most Americans reject facts when [View all]OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Propaganda analysis is not the same as mass media research for it incorporates much of what might be termed the psychology of ideology. Thus, other questions of interest include: How is propaganda passed through social networks and by means of socialization processes within the family? How do interpersonal processes like conformity, intrapsychic processes like dissonance reduction, communication processes like assimilation, and cognitive processes like primacy or recency effects combine to affect the response to propaganda? Is susceptibility to propaganda based on particular cognitive biases or logical errors?
Individual differences may also be important. Who is most affected by propaganda? Do personality variables or styles of cognitive processing affect susceptibility to propaganda? Ellul (1973) claims that contrary to popular belief, as a result of their increased exposure to propaganda, highly educated, well-informed citizens of modern societies are more, not less, open to propaganda than are people who receive less information. This hypothesis must be tested. Do some forms of information and education produce greater susceptibility to propaganda while others produce less?
This brings up an important question regarding the application of propaganda analysis: Is it possible to develop means of training people to recognize and resist propaganda? McGuire's work on innoculation against attitude change (1968) might lead us to be skeptical about this possibility but the ability of many fledgeling researchers to learn to recognize and avoid methodological errors such as the confusion of correlation and causation leads me to believe that people can be taught to resist propaganda. Much more work must be done on this question.
Silverstein, B. (1987). Toward a science of propaganda. Political Psychology, 8(1), pp. 53, 54.