Thread: T2K Propaganda
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Old 12-30-2008, 04:26 PM
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ChalkLine ChalkLine is offline
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I studied propaganda under historiography at uni, it's a fascinating subject.

Propaganda is designed to build and maintain the ideal society to follow government aims, by developing a widespread ideology that promotes government aims.

It is both pro-active and re-active. Propaganda is closely monitored by the propagandist, who watches the reactions to the message and modifies the message to account for those reactions. The successful propagandist is also a political soldier; who fights the political aspect of the war.

The primary aim of a propagandist is dominance of message.
In essence, you must minimise the access other information has to the target, and maximise your own. You can do this by subverting other information channels/sources to carry your message or a variation of your message. Also, you can cut off other routes of information to minimise uncontrollable or hostile information.

There are many different methods and tactics used in information warfare, and many have crept into peacetime political systems that can be used for source material. Tactics such as echoing, source concealment, inference and demonisation are fairly common these days.

T2K gives the propagandist an ideal situation along with serious challenges.

The collapse of globalism and its aspects such as global communications means that the propagandist has far fewer information sources to deal with, and can under emergency powers make some behaviour such as listening to foreign broadcasts illegal. Rumour spreading may have serious legal punishments.
However, the same situation means that less control over the propagandist's target is possible. Dispersed populations and collapsed official news systems means that there may be 'grey outs' in the information theatre, and unknown information sources may exist in these areas that damage the official message.

Often, combat soldiers are prime targets for propaganda, but are also viewed as dangerous channels of information. Rear echelon soldiers in a total war are solely exposed to the official message, whereas combat soldiers are considered (rightly so in most cases) unimpeachable sources of accurate information regarding the enemy. A combat soldier standing up at a train station, rally or cinema and refuting an official statement can destroy credibility in an instant, and many believe they have a duty to refute errors regarding the enemy.
For this reason, military disagreement with propaganda is strictly penalised.
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