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Gossips , news, propaganda are all stories that serve the same purpose. The purpose of socializing humans in many ways that ultimately makes them understand the society they live in. The tricky part is who controls what kinds of information or when and how it should get propagated. This defines the effectiveness of the said stories.
Gossip and news can be true or false, unlike propaganda which is only used to propagate falsehood. Propagation of gossip is easy, news needs a systematic array of personnel working together, while propaganda needs proper planning, dedication and it’s very hard unlike the other two.
News was the privilege of the ruling class two centuries back which are now run by institutions. Its recent transformation makes it hard to make out what to believe and what not. News are supposed to be true events that give people an idea of what’s happening around.This has an element of ethics and provides service to the society. However, true and false news go hand in hand these days. The false element makes up for the propaganda.
News is like a commodity that fetches great value depending on its time and space. This was first understood by Reuters, the first news agency that started selling news. In 1851 it was created to transmit mere London stock market information. Now it has offices in over 200 nations.
Think about those times when an incident takes months to travel versus now the very second a missile is launched first it gets exploded in our media much before its real impact.
Conventional news has been more or less encroached by propaganda news these days.
One of the first uses of propaganda was in 1814; news broke out that Napoleon had been killed and the French government had fallen. This affected the London stock markets, which later was found to be false news deliberately done for profit.
Propaganda works in steps. First is to create a narrative, make it strong by connecting with incidents. If there are no incidents, create it. Keep the narration alive, never allow it to go off from the mind of the people until they start identifying the narrative. At this point it enters the belief mode.
A story in belief mode is true for gossip, news and propaganda. True in the sense that how it achieves its objectives with respect to what they profess.
Those who don’t understand history cannot build a future. This is the main exponent of the propagandists. They take a lot of cue from history, even make history to fulfil their objective.
Mutated forms of news in some places are turned into propaganda. Certain facts are manipulated and transformed into emotional content. Here fake stories are made in such a way that common people think it’s a factual interpretation of facts, such is the level of planning that makes falsehood part of belief.
Propaganda breeds emotion that makes people overcome the virtue of civility and engage in the power of slavery. The greatest propaganda methods were used during the Nazi times to brain wash an entire nation. It is systematic in using all means; be it conventional media, cinema, even street fights to pass an agenda into the minds of the people.
There are many who fall for a mere speech, some have to be persuaded with falsehood, while others have to be intimidated. When all these fall in place propaganda starts its real work of enslaving the society. At this stage the society is without moral direction, where might will become the right and there will not be any accountability. Now many vice can become legalized. This is a sorry state where there can’t be any complaints, there will not arise any questions that need answers. Joseph Goebbels was a master in this type of propaganda.
The propagandists are a small percentage of the society, but its effects are on the majority.
In this era where media war is true to its senses propaganda plays its part. A war is half won if positive news favours a nation. Since propaganda has a wider audience, fast and very effective it can uplift the morale of the entire nation. Even a small incident when propagated in the right essence can have a favourable effect on the people.
News and propaganda plays an important role in war as well during peace.
Gossips are localized, news is your choice but propaganda cannot be ignored. Since we are at an age where information is easily available we brace this generation to be good analysts to overcome any bad effects of propaganda.
Gossip, news and propaganda are here to stay.