How Advertisement, Prejudice and Morale Help in Propaganda

The following article will guide you about how advertisement, prejudice and morale help in propaganda.

Advertisement:

Popularly, propaganda and advertisement are equated though propaganda uses advertisement as a technique to change the belief and attitude of people. Propaganda is a very broad and wide concept while advertisement is a narrow one.

Some say that there is no line of demarcation between propaganda and advertisement, particularly when it comes in the shape of institutional advertisement. The institutional advertisements found in newspapers try to secure the goodwill of the consumers and control the market through it.

In the institutional propaganda to gain the goodwill of labour conscious consuming public a particular company may release statistics about the wages of the employees, recreation, health and environmental facilities provided to the employees.

With this background, the institutional advertisement regularly enters into the domain of propaganda proper. Undoubtedly, both seek to impress upon the audience favourably the merits of a given product, and to drive away competiting items. Both propaganda and advertisement cannot tolerate any competition.

Both play frequently and deliberately among the weak and credulous public to exploit their ignorance, impatience and irrationality. Characteristically, advertisement refers to a limited commercial context. It grows out of restricted monetary motives.

Advertisement is mainly concerned with controlling the market and commonly regulated by some informal code of ethics to avoid confusion and encourage conformity. But propaganda does not have this commercial term and ethics, propaganda is mad to create confusion and thereby take advantage of it. Propaganda has a more political, etiological and social conflict involved in it.

The aim of advertisement is definite and selective i.e., to get the support and patronage by a large number of consumers. But the aim of propaganda is to monopolize the vigour loyalties and supporting conduct of a huge population. The propagandist tries to exercise their power more extensively from the advertisements.

The differences between propaganda and advertisement are, thus, minor and subtle which popularly lies in the design and emphasis.

Morale:

Morale is essential for giving adequate motivation to any group. Propaganda, generally, is made in such a situation where the morale is neither too high nor too low. When the morale is too high, propaganda is ineffective when it is too low, there is no need for propaganda.

When the morale of group is of moderate degree, the propagandist tries to exaggerate, distort and present erroneous materials to change the beliefs and attitudes of the group members. In a conflict situation propaganda generally flourishes. When there is no conflict situation, there is nothing to propagate like in case of an uncontested candidate in an election.

The intensity of the conflict has also to do a lot with the work of propaganda. The propagandist attempts to make a clash of judgements. Once it is started, the propagandist will try to exploit the situation in his favour. A strong propaganda against any group can be countered by maintaining or improving the morale of the group.

Prejudice:

In order to make propaganda effective, the propagandist should have clear knowledge of the variety and intensity of the prejudices of the people, he is trying to influence.

Thus, the existing prejudices of the public, their intensity and interrelations are to be studied in great detail before trying to change or influence beliefs and attitudes. Concrete prejudices should be used by the Propagandist to convey his message, Literary and artistic and similar media of propaganda should be used to cover one’s prejudices.