How Does Propaganda Affect Our Society?

Mass communication is when an organization, employs a technology as a medium to communicate with a large audience (Baron & Davis). There is no denying that mass communication has played a critical part in the evolution of mankind. There have been and are numerous tools that can be used to broadcast the messages these organization wish to spread such as television, radio, and newspapers. Each medium targets its own specific audience. Humans have always looked to communities and cities to form a familiar sense of identity with one another. Of course in these communities there are those who lead and those who listen. Leaders have always looked for ways to control the population the best way they could. Some used love and compassion while some used outright fear. In the end there was one goal: control the minds of the people. To do so propaganda was introduced.

Propaganda allows for organizations and elites to control the population through their subconscious, being influenced in their everyday life without even knowing. Propaganda can be split into three distinct groups. There is white propaganda, the intentional suppression of potentially harmful information and ideas, combined with deliberate promotion of positive information to distract attention from problematic events. Black propaganda is the deliberate and strategic transmission of lies. And gray propaganda, the transmission of information or ideas that might or might not be false with no effort being made to determine if it is true. Each form has been used and tweaked for as long as they have been around. Propaganda is a form of persuasion involving a mass message campaign designed to discourage rational thought and to suppress