Question

Chapter 12 in Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your learning and your life (3rd ed.). King, G., Pan, J., & Roberts, M. E. (2017). How the Chinese government fabricates social media posts for strategic distraction, not engaged argument. The American Political Science Review, 111(3), 484-501.

Klausen, J. (2015). Tweeting the Jihad: Social media networks of Western foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38(1), 1-22. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2014.974948?scroll=top&needAccess=true

Murphy, D. M., & White, J. F. (2007). Propaganda: Can a word decide a war? Parameters, 37(3), 15.

Directions: The required readings this week include historical and contemporary examples of media bias and propaganda from a range of times, cultures, and countries (the United States, China, Iraq, Rwanda, etc.). Using these required readings, address the following prompts and questions: Compare and contrast the propaganda and bias emerging from jihadist fighters (Klausen, 2015) and the Chinese state (King, Pan, & Roberts, 2017). What similarities do you detect? Differences? How can propaganda and bias be used to further different aims? Describe two historical examples of propaganda from Murphy and White (2007) that show how governments use propaganda and the media to achieve their ends? What suggestions do Murphy and White (2007) offer in terms of how the U.S. government should use information? What criticisms or critiques do you have of their approach?

Answer 1

Use of media and other means of communication to create propaganda is a political need by which our leaders and institutions distract public attention from real issues. Role of media in propaganda creation has increased in recent days because of the reach of media. Media houses help the government to create artificial issues and situations.

Government and institutions always want to control the media and communications, after the emergence of social media, the government got another easy and less accountable mean of communication so that authorities used social media and TV to create fallacies and propaganda.

If we think about past, we could get a lot of example of propaganda forming for special interests. During Iraq war, the government of US created propaganda against a sovereign country and we know what had happened afterward. On the other part of the world, the Chinese government is controlling media and using it accordingly, the Chinese government created false statements against various issues.

The Murphy and White suggest the US government use information because information helps the government to understand the public opinions and create conditional news and statements.

Recent time, information is a kind of asset which can be used to direct public opinions and can control thought process by conditioned politics. Every government in the world uses the information to understand public opinions and ideology while some authorities use this information to create disputes, controversies and artificial information and issues.

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