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Technically correct, though. Definition of propaganda according to merriam webster:
propaganda
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3: ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause
also : a public action having such an effectNote that it’s still propaganda if all the information is true, as long as it’s spread deliberately.
Yeah, I agree with cowbee’s point here in abstract, propaganda is just as useful for stoking activism as it is supressing it, but something tells me we’d disagree on whether Russian government propaganda is “good” or “bad”.
That’s exactly how cowbee operates. He makes a point that is a perfectly acceptable in abstract but when you get to the specifics of the real world he will absolutely throw out that point and do whatever suits his world view. He will view propaganda as something negative when it’s “western” propaganda. And then flip it around and view it positively when it’s propaganda he agrees with.
The only internally consistent logic he has is that everything he believes in cannot be wrong and everything he doesn’t believe cannot be right.
authcomms are conservatives who lick a different boot
I might even disagree with them on whether something is anti-fascist propaganda!
Technically correct, but ignorant of history and context.
Since the Nazi’s decided to call it the “ministry of propaganda,” the word became heavily associated with misinformation. To pretend that isn’t the way it’s used today is just dishonest. Like Cowbee.
I think it was the soviets that had more of a prolonged track record of “state propaganda is lies” that worked to distance it from the notion of “propaganda is messaging” sense that’s technically usable.
Basically everyone has propaganda at the same time the Nazis did. It wasn’t until the soviets used it to spin things more in the way we associate with the modern sense that the term fell properly out of favor.
True, if we’re going by a strict definition.
But in practice it means (at best) suppression of negative facts “for the cause” even when they’re true which is problematic in of itself, but it also encourages exaggeration of the pros and tearing down the opposition even if the opposition has good points worth considering
Tankies use a different flavor of propaganda than, say, Greenpeace, but even organisations like Greenpeace exaggerate the pros and downplay the downsides of their actions and beliefs - they aren’t going to put up a big poster that says “sometimes we could use our funds more effectively” or “in hindsight, this action has been counterproductive”.
They probably should. Transparency is a good thing.
Maybe. But the media game doesn’t work like that, currently.
For some of us it does. (Notwithstanding, for most people it does not.)
Cowbee@lemmy.ml said the definition that they are using at the beginning of the comment
There is a knee-jerk reaction surrounding the word propaganda. Etymology of the word is Latin for “what is to be disseminated” and it can be used with or without the malicious connotation. Also telling apart the distinction between wartime propaganda (psychological warfare) and political propaganda might help. The commonplace usage of the term is better illustrated by “manufacturing of consent”.
Is language prescriptive or descriptive? What determines a word’s meaning: Static definitions, or dynamic cultural usage?
If we’re going by cultural usage, “literally” can mean both “literally” and “metaphorically”, and “incel”, which is short for “involuntarily celibate”, can mean both “guy who never had sex” and “guy who has a lot of sex (but is a dick about it)”. I reject culture that’s fucking stupid.
Take a propaganda at deez.
Lmao gottem’.
Fun Fact: “Propaganda” translates to 宣传 (“announcement”) in Chinese which lacks the connotation of being biased as the English word has.
I can’t find a word in the Chinese language that evokes the same emotions as “Propaganda”.
In Portuguese, we call ads “Propagandas”
yeah I explored this problem with my classmates a long time ago. we concluded that the best approximation was 煽动 (“agitation”) even though it’s much more of a verb so to noun it you’d have to use it like 煽动行为 (“agitating act”)
also “announcement” is more 公告. 宣传 is more “promotion”.
煽动
What?
I thought that was “to provoke” or “fanning the flames”
As in: The Wechat articles that my parents read, claims that “the HongKong Protests were '煽动’ed by the US Government” (their words, not mine). I don’t think it translates to propaganda
like i said it’s “agitation” and the best approximation when also accounting for connotation. as you note it’s still a ways off
The Chinese Wikipedia page for propaganda uses 政治宣傳, and I think that works too
Still no negative connotations afiak. That’s like “political announcement/speech/publications”,
OP , I tapped this several times trying to downvote the .ml commenter I have labled for being a tankie… only to realize each time that: nope, it was still a screenshot. I am not a smart man.
It’s the thought that counts.
It’s not really a surprise. A key tankie belief is that freedom of speech fundamentally shouldn’t exist (yes, even as they themselves enjoy it).
Propaganda is just the act of spreading information that furthers your cause, the term is neutral towards whether the information is factual or not. All political parties and activists engage in propaganda, it’s literally what they do.
That’s the dictionary definition, sure, but that doesn’t cover common use, or connotation. When most people use “propaganda,” they typically mean government-affiliated messaging that hides the truth and pushes a narrative to get people to fall in line.
These people are technically incorrect.
It’s all so exhausting. Like most of us, I left Reddit to get away from centralized control of communication on the Internet and the constant performative division, but it’s almost impossible to avoid. Each platform seems to foster its own flavor of identity with no tolerance for nuance or common ground. I try not to block instances or communities so I can stay up to date on the current tides, but much of it is so reactionary and tolerates nothing less than complete loyalty. Then, every day a new line is drawn in the sand by some faceless account going one step further in one direction or the other and that becomes the new accepted and expected position.
I deeply enjoy the fediverse and especially how genuine most of the users here are, but the choice is still between an echo chamber I make for myself or the echo chamber constructed by the loudest voices.
Tankies annoy the fuck out of me as well, got banned from an .ml community for daring to say dictatorships are bad the other day, but he is 100% factually correct. The term propaganda itself has no positive or negative connotations. It’s just that in person people just typically only use the word when they want to imply said propaganda is bullshit. Like “Don’t listen to this it’s just propaganda”. Even the causes you support likely have some sort of propaganda, it’s not inherently bad, the word just has negative connotations colloquially.
Propaganda generally requires shilling for an org like a state or corporation. People sharing their opinions are no propaganda unless they are doing to advance some orgs interests.
My shit posting is hardly propaganda, just opinions. Although it has been labeled as propaganda but nobody can tell om whose behalf
