Leap 3-Synthesis
Sophie Chatell
View my paper here: Propaganda Inquiry
The top five insights that I chose for this leap assignment were the most significant to me this semester. These insights helped expand my knowledge of propaganda. By learning more about propaganda this semester, I was able to understand more about communication and media. Propaganda exists within so many different social insitutions and this is what I was able to take away from this semester. Before this course, I had little knowledge of what propaganda was or its effects on the society we live in. Propaganda significantly impacts multiple aspects of my daily life and I now understand this because of this course.
The top five insights I chose from this semester were from my top five favorite lessons from the modules during this course. The first insight I identified this semester was the four keys of propaganda taught to the class at the beginning of the course. These were four aspects help anyone define and understand the impacts of propaganda. The ideas associated with this topic helped me have basic standards to understand and compare the propaganda of the semester to. This topic helped me quickly understand why propaganda is so important and present within society.
The next insight I identified from this semester was that ideas and ideologies are embedded deeply into many forms of media, including video games. In my paper, I summarized different games that had different hidden idelogies and values. By looking at video games and media this semester, I was able to gain a better understanding as to why media is created and where the ideas for media come from. This topic helped me understand how propaganda is used to entertain a group of individuals.
The next insight I identified was how candidates use propaganda as strategies to gain voters and popularity. By looking at memes and attack advertisments, I was able to idenitfy how candidates attempt to gain a following. Before this class, I had little understanding on the political system and this lesson helped me understand the world and strategies of politics.
The next insight I decided to cover in my paper was how propaganda is not the only form of fake news. Before this course, I thought fake news was one single thing. I now understand that there are many different forms of fake news that persuade and manipulate society to think and act in certain ways.
The final insight I decided to cover was indoctrination in education. Before this course, I did not know what indoctrination meant. After this lesson, I was able to better understand the motives behind the educational system. This lesson taught me a lot about how content is modified based on location no matter where you are.
This semester, I was able to learn a lot more about many institutions within society that I interact with. The propaganda lessons of this semester opened my mind and allowed me to think from different perspectives. This course allowed me to expand my thinking and dive deeper into an unknown and intersting topic. Exploring this topic helped me gain interest in many topics. I will use the information I learned this semester in future courses and thoughout my future career path.
