Week 11 Sociology Individual Work - Essay Example

Sociology Media Propaganda As a media consumer, it is not hard to notice that the media is changing fast. One of the most effectual ways that the media personnel use to persuade the viewers is through television or video recording. Televisions offer the media the advantage of propaganda operations. In my opinion, Stanley Cunningham (2002), who is the author of the book “The idea of propaganda” provides the most appropriate explanation of propaganda. According to Cunningham (2002), propaganda means there is information control and belief manipulation while at the same time persuading masses.

I find Cunningham’s explanation of propaganda to be impressive because the author shows that propaganda is used by the media in attempt to arouse the consumers to specific corners, thereby initiating change. There are two propaganda techniques that I have seen being used by the media. One of them is the populism technique, used by MSNBC. I noticed that the MSNBC used this technique mostly when there was an election. The media company took advantage of the brief surge of the ratings so as to see how Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann would react or rather show their love for President Obama.

Now that the election is over, this is a technique that MSNBC may find hard to use. This was a technique that I saw on television, as part of news reports. The other technique that I saw was in print; confusion. This is a technique that works well in cases when consumers are less confident. The New York Times had recently had an exclusive report on how the president used a dictatorial method as a strategy in handling the terrorism issue. When it comes to issues of terrorism most media consumers are confused and the newspaper only made matters worse.

In my opinion, this is all propaganda because any injustices carried out by the state are not likely to continue without the public noticing. In the book “Essentials of Sociology” the author clearly shows that persuasion and propaganda go hand in hand. In propaganda, deceptive but persuasive methods are applied with the intention making sure that the audience is influenced. This can be seen through one of the recent global events to occur and it can be seen how the media portrayed it. The Haiti earthquake that occurred in 2010 was the second among some of the deadliest earthquakes in the world, claiming around 316,000 lives.

The people of Haiti received assistance from all over the world; however, the Israel saw this as a chance of launching propaganda against the Arabs using the earthquake in Haiti. In the Dailybhaskar.com paper reported on November 23, 2012, it was indicated that the Arab world did not assist the Haitians, while the reverse was true. The propaganda given in the above examples applies to the three sociological theories. According to Tischler (2010), functionalism theory shows that in modern society television or any other advertisements are the key to promoting the economy and standards of living.

That is why propaganda is used; to attract more audiences though advertisements, thereby increasing society’s ability to employ more people. In conflict theory, Tischler (2010) argues that the power which comes with advertising promotes the circle of propaganda, since propaganda is controlled though advertising. In this theory, Negativity and biased news is the key to attracting and maintaining masses. In interactionism theory, propaganda is the basis of socialization; therefore, it is used as a way of creating the consumer’s need to make purchases (Tischler, 2010).

ReferencesCunningham, S. (2002). The idea of propaganda: A reconstruction. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group.Tischler, H. (2010). Introduction to sociology. New York: Cengage Learning.