Propaganda techniques and

Logical Fallacies

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Whose voice guides your

choice?

How do you decide who is the best candidate…

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or which is the best toothpaste ?

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Looking for facts to back up your choice is an excellent idea, but find out who is presenting those facts.

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Are they facts at all, or is the advertiser using propaganda techniques to persuade you?

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What are Propaganda

techniques?

• Propaganda is designed to persuade.

• Its purpose is to influence your opinions,

emotions, attitudes, or behavior.

• It seeks to “guide your choice.”

• Many are not based on sound logic and are

thus, errors in logic: “logical fallacies”

Who uses Propaganda?

•Military

•Media

•Advertisers

•Politicians

•You and I

What are some of the techniques

used to persuade us?

• Bandwagon

• Snob Appeal

• Name-calling

• Testimonial

• Glittering Generality

• Plain-folks appeal

• Transfer

• Emotional words

• Fear

• Red Herring

• Faulty Reasoning

• Fear

• Expert Opinion

BANDWAGON

•Everybody is doing this.

•If you want to fit in, you need to “jump on the bandwagon” and do it too.

•The implication is that you must JOIN in to FIT in.

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SNOB APPEAL

• Connects the product, idea, or person with the elite, luxurious, or intelligent.

• Aims to make the reader desire the positive qualities of the elite.

NAME CALLING (Ad Hominem)

• A negative word or feeling is attached to an idea, product, or person.

• If that word or feeling goes along with that person or idea, the implication is that we shouldn’t be interested in it.

TESTIMONIAL

• A famous person endorses an idea, a product, a candidate.

• If someone famous uses this product, believes this idea, or supports this candidate, so should we.

•A commonly admired virtue is used to inspire positive feelings for a person, idea, or product.

•Words like truth, democracy, beauty, timeless are examples of those general terms.

GLITTERING GENERALITY

• This idea, product, or person is associated with normal, everyday people and activities.

PLAIN FOLKS

TRANSFER

• Symbols, quotes, or images of famous people are used to convey a message.

• The message may not necessarily be associated with them.

EMOTIONAL APPEAL

• Words that leave us with positive feelings are used to describe a product, person, or idea.

• We associate those words and, therefore, those positive feelings with the product.

FAULTY REASONING

• Factual supporting details are used though they do not support the conclusion. It works like this:

• Christians believe in God.

• Muslims believe in God.

• Christians are Muslims.

For example:

Does this mean that teachers need medication to keep their cool during the school day ? More teachers

recommend Calm-me to help them make it through the day

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FEAR

• Our fears are displayed.

• Ideas, candidates, or products are shown to put our fears to rest.

RED HERRING

• Emphasis is removed from an important issue by bringing up a different non-related issue.

• Distraction technique

EXPERT OPINION

• Claims to be the choice of “experts”

• States false statistics or statistics that are misleading in order to sound authoritative.

How do we make sure that we are making informed choices,

instead of allowing others to sway us in our decision-making?

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We make our own choices when …

•we read and listen to reliable sources,

•we watch for combinations of truths and lies,

•we check for hidden messages,

•we watch for use of propaganda techniques,

and, most importantly,

www.scottish.parliament.uk/ educationservice

WHEN WE LISTEN TO OUR OWN

VOICES !