Reading and Understanding Text

I chose the text 'PROPAGANDA' by EDWARD L. BERNAYS as the basis for my research.

The authors tone of voice implies he has no trust for the government and believes we are manipulated as a population in regards to our social and political beliefs. He seems to think there are a number of very deliberate techniques and agendas to the way we receive information. 

5 key points

1-The few that dictate our social and political beliefs know how to influence he masses.

2-we accept information on the word of various sources to mold our group identity.

3-The groupings and affiliations of today are no longer subject to local and sectional limitations.

4-Advances in technology allowed information to be spread across the whole of america, in some cases almost instantly.

5-propaganda influences all aspects of our lives and molds our opinions on almost everything.

5 key quotes

1-"We are all governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."

2-"We have voluntarily agreed to let an invisible government sift the data and high-spot the outstanding issues so that our field of choice shall be narrowed to practical proportions."

3-"With the printing press and the newspaper, the railroad, the telephone, telegraph, radio and airplanes, ideas can be spread rapidly and even instantaneously over the whole of America."

4-"The America Newspaper Annual and Directory for 1928 lists 22,128 periodical publications in America."

5-"But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given him rubber stamps, rubber stamps inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of the tabloids and the platitudes of history"

This article speaks a lot about politics but not about individual parties or opinion on political beliefs, instead it focuses on how these beliefs are delivered to us in simplified and hand picked packets of information designed to mold our political affiliations. The author speaks about the government as a small number of individuals that are skilled at identifying ways the manipulate the ideas of the masses. Our social and cultural identity's are dictated to us with subtle propaganda. Technological advances have meant that these techniques are able to reach communities worldwide making them extremely powerful, whereas before information was confined to local community's the advent of print and faster methods of travel meant that information could become widespread almost instantly.

The sheer number of publications available in America by 1928 shows the scope of the printed word, literacy had given people the chance to expand their minds but was also a tool to control them. With this new found wealth of information available the masses needed someone to sift through it and highlight the important issues. the author says that a small group of people learned that they could use this cherry picking to dictate the way the masses acted and even thought.