Age of Propaganda

  2. After some research, decide on your purpose for writing the essay. Draw information three sources: Age of Propaganda and two additional sources. 3. Determine what major idea (your thesis statement) you intend to support, prove, explain, or elaborate. Then, write your thesis statement. 4. Create a brief sentence outline as an organizational plan for your essay. You must submit the outline. 5. Next, write an essay of at least 700-900 words concerning your selected topic. Ensure that your writing is not just general observations. Include specifics to make your explanations convincing. Most student essays are too general; consequently, there is little or no development and progression of ideas. One strategy is to state a general idea and then develop it with specific detail. I shall illustrate this concept by referring to an essay assignment on mystery movies: Do not be satisfied by simply saying that mystery movies engage their audiences [this is the general observation or idea] and then hope to move on. Instead, next you could state that they frighten movie patrons in several ways, but especially by their gore, the unexpected, and their suspenseful plots. Then follow up on the previous sentence by providing one or more concrete examples, such as by describing a scene from the 1967 film version of the play Wait Until Dark. Probably the most frightening scene occurs when Susy Hendrix (played by Audrey Hepburn), a blind Greenwich Village housewife, is the target of "Roat" who is seeking in her basement apartment a doll containing heroin. In one scene she struggles with him as he tries to kill her. At the point when the viewing audience members think that she has stabbed him and he is down, she runs away and the audience believes that she is safe; however, suddenly he springs at her and grabs her ankle. In the theater, numerous people jumped out of their seats and screamed with fear. The structure of the writer's thinking can be represented as follows: A general statement--> A specific application of the general statement --> A concrete example. This approach makes good writing because it is specific rather than general and, in essence, it allows for both 'primary' and 'secondary' support in paragraphs. Age of Propaganda 1. Define and describe “behaviorism.” Explain how it is related to the magic bullet theory. 2. Define and describe psychoanalysis. Explain how it is related to the magic bullet theory. 3. Define and describe the information processing model and show how it suggests the limits of the power of the mass media. 4. Define and describe the Law of Cognitive Response. 5. Describe six facts about modern propaganda. Explain why these techniques work 6. Describe the two routes to persuasion: the peripheral and the central. What determines which route to persuasion will be adopted? Also, be sure to discuss cognitive misers. 7. Define rationalizing animal and describe how cognitive dissonance describes and predicts how we humans rationalize behavior. 8. Identify and describe the four stratagems of influence. 9. Explain how words and slogans are used in persuasion to influence people. 10. Explain how images are used in persuasion to influence people. “To what extent do the pictures we see on television and in other mass media influence how we see the world and set the agenda for what we view as most important in our lives?”—Pratkanis and Aronson. 11. Describe how question asking can be a form of persuasion. 12. Discuss the power of factoids, rumors, flaming, innuendo, and projection tactic in persuasion