Resources About Propaganda?

[JumpyTheFrog]

Does anyone have any books, documentaries, etc. they recommend for teaching about propaganda? We're currently going through this article about spotting 16 types of media bias, as well as reading The Fallacy Detective. I'm especially interested in the use of political cartoons or other forms of visual persuasion.

[HomeAgain]

You might like the lessons from the Reading Like a Historian folks.  Civic Online Reasoning course: https://cor.stanford.edu/

[silver]

You could try the games here:
https://inoculation.science/inoculation-games/harmony-square/

They go off the "pre-bunking" idea of inoculating against misinformation by showing how it works. 

[El...]

There's an interesting history book entitled "The Commissar Vanishes" that we found fascinating, about Stalin. It sparked conversations. It's hard to find, but you can get a used copy.

[Amoret]

The book Propaganda by Edward Bernays is worth reading.

You might also look for resources using the search term "visual rhetoric." It will bring up potentially useful sources like this one from Purdue's OWL.

There is also quite a bit out there about war posters as propaganda. This is from the Smithsonian. Here is an Australian source, for example.

[8filltheheart]

Facing History and Ourselves has resources: Search | Facing History & Ourselves

[SilverMoon]

Art of Argument is my favorite for fallacies. 

Crash Course has shorter series called Navigating Digital Information and Media Literacy that may be useful. 

And Twitter/X honestly. Make an account that follows political figures on both sides, locally and nationally. The feed will be a constant stream of examples and loads of them use graphics to analyze. 

[SilverMoon]

Thethinkingshop.org may be useful too. They used to offer free PDF downloads of some of the cards and posters they sell hard copies of, but I'm not sure if that's still an offer. 

[idnib]

If you are in the Bay Area, there's a Museum of International Propaganda. There's a virtual tour as well, although for me it's only working on Chrome. SFGate had an article about it recently. (There's a Nazi symbol in the article, fyi.)

Edited November 8, 2023 by idnib

[Malam]

https://callingbullshit.org/

[turkeypotpie]

On 11/10/2023 at 5:04 AM, Malam said:

https://callingbullshit.org/

Yes!! We went through this syllabus in 9th grade in conjunction with our arguments & logic materials. It has a 'sanitized' sister site here: https://callingbull.org/syllabus.html if you want to avoid the profanity. Plenty of articles and class videos on how to judge sources, arguments, misuse of statistics, etc. Highly recommended as a catalyst for great topical conversations.    

[kokotg]

Katherine Anne Porter's short novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider is great if you're interested in fiction with propaganda (WWI specifically) as a theme. 

[Malam]

On 11/8/2023 at 4:00 AM, JumpyTheFrog said:

Does anyone have any books, documentaries, etc. they recommend for teaching about propaganda? We're currently going through this article about spotting 16 types of media bias, as well as reading The Fallacy Detective. I'm especially interested in the use of political cartoons or other forms of visual persuasion.

Just curious, is this for a full course on this topic or just a unit within an English class?

[JumpyTheFrog]

While doing a full course interests me, we can't fit it in, so I'm making it a unit in their English class. (I may also expand it to have a unit in their government class.) I found some logical fallacy bingo cards, so we're going to use them while watching political debates.