Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Street propaganda

For the next few weeks, I'll be participating in a MOOC (massive open online course) from the University of Nottingham in Britain. The subject is Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life. Let's see what these academics come up with; if this proves interesting to me, I'll comment here.

Meanwhile here are some examples of street propaganda from one of the precincts I've photographed for Walking San Francisco. Click on any of these images to enlarge.

Someone thinks pasting Post-It note size messages on poles is the way to spread a message.

What do I know? This individual may be right.

Clearly, there's a particular bone being picked here. The anonymous author (not good for building confidence when spewing opinions if you are not willing to put your name on them) seems to have an idée fixe about the nature of contemporary life. Not saying those opinions are wrong, but I can question if this is the way to deliver them convincingly. And a some design assistance might command more respect ... or not.

3 comments:

Hattie said...

This opens up a whole train of thought.

Cinderellen said...

This kind of propaganda is thought provoking and/or amusing. The kind I find more worrisome is the not-quite-visible. For example, why is every single news station suddenly featuring security delays at airports? Who is benefitting from this? Why do they all have the same footage? Only after they stir us up will the penny drop.

janinsanfran said...

Hi Ellen -- fascinating comment. I too noticed the footage about TSA lines and wondered about it, especially as I had flown crosscountry recently with absolutely no trouble or delay. Might the TSA be trying to force a budget increase by releasing this stuff? Worth wondering.

More and more journalistic platforms online are trying to make up for the advertising revenue they never captured by publishing "native content" -- ads disguised as news. TPM published PHARMA content for awhile, though that seems to have gone away. They labelled it. Most probably don't.