LEAP 2: Partner Project on Propaganda

I had the pleasure of working on a project for class with my partner Emily Mulvey. We decided after chatting via a Google Doc that we wanted to do something on the topic of propaganda. I had read a couple of articles that talked about many people feeling like propaganda is something that happened in the past and is not relevant to modern day circumstances. I am a huge fan of World War II historical fiction so I was familiar with how propaganda was used during that time period. What I didn't realize or had never thought about was how long the effects of those messages would have lasted. And this was all in a time period before the Internet, Social Media, and the many ways we can currently express our opinions digitally. Not only that, but now the opinions we express or visuals we share have the potential to exist perpetually. In addition, I have been thinking a lot about examples of "harmless" propaganda and wondering if the same ideas were true within those examples.

This idea is the one that led me to want to dig further and find examples of propaganda both from the past and today. Initially, Emily and I were looking at anti-marijuana propaganda- both from the past and current. We found plenty of examples of false information being promoted about marijuana use and good examples from today that are more grounded in factual information, but we didn't want to come off as having a pro-marijuana use message. Instead, we chose to look at the impact of anti-Japanese propaganda from WWII and how long those harmful messages lasted. As a comparison, we also wanted to show modern day propaganda and reflect on the harmful messages that are currently being promoted. If we don't learn and teach about propaganda, we run the risk of creating a whole new set of prejudice sentiments that will take decades to undo.

The hardest part about completing this project was finding time to discuss ideas with my partner. We both have busy lives and time to arrange a phone call or a Skype chat was hard to come by. Instead, we started to have a "conversation" via a Google Doc. We would find interesting material or brainstorm ideas and just add it to the Google Doc. From there, we were able to piece together the message we wanted to share.

Please enjoy our Adobe Spark on Propaganda, Then and Now.