Soft power and American propaganda in the APR (Spring/Fall)
| GREETING |
Greetings! My name is Kirill Donskov. My scientific specialization is the history of propaganda development. The topic of my dissertation is American propaganda in the Russian Far East. The aim of this course is to teach you how to recognize attempts at manipulation, persuasion and propaganda. It indirectly concerns manipulation in everyday life and between people, as well as methods of political PR and marketing, but its main focus is state-sponsored propaganda. How did countries come to the need to shape the perception of the world by their citizens? What are their goals? In a strict sense, suggestion and propaganda has haunted us since childhood, starting with the language we speak, but this course is dedicated to studying the development of the most successful propaganda machine of our time, which belongs to the United States. Its methods are borrowed by other countries, thousands of works by historians, political scientists, and cultural scientists are devoted to its analysis. We will consider its path, study the canons of propaganda, strains, genres and schools of propaganda work. The United States was chosen as a model because their methods are the most popular, but our task is to understand how state propaganda machines generally function, what mistakes in our thinking patterns they use, what advanced achievements of psychology, neuroscience and sociology they are adopting and will use against us. |
| SEMESTER OF STUDY | Spring/Fall |
| COURSEWORK BREAKDOWN | TEACHING HOURS | ECTS CREDITS |
| Lectures | 36 | 1 |
| Laboratory / workshops | 18 | 0.5 |
| Self-study assignment | 54 | 1,5 |
| Total (1 ECTS = 36 hrs.) | 105 | 3 |
| GENERAL SKILLS |
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| LEARNING OUTCOMES |
This course will allow students to form an objective understanding of the development of the Far East in the dynamics on the example of various era: Russian Empire, Soviet Union and the post-Soviet Russian Federation. The course will help you understand the development strategy of the Far East of Russia and its parts at different stages of history and apply these knowledge in practice, including in the framework of scientific discussion. The course will show how to correctly identify external and internal factors that determine the level of development of the region in various historical periods. The course will also present students to modern research and will help develop communicative skills. In the course of training, students will be able to constantly improve their knowledge about the history of the region, argued and constructively defend their positions and ideas in academic and professional discussions. |
| COURSE OBJECTIVES | This course will allow students to gain a comprehensive understanding of modern propaganda on the example of the most successful and used worldwide American model. Students will learn about the most effective advocacy techniques used in modern realities, with illustrative examples, the main logical and psychological tricks used by both the United States and business and PR specialists. A step-by-step analysis of the development of propaganda will allow students to train their critical thinking and independently assess mechanisms by which a third-party agent tries to influence them. Students get sufficient information about the development of the science of persuasion and manipulation on the current moment they need to make independent decisions in life. |
| COURSE CONTENTS | |
| Topic 1: | Propaganda as a phenomenon in politics, war and in everyday life. |
| Topic 2: | Preindustrial propaganda: history and development. Emergence and development of propaganda as a phenomenon, starting from ancient times. |
| Topic 3: | American school of propaganda and its genesis — from the Committee on Public Information to modern "public relationships". American messianism and culture as a tool for propaganda. |
| Topic 4: | Early theory of propaganda: theorists of propaganda G. Lasswell, W. Lippman and J. Dewey, J. Orwell. "Magic Bullet", "Good Citizen". |
| Topic 5: | World War II — American isolationism and the fight against it. |
| Topic 6: | Technical means of propaganda. Television, radio, media, booklets, leaflets, posters, culture, exhibitions, activities of embassies and consulates and other ways of persuasion. Visual materials. |
| Topic 7: | The image of an enemy, an ally and the image of a citizen, a dissident are the key archetypes of propaganda work. |
| Topic 8: | Cold War and Ideological Struggle. As part of this lecture, students will get an idea of the reasons for the confrontation between the two military-political blocs, their goals and objectives, the situation that forced the opponents to abandon the use of weapons of mass destruction, which led to the improvement of the ideological and propaganda apparatus. |
| Topic 9: | Mythology of propaganda — "The Dulless Plan" and "The Communist Rules of the Revolution", "Brainwashing. Outline of the Russian Guide to Psycho-Politics”. |
| Topic 10: | Counterpropaganda and ideological sabotage. This lecture will consider ways to protect the state from enemy propaganda, persecution of dissidents, approaches to this activity in the USA and the USSR, as well as in some modern states. |
| Topic 11: | Globalization, Westernization, Cultural Imperialism are the reasons for the success of the United States. |
| Topic 12: | Protection from American influence — how Asia-Pacific countries react to cultural intervention on the example of Canada, China and South Korea. Mechanisms for protecting cultural identity: quotas, promotion of cultures of small peoples, localization. |
| Topic 13: | Future Hegemons — Will China Become the New Cultural Superpower? What should we prepare for? |
| Topic 14: | Formation of the image of a "default person" — how to prepare a cultural product that can be understood by a German, Russian, American and African bushman. |
| Topic 15: | Interweaving of advertising and propaganda — what messages, besides the desire to sell a product, are modern mass advertising promote. |
| Topic 16: | Famous cultural products of the Asia-Pacific countries — China, Japan and Korea: we analyze the value-ideological component of the works. How do they differ from American ones? |
| Topic 17: | The recipient of propaganda: what does it look like? How do different countries represent their consumers, and what is the difference between their expectations? Targeting in cultural messages of different countries. |
| Topic 18: | Extra-cultural propaganda. Humanitarian aid, "American home", cultural and educational exchanges and other, the most promising directions of propaganda outside of cultural intervention. |
| Topic 19: | The clash of civilizations and the transformation of the world order: criticism and discussions about cultural clashes in the present and the future. |
| Topic 20: | Internet and propaganda — "troll factories", fake news, the use of social networks and Internet platforms to spread their influence. Great Chinese firewall. |
| Topic 21: | The future of propaganda in cognitive biases and neuromarketing. |
| TEACHING METHODS | Assessment |
| USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY | Projector, software for presentations (pptx format) |
| RECOMMENDED BOOK AND JOURNAL ARTICLE RESOURCES |
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| THE GRADING SCALE IS AS FOLLOWS | ||
| Score | Grade | |
| 100-91 | Excellent | 5 |
| 90-76 | Good | 4 |
| 75-61 | Satisfactory | 3 |
| 60-0 | Unsatisfactory | 2 |
