Identify audience’s existing sentiments, opinions, and stereotypes that influence their perspectives, beliefs, and actions.
- Identify audience's existing sentiments, opinions, and stereotypes that influence their perspectives, beliefs, and actions.
- Since the objective of counterpropaganda is to influence an audience to reject a propaganda message, it must touch upon the elements of culture, belief and emotion that will result in such action. [1]
- The message elements will vary, but messages must always be designed for the individual target audience. [1]
Counteract propaganda pandering with counterpropaganda resonance
Propaganda principle #8 is Pander: Ignore intellectuals and reasonable arguments; target unthinking masses with powerful emotional pitches.
Well-designed propaganda must always resonate with the target audience. It may target their values, their lifestyles, religion, beliefs, manner of dress or speech, regional concerns, fears, angers, feelings of being overlooked or treated unfairly, or all of these. It will make them think or say, “Yeah. That’s right. That’s true. That’s my life.” It will speak to their hearts, rouse their emotions, make them jump out of their chairs and roar in agreement. It may bypass their intellect altogether. It will tread very lightly with facts.
Effective counterpropaganda must equally resonate with the audience by appealing to the same things: values, opinions, manners of speaking. The influence of rousing propaganda cannot be countered by dry facts; your messages of truth must stir their hearts. Hope can counter fear, appeals to virtue and cultural ethical credos can quell anger. Pointing out when, how and why the audience was lied to and manipulated can rouse anger against the propagandist and desires for revenge against their lies and unethical behavior.
When you have plenty of time, dry recitations of counterpropaganda facts may eventually win. When time is short, it will often fail.
Some Comments From the War in Iraq
The following are excerpts from Andrew Garfield’s 2009 article Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda: An assessment of the war of ideas in Iraq, published in Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, J. Michael Waller, Editor. Pages 181-196. Section titles have been added. [2]
We Must Resonate
The keys to a successful information campaign are to develop lines of persuasion and messages that will actually resonate with the target audiences, use culturally sensitive and relevant narratives, and exploit all possible avenues to reach hearts and minds….[It] must be timely, quickly exploiting all successes and rapidly challenging enemy propaganda before opportunities are lost and the lies and deceits of the insurgents gain credibility…..we simply cannot allow an information vacuum to develop, because it will be filled with gossip and with the lies of the insurgents and extremists….[It] will fail if it simply extols a government ideology and/or vague abstractions such as the benefits of democracy or a free-market economy….it must focus on what really matters to people – local and personal issues such safety, jobs and representation. [Expertise includes] the types of skills and experience found in the advertising, marketing, public relations, lobbying and political campaign industries, and within the broadcast, print and new media. [Page 182]
Adversaries’ Propaganda Good, American Counterpropaganda Bad
In the face of what can only be described as propaganda onslaught, we have demonstrated ourselves to be little more than dedicated amateurs in the war of ideas in Iraq, while our adversaries have shown themselves to be remarkably effective propagandists. This is nothing new for the western democracies in fighting insurgencies. [Page 183]
Coalition Counterpropaganda Make Things Worse
Most of the successes are advertisements designed and produced by the Iraqis themselves and not by international advertising agencies. However, most Coalition advertisements, which saturated the airwaves, lacked resonance and relevance; for years they were near-useless. Some Coalition ads actually have done more harm than good, causing mostly anger, incomprehension and derision. For example, the use, at great expense, of Hollywood style Matrix-like stop action cinematography, sanitized to avoid any portrayal of the true bloody horrors of a suicide bombing, had little or no impact on ordinary Iraqis who live first hand with the realities of streets running with blood from countless such attacks. Or the ad was seen simply as yet another example of none too subtle American propaganda. Either way, opportunities were lost, audiences potentially alienated, and money and time clearly being wasted. [Page 186]
Too Abstract, No Resonance
All too often, the lines of persuasion upon which the Coalition’s IO campaign is built to relate to abstract concepts such as the promotion of democracy, citizenship, or the legitimacy of the Iraqi Security Forces. Those issues have little or no relevance to the majority of Iraqis or are simply not recognizable to them. [Page 187]
No Resonance, Bad Rhetoric
Similarly, the Coalition continually uses meaningless rhetoric and politically correct terms to describe groups and events in Iraq, the subtleties of which are lost on Iraqis. The rhetoric and wording are the subjects of derision. They delude our own troops. Worst of all they hand propaganda victories to the enemy. For example, insurgents of all hues are now routinely described as “anti-Iraqi forces.” What does that mean? Coalition personnel are probably the only people in the country that think that the insurgents are anti-Iraq. Indeed many consider the Coalition itself to be anti-Iraq. [Page 188]
Handing Propaganda Victory to the Enemy
Early in the war, Iraqi men were commonly referred to as MAMs or military-age males. This was a dehumanizing and simplistic term that provoked anger among average Iraqis and desensitized Coalition troops to the fact that not all young Iraqi men are insurgents. Coalition officials and the troops a[t] large also refer to the insurgents as jihadists, hajjis or the Muj – all terms of honor in the local culture that bestow a dignity and divine legitimacy on the same adversaries we are also trying to denigrate and delegitimize. The Coalition’s information campaigns therefore need to do a far better job of linking Coalition objectives to the issues that matter to Iraqis, exploiting narratives that actually resonate with the people, and use terms that accurately describe our adversaries without promoting their agenda. [Page 188]
Ignorance of the Audience
The next shortcoming is the fact that too many Coalition campaigns are aimed at a generic Iraqi audience that simply does not exist. There still seems to be a general assumption that all Iraqis are broadly similar and therefore the same messages and emotional appeals will resonate with them all. In reality, Iraq is a highly complex ethnically and ideologically diverse – one could even say divided – country. [Page 188]
A Truism
In conflict the enemy always gets a vote. Winning the influence war ensures that its vote does not count. [Page 195]
Boko Haram – Don’t Spread the Propagandist’s Message for Them
The “Islamic State in West Africa” (ISWA), commonly known as “Boko Haram,” was founded in 2002 and is active in northeastern Nigeria, Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. "Boko Haram" is usually translated as "Western education is forbidden". The Arabic word “haram” means “forbidden, sinful, sacrilege, unclean.” The Hausa word boko means "fake” and is commonly used to refer to secular Western education. To the African locals “Boko Haram” means “[fake western education or influence] is [forbidden, sinful, sacrilege, unclean].” Selecting “Boko Haram” as the common name was a brilliant propaganda ploy by ISWA. [3]
The Western officials and press always refer to this band of murderers by this common name of “Boko Haram,” even while they (Boko Haram) have killed tens of thousands and displaced millions with their attacks. Thus the West repeats the ISWA propaganda that the west is evil. Saying “A village was attacked today by armed troops of ‘Westernism is sinful,’” is, to put it mildly, counter-productive, not counter-propaganda. At best this is a cause for laughter.
Our Final Note
In the battle between propaganda and counterpropaganda, the propagandists always vote first. Nullify their vote. Move the audience’s minds forward from where the propagandists parked it by engaging their hearts.
This is the fourth installment in our series on counterpropaganda.
Other reports and items of interest:
The Nine Principles of Propaganda begins HERE.
Trump - Our Psychopathic President begins HERE.
For a double-sided PDF copy of the principles of propaganda and counterpropaganda go HERE.
For a double-sided PDF copy of the twelve criteria of psychopathy go HERE.
THE NINE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF COUNTERPROPAGANDA
Propaganda is the backdoor hack into your mind
#1 Truth — Honest opposition is practical, moral, and unbiased.
#2 Focus — Address only one or at most two points.
#3 Clarity — Easily understood without further explanation.
#4 Resonate — Identify audience’s existing sentiments, opinions, and stereotypes that influence their perspectives, beliefs, and actions.
#5 Respond — Lies not immediately refuted become the audience’s truth.
#6 Investigate — Collect and analyze their propaganda to understand their message, target audience & objectives.
#7 Source — Expose covert sources of false propaganda.
#8 Reason – Expose their logical fallacies. Human cognitive biases for rapid thought response make us vulnerable to faulty reasoning.
#9 Disseminate — Share exposed propaganda with audiences not targeted; they can then recognize the lies and reciprocate.
Citations
1. Based on Wikipedia – Counterpropaganda. Retrieved 12-8-18 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpropaganda#Knowledge_of_the_audience
2. Garfield, Andrew (2009). Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda: An assessment of the war of ideas in Iraq (PDF). Published in Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda, and Political Warfare, J. Michael Waller, Editor. Washington, DC: Institute of World Politics Press. pg. 181-196. Retrieved 12-8-18.
Cited by Wikipedia – Counterpropaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpropaganda#Definition
3. Based on Wikipedia – Boko Haram. Retrieved 12-8-18 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram#Name