Full Circle Associates

Wow, what a wiki-wonderful-page. Propaganda techniques - SourceWatch offers the a-b of propaganda techniques. This is just one part of an amazing resource for people who want to get to the bottom of public issues. I am heartened to see these resources and will point many to them (particularly the students in high school and college I have the chance to interact with.) There is so much out there saying how rotten the content is on the 'net. I say, lets learn how to dig down to the key issues. Resources like SourceWatch are part of that solution.

"Propagandists use a variety of propaganda techniques to influence opinions and to avoid the truth. Often these techniques rely on some element of censorship or manipulation, either omitting significant information or distorting it. They are indistinguishable except in degree from the persuasion techniques employed in social, religious and commercial affairs. Recently persuasion technology has come into common use, in all styles from digital image alteration to persuasive presentation and persistent telemarketing based on repetition, making these techniques impossible to avoid."

From an online facilitation perspective, we as facilitators need to make sure we don't fall into any of these traps. It happens. Being aware of them makes it a bit easier to stay out of the trap, or at least admit when we have fallen in.