Propaganda By The People
Thursday, July 16, 2009
What happens when the tools and skills of propaganda are available to everyone?
Rob Walker's article on the evolution, rediscovery, and recent remixing of this British poster keeps echoing in my thoughts.
Digital technology and the internet have made writing, publishing, journalism, photography, and video-making mainstream abilities. You no longer have to be schooled or experienced in order to do something that makes a significant impact on our culture.
And now, a generation that grew up hacking and customizing their MySpace profiles and creating lolcats is now re-purposing the skills once reserved for trained advertising professionals, and spreading their own messages.
The ability to combine words and images in affecting ways to communicate meaningful, powerful, and often humorous messages to a wide audience is going mainstream. Most importantly, people now have the ability to spread messages about things that are personally important to them and their own community.
(Remind you of a recent Levi's ad campaign?)
3 Comments:
Found you on twitter. Great post.
Do you think this ("And now, a generation that grew up hacking and customizing their MySpace profiles and creating lolcats is now re-purposing the skills once reserved for trained advertising professionals, and spreading their own messages.") is a good or bad thing?
I think you're confusing "more people" and "most people."
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