Watch both of the McCain ads from the 2008 campaign and use the techniques worksheet to sort out which propaganda techniques the campaign employs in each of the ads. Choose one of the ads to blog about. In your blog, write about the techniques you observed and the effect you think they had. Also include your observations about what you believe the campaign was trying to communicate through the ad.
4 Comments
Dina Forer
1/3/2016 11:48:23 am
In McCain's campaign ad from October 2008, he uses several propaganda techniques to convince the audience that Barack Obama is a bad choice of president. The ad is one big appeal to fear, combining scary music, darkened, shadowy pictures, and frightening terms such as "domestic terrorist," and "radical" to frighten the audience into voting for McCain as the lesser of two evils. The ad associates Obama with Bill Ayers, and describes several instances when they worked together. By calling Ayers a domestic terrorist, and a violent left wing activist, and then associating him with Obama, these qualities are transferred to Obama. The ad also uses the bandwagon technique, by claiming that "we know.." various incriminating things about Ayers. This makes the audience feel like the whole country is worrying about this together, giving him a sense of security that everyone is in this together. When the ad references Obama's reluctance to speak about Ayers, this is a further appeal to fear, by making the audience believe that Obama is hiding dangerous information form the country.
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Ms. Frates
1/3/2016 12:01:20 pm
Great observations Dina. You've done a nice job breaking down the ad and showing how the campaign employed each of the techniques you've identified in order to achieve a desired effect.
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Chana Sandberg
1/5/2016 05:55:20 pm
McCain’s ad of March 2008 includes techniques that persuade the audience that America will be strong and not waver with McCain as president. The ad begins with clips of presidents, Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt, which create a certain similarity between Churchill and Roosevelt and McCain, that McCain has the same good qualities as them, the same ambition and the same hopes. It transfers the positive qualities of the two presidents to McCain, making him strong like them, brave like them, and just like them. McCain also uses card stacking, by emphasizing “never give in” and “never surrender”. He only supplies one side and repeatedly says this in the ad to make the people think a certain way and not give a second thought to the opposite. These phrases “never give in” and “never surrender” are also glittering generalities as the ad never adds any information about them like who will they never surrender to. They are very vague statements, but they create an image of bravery and an image of strength that appeal to the audience. Towards the end, McCain uses plain folk appeal when he states, “I’ve been an imperfect servant all my life,” which makes him just like everyone else. He is just like any other citizen in America, who has not done anything special for their country; he is just one of us.
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Chana Kaplan
1/5/2016 10:52:06 pm
In McCain's March 2008 his campaign uses propaganda techniques to make McCain seem noble and vigilant. In the ad, clips of Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt are juxtaposed with clips of McCain to transfer the image of greatness of these iconic figures from the past to McCain. In one instance the ad first shows a clip of Churchill saying "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender" and then the ad shows a clip of McCain saying "keep that faith, keep your courage, stick together, stay strong, do not yield, do not flinch, stand up, we're Americans and we'll never surrender." Because McCain uses language structure that is similar to Churchill's -parallelism and anaphora- and says similar things the juxtaposition of the clips of these two speeches almost makes it seem as if McCain finishes Churchill's speech. This blends McCain and Churchill together and makes them seem like equals as great inspiring men who have like minds, and who say similar things.
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