My mother, born, raised, and still lives in Norway, was anti-mask during COVID and refused to take the vaccine because of micro-robots (and the scary 5G towers), so we all know where she stands in certain topics. She also believes that Zelenskyy is the reason for Russia invading Ukraine…
Anyhoo, I was talking to her then other day, and she told me that I need to stop reading anti-propaganda. I laughed and asked if she could explain it, which she, of course, could not, but she said it’s a wording being used online all the time. I don’t frequent the sites she does, and I’ve known she’s been reading conspiracies for at least 10 years, but anti-propaganda? Does words not have meaning anymore?
If you ask me, anti-propaganda is facts, but hey, I might be wrong, considering English is my second language.
If she has accepted that she is pro-propaganda then maybe you need to link her to the Wikipedia page for the word.
“Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented”
I’d like to add that Wikipedia itself, while an amazing resource, can be full of propaganda. I came across a page for an international organisation against chemical warfare and went to the edit history. Sourced additions regarding complaints by scientists on the ground in Syria that their findings were being completely misrepresented to show Assad was using chemical warfare were consistently scrubbed without any reason given.
It’s funny that I was actually looking at that page randomly while considering how to code a tool that would highlight the most recent (and therefore unreviewed) edits on wiki. I got the idea from a Defcon talk on how to counter and deal with misinformation. It’s ironic that in this instance, it was the more established editors that were propagating misnformation.
I like the Oxford dictionary definition:
“The systematic dissemination of information, esp. in a biased or misleading way, in order to promote a particular cause or point of view, often a political agenda.”
So, it doesn’t matter what the bias is. It’s still propaganda. The opposite of that would be a balanced view without any bias. So, would that also imply restricting to just factual information?