Once you learn the propaganda techniques, you start seeing it everywhere in the mainstream media. I used to think about 10% of the mainstream media was propaganda, now it seems like about 90%.
This is one of my favorite YouTube videos. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KewaCcYF9nY
All media is owned by probably 5 people....but the general population eats that shit up and seems to get offended if you inform them of that.
I think it heavily depends on what media you see. The best journalism generally avoids it (i.e., the straight news side). Most journalism isn't in the top few percentile, but you don't need to read anything less than the best. I stick to the best, and when I encounter lesser stuff (e.g., I was visiting relatives and CNN was on TV), it's shocking and depressing how obviously bad it is. (BTW, one good source I discovered on that trip: BBC World News television - actually excellent cable news!)
But the opinion pages of even the best news sources (e.g., NY Times, Wall St Journal) are 99% exercises in propaganda; it almost defines opinion in the news. It's disgusting to me that they brazenly deceive their readers, but it's ok because it says 'opinion'.
However, where I see propaganda far more is online, not in the news media. I see it comments and blog posts, etc., including in this forum, sadly. The focus on the professional news media is odd to me; and in fact, and ironically, de-legitimizing the professional news media is a widespread propaganda campaign from a specific political grouping.
By nature of their primary funding source (a "tax" levied on those who watch TV in the UK through the government, which thus controls their purse strings), they tend to be very soft on whoever the governing party is, especially at present. For one, Laura Kuenssberg, their political editor, has had a lot of allegations of bias against the current opposition party, some of which have been upheld in enquiries. She's also ended up serving as an unofficial mouthpiece for leaks from the conservative party on a number of occasions, parroting party talking points uncritically.
It was the very definition of propaganda: clearly biased, obviously wrong to anybody who has the slightest idea about finance and obviously working hard to push a foregone conclusion against an imagined enemy ("The Rich").
To my dismay, mainstream media, including the BBC, picked up the story as if it was anything else than bad journalism, thus offering it credibility. Because as flawed as it was, it served their cause.
That repeats what a blog post on HN's front page said, but that doesn't make it true. It was the blog poster who didn't understand finance, as many on HN commented, and their argument was weak in many other ways. Also, the conclusion about ProPublica's motives has no evidence - even if the article is inaccurate in that way, there are many possible reasons why. It's an appeal to emotion when we start saying "the slightest idea", "obviously", and "imagined enemy", not to fact and reason.
Even the allegations don't necessarily fit the definition of propaganda; bias or even deceit are not necessarily propaganda.
Why are people so ready to believe that a carefully researched story, rich in evidence, is wrong and take at face value a ranting blog post, with no evidence or research, by some anonymous person?
The answer is, that is how propaganda works: An appeal to emotion, and many other tactics described in the OP, were in that blog post. That is killing our society, IMHO.
There is obviously some overlap. Propaganda is inherently opinionated and basic communication techniques used to convey any story of course also work with propaganda.
This is not about differences of opinion. It's about whether the population is allowed to have an independent opinion at all.
In the US it simply isn't. There's a gigantic shrieking fog-horn of pro-corporate anti-democratic extremism on one side, and a smaller but more shrill progressive air horn on the other.
Between those two it's very hard to debate anything on its merits. Most positions are tribally one-vs-the-other, wrapped in triggering rhetoric and imagery, and powered by stock cut-and-paste memes, opinions, and predigested talking points.
None of that is about communication.
There are reasons for all of this. Some are reasonable, some are toxic. But that's a different issues.
It doesn't change the fact that propaganda is the default media mode in the US - not just in the mainstream media and in advertising, but also in the form of the interactions and quality of relationship that are typically promoted on social media.
My point (in response to the parent comment stating that 90% of all "mainstream media" is propaganda) is that the assertion "90% of mainstream media is propaganda" seems to be stretching the definition of propaganda from the reasonable one which you have brought up to something more like "propaganda is rhetoric to promote beliefs".
To me, that original comment seems to be more similar to weaponized rhetoric (in this case, designed to promote the belief that "mainstream" media is untrustworthy) than to earnest communication or expression of opinion.
It's pretty ambiguous: Where do you draw the line between them, and what evidence do you have about their relative reliability. The professional journalism I see, e.g. news sections in established newspapers, is far more accurate and honest than the non-mainstream stuff I see.
But it's not true. There actually is bias and subjectivity, and various degrees of them.
Edit: Finally when we got an actually interesting topic to discuss among the ocean of controversies everyone forgets in a week and tech equivalents of cute animal pictures, mods suddenly decided to limit my account and I can no longer respond to anything. I don't want to deal with this BS, bye.
Last response, since I can't respond directly to shuntress:
Feel free to post examples of right-leaning media doing it. Like for example the mask idiocy, because your example doesn't make any sense. As I said, it wasn't my intention on picking on the left here. It's just that the 'mainstream' right don't have the 'activist spirit' like the left or the fringes have, so it happens behind the closed doors and saying the same about the right would be technically a mere speculation on my part. Activism on the other hand happens out in the open on the internet and you can see all the tactics for yourself. Also I'd love to refute the 'wokeness' meaning 'being polite', but that would probably be a somewhat longer discussion and given the situation I'm unable to do it. You can thank the mods.
One tell is when they quote anonymous sources => propaganda. Another is using unconfirmed reports. Another is when the only source has a heavy incentive to misrepresent. Another is when the statistics make no sense, or do not support the thrust of the story.
It goes on and on.
This just shows a total lack of understanding for how journalism works.
You should try to consider what unnoticed propaganda has led you to (apparently) separate "wokeness," as a concept, from just "being polite" or "treating people with respect".
It is closely related to the similar discussions had over "political correctness".
Here's one example from PaulG: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1396769717805780994
As I wrote in the opening post, once one learns about how the propaganda is done, what the techniques are, you start recognizing it all over the place.
It's like when I took some courses in sales techniques. Then, I'd go to buy a car, and sure enough, the salesmens' pitches were right out of those courses. I never recognized them for what they were before.
Becoming aware of when someone is trying to manipulate you, how they are doing it, and why it works is kind of a superpower.
Especially regarding implicit bias. Implicit bias is specifically distinct from "regular" bias because is not deliberate and lacks intent.
The article: "Propaganda is information (delivered through any medium) designed to persuade, manipulate emotion, and change opinion rather than to inform using logical truths and facts."
The dictionary: "information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view."
Not at all. In fact, effective propaganda will have its targets repeating it explicitly and internalizing it as a frame to other things. If nobody did that, propaganda wouldn't matter.