Propaganda's Value

"Credibility is created by carefully managing the situation so that the star of the event, the communicator, looks just the way he or she is supposed to look - likeable, credibile, strong, expert, or whatever image is needed at the time. Once the image is created in the form of a celebritiy or politician, then it can be bought and sold like a commodity to advance any cause that has the resources to purchase the "rights" to the image."

Age of Propaganda, Pratkanis and Aronson, 2002

An Image can be created for any communicator including a media source.

A guy said to me the other night "you've got too much psychology on your blog". I don't think I have enough! Here are a few others who think psychology is interesting:

Norm quotes from an obituary:

"But Strawson argued that sentences are not in themselves true or false, simply meaningful; it is the statements that they are used to make that are true or false."

Dr. Sanity wonders if the "antique media" will back down when clear evidence of WMDs goes mainstream:

"Think of the "pre-reactions" as their way of being paranoidly proactive about news that exposes them for the complete idiots they are."

Mystery Pollster has an interesting article about American research studies of blog reading.

"Yes, MP is a blogger, and so he certainly appreciates Lydia Saad's final acknowledgment that despite the relatively low readership, blogs may still exert a "disproportionate influence...on opinion leaders, political insiders, and modern news media."

"But oh for some empirical data to test that hypothesis."

The statistics for my blog fascinate me. Everyone I ask directly says "I haven't read your blog in months". I get one or two comments from friends a week, that's it. Yet I get about 1,000 visitors a week. As I understand it, this is small potatoes in the blog world but fine by me! I'm still new to this and glad for the chance to practice under the radar.