Age of Propaganda

When thinking of a topic, point, theme, etc. the one that has stuck out to me when reading “Age of Propaganda”, is the topic “to be forewarned is to be forearmed”. The reason this stuck out to me is because I can relate to this, and it all seems so true. What “forwarned to be forearmed” means, is member of an audience can be made less receptive to a message if the audience is forwarned that an attempt of persuasion is going to be made. This is saying that, if someone is told that they are going to be persuaded by someone before it actually happens, then they are going to be less persuaded than if they weren't “forewarned”. It is important because it explains how media persuasion influences different types of age groups. If people actually looked into this idea, it actually has proven studies that younger aged kids under 8 believe most of what they see on television ads. As people get older and start to grow, persuasion from television starts to go down. As they mention in “Age of Propaganda”, older people tend to not believe anything in the media. The whole idea of “to be forewarned is to be forearmed”, is evolved around persuasion. Almost everything is built upon persuasion, this idea just goes more into depth about how media effects different age and gender groups.

An example of “to be forewarned is to be forearmed” that is not in the book, would be something like if a person (no one specifically) goes to an AA (Alcohol's anonymous), and they are told that they are going to be persuaded not to drink anymore. This is being forewarned that it is coming and that someone will persuade them. I feel as if I have seen this a lot, where people get tickets for DUI, or underage, etc. and they must go to an alcohol class, and they decide that instead of listening to the persuasion, they automatically start to pretty much “rebel” against the persuasion at all costs. They know going to the class is only going to be people persuading about how alcohol is bad, so they go