What do you think?
Rate this book
Language and Literacy
Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education for a Digital Age
Media literacy educators have always insisted that we are both creators and receivers of media messages. The truth of this is even more apparent in today’s digital environment, with children and adults alike participating in a ubiquitous, nonstop stream of social media. Clearly, students need the tools to interpret news and information critically—not just for school but for life in a “post-truth” world, where the lines blur between entertainment, information, and persuasion.
Renee Hobbs demonstrates how a global perspective on contemporary propaganda enables educators to stimulate both the intellectual curiosity and the cultural sensitivities of students. Replete with classroom and online learning activities and samples of student work, Mind Over Media provides a state-of-the-art look at the theory and practice of propaganda in contemporary society, and shows how to build learners’ critical thinking and communication skills on topics including computational propaganda, content marketing, fake news, and disinformation.
Renee Hobbs demonstrates how a global perspective on contemporary propaganda enables educators to stimulate both the intellectual curiosity and the cultural sensitivities of students. Replete with classroom and online learning activities and samples of student work, Mind Over Media provides a state-of-the-art look at the theory and practice of propaganda in contemporary society, and shows how to build learners’ critical thinking and communication skills on topics including computational propaganda, content marketing, fake news, and disinformation.
368 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2002
20 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 14, 2023
Such a wonderful book to understand how propaganda works nowadays and the importance of media literacy education. This book should be widely read for researchers and teachers.
May 20, 2022
A terrific, timely primer on the world of modern-day persuasion of benefit to teachers (and anyone else interested in learning more about the topic).
July 4, 2023
The book is well-researched. I am SHOCKED at what I didn’t know. I wanted to learn as much as I could about Hobbs, because her facts are quite eye-opening. Her opinions on the previous president are also clear - lol. I do feel the author repeats herself a bit, but maybe it’s that earlier in the book, she introduces examples and then explains them further in later chapters.
The book really made me consider how I can help educate my students and children without shoving information down their throat. TV, news, books, politics, social media - all of it is sharing information. How are we responding? In all, I learned a lot of terminology I didn’t know or needed a review of, for my own knowledge and for teaching. I feel more aware as I open a website or like a photo, or even participate in a family conversation about political drama.
Propaganda:
1. Activates strong emotions
2. Simplify info and ideas
3. Respond to audiences needs and values
4. Attack opponents - vilifying and creating controversy
Be aware of my emotions surrounding propaganda and how it impacts me
Many types of fake news.
1. Sponsored content. Ads that blend in and look natural.
2. Partisan news - produced in alignment with a particular world view. (Fox News or MSNBC)
3. Conspiracy theories and pseudoscience
4. Parody, satire, hoaxes, and memes - highly valuable so that we can freely critique current events (through humor) - book GO ASK ALICE
5. Bots, trolls (fake identities), and sock puppets - depend on disguise
6. Government sponsored news (Russia today)
Errors in journalism:
Budget pressures, time pressures to share stories.
Frames are rhetorical devices that guide the audiences thoughts. Language is a form of social control. Word choice influences human behavior.
If you are the first to reveal a story, you can frame people’s thoughts.
Misleading PR makes people doubt the medical professionals.
The Epic Times newspaper we got in our mailbox.
The Drudge Report: wellspring of conservative media.
Partisanship is not a boogieman to be feared. Examples of immigration: partisan news does not lead to polarization. Trump saying Obama was born elsewhere.
People stick to a narrow range of news places for their info, choosing to listen to and watch the ones that support what they believe, instead of vice versa.
How do teachers teach partisanship?
News quality chart. Charts represent POV of people who created them.
Confirmation bias - I go to the sites I know that confirm the news I know, even if it’s bad
We only think deeply about the things we care about emotionally.
Fact vs opinion
Reason vs emotion
Entertainment and Education as propaganda:
North Korea and China blocking shoes but using thumb drives to not get caught. Exposure to foreign media isn’t bad.
Just because something reaches a large mass of people doesn’t mean it is propaganda (like the weather).
Teaching, preaching, selling, publicizing…. are close to propaganda. Not easy.
What’s the difference between indoctrination and education? (For patriotic and obedient citizens - like in China/textbooks).
Education is not indoctrination when it activates critical thinking and encourages the exploration of multiple points of view.
Teachers claim to want open discussion, but do they get uncomfortable when students disagree? Teachers are human, but we can’t constrict students from thinking for themselves.
WOW - even the timing of TV shows is on purpose, to show families what a typical parent might/might not be like and to normalize values we don’t agree with.
Children’s literature as propaganda (it is double-voiced because speaks to parents and children): offers moral messages, social codes, and ways of thinking.
Books about thumbs being cut off after the child sucked on it - teaching a lesson, but scary. Countries around the world have their different stories.
The book that most influenced the war - Mein Kampf (Hitler) - was written by a man who hated books enough to burn them. Ironic. After the war, books were written to try to replace the bad emotions from WW2 Nazi experiences.
Before every movie showed in Germany, a news reel or info piece (rewriting history - like how bad Polish people were) was required to be played so that “facts” were in the back of the mind while movie played.
Impressions about the armed services as propaganda: (the use of military equipment and personell) The military allows that IF move producers present the armed services in the right light. DOD or CIA has control over some of the info, which makes it pro-American but sometimes horrifying on the facts, like killing bin Laden. Some countries do not allow movies like this (object to it) because it reinforces mistrust and promotes violence.
Education: Dr. Seuss: The Lorax book (creature who speaks for trees) - the Ohio river had burst into flames. Opposition about the timber industry and the way we aren’t taking care of the environment. Very controversial.
In high school literature classes, students have little choice in what they read. Across the country, most students are reading the same books, and teachers/parents allow books that they like/are appropriate/but aren’t teaching students to think.
Literacy has declined! More student choice needed. Reading stamina improves with choice. Teaching things like Mark Twain and Shakespeare do help the classics not be forgotten.
Orwell has a legacy (Animal Farm) - useful for teaching/short/entertaining. BUT? HAHA - now Napoleon can be compared to Trump? Trump uses the sentence structure often. Totalitarianism.
Simulations for teaching Animal Farm - rebellion activity, set up like Napoleon does in the book.
Humor as a propaganda weapon (vaccine) - memes? Satire? Parody?
Trump rallies - name calling, insults, gestures, eye-rolling, hoaxes, irreverent whit, memes: all supposed to entertaining and humorous but helps us enter into deep topics.
Scare tactics are used (like in climate change)
Data representation.
Data literacy (not media literacy) is the ability to gather, interpret, and use multiple data sources effectively to improve student learning. So is this past media literacy, because there’s so much data now?
How do we know what data can be trusted? WOW! No one has time to research every fact/statistic to believe. How can I know who to trust?
Habits of mind/expertise/introspective: I can’t be an expert in everything.
Decisions about who to trust are social practices made in a community (thought leaders).
So for parenting advice, who do I ask?
Cooking advice? Teaching advice? Family advice? Spiritual advice?
Different “experts” I’ve chosen to trust. GREAT ACTIVITY for my students to consider.
Expertise does not guarantee truth.
Textbook propaganda: is there overt propaganda being scooped into students’ minds as the guise of education. Blacklists of textbooks and novels - book banning!
How are African Americans portrayed in textbooks?
Is propaganda immoral? What are the ethics behind propaganda?
1. Truthfulness or falsity? IT CANNOT be indifferent to truth - lies/truth can’t be used only to someone’s advantage. Truth can’t just be a strategic communication tool.
2. Intentionality and strategic purpose?
3. Stance toward target audience
4. Beneficial or harmful?
Propaganda doesn’t have to be seen as bad.
All forms of communication are biased because they were created by humans!
Must be looked at case by case.
Communicator, subject, and audience - consider the relationship to see whether the propaganda is good or bad.
What is participant media?
College campus indoctrination: China has a Confucius Institute - schools all over the US funded by China to teach students in the US China policies. Colleges who are underfunded get support from China but then have to teach what they want taught.
Cancel culture:
The dangers of righteousness: demagogues promote hate for purposes of war and mass murder.
July 20, 2021
I’ve seen a number of studies that show most students are terrible at deciphering media in terms of its credibility, biases, and other propagandistic qualities. And as much as I would love to believe one approach, or one book even, would be enough to set them all straight, Renee Hobbs’ Mind Over Media reminds me that just isn’t possible.
Hobbs explores many of the ins and outs of how propaganda functions, especially in its newer forms and guises like viral videos, memes, and deep fakes. She discusses how it plays off of people’s deepest fears and beliefs. She also gives a serviceable enough history of propaganda going back to Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels.
But as she一and many prior political and communication theorists一elucidates, there is no one clear definition of propaganda. This really shouldn’t come as a revelation to anyone, but it does help explain how and why a discussion of propaganda gets so messy so quickly. Propaganda is often in the eye of the beholder and, therefore, usually boils down to all the messages that people of one political ideology don’t like. And while Hobbs does address this in regard to how it might impact local communities (that is, how parents would react to something they like being labeled propaganda), I never felt like she offered many practical solutions.
Overall, Hobbs splits her time between an analysis of the function of propaganda and how teachers can approach the topic. And some of the projects she details for teachers are quite helpful like Hugh Rank’s intensify/downplay formula as well as the many tasks that ask students to create a piece of propaganda themselves. This requires them to understand the common techniques before applying them on their own.
But other lesson plans she offers are pretty vague and unhelpful. For instance, when she briefly mentions the novel 1984, her plans include little more than asking, “What is power, and how is it gained and used?” and “Can individuals change society? Can changing language change people’s thoughts?” I understand these questions could be altered or enhanced by the teacher, but this is so basic, it hardly serves as a foundation.
This also gets to the heart of the problem I have with this book: it has too many target audiences, the layman and the educator. While there is good information to be learned, at some point, many of the lesson plans felt thrown in and sometimes didn’t even match the topic at hand. So since this book was never going to be able to address everything under the umbrella of propaganda, I wish it would have narrowed its scope down even further.
Hobbs explores many of the ins and outs of how propaganda functions, especially in its newer forms and guises like viral videos, memes, and deep fakes. She discusses how it plays off of people’s deepest fears and beliefs. She also gives a serviceable enough history of propaganda going back to Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels.
But as she一and many prior political and communication theorists一elucidates, there is no one clear definition of propaganda. This really shouldn’t come as a revelation to anyone, but it does help explain how and why a discussion of propaganda gets so messy so quickly. Propaganda is often in the eye of the beholder and, therefore, usually boils down to all the messages that people of one political ideology don’t like. And while Hobbs does address this in regard to how it might impact local communities (that is, how parents would react to something they like being labeled propaganda), I never felt like she offered many practical solutions.
Overall, Hobbs splits her time between an analysis of the function of propaganda and how teachers can approach the topic. And some of the projects she details for teachers are quite helpful like Hugh Rank’s intensify/downplay formula as well as the many tasks that ask students to create a piece of propaganda themselves. This requires them to understand the common techniques before applying them on their own.
But other lesson plans she offers are pretty vague and unhelpful. For instance, when she briefly mentions the novel 1984, her plans include little more than asking, “What is power, and how is it gained and used?” and “Can individuals change society? Can changing language change people’s thoughts?” I understand these questions could be altered or enhanced by the teacher, but this is so basic, it hardly serves as a foundation.
This also gets to the heart of the problem I have with this book: it has too many target audiences, the layman and the educator. While there is good information to be learned, at some point, many of the lesson plans felt thrown in and sometimes didn’t even match the topic at hand. So since this book was never going to be able to address everything under the umbrella of propaganda, I wish it would have narrowed its scope down even further.
October 4, 2021
Wow. Propaganda disguised as a book teaching about propaganda. Clever.
June 13, 2021
This outstanding book is written as a practical guide for educators, but its value goes far beyond the individual classroom. Mind Over Media is a book full of hope and wisdom for these dark times. I found the international perspective enlightening, especially the case study of the Ukraine which is more on the front lines of the Russian information war than the United States. This book should be widely read!
August 25, 2022
I was expecting a book with neutral impartiality on facts and statistics, and that is not this book. I don't even mind a piece that is politically leaning more one side than the other, but it wasn't even close which lessens the credibility of the content for me.
It also made me look back and appreciate my political science teachers in school and how they were able to offer the class view points on all sides of the political spectrum.
It also made me look back and appreciate my political science teachers in school and how they were able to offer the class view points on all sides of the political spectrum.
June 13, 2021
‘The educator can help students see their own culpability in the dissemination of propaganda, learning to recognize “the enormous mischief and casual cruelty of our prejudices.”‘
#DeZinVanHetBoek #ThePointOfTheBook
#DeZinVanHetBoek #ThePointOfTheBook
January 14, 2025
Interesting
May 8, 2021
The other reviews here are not for this book: Mind Over Media, but seem to be about a copyright law book by the same author.
I found Hobbs' attempt to redefine propaganda as something positive when used "for the good" short-sighted. Who gets to decide what is "for the good" and for whom? Some aspects of this book could lead students to identify and analyze propaganda, but with a stated goal of teaching students to use propaganda to become activists, I draw the line.
I found Hobbs' attempt to redefine propaganda as something positive when used "for the good" short-sighted. Who gets to decide what is "for the good" and for whom? Some aspects of this book could lead students to identify and analyze propaganda, but with a stated goal of teaching students to use propaganda to become activists, I draw the line.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews