Media Literacy and the Engineering of Reality in Propaganda

Media Literacy and the Engineering of Reality in Propaganda

by Kimberly Barth, Arizona State University

Introduction

You are the target of a constant barrage of advertising, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation from sources you might trust. Your reality is manipulated and engineered by governments, companies, news media, and social media using words, images, and symbols.

Here is a quiz regarding current events. Tell me if you agree or disagree with each of these statements.

1. The Ukraine-Russia war started in 2022.

2. The Ukraine-Russia conflict is not a “war;” it’s a “special military operation.”

3. The U.S. is helping defend freedom.

4. Russia is fighting NATO.

5. Ukraine has been a democracy resisting aggression.

6. Putin is irrational.

7. Ukraine is run by Nazis.

8. Some Western journalists report favorably from inside Russia.

9. This is about democracy versus dictatorship.

These are loaded questions. Although you might say the invasion “looks like a duck” (war), “and quacks like a duck” (war), “so it must be a duck” (war), Putin has not formally declared war, perhaps because this word invokes certain international formalities like the Geneva Conventions. (Perhaps he is more cunning than irrational.) Some of the statements above are part of the American narrative. While a NATO country has not been attacked and so NATO has not formally entered the war as a whole (#4), many NATO countries are supporting the Ukraine effort with weapons and intelligence. Did you know that Ukraine was a Soviet Republic and after that struggled for many years with internal corruption (#5)? Do Russian citizens in Russia believe #7? Finally, #8 is true, calling into question their patriotism.

Significance of Topic

This article urges consumers to become media literate: Aware of propagandistic techniques meant to persuade or mislead. This article urges consumers to make informed decisions about the source and intent of statements made by governments, media outlets, and companies or organizations that proffer goods or services.

Broader Implications

The statements at the beginning of this article have been made or inferred by media from many sources on all sides of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Propaganda can take many forms, but as Wilcox (2005) defines it, it always has an intention to persuade: “The conscious or unconscious attempt to advance their cause through manipulation of the opinion, perception and behavior of the targeted group” and “by manipulating text, images, symbols, and data which distinguishes the act from other forms of conveying information.” A piece of propaganda can be misinformation (unintentionally misleading) or disinformation (deliberately misleading). Propaganda in media studies can also be classified into three categories: (1) White, where the speaker/writer is transparent and intends to persuade the recipient; (2) Black propaganda, which obfuscates the speaker or writer and deliberately aims to mislead the recipient; and (3) Gray propaganda, which may be misleading in that it might be selective about truthful points.

Propaganda uses various techniques to persuade or mislead the audience. A study by this author following publication of this article will search for a particular grammatical form to the techniques used in persuasion or obfuscation, such as the eleven techniques in Zubaitiene, Maliukevicius, Rizgeliene (2025): Appeal to emotion, simplification, doubt, ambiguity, flag waving, reductio ad Hitlerum/Stalinum, appeal to authority, repetition, band wagoning, and diversion (whatabout-ism, red herring, and straw man).

Call to Action

Raise your awareness of speakers’ and writers’ decisions they make regarding information dissemination by trying the internet game RigIt! (You play it in your browser, and it takes about 10 minutes. It has no advertising and does not require a login or password or any personal information.) You play the role of a candidate in an election, and you make decisions about dissemination of messages to the public. The goal is to win the election with a balance of popularity and credibility which are often at odds with one another.

This game is meant to bring awareness about rhetoric and propaganda. The overarching purpose of the RigIt! website is to demonstrate the effects of propaganda tactics to help you understand them and recognize them more quickly.

Call to Action: Media Literacy

You can be your own “fact checker” like journalists in fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact which uses the following five steps in evaluating a statement and rendering a value for its truthfulness on the Truth-O-Meter©: Choosing which statements can be investigated (an opinion can not be evaluated as factual); contacting the speaker/author; tracing false claims; consulting experts; and documentation of the fact checking steps in the report about the statement (Graves, 2017). Note that the qualification as an expert can be a hairy issue. Some propagandistic statements appeal to an authority or “expert” whose position or motives can be questioned.

Here are six categories of actions to take and questions to ask yourself when you face advertising or statements made in a public sphere.

1. Watch your emotional reaction to political or advertising claims or images: An impulse to buy, or feeling angry, afraid, outraged, or shock? Does this photo of a pizza below make you hungry or want to go buy one? Three researchers at MIT found in a 2020 study that “people fall for fake (but not real) news, in part, because they rely too heavily on emotion. . . Interventions that are directed at making the public less emotional consumers of news media may have promise in reducing belief in fake news” (Martel, Pennycook, and Rand, 2020, 18). I direct this caution to consumers of goods and services in the marketplace.

(This image was generated with chatGPT, OpenAI, 2026.)

2. Check the source of the information. Who or what organization wrote or published it? What is their reputation? Do they themselves cite verifiable sources?

3. What evidence is there to support the statement? Are there named experts or only vague references (“many people say”)? Are statistics cited? Can they be traced? Are images used without context? Beware when there are no sources; there are anonymous claims; or you see screenshots instead of links.

4. What information is missing from a statement or report? What perspective isn’t represented? Is counterevidence acknowledged? Are complex issues presented as simple?

5. Cross reference the information that is presented to you. Are multiple credible outlets reporting the same facts? Do fact-checking organizations address this claim?

6. Have images or videos been manipulated in a report or advertising? Have they been cropped to change meaning? Are they taken out of context? Are they edited or AI-generated?

Finally, educate yourself further by reading the American Public University library’s guide “How can I Fact Check?” for more ways to help you detect bias and find reputable sources in your perilous wanderings of the media and the marketplace.

Conclusion

Propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation are issued on all sides of any war (or conflict) and are also used in advertising goods and services to consumers. This article has suggested numerous tools, techniques, and approaches to analyze information, statements, and advertising for making decisions on the origins, intent, and reliability of what you read, hear, and see.

Summary of Tools You Can Use

Understand and apply H. Paul Grice’s Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Manner, and Relevance (edited out of this article for conciseness)

6 media literacy points above

The online game Rig It!

Ask yourself if this is propaganda that is misinformation (unintentionally misleading) or disinformation (deliberately misleading)

Is this propaganda classified into any of the three categories: (1) white where the speaker/writer is transparent and intends to persuade the recipient; (2) black propaganda obfuscates the speaker/writer and deliberately aims to mislead the recipient; or (3) gray propaganda may be misleading in that it might be selective about truthful points.

American Public University System’s library guide “How can I Fact Check?”, to detect bias, find reputable sources, and more

Understand techniques of persuasion or obfuscation, such as: Appeal to emotion, simplification, doubt, ambiguity, flag waving, reductio ad Hitlerum/Stalinum, appeal to authority, repetition, band wagoning, diversion (whatabout-ism, red herring, straw man) (from Zubaitiene, Maliukevicius, Rizgeliene [2025]).

References

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