Propaganda is the usage of embellished or otherwise untrue information as a means of promoting a cause, whether it be good, bad, major or trivial. It has been used for centuries and has only grown more prevalent in the information age, and can be utilized for any topic as long as you have something convincing enough to promote or discredit it with. You likely encounter a lot of propoganda in your daily life, and the prevalence of advertising links back to propoganda as well.

Propoganda is relevant primarily in our Literature and History classes, though it also came up in our art classes as well- with ChemVAS being one of the primary classes the Guernica project had been based in.

In World Literature, we were tasked with creating a propoganda poster, either with Canva, generative AI or hand-drawn, in order to raise awareness for a topic of our choice that would later play into our Guernica project.

For my topic, I chose to focus on global warming and the corruption of big oil companies. Global warming is driven by greenhouse gas emissions, causing extreme weather, rising seas, and ecosystem damage. Big oil companies fuel this crisis by extracting and burning fossil fuels for profit, despite knowing the harm. Their operations pollute air and water, destroy habitats, and endanger public health. Without urgent action to hold them accountable and transition to renewable energy, the damage to our planet may become irreversible.

Continuing on our propoganda unit, we also created PSAs based on another topic of our choice. Public Service Announcements are more specifically information-centric and generally truth-based than direct propoganda, however do often employ similar tactics such as exaggeration, slogans and direct emotional appeal to the viewer as a call to action. They can be used as a form of propoganda but are not directly propoganda themselves. I worked with Norah Dunlap, Titus Smith, Madison Morales, and Marisol Atencio.