The History of Advertising
As a discussion leader for this week, I thought the material my group and I chose gave a great overview of how advertising has evolved throughout the ages. In particular, O’Barr’s article does a good job of discussing the evolution of advertising in a way that is easy to digest and not overly convoluted as some scholarly papers can get. I thought my group did a great balance between having readings and videos assigned for the classes this week. I think the three videos for Tuesday paired well with O’Barr’s video and gave additional context to how advertising is today and the way it has changed since it became popularized and how it has stayed the same. The questions my group and I came up with were pretty good and lead to some great discussions. In particular, the question “How did advertising play a role in the rise of brands? What does the emergence of brands tell us about American society and life in the 1800s, and was the shift towards brands from generic products indicative of larger social changes in this period?” resulted in a great conversation about how brands have affected advertising as a whole and get consumers to buy in a certain way.
The History of Propaganda
The material for Thursday was a bit more reading-heavy, but my group still did a good job balancing it out. While there were no readings found summarizing the history of propaganda, the Fellows reading gave an interesting take on looking at the evolution of propaganda through the lens of linguistics and the way the word evolved and changed meaning. I think Fellows’s article also provided a reason as to why it is difficult for us to summarize the evolution of propaganda since the word as we use it today did not come into being until the 19th century. Therefore, while initiatives, such as Indulgences in the 13th Century, may be labeled as propaganda today, the definition of the word was different back then nor did it really exist. Our other materials for Thursday complimented each other well, with the infographic covering a brief history of propaganda evolution, and the Witkowski reading and the “Commando Duck” video giving a good idea of how the definition of propaganda was thoroughly solidified during WWII. The WWII material also led to a really in-depth and engaging class discussion about whether or not propaganda campaigns can be good since we usually have a negative connotation of the word and idea behind propaganda. I really enjoyed that part of our class discussion.
