Course Description & Objectives:

CMN 456 is one of three introductory level courses in the Department of Communication.  It is required of all Communication majors.  CMN 456 is also offered as  a “Humanities” course in the Discovery Program.  “Propaganda & Persuasion” is the study from a theoretical, historical, critical, and ethical perspective of attempts by human beings to use communication to influence the attitudes, opinions, judgment, and conduct of other human beings.  We will undertake an introductory study of the discipline of rhetoric, and examine an approach to the persuasive use of language, argument, and emotion in various political, legal, social, and cultural situations.  In addition, we will study various examples of propaganda, and examine how that communication phenomenon induces habits of collective thought and behavior that are often accepted uncritically or perceived as “natural” in our contemporary social, political, and economic culture.

Textbooks:   

Aristotle, Rhetoric & Poetics, trans. By W. Rhys Roberts, (New York: Modern Library, 1954).

Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928; Brooklyn, IG Publishing, 2005).

Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage, 1973).