Games of Persuasion : Exercises in Media Literacy

Like rain, the media overload pours over us each day, each hour, each waking moment of our lives. One way to cope is to withdraw from the world to a faraway island unhooked to any satellite. Another way is to grapple with the media as so to understand the nuts and bolts of the persuasive messages that relentlessly hammers us at home, even at school, on the job and at our getaway vacation. On TV and the Internet ads never tire of repetition. But to viewers of these messages, they appear as so many headache-hammers inflicting true pain. Therefore, on the premise that the best defense is an offense, every citizen and consumer must go on the offense. How? By creating mentally a number of hypothetical ads using all the tricks of the craft of the trade. Practice makes perfect!Hence, the "edge" need not remain always with Madison Avenue, public relations specialists, lobbyists, single-issue advocates, politicians and other practitioners of persuasion. In turn, the citizen and consumer have their ready vaccine, their firewall against unwanted manipulation. To that end, citizens and consumers need their booster shots of protection in the propaganda wars. This work addresses those needs. AUTHOR BIO: Currently, the writer is at work on a primer on problem solving. Formerly, he taught history and economics on the secondary level, and was an occasional university instructor. As to education, he received from the University of Washington his master's in economics and a doctorate in the history of education.