Chapter 13: Exercises

Print and Radio — The First Mass Media

Exercise 13.1 — Front Page Comparison: Framing the Same News

Type: Individual analysis | Estimated time: 60–75 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate

Instructions

Select a single day's news — any date from the past two weeks — and locate the front pages (print or digital) of two newspapers with demonstrably different political orientations covering the same event. In the United States, useful pairings might include: The Wall Street Journal vs. The New York Times; a regional conservative paper vs. a regional liberal paper; a national broadsheet vs. a local tabloid. International students may use equivalent pairings from their home countries.

Part A: Surface Analysis (20 minutes)

Create a comparison table with the following rows for each newspaper:

Part B: Framing Analysis (30 minutes)

For the same story in both papers, answer the following:

1. Equivalence vs. emphasis framing: Does either paper use percentage vs. absolute numbers? Positive vs. negative framing of the same statistic? (Example: "90% survival rate" vs. "10% mortality rate.")

2. Source selection: Who is quoted in each version? What are those sources' institutional affiliations and presumable interests? Do the two papers quote different sources, or the same sources differently?

3. Vocabulary and word choice: List five specific word choices that differ between the two versions of the story. What emotional or evaluative freight does each carry? (Example: "migrant" vs. "refugee" vs. "illegal alien" — each carries a different set of associations.)

4. Omission analysis: What appears in Paper 1 that does not appear in Paper 2, and vice versa? What is the effect of each omission on the reader's understanding of the event?

Part C: Synthesis (15 minutes)

Write a 200-word paragraph responding to this question: If a reader consumed only one of these newspapers for a year, what would they know accurately about the world, and what would they be systematically misinformed about? Be specific, using your comparison as evidence.

Exercise 13.2 — Applying the Propaganda Model's Five Filters

Type: Individual research and analysis | Estimated time: 90 minutes | Difficulty: Advanced

Instructions

Select a major news story from a mainstream print outlet (national newspaper or major news magazine) from the past six months. The story should be one in which the interests of significant corporate or government actors are at stake — coverage of a regulatory decision, an environmental report, a labor dispute, or a foreign policy event works well. Avoid celebrity or sports stories.

Apply each of Chomsky and Herman's five filters to your chosen story and outlet, writing a paragraph for each filter:

Filter 1: Ownership Research the ownership structure of the outlet that published this story. Who owns it — an individual, a corporation, a private equity firm? What are the owner's other business interests? Are any of those interests potentially affected by the story's subject matter? Write a paragraph describing what you found and what implications, if any, ownership might have for how this story was covered.

Filter 2: Advertising Identify, if possible, the major advertising categories for this outlet (look at a typical issue or the publication's media kit). Are there advertisers with interests potentially at stake in this story? Write a paragraph on what advertising relationships might create pressure toward or against aggressive coverage of this story.

Filter 3: Sourcing Analyze the sourcing of the story itself: How many sources are quoted? What proportion are government officials, corporate spokespersons, independent experts, affected community members, critics? Is the story's coverage dependent on any particular institutional source's cooperation? Write a paragraph analyzing how sourcing shapes the story's framing.

Filter 4: Flak Research whether this outlet or similar outlets have faced organized criticism (from advocacy groups, political actors, or media critics) for their coverage of this type of story. Has the outlet changed its coverage approach in response to past criticism? Write a paragraph on what organized pressure campaigns might be relevant.

Filter 5: Dominant Ideology What assumptions does the story treat as natural, neutral, or self-evident that are actually ideological positions? (Examples: that economic growth is inherently good; that national security concerns justify restricting civil liberties; that property rights override other considerations.) Write a paragraph identifying the unexamined ideological premises the story relies on.

Synthesis Paragraph: Based on your five-filter analysis, what systematic biases, if any, are visible in this story's coverage? What would a version of this story look like that had been filtered differently?

Important note: Applying the Propaganda Model does not mean assuming the story is false or that the journalist was dishonest. The model is about structural pressures, not conspiracy. Your analysis should be specific to the evidence you can document.

Exercise 13.3 — Historical Radio Analysis: The 1930s Archive

Type: Individual listening and analysis | Estimated time: 45–60 minutes | Difficulty: Intermediate

Instructions

The Library of Congress and the National Archives maintain substantial collections of radio broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s, many of them freely accessible online. For this exercise, you will listen to a radio clip from this period and apply the analytical framework from this chapter.

Finding Your Source: The following archives have relevant material: - Library of Congress American Memory project (memory.loc.gov) - Internet Archive (archive.org) — search "1930s radio broadcast" - The FDR Library (fdrlibrary.org) maintains recordings of the Fireside Chats - Several archives have recordings of FDR's fireside chats, wartime propaganda broadcasts, and commercial programming from the 1930s

Select a clip of at least three minutes from the 1930s–1940s period. It may be a news broadcast, a political speech, a commercial program, or a wartime public service announcement.

Analysis Framework:

1. Channel conditions: Describe what you know about how this broadcast would have been received by its original audience. Where would they have been listening? What would the listening experience have been like? What other media would they have been consuming?

2. Source and authority: Who is speaking? What is their institutional position? How is authority established within the first thirty seconds of the clip?

3. Emotional register: Describe the vocal qualities of the broadcast — pace, tone, pitch variation, urgency, intimacy. What emotional state does the broadcaster seem to be in, or to be performing? What emotional state is the listener apparently expected to be in?

4. Message structure: What is the core claim or request? Is it stated explicitly or implied? How is evidence (if any) presented?

5. Us and Them: Is there an in-group/out-group construction in this broadcast? How is it built — through vocabulary, through reference to shared values, through the identification of enemies or obstacles?

6. Contemporary comparison: Find a contemporary podcast or radio broadcast on a similar topic (political speech, public health messaging, etc.). In one paragraph, describe what has changed about the medium's use and what has remained structurally the same.

Exercise 13.4 — Fireside Chat vs. Goebbels: A Comparative Broadcast Analysis

Type: Paired listening and comparative analysis | Estimated time: 90 minutes | Difficulty: Advanced

Instructions

This exercise asks you to perform a rigorous comparative analysis of two uses of the same medium — radio — in the same historical moment: FDR's first Fireside Chat (March 12, 1933) and excerpts from Joseph Goebbels's radio broadcasts of the same period.

Sources: - FDR's first Fireside Chat transcript and audio are available through the FDR Presidential Library and the Miller Center (millercenter.org). - Goebbels's radio speeches are available in historical archives; translated excerpts appear in Richard Evans's The Third Reich in Power and Ian Kershaw's Hitler biographies. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org) maintains documentation.

Since you may not have access to Goebbels audio in the original German, you may work from transcripts and the contextual descriptions of delivery in the secondary literature.

Part A: Independent Analysis (30 minutes each)

For each broadcast, apply the five-part anatomy (source, message, emotional register, implicit audience, strategic omission), recording your analysis in parallel columns.

Part B: Comparative Analysis

After completing your parallel analysis, write responses to the following:

1. Medium exploitation: How does each broadcaster exploit radio's specific affordances — intimacy, voice authority, simultaneity? Give specific textual or delivery examples.

2. Honesty and omission: Each broadcaster omits information. What does FDR omit, and why? What does Goebbels omit, and why? Is there a morally relevant difference between the two cases of omission?

3. The parasocial relationship: Both broadcasts attempt to build a feeling of direct personal connection between the speaker and the individual listener. What specific techniques does each use to accomplish this? What is the purpose of that connection in each case?

4. The legitimacy question: Webb asks the class: "Is the Fireside Chat propaganda?" Write a 300-word response to this question, drawing on your analysis. Your answer should grapple seriously with both the case for calling it propaganda and the case for distinguishing it from Goebbels's broadcasts.

Exercise 13.5 — Group: Design a Propaganda Poster, Then Analyze Another Group's

Type: Group exercise (4–5 students) | Estimated time: Two class sessions | Difficulty: Intermediate-to-Advanced

Session One: Design (50 minutes)

Your group will design a propaganda poster for a fictional campaign. The campaign should be specific enough to make real design choices, but should not target real existing political figures or currently active political controversies. Some options:

• A fictional wartime government trying to increase voluntary enlistment
• A fictional public health campaign for a disease that disproportionately affects a particular group
• A fictional political party campaign in a country with a parliamentary system
• A fictional corporation trying to shift public opinion on an environmental issue

Your poster design should include: - A slogan (5–8 words maximum) - A dominant visual element (described in writing and/or sketched) - A color scheme and its emotional logic - An "enemy" or obstacle (explicit or implied) - A call to action

For each of these design elements, write a brief justification explaining what propaganda technique you are using and why you expect it to be effective.

Prepare a one-paragraph "designer's statement" explaining the propaganda goals of your poster and the specific techniques you chose to achieve them.

Session Two: Exchange and Analyze (50 minutes)

Exchange your poster design (including description) and designer's statement with another group. Do not read the other group's designer's statement until you have completed your own independent analysis.

Analysis tasks:

1. Identify every propaganda technique you can find in the poster design. Use the vocabulary from this course: framing, Us vs. Them construction, emotional trigger, visual dehumanization or glorification, false urgency, selective omission, authority appeal.

2. Identify the intended audience and the cognitive vulnerabilities the design appears to be targeting.

3. What information would a viewer need to resist the poster's manipulation? What inoculation message would you design for the same audience?

4. Now read the designer's statement. Were there techniques you missed? Techniques you identified that the designers didn't consciously intend? Write a paragraph on the gap between conscious design and actual effect.

Group debrief: Each group reports to the class on the most interesting gap between their own group's intent and the other group's analysis. What does this exercise reveal about how propaganda works — and how it is experienced?