How Good is Propaganda?

In the previous post today, discussing the social media under-reporting of Russian involvement in the 2016 US election, there was a reference to a New York Times article on the images and messages the Russians used.  I had forgotten about it, but it is nice to look at it in context. 

Years ago, I had worked on some research in the use of computer images to influence users for advertising or persuasion, and this article reminded me of the outcome of some of that research.  The messages were interesting to a lot of users, but many of them did not motivate them to actually do what was intended.  They looked at them, but didn't take any action as a result.  Sometimes, we take the numbers of views as the amount of action taken by the viewers when that may not be a good caparison.  Sometimes, images and messages can get a person who was predisposed to doing something to actually do it, but many more times it does not work. 

I went back to an article I saw earlier this year on getting views on Google. and it made more sense in this context.  It is possible to drive views using various techniques but it is not as easy to get action from those views.  Back in college I wanted to be a Marketing person (for my undergraduate years) where messaging really matters.  You have to get people to buy your product, not just enjoy the commercial.  Yet, most people cannot even remember the name of the product when the commercial is over.  They really don't care if you drink that beer, but they do care that you buy it.  I think the Russians are doing the same thing with the idea that their campaign is successful if lots of people view their images and messages. 

A lot of that comes from thinking the American public are a bunch of ignorant yokels.  Hillary Clinton called a bunch of them "deplorables"  and suffered for it.  If you look at the images and messages in the New York Times article, you find very little action being proposed.  In only a few of these cases was there any demonstrations or money raising campaigns that came from anything the Russians did.  The Democrats in this country seem to believe the Russians helped throw the election to President Trump, but if you look at those messaging techniques, it seems unlikely that they produced any outcome like that.