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Thursday, February 21, 2013

BB45: Psychological warfare

"In a socially-driven game environment such as EVE Online's, everyone has an agenda. CCP promotes its products and has an army of volunteers to do the same; corporations and alliances deliver entertaining recruitment drives, CSM election candidates solicit for voter favour, bloggers and podcasters opine to their audiences.

In this intricate web of communication, influence and control, what part does propaganda play in your game?"


I'm quite a new player so I have not had much experience in applying propaganda to my game in Eve, but I experience other peoples propaganda all the time in blogs, forums, mails, convos and local chat. 

A quick explanation of what I think two important forms of propaganda are:

1)Propaganda: can be described as form of communication that is aimed towards influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position by presenting only one side of an argument.

2) Counter-propaganda: can be described as form of communication consisting of methods taken and messages relayed to oppose propaganda which seeks to influence action or perspectives among a targeted audience
 
While propaganda messages may not always be truthful, effective counter-propaganda generally only broadcasts the truth

So... why did I label the name of this post as psychological warfare? Because the U.S Department of defense defines psychological warfare as:
"The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives."
I'll keep the explanation short and leave it at that so you can decide for yourself. To end this post, I will attempt to use some propaganda to explain my character's mentality as he interacts with the universe of Eve Online...

Fly like a maniac
Da Dom
:)(:
 

5 comments:

  1. I don't want a vocabulary lesson or to be told to decide for myself what propaganda is. I read blogs to get my peers take on a topic. Give us your take on it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a bit harsh Azalean - there's nothing wrong with a bit of clarification. The irony of your demand for more propaganda about propaganda is delicious.

      Delete
    2. Mmm... Much fighting spirit I sense in you

      Delete
  2. I was hoping to inspire open his flood gates of opinion. It was meant as a challenge. Challenge accepted?

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are a good leader/ladder aren't you? Inspiring others (including your competitors?) to express their opinions and "swim in the sea of information rather than drown in it"

    Now, while your at the stage in your game where you would use propaganda for good business management, I use it to get noticed because I understand that I am small fish in a pond full of giant prehistoric monsters who grab all the attention. In order for my business to grow and thrive in this kind of environment, people need to a) know that my company exists, and b) decide for themselves if the content/propaganda is worth paying any attention to or not.

    Using your descriptions in your post, I would view my use of propaganda as "aimless" with the "intention" of advertising myself and my stuff as a product. Therefore what I say and do can be seen as my own personal flavor of propaganda. A good example of this was a comment I made on one of Poetic's post's yesterday that was re-blogged by Ardent Defender and scored me some free advertising. It is my intention to "wage psychological warfare" because once people get an idea they enjoy into their heads, chances are it'll snowball.

    This post is counter-propaganda
    Da Dom
    :)(:

    ReplyDelete