Towards a Counter-Propaganda Approach to Democratic Education

• In Event: Disassembling Mis/Disinformation, Reassembling Democracy: Theory, Practice, and Possibilities

Abstract

One need not look far to find comparisons between the actions of the current administration and the historical establishment of authoritarian regimes (e.g., Applebaum, 2024). Such comparisons draw attention to the systematic dismantling of structures, institutions, and norms (Haggard & Kaufman, 2021) and highlight that the United States is currently in the midst of a struggle between authoritarian forces and democratic institutions. Of the many lessons to draw from these histories, we focus on one specific area where we feel educators can play a key role in the defense of democracy: effective countermessaging to authoritarian narratives.
Authoritarian regimes are accompanied by a sophisticated messaging apparatus that spews propaganda to promote authoritarian narratives and thought processes. Defense of democracy, including that occurring in the classroom, usually relies on appeals to high-minded ideals and presumably shared norms. In this presentation, we argue that these approaches are insufficient and that a direct focus on counter-propaganda strategies is needed. Towards this end, we present general principles of counter-propaganda along with examples of lessons that, we hope, undermine authoritarian messages while not exposing teachers to undue risk or requiring drastically different pedagogies.
In designing lessons with a counter-propaganda goal, we focus on several insights from prior counter-propaganda efforts (Pomerantsev, 2024), framed with questions for educators to consider:
1. Belonging is a primary need; good (counter)propaganda helps the audience meet this need. How do educators create communities resilient enough to resist authoritarian messages and promote belonging in pro-democracy communities?
2. Propagandists give people permission to indulge their inner resentments and repressed negative feelings. How can social anxieties be processed in healthy ways? Can some anxieties be harnessed for pro-democracy goals?
3. Propaganda provides the audience with social roles they can inhabit. How can educators help students recognize and deconstruct these roles?
4. Propaganda works to shut down independent thought and behavior. How can education help young people reclaim their independence?

Our team is currently designing lessons to address these questions. One such lesson asks students to deconstruct roles and cycles created by political provocations.
The lesson features a socratic seminar and would be appropriate for high school government, sociology, or psychology classes. The central guiding question will be “What is the value of political outrage?” To prepare for the seminar, students read and listen to a number of sources, such as a podcast (Vedantam et al., 2019) describing the cycles of online outrage, a short video critiquing “slactivism” (Dreger, 2018), and excerpts about how propaganda and social media shape identities (Pomerantsev, 2024). During the seminar, the teacher will prompt students with questions that attempt to shed light on affordances and limits of political outrage (e.g., What are examples of movements that have capitalized on public outrage? What can individuals do beyond merely voicing their outrage on social media? What if generating outrage is the point, for example “rage baiting?”).
More broadly, our hope is to generate conversation among attendees about how educators can undermine the authoritarian structures that have come to define American political discourse.

Authors

• Christopher H. Clark, University of North Dakota

• Mardi Schmeichel, University of Nebraska - Lincoln