March 2020, Dr. Colin Alexander1Senior Lecturer in Political Communications within the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University anticipated twenty ‘plays’ the British Government would use in its Covid propaganda – mirroring the wartime propaganda ‘playbook’ developed during the First and Second World Wars.
December 2021, in a PANDA Open Science meeting, he recapped before giving – in my opinion, one of the better talks on the psychology of what we are all being put through.
Ever heard of “self-haunting”? Me neither. But it explains a lot.
How will the Covid-critical be treated in a post-pandemic society? Unsure. But there are worrying undercurrents.
Both reckoning and reconciliation are needed.
Here is his original video from March 20202From Nottingham Trent University website.
… one of the highest achievements for the propagandist within the dissemination of mass communications is the successful transfer of a contested subject with a multitude of legitimate positions into the realm of public consensus wherein the vast majority consider alternative positions to be illegitimate and where some don’t even realise that alternative positions exist at all.
Colin Alexander, Jan 2021
Also here’s an article from July 2021 in which he explains why the UK’s “Freedom Day” is another example of Covid propaganda – and why greater ‘propaganda literacy’ amongst the public is important.
- 1Senior Lecturer in Political Communications within the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University
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