Tag: propaganda

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“Officially” is the new “literally”

“Labor, the party of the working class, has officially become the party of choice for intellectuals,” claimed The Australian last Thursday. Sorry, which “official” said this?

No, it wasn’t a Labor party official announcing a change in their funding source. Nor some mythical official spokesperson for “intellectuals” — could there ever be such a central organisation? No, the “official” is just the journalist who wrote the story, or his sub-editor.

In one way this is like that common mis-use of the word “literally”. As in: “Kevin Rudd was literally torn apart in Parliament this afternoon.” But there’s also some lovely propaganda at work — either because the journo thought it’d make it more dramatic, or because (heaven forbid!) The Australian is continuing its pro-Coalition stance.

Continue reading ““Officially” is the new “literally””

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Dead cat waving

Go read John Birmingham’s angry rant about the government’s recent straight-up racist demonisation of Sudanese migrants. I was so angry with immigration minister Kevin Andrews last week I couldn’t actually write for fear my brain would explode. Birmingham has let his explode — and the world is a better place for it.

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“Clever”, but too late?

Photo from government Climate Clever campaign

The government’s Climate Clever campaign is, apart from a wonderful subject for satire, apparently a nice attempt to re-associate the word “clever”.

As Possums Pollytics explains, it’s trying to re-frame the word away from “John Howard is clever” as in “tricky” to “clever policies on climate”.

Word association is a powerful propaganda weapon. Think Beazley and ticker, Keating and elitist, Latham and learner, and now Howard and clever. If the Libs could disassociate the word clever from Howard and re-associate it with climate change policies, not only would they neutralise the ALP attack, but would reduce the power of any residual word association with Howard.

A shame it’s probably way too late to make a difference. Possums also reports on the latest AC Nielsen polls with a simple “Business as usual. Nothing to see here folks, please move on.”

Mr Howard, please just call the bloody election. The longer you leave it now, the more you’re going to piss off the very people you’re trying to impress.

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How’s that whistle, little doggie?

Given the fascinating discussion happening in my piece about the Citizenship Test — and there’s plenty for me to respond to, I know, I’ll get to it — it’s appropriate to mention the Australia Institute’s new report Under the Radar: Dog-Whistle Politics in Australia.

You can download the table of contents and summary (21k PDF) free. The full report is $21.

Continue reading “How’s that whistle, little doggie?”

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The Citizenship Dog-Whistle

Video of Australian Citizenship Test advertisementAnother week, another big-spending government TV “information campaign”. This one’s for the new Citizenship Test — and gosh, that just happens to be a Coalition-specific policy and it just happens to be running when we’re not in an election campaign, honestly.

And last night immigration minister Kevin Andrews was seen on TV with a bunch of potential citizens — all of whom, by some happy coincidence, had reasonable English and were not particularly unphotogenic. But he was still defending the test.

This TV advert is little more than dog whistle political propaganda. That’s clear for two reasons. First, look closely at the script (below). And second, if you wanted to reach the people most directly affected, mass TV advertising is far from cost-effective.

Continue reading “The Citizenship Dog-Whistle”

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A Picture of a Ruddslide

Mumble Poll Mix, 23 March to 23 September 2007

Earlier today I nearly choked. Despite Kevin Rudd making some minor tactical errors, despite squillions of our dollars being spent on government propaganda, Labor’s primary vote has reached its highest level since Kevin Rudd took over the leadership last year.

54%! Factor in preferences and that means the 2-party-preferred (2PP) vote is 60.5% to 39.5% Labor’s way. Astounding!

The graph (right) shows Peter Brent’s meta-analysis of all the major polls for the last six months. Clearly, all this talk of “a swing back to Howard” is crap. They’re just little wiggles in a much bigger picture that tells a very clear story.

There’s always a big gap in the middle of at least 10 percentage points.

Brent reckons the weighted aggregate 2PP vote is 56.5 to 43.5 in Labor’s favour. If so, Labor wins two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

There’s lot more numbers and graphs at Mumble Elections and Possums Pollytics.