If you work in communications, you are not immune to propaganda. In fact, you’re likely to be a target for those who want to influence the public’s perceptions of your company or organization. As the recent presidential election showed us, it doesn’t take much misinformation for people to form an opinion that they might regret later on. So how do you avoid this? The answer is simple: You need a propaganda-proof communication strategy!
To create a strategy that will resist any misinformation, you need to be aware of the world around you. A misinformed public is susceptible to manipulation and falsehoods that can damage your reputation or organization’s credibility. You have an advantage over most people in this regard because you’re trained as a communications professional!
There are three key areas to keep in mind when it comes to propaganda-proofing your communication strategy. The first is being aware of the world around you and what the public needs, wants or fears at any given time.
This will help you identify opportunities for addressing concerns before they arise while also highlighting topics that might be exploited by someone with a different agenda than yours. It’ll make sense if you think about how political campaigns use this type of insight all the time!
The second area is building trust through transparency so people know where your information came from and why you’re releasing it at that particular moment–we live in an era where we question everything because there’s so much access to knowledge on every topic imaginable. This doesn’t mean you should share everything (as much as I might want to), but be honest and open about what you’re doing.
The first is being aware of the world around you and what the public needs, wants or fears at any given time. This will help you identify opportunities for addressing concerns before they arise while also highlighting topics that might be exploited by someone with a different agenda than yours. It’ll make sense if you think about how political campaigns use this type of insight all the time! The second area is building trust through transparency so people know where your information came from and why you’re releasing it at that particular moment–we live in an era where we question everything because there’s so much access to knowledge on every topic imaginable.
People are not immune to propaganda, but there are things you can do as part of your communication strategy to try protect against these techniques: first, understand who you’re talking with and why; second, build trust by being transparent about sources and motives; third, anticipate their intentions. You’ll want to look at ways you might be unwittingly incentivizing certain types of misuse, whether through internal processes or external design choices. The fourth tactic for combating disinformation involves educating people about how they consume information and what may happen if they’re careless online–everyone has a role in disruption resilience so we can’t leave it up to the experts alone!
