21st Century Propaganda and Education – Friends or Foes?

Abstract

Today, in the 21st century, there are extensive discussions about propaganda. On the one hand, education can be used for propaganda but, on the other hand, education can cultivate skills, such as critical thinking, necessary to identify and reject propaganda. I set out to identify frames promoted by Sputnik, in the context of the Centenary, to identify mental models activated by the propaganda and those associated frames, and to determine if they are related to the educational process within the school. The strongest frame is a failure; however, we also identified attitudes of rejection of the approach of communicator but we cannot associate these attitudes with the school. We consider that school (at least secondary school and high school) does not cultivate enough elements of Romanian identity.

Keywords

• propaganda
• education
• propagandistic discourse
• mental model
• framing