Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life

Overview

This Propaganda and Ideology in Everyday Life course from The University of Nottingham by FutureLearn explores the building blocks of our political views: freedom, community, place, justice and choice.

These words mean different things to different people – such radically different things in fact, that individuals, protest movements and entire states often go to war to assert their understanding of, say, freedom over somebody else’s.

Understand how propaganda works with our everyday beliefs

Over five weeks, we will explore how and why words come to mean such different things, across time and space. We will look at how we come to be political, and how political ideology and propaganda pick up on the words, images and symbols we use to express our own convictions and sentiments.

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

• Assess the usefulness of different academic methodologies for understanding ideologies

• Compare propaganda produced by regimes from across the political spectrum

• Discuss how political ideals and values travel between different historical periods and cultural contexts

• Explore how images and spaces reflect and shape ideological assumptions

• Reflect on the relationship between personal beliefs and political behaviours