Propaganda – Be Aware!

Core features of the practice


  • Organisation:

    Institution name: Living History Forum
    Institution URL: https://www.levandehistoria.se
  • Format:

    Workshop, Exhibition
  • Target population:

    Students
  • Cost (per practice):

    Free
  • Setting:

    Your institution
  • Themes:

    Remembrance education and/or history education, Citizenship/democracy education, Critical thinking
  • Core activities:

    Group work, group discussion, image analysis

Additional information about the practice


    Target population

  • Number of participants:

    Up to 34
  • Age of target population:

    16-18
  • Additional specifics:

    National/local specifities (e.g. activity targeted to Swedish school students)

    • Components of the practice

  • Topics and objectives:

    The objective is to promote critical thinking and make students aware of ways to detect problematic messages in their own environment. The workshop is taking its starting point in historical examples from the Nazi regime as well as from the Soviet regime. Then the students are invited to study the exhibition, its pictures and texts telling facts about propaganda in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet society. In the exhibit, there is also a stand dealing with “ways to handle influence”. The students are asked to work in groups with a questionnaire. Within the workshop’s frame work there is also examples of current day’s flow of messages through different digital tools and discussions on how to define and handle this flow. Learning outcomes: Critical thinking, source criticism, knowledge of propaganda technics in the Soviet and the Nazi regimes in the 30’s and 40’s.
  • Materials used:

    Material culture, i.e., physical object or setting, Audiovisual material, Online material
  • Material produced:

    Written material
  • Sequence of activities - methodology:

    The workshop is 2 hours. We discuss the student’s thoughts about the term propaganda with an exercise containing pictures which are historical as well as current. Then the students work in small groups in the exhibition. The aim is to make the students find examples in the historic cases where people were subject to influence that had a strong impact on their lives and ways of thinking. This leads to discussions about how to know when you are the object of unwanted influence. Then the students discuss what significance the “us and them” has when it comes to being susceptible to influence. We talk about the “filter bubble” that we all carry in our minds and how this reinforces specific messages directed at us, and about the way message handling works in the digital world. It’s a dialog based method with open questions. At the end of the workshop session we arrange a “debate” that promotes critical thinking and awareness about the importance of stepping out of your own filter bubble.
  • Length of activity:

    Up to 5 hours
  • Is the activity digital?:

    No

    • Accessibility and replicability

  • Language(s) in which activity can be delivered:

    Swedish
  • Is specialist knowledge or professional training required?:

    Yes
  • If yes, which type?:

    Formal educational training and/or certification

Qualitative Details


  • Has this practice been evaluated?

    Yes
    • How many times?:

    10
  • By whom?:

    Informal non-participant observer
  • By what means?:

    Qualitative written feedback
  • Core content knowledge and transferable skills:

    Learning outcomes: Critical thinking, source criticism, knowledge of propaganda technics in the Soviet and the Nazi regimes in the 30’s and 40’s.
  • Indicators of success:

    Dialog based method with open questions, inter active, workshop created with an exhibition that constitutes an incentive to critical thinking.
  • Educational coordinator contact details:

    Name: Camilla Sjöström
    Email address: camilla.sjostrom@levandehistoria.se

Scalability

The RETHINK project is concerned with bridging formal and informal education. This section explores the factors that make a practice adaptable.


  • Key factors for successful implementation:

    Specific setting
  • Main challenges to teachers adapting this practice for their students:

    It's an exhibit with educational workshop, so you need the exhibition in order to do this specific workshop.
  • Availability of guidance/training/replication materials (and in what language/format currently):

    In June 2018 there will be a digital classroom material based on this workshop, in Swedish.
  • Other comments or details:

    .