Using YouTube to Teach Presidential Election Propaganda : Twelve Representative Videos

concepts to fully understand the propaganda they encounter every time they turn on their televisions or surf the Internet during an election year. If students are to make informed political decisions as adults, then they must learn to decipher ways politicians manipulate media. The good news is that access to presidential propaganda has never been easier. The Internet, in particular, is a wonderful repository for examples of both historic and contemporary political television advertisements. In this article, I provide a starting kit for using You Tube to teach presidential propaganda by listing 12 well known political advertisements found on that website, along with a short description of how each represents a certain type of campaign propaganda. While many of these videos are from presidential elections that occurred well before current high school students were born, each represents a propaganda strategy that is evident even without knowledge of a particular election or candidate. The names of the types of propaganda are largely my own creations, influenced by my years as a high school U.S. government teacher and the various textbooks that I used.' Using popular commercial websites, particularly ones like YouTube that allow community postings, may pose problems for some educators. In fact, NovEMBER I DncEMBER zoo9 1m many schools block access to YouTube on school property. Certainly, many of the advertisements described in this article can be found on other websites or through a savvy Google search. 5 However, YouTube has the advantage of an easy-to-use search engine and a name brand that middle and high school students recognize. At the conclusion of this article, I offer suggestions for minimizing any risks associated with using YouTube in the classroom. Twelve Representative Videos Name Recognition "I like Ike" Eisenhower 1952