Subject Area: Politics
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: Australian Studies; Globalisation Studies; International Relations

This is a course about propaganda, democracy and persuasion. Propaganda and public relations are essential to representative democracy yet they are seen as threats to democracy because of their perceived potential for lies and manipulation. Such modern perceptions are reinventions of the ancient dispute between rhetoric and philosophy. This subject disentangles such issues while exploring political rhetoric as a common feature of human interaction, the nature of rationality and truth in argument, the internet, and the public relations state. The history of propaganda since World War I forms the core of exploration. Satire is also explored as it is not adequately covered in some theories of democracy, even though there is a history of satire overlapping with propaganda.