American students can now get a certificate in ‘Trumpaganda, as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign begins a course on the subject.
According to a report by TheHill.com, students will examine Trump’s “war on facts, press and democracy,” during the eight-week course.
The class is offered through the university’s journalism program, the Daily Illini reported.
“As a candidate, Trump employed the most common propaganda device, name-calling, to define, degrade, discredit and destroy his primary opponents as well as the “fake” news media,” the course description reads.
Mira Sotirovic, associate professor in media, is teaching the class, and told the Daily Illini that students will look at President Trump’s strategies for dealing with the press to look how propaganda can exist in a democracy.
“Propaganda is effective only if it is concealed and camouflaged as something else, such as news, advertisements or PR releases, and it is critical to learn how to detect propaganda and recognise propagandistic features of any communication, including presidential,” Sotirovic told the paper.
Sotirovic contributed a chapter to the scholarly text: “Communication in the Age of Trump.”
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