Likiyoshi's

Semiotics have been playing a huge part in political propaganda, it gives meaning to the visual art and most importantly, persuade people to put their trust on certain people who is going to be the leader of the country. 'Thomas W.J. Mitchell defined these powers as power of illusionism and power of realism, or in other words, power of spectacle and power of surveillance' (Teikmanis. A, 2011). When Bernie Sanders was running his presidential campaign in year 2016, the poster 'Not Me, Us' was used.  In this poster, we could see a man holding up his hand, words 'Not Me, Us' on the top left and a lot of different colour of human's silhouettes. As we can see, the man holding up his hand must be Bernie Sanders since he's the one who is running the presidential campaign. The words 'Not Me, Us' would act as a denotation in the poster since the message is straight-forward which means Bernie Sanders would be the president who always put his people...

During the World War II, America had produced propaganda posters 'as major sources of propaganda for perpetuating the government-desired messages and attitudes during the war' (Foley. C, 2015). The posters were usually used to encourage people to do their part according to their abilities. The poster above was sponsored by The Office of War during 1943. It was printed for the War Manpower Commission. The posters has a American flag at the background, two men building something, and a sentence which writes 'United We Win'.  The symbolic signs in this poster is the two men which one of them is an African-American and the other one is a Caucasian. It is telling the citizens that despite the difference such as races or religions between people, they should work together and contribute to the country. And both of them are working on the same job which means no discrimination. And the America flag at the background is symbolic 'because it flies over both men equal...

When Mao Zedong was the president of China, he launched a revolution which is called Cultural Revolution. Cultural Revolution is to ' purge the “impure” elements of Chinese society and revive the revolutionary spirit that had led to victory in the civil war 20 decades earlier and the formation of the People’s Republic of China' (History, 2009).  This ideolody was mostly propagated by the posters. T his revolution has caused one million death toll and it also ' encouraged the eradication of the “Four Olds”—old “things, ideas, customs, and habits,” through which classical literature, art, and architecture were damaged or destroyed' (Burgess. A, 2018). The poster above is in black, white and red colours and the sentence on that poster means 'Chairman Mao leads us to advance'. The people below are looking forward and some of them are holding a book which is 'Little Red Book' by Mao Zedong. It ' contains 267 aphorisms from the Communist Chinese lead...

Silence Propaganda has been using since the World War 2 until now. 'That is evident in autocratic regimes: in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, but also in present-day states like China, Iran, or North Korea, huge state efforts are made not only to propagate the ideological tenets of the regime, and not only to detect, censure, and repress dissidents, but also and especially to make sure that people keep silent about certain areas of private and public life' (Leone, M. 2017). To make sure the people keep silent during the World War 2, they made posters or even postcard for the soldiers to remind their nation about it. Most of the posters and postcards had used denotation and connotation in it. For example, this postcard  made by Italian Fascist which shows two men talking and a man reading newspaper at the back and also with a sentence 'Il nemico vi ascolta' which means 'the enemy listens to you'. The sentence would act as a denotation because it is the most s...

Semiotics is often used in political propaganda to attract the voters or either plant certain ideologies into people's minds.  Umberto Eco stated that 'semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as  a  sign’. It involved the study of things that we refer as 'signs' in our everyday life, their meanings and the way they are presented. We will take the propaganda during Leninism in Soviet Union as an example. Vladimir Lenin who was the Soviet Union politician said that ‘genuine art is one expressed so clearly, that it is perceivable for everybody. Its topic is something more sublime and important for the mass of workers rather than the idle minority’. That is why the messages conveyed through the visual arts during Leninism is easily comprehended by their nation, not just only the upper class, but to all citizens. This poster is created during the Leninism. The words on the posters are 'Long live Marxism-Leninism'. Their signs in their visua...