Carol Forsloff - An email forward shows Hispanic teens lowering an American flag and raising a Mexican one, with a statement underneath about how disloyal this is and how the Arizona immigration bill is right but in a way that fosters not news but propaganda..
These email "news" messages are part of communication in the information age. In this case, the email with the image of Hispanic youth lowering the American flag and replacing it with an America one, was forwarded by a former school teacher, over 70 years of age, who runs an employment company in Yuma, Arizona.
Email communication forwarded one to another with "news" items like the one forwarded to a newspaper editor, circulate widely, becoming what people remember when events are recalled. That's because, as language experts tell us, powerful images are the ones most likely to be remembered and false information can become rooted in ways difficult to remove.
The message was forwarded at a time when the conflict surrounding Arizona's immigration bill began. It continues to circulate through the Internet, and as it does it continues to reinforce an image that arouses negative emotions regarding Hispanics and their beliefs.
In Mexico, Americans often live in compounds, cluster together for activities and often don't learn Spanish. In addition, these compounds are often identified as occupied by U.S. citizens by American flags placed outside doorways, on poles, on windows and on any publicly viewed area as a matter of pride. This is not, however, part of an email message about how various cultures interact in new environments, during early periods of assimilation especially.
Experts inlanguage and cultureremind us how vulnerable people are to the messages that are false or misleading or have the intention to elicit negative emotions as opposed to educate and inform.
Dr. Anthony P. Young, national president of the Association of Black Psychologists, tells us if someone has a preconceived idea about an individual, a group, an idea or an event, that if a person believes that a lie is real, it will become real in its consequences.
"Individuals construct reality in their own mind. If you believe something is true, it becomes true regardless of what the facts are," maintains Young, a specialist in forensic psychology.
Messages that come in the form of images with slogans, lacking author, title and detail, are defined by communication experts not as news items but serving only to propagate a belief, often false, and to that extent is propaganda and not news at all.
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