Socially Engaged Research

     Throughout recent history, posters and advertisements have been recognized as powerful tools of influence. Similarly describing propaganda techniques and acknowledging their use in the past describing marketing strategy is well documented on how to sway public opinion, individual choice and increasing even sales as to why one’s individual or group’s psychology is relevant.  How to harness this ability becomes even more prevalent as we study the past, such as at its highest form like Nazi influence; convincing mass population of righteous ideals so far from the truth genocide was justified byto some in Germany. Controlling our visual culture and understanding its effect on the human mind starts with recognizing our past and its potential. Controlling any media, radio, advertisements, and visual culture around us equips us with the knowledge of how it influences and can be utilized more than those it influences. As even Paulo Freire recognizes in Pedagogy of the Hope,

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          -If the great popular masses are without a more critical understanding of how society functions, it is not because they are naturally incapable of it—to my view—but on account of the precarious conditions in which they live and survive, where they are “forbidden to know.” Thus, the way out is not ideological propaganda and political “sloganizing,” as the mechanists say it is, but the critical effort through which men and women take themselves in hand and become agents of curiosity, become investigators, become subjects in an ongoing process of quest for the revelation of the “why” of things and facts (Freire,  P. (2021).

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      Knowing becomes extremely powerful as we recognize our past and now, even more with AI as a tool to keep those ignorant oppressed and controlled using the technology. Understanding these tactics and technology to our fullest critical capability becomes more important than ever to recognize prior to its implementation. As AI technology moves closer to our understanding of our own human development besides us also, it and then becomes more difficult to detect when it is used. Therefore, more imperatively, AI and marketing tactics recognized through cultural jamming can be recognized when we can implement creative tactics to question and investigate. Background and study of this influence is just now occurring as it is such a new and contemporary problem of ethics in AI marketing and influence. We can utilize Culture Jamming because we know it “is a new effective way to change share aspirations, express ideas, or criticize political issues or other forms of political associations” (Tibuta, 2016) Having our youth understand this, especially age appropriately as they develop in discussion, is vital to remaining critical, investigative, and free from biased influence.