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Indeed, Any Painting Or Diagrammatical Work Can Be Seen As Expounding A ...

Indeed, any painting or diagrammatical work can be seen as expounding a particular view and therefore can be seen as a subtle form of propaganda or persuasion. The development of the mass media and the printing press allowed for greater amounts of information to be published to the masses in an attempt to persuade people of a particular view, ideology or belief system. The effects that this had upon the degree to which information could be disseminated, and therefore the problems that this caused in considerations of human freedom in the face of manipulation have to be considered in the effects that Luther's Bible had upon the spread of Christianity. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell (1992) comment that The development of the printing press was a quantum leap in the speed of communication, and in the sixteenth century printing speeds increased from about 20 sheets per hour to over 200 (48). The use of visual imagery was also important in creating a document that was entertaining as well as persuasive, and the effects that this had upon the schism in the Catholic church and the development of Luther's ideology in the Reformation was profound and wide-reaching in scope: early cartoons were able to convey in a simplified manner Luther's attack on the papacy and Catholicism, and greatly increased the effectiveness of his message (48). Indeed, the use of visual imagery, especially simplified imagery had the effect of making the work striking and accessible. It also had the effect of appealing to the illiterate, and to people who couldn't speak the particular language of Luther. As such, visual iconography and cartoons originated in the development of the printing press, and proved vital to the dissemination of persuasive materials in the time that followed.
The cartoon was also used as a propaganda device in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) as a means of persuading swathes of largely illiterate villagers to put up little resistance and to join their side. As such, the widespread use of propaganda can be seen as having a widespread history, and the First World War was certainly not the first instance of the use of cartoon imagery that depicted the enemy as bad: As an example, both sides in the Thirty Years' War, that titanic struggle waged all over Germany and Northern Europe by competing religious forces, turned out massive quantities of leaflets, pamphlets, and line drawings, including vicious caricatures of the religious and secular leaders (Jowett & O' Donnell 1992, 54-5).


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