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The role of propaganda and censorship is not as obvious as it may seem. At times, it is subtle; other times, it appears obvious. From the infamous propaganda arm of the North Korean government to the state-run media organizations in China and Russia, it is clear that the mechanisms and effectiveness of propaganda and censorship vary widely. During the height of propaganda in the twentieth century, authoritarian governments were able to craft strong, singular national narratives by propagating political messages in popular media while censoring those that conflicted with the government's line of thought. With the advent of the digital age, Russia and China have been forced to develop their propaganda strategy to combat the newfound power of the average Internet user, who can seek and share information at the instant click of a mouse. While the basics of propagandistic strategy have persisted, fundamental changes have occurred as a response to the paradigm shift in information sharing and seeking.
The Historical Height of Propaganda: The Era of Mao and Stalin
In Mao's China, control of media was so intense that arguably every flow of information in and out of the state's mainstream news was propagandistic. It was, back then, simply a matter of "thought work," the ideological reform of the propagandist's audience. In particular, the network of control the government had in overseeing popular culture was so complete that the public came only to know state-sponsored forms of entertainment. In particular, the Chinese government had complete control of the production and distribution of movies. While very few movies were produced during the Cultural Revolution, their consequences were immense, for films served as the main source of formal entertainment in both rural and urban areas. Harvard University Associate Professor Jie Li, a scholar of media cultures in modern China, explains that in Mao's China, "there was a conflation between entertainment and political propaganda because ... the only entertainment they had were these movies which of course had very strong political messages. In a lot of ways, propaganda equaled entertainment." The Chinese people were eager to view the productions, which depicted, for example, a hero that fights against the cruelty of a bourgeois landlord ("Sparkling Red Star," 1974) or the drama and eventual victory of the Communist...