MTVExit... an sensationalist site to play on the empathy of viewers.

MTVEXIT.com states that it is a site to help encourage awareness of human trafficking. While the stated purpose of the site is to raise awareness of human trafficking the majority of the site is really contributed to making an impression on the user that MTV and the associated artists care about the current human rights issues and you should therefor support them. The first thing you see on the site when you load it is a picture of a huge concert in Hanoi, with a caption saying “40,000 Fans joined the fight against human trafficking” in all caps humanist style font. This seems to communicate that what they did is a big accomplishment and it was made possible by all of the normal people who participated. But if we think critically about the claim that is being made “that X Fans joined  the fight against human trafficking” we realize that it makes very little sense. How is standing in a stadium listening to good music being on an incredibly expensive stage with incredibly expensive production equipment  “joining the fight”. MTV is communicating that by listening to music you are actually helping a human rights issue… This is a fallacy. Beyond the glaring logical fallacies designed to encourage music lovers to spend money on MTV, there are visual errors. For example on my computer some of the images will not load, or in the news drop down the edges of the frame do not evenly line up relative to the edges of the content space, or much worse parts of the Vietnamese translation of the page are in English (the twitter feed in particular.

The page does not do what it is designed to do for me. I personally just find the blatant attempts to take advantage of people’s emotions by pasting “join the fight against (human rights issue here) by listening to our music” all over a website fairly offensive.   This is now the second media source that we have had a blog entry on that is effectively “positive” propaganda. According to American Heritage dictionary the definition of propaganda is:

“Official government communications to the public that aredesigned to influence opinion. The information may be true orfalse, but it is always carefully selected for its political effect.”

While this is not being disseminated by a government it is definitely information distributed for a political effect (in this case to put MTV in a position of being the “good guy”).