There are many different authorities who make knowledge claims. What criteria do you use to distinguish between knowledge, opinion and propaganda?

Essay by KeirHigh School, 12th grade September 2005

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In our society, with the mass media around us, and with many other sources, we are surrounded by different kinds of information. Then, how much information do we get everyday, from seeing something to actually learning something from the school to listening to a president talking about a country? And how much opinions do you hear, and what kind of propaganda did you observe, and how much of them have become your knowledge? And how did your knowledge and propaganda help you construct your opinion?

Opinion is a person's ideas and thoughts towards something. It is an assessment, judgment or evaluation of something . Opinion is something that you believe. It can be different from what all other people think; it can be something that only you believe without anyone else supporting you. Galileo had an opinion of the earth going around the sun before it was accepted by others and became knowledge.

Before that, the opinion of the majority was the sun going around the earth because of the propaganda of people who wanted to believe that that the earth, the human, is in the middle of everything, which signifies the importance of them.

Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation aimed at serving an agenda. The most common use of the term (historically) is in political contexts; in particular to refer to certain efforts sponsored by governments or political groups . This was what the Church authorities did to let people believe them, and think that Galileo was wrong. Actually, propaganda was one of the most important part of the World War. The Soviet Union and the United States wanted to show that they were the "right ones" and they were there for justice. This way, they were able to let people listen to them, think like...