Tag: propaganda

Faith and Fiction — The Impact of AI on Spirituality and Design

How researching spiritual subcultures can illuminate the ways AI shapes belief systems.

Nika Simovich Fisher
Assistant Professor
Parsons / The New School for Design

Today’s designers are navigating a landscape dominated by AI-generated content. In this presentation, I will explore an area of personal interest — digital spirituality — and examine how researching spiritual subcultures can illuminate the ways AI shapes belief systems. My research examines how AI-generated content influences spiritual subcultures and the broader implications for communication designers. This exploration is particularly vital for communication designers, who are tasked with conveying messages through visuals and language across diverse digital platforms.

By analyzing the language and production of specific spiritual practices, students can uncover the biases inherent in AI, sharpen their critical eye for content consumption, and better discern fact from fiction in online discourses. Understanding these dynamics is crucial as emerging technologies continue to impact the field, and design is a vital part of adding believability and establishing a convincing tone of voice. Design educators can enhance students’ technical literacy and mindfulness by incorporating projects focused on belief systems, ensuring they are better equipped to consume and create content responsibly. This presentation will explore the following questions: How do emerging belief systems, shaped by AI and social media algorithms, challenge traditional approaches to design and communication? How do the limitations of the AI tools impact what they look like? How do existing belief systems get amplified through AI generated content? How does technical literacy improve critical thinking skills?

My presentation will include three distinct sections:


1. AI-generated Serbian Orthodox Avatars on YouTube: These chain-letter-inspired videos use non-native Serbian speakers’ voices and depict a Catholic-style Jesus rather than an Orthodox one. This highlights the bias of the AI creators’ defaults, and analyzing their production can provide clues about their creation. I plan to connect this to other research on AI and bias, such as this study done by international news organization, Rest of World, which highlighted the cultural flatness within AI training.

2. Spiritual guidance and developing a tone of voice. In this section I’ll talk about the research that went into my WIRED article, “Generative AI Has Ushered In the Next Phase of Digital Spirituality.” In it, I’ll highlight how LLMs and algorithms are trained to predict the next appropriate response and how this can give the impression of believability. I will connect it to historical LLMs that were trained to respond to users as psychologists, and connect all of this to how a bias can impact how you understand the generated content that’s being shown to you. I’ll also touch on new spiritual practices, such as e/acc, that have formed in this moment, as well as art inspired pieces, like Sheila Heti’s Alice, that speak to these themes.

3. AI Pedagogy project on Wikipedia hoax — Lastly, I will discuss a pedagogical case study from my Design and the Future of Publishing class, where students engaged with Juliana Castro-Varón’s “Illustrate a Hoax” project. Part of Harvard metaLAB’s AI Pedagogy Project, this assignment involved students selecting a Wikipedia hoax and using AI-generated tools to substantiate it. The project encouraged students to push AI tools to their limits and reflect on what makes content believable.

Conclusion

Through this exploration of AI’s impact on spiritual subcultures, my presentation will not only reveal the nuanced ways in which belief systems are shaped by digital technologies but also highlight the critical role of design in navigating these complexities. By integrating these insights into design education, we can equip future designers with the tools to critically analyze and responsibly create content in an AI-driven world. This approach will foster a deeper understanding of the intersection between technology, spirituality, and design, encouraging a more thoughtful and informed practice in the field, and a progressive approach to design education.

This design research is presented at Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1: Boston University on Friday, October 25, 2024.

Utterly Butterly Propaganda: An Analysis of Illustration as a Tool of Persuasion in Amul™ Ads

A pop culture icon and a beacon of upper-caste, liberal politics in India.

Kruttika Susarla
Graduate Student
Washington University in St. Louis

Brands have used mascots as a tool for persuasion and personalization of everyday commodities for ages (Dotz, Husain, 2003). Amul™ is an Indian dairy brand whose mascot is a fair-skinned girl in a white polka-dot dress and a matching bow in her blue hair. She was designed in 1967 and has since been used on product packaging and in political cartoon advertisements on billboards, print advertisements, and social media. The design of the mascot has remained consistent through the years and draws heavily on a rounded shape language. The Amul™ girl has been a pop culture icon and a beacon of upper-caste, liberal politics in India. Over the last six years, these advertisements shifted from liberal messaging to pro-state propaganda with a change in power in Indian politics to Hindu nationalism.

Amul™ uses visual and phonological puns, portmanteaus, and polysemous words in English and Hindi. The mascot transforms into politicians, celebrities, and sports persons depending on context. Her shape language is aggressively cute. Bright primary colors and consistent watercolor treatment with black outlines draw the audience into a nostalgic “good old” past while placing the mascot in an ever-changing political landscape. 

This presentation will visually analyze this evolution by examining the Amul™ illustration style, character design, and slogans. The analysis will use a dialectic method to read into the disarming aesthetics of the illustrations. It will contrast connoted messages with the material reality of the subjects of these ads by placing them in a historical, socio-political context. By doing so, we gain insight into how illustration has been used in these advertisements as a tool to normalize harmful government policies, the military, or pro-surveillance laws (Bhatia, 2020).

Feminine Archetypes on Women’s Suffrage Postcards as Agents of Propaganda

Insight into the prevailing beliefs of the early twentieth century

Andrea Hempstead
Assistant Professor
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Archetypes have been used as a successful marketing tool for years as the “collective unconscious,” so the use of feminine archetypes on suffrage postcards at the turn of the century should not be surprising. Both pro and anti-suffrage cards visualize the conformity to, as well as the divergence from, the mother, the maiden, the lover and the huntress to further their cause. The social importance of postcards during this time can be compared to the power and proliferation of the modern-day meme on social media, as billions of private visual messages were made public. Today, memes are used as a cultural practice of belonging for conversation, community and identification.

As consumerism grew in America at the turn of the twentieth century, so did the need to communicate to sub-cultures within America. By studying the styles, methods and modalities of the illustration of women as feminine archetypes on suffrage postcards, we gain insight into the prevailing beliefs of the early twentieth century surrounding gender roles, sex and power, gender and nationalism, and how these postcards were used as agents of propaganda using feminine archetypes.

Context and an understanding of audience are integral to meme generation. By examining the use of feminine tropes and archetypes in memes as situational understanding, we can see how the power of the narrative has shifted. The female narrator can use gendered assumptions to further her message through the common experience with the messaging of a meme.

Building off of historical analysis, sub-cultural beliefs and motives can be contextualized to gain an understanding of the use of archetypal imagery and messaging present on suffrage postcards and memes. By comparing and contrasting the use of the feminine archetype on suffrage postcards and memes, we can see how the feminine ideal and experience are tools for message making.

This research was presented at the Design Incubation Colloquium 7.2: 109th CAA Annual Conference on Wednesday, February 10, 2021.