Persuasion versus Propaganda: how does it play into our lives?

As I began writing my TED talk outline, my mind centralized around the idea of people being distrustful of the national government that was built over three centuries ago to protect us. With some faults in the past, history shows that for the most part, people believed in the federal government’s ability to do the right thing. Yet, this is changing. In our recent politics, the fear of our government being untruthful or deceptive is present more than ever. To some, this may be a repeating theme in American history and politics, such as the Cold War era suspicion; for others, however, this feeling is unprecedented.
The United States is noted in history as a founder of and home to democratic government, with representatives at all levels and representing all types of people; there is the notion of truthfulness that people expect from the information they receive from or about the government. Yet this is not the case for other countries in the world; some lesser developed countries are not always as transparent and forthcoming with their information, leaning on forms of propaganda to disseminate the ideas created by those in charge. So what is the biggest difference between a democratic country compared to one that is not truly democratic? It comes in the form people receive and evaluate information. In the United States, persuasive messages exist to compel people to do the right thing, unlike propaganda where the information is not entirely truthful.
Often times the words propaganda and persuasion are used interchangeably and incorrectly to describe a scenario where individuals are conditioned to believe a certain way based on communication between that individual and another or an organization. The differences between the terms can be challenging to separate, as they use each other to build on themselves. Propaganda is defined by scholars in multiple ways, but the universal and most accepted definition is planned communication with the purpose of shaping perceptions, manipulating cognitions, and redirecting behavior to achieve the desired intent of the propagandist. Propaganda bases itself upon disseminating information which at some times is untrue for the purpose of getting an individual or group to think or act in a certain way; it can come in the form of advertisements, political platforms, public service announcements, and other modes of communication. Persuasion divides from propaganda at this point by being rooted in absolute truth and original sourcing, offering to promote, not force, an opinion of the creator. Based on the notions that persuasion is an interactive process between the sender and receiver, it has the opportunity to influence an individual in a way that had not been thought of previously.
The differences between the types of information the public receives is an accurate measurement of the efficiency of government a country functions with. Although this may not seem correlated to my intended blog topic, I find it important to educate people on the subtleties of syntax and diction in order to understand more of the world around us.