This piece of visual text is not particularly recent, but is a treasure trove to analyze. Paul Revere had this engraved in 1770, after the so called "Boston Massacre," where British soldiers clashed with American colonists. It was immediately spread through the colonies until it had reached and enraged people in all of the early American colonies. Paul Revere was very against the British and this conflict was the perfect event to get the colonies united and working towards secession. His purpose was to turn the American public against Britain, and he manipulated the facts to do so. "The Bloody Massacre" is clearly propaganda because many of the elements of Revere's engraving are manipulated or simply not true. But he did manage to persuade the colonies that this was what had happened, so this visual text was very effective. One thing that Revere used to show Britain in a bad light was that all the soldiers were smiling while killing seemingly innocent people. He made it seem that the British soldier were monsters, killing everyone around them at their fancy. This persuaded colonists to believe that the British were actually evil and no good would come with staying part of Britain. Another element Revere manipulated were the colonists involved in the conflict. He completely omitted the first person to get shot, a black man, because the colonists he wanted to persuade would be infinitely more bothered if it was a white man. He also portrayed the colonists as wealthy, high status people who weren't looking for a fight and were just going peacefully on with their day. In reality, the crowd was unruly poor men who were probably drunk and were armed with sticks and stones. He makes the colonists seem saintly, like they were completely blameless. The final symbol Revere included was the loyal dog, standing by the colonists. There was no dog on that day but he added it to show that loyalty was on the colonists' side, not the British's. This engraving was extremly effective in conveying the message that Britain was evil and that the colonists should no longer take the abuse because of the way Revere portrayed the event, not true to what happened, but to what would inflame the colonists the most.
