Propaganda is a form of communication that aims to shape people's beliefs, actions and behaviours. It is generally not impartial, and is hence viewed as a means of persuasion. It is often biased, misleading, or even false to promote a specific agenda or perspective. Propagandists use various techniques to manipulate people's opinions, including selective presentation of facts, the omission of relevant information, and the use of emotionally charged language. Propaganda has been widely used throughout history for largely financial, military as well as political purposes, with mixed outcomes.
Propaganda can take many forms, including political speeches, advertisements, news reports, and social media posts. Its goal is usually to influence people's attitudes and behaviors, either by promoting a particular ideology or by persuading them to take a specific action. The term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples.
Pre-modern precedents Primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists. In the New Kingdom of Egypt's military ideology, the concept of a "Clean Victory" functioned as a strategic form of state propaganda, emphasizing the preservation of Ma’at (cosmic order) rather than faithfully recording the realities of war. Egyptologists observe that temple reliefs were carefully regulated to omit depictions of violence against non-combatants, instead framing the Pharaoh as an ideal masculine protector whose disciplined forces avoided the chaotic excesses seen in contemporary Near Eastern records. Incipit: "George Orwell famously declared »all art is propaganda.«" This sanitised record was often paired with the active rewriting of history, most notably in Ramesses II's accounts of the Battle of Kadesh, where a tactical stalemate was re-imagined as a unilateral triumph achieved through the King's sole divine intervention. To reinforce this hierarchy, artists utilised hierarchical scaling, depicting the Pharaoh as vastly larger than both his enemies and his own troops to visually manifest his supreme authority. Ultimately, these displays functioned as symbolic warfare; iconic motifs like the smiting of the enemy, are associated with the Pharaoh's role in crushing chaos and preserving the Egyptian state.
The Behistun Inscription (c. 515 BC) detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda. The Arthashastra written by Chanakya (c. 350 – 283 BC), a professor of political science at Takshashila University and a prime minister of the Maurya Empire in ancient India, discusses propaganda in detail, such as how to spread propaganda and how to apply it in warfare. His student Chandragupta Maurya (c. 340 – 293 BC), founder of the Maurya Empire, employed these methods during his rise to power.Boesche, Roger. "Kautilya's Arthasastra on War and Diplomacy in Ancient India", The Journal of Military History 67 (pp. 9–38), January 2003.
The best-known originator of Roman historiography was Quintus Fabius Pictor (3rd century BCE). His style of writing history defending the Roman state actions and using propaganda heavily eventually became a defining characteristic of Roman historiography. The Roman Civil Wars (44–30 BCE) saw Octavian and Mark Antony accusing each other of obscure and dishonorable origins, cruelty, cowardice, incompetence in oratory and literature, debauchery, excessive luxury, drunkenness, and other slanders. This defamation took the form of uituperatio (Roman rhetorical genre of the invective) which was decisive for shaping the Roman public opinion at this time.
Another example of early propaganda is the 12th-century work, The War of the Irish with the Foreigners, written by the Dál gCais to portray themselves as legitimate rulers of Ireland.
Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I was the first ruler to utilize the power of the printing press for propaganda – in order to build his image, stir up patriotic feelings in the population of his empire. He was the first ruler who utilized one-sided battle reports – the early predecessors of modern newspapers or neue zeitungen – targeting the mass. and influence the population of his enemies.
Propaganda during the Reformation, helped by the spread of the printing press throughout Europe, and in particular within Germany, caused new ideas, thoughts, and doctrine to be made available to the public in ways that had never been seen before the 16th century. The printing press was invented in approximately 1450 and quickly spread to other major cities around Europe; by the time the Reformation was underway in 1517 there were printing centres in over 200 of the major European cities.Mark U. Edwards, Printing Propaganda and Martin Luther 15; Louise W. Holborn, "Printing and the Growth of a Protestant Movement in Germany from 1517 to 1524", Church History, 11, no. 2 (1942), 123. These centres became the primary producers of both Reformation works by the Protestant Reformers and anti-Reformation works put forth by the Roman Catholics.
The modern uses of propaganda were initially witnessed during the 17th century, when Pope Gregory XV established a dicastery in 1622, composed of a cardinal commission who were mandated with expanding the faith along with regulation of church affairs in primitive-judged areas. A College of Propaganda was later founded by Pope Urban VIII under the Bull "Immortalis Dei Filius" in 1627, with the aim of training priests for foreign missions.
During the U.S.'s Colonial period, religious writers and trading companies circulated glowing tracts urging settlement in the Americas, but often left out the risk and perils.Susan A. Brewer, "Propaganda", in The Oxford Companion to United States History, ed. Paul S. Boyer (Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 625. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers which specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots (and to a lesser extent on behalf of the Loyalists). The most famous single publication was Common Sense, a 1776 pamphlet by Thomas Paine that played a major role in articulating the demand for independence.Russ Castronovo, Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America (2014) excerpt On occasion, outright disinformation was used, as when Benjamin Franklin circulated false stories of atrocities committed by the Seneca Indians in league with the British. Later, The Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms by three framers of the Constitution in order to influence public support for ratification. Thomas Jefferson also frequently practiced propaganda during this era as well.
In the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars both sides made heavy use of it during military campaigns with media literate. For instance, Secretary of War Henry Dundas and Secretary at War William Windham funded writers to promote English interests.Arthur Aspinall, Politics and the Press 1780-1850 (New York: Barnes and Noble Booksm 1949. In France, the Girondists distributed broadsheets among enemy troops offering them rewards for desertion.David Welch, "Introduction: Propaganda in Historical Perspective", in Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present, eds. Nicholas J. Cull et al. (Santa Barbara, Cal.: ABC-CLIO, 2004), xvi.
19th century
Propaganda, as generally understood, is a modern phenomenon that emerged from the creation of literate and politically active societies informed by a mass media, where governments increasingly saw the necessity for swaying public opinion in favour of its policies. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars produced some of the earliest propaganda of the modern period, with British cartoonists such as James Gillray "devoting [their] entire output to creations of social or political satire, many of which were circulated widely throughout Europe and even in North America." French general and statesman Napoleon also played a major role in developing propaganda, and excelled at garnering public support by capitalizing on his many victories.Hanley, Wayne (2005). The Genesis of Napoleonic Propaganda 1796-1799. New York: Columbia University Press. . He often commissioned paintings from French artists for propaganda purposes, including Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa, an 1804 painting by Antoine-Jean Gros depicting Napoleon visiting bubonic plague victims in Jaffa which was intended to counter reports of French atrocities during their capture of the city. As historian Garth Jowett noted,
Napoleon quickly learned to exploit the power of the press to his advantage as a political weapon, devising new propaganda techniques that caught his opponents by surprise. Like most other European governments of the time, he maintained domestic censorship, but he went out of his way to plant pro-French items in foreign-language newspapers on the continent. Several newspapers were even founded by the French in occupied German territories, and in Paris a newspaper called the Argus of London appeared, allegedly edited by an Englishman but, in actuality, produced by the French Foreign Office. Supposedly written from an English viewpoint, the newspaper attacked the “war-mongering journals” back in London and was widely distributed throughout the West Indies and to British prisoners of war in places such as Verdun. Napoleon also made wide use of leaflets distributed before his invading armies; he projected a promise of French “liberty” to countries such as Italy, where oppression had been the normal political way of life and a hint of freedom was bound to create widespread excitement.
During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, a revolt against the East India Company's rule of the Indian subcontinent, allegations of rape committed by rebels against European females were published by the British media, including several prominent newspapers. It was later discovered that many of these accounts were intentionally false stories created to incite hostility against the rebels, and historians have noted that was no evidence that any rebel raped European women or girls. An account by The Times which claimed 48 European girls as young as 10–14 were raped by rebels in Delhi during the revolt was criticised as a false propaganda story by Karl Marx, who pointed out that the story was reported by an Anglican clergyman in Bangalore, far from the events of the rebellion.