Propaganda is a form of communication that is primarily intended to influence the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of a large audience. It is typically associated with the selective presentation of information, emotional appeals, and persuasive techniques designed to shape public opinion. While propaganda is often linked to political contexts, it can also appear in advertising, media, and other forms of mass communication. Scholars such as Edward Bernays have emphasized the role of propaganda in modern society as a tool for shaping public perception and managing collective behavior.
Historical development
The use of propaganda dates back to early forms of mass communication, including print media, religious messaging, and political campaigns. It became especially prominent during the 20th century, particularly in times of war, when governments used propaganda to influence public opinion and maintain support for national efforts.
In the early 20th century, the development of modern public relations further expanded the use of propaganda techniques. Edward Bernays, often considered a pioneer in this field, argued that shaping public opinion was a necessary function in complex societies.
Over time, propaganda has evolved alongside media technologies. From newspapers and radio to television and digital platforms, the methods and reach of propaganda have continued to expand, adapting to changes in how audiences consume information.
Propaganda model
The propaganda model, developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, provides a framework for understanding how media content can be shaped by institutional and economic factors. According to this model, mass media serve to communicate messages that support the interests of dominant social and political groups.
The model suggests that information is filtered through several factors, including ownership, advertising, sourcing, and ideological pressures. These filters influence which stories are reported and how they are presented, ultimately shaping public perception.
The propaganda model is widely discussed in media studies as a way to analyze bias, power structures, and the role of media in society.
To explain the close associations between media and propaganda, Richard Alan Nelson observed propaganda as a form of persuasion with intention with the aid of controlled transmission of single-sided information through mass media. Mass media and propaganda are inseparable. Mass media, as a system for spreading and relaying information and messages to the public, plays a role in amusing, entertaining and informing individuals with rules and values that situate them in social structure.
Propaganda creates conflicts among society's differing classes. In a media engulfed society, mass media is the main platform and output for carrying out acts of propaganda and for pushing forward agendas. Various amounts of modern media can be used to supply propaganda to its intended audience such as, radio, television, films posters handouts music smartphones, just to name a few.
Origins
Spoken forms of propaganda can exist in an oral-biased society. "Propaganda" has a negative connotation in a modern political context. Despite that, the word entered language with religious origins. Pope Gregory XV established an institution for spreading the faith and addressing a series of church affairs, which is namely the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Further, a College of Propaganda was set up under Pope Urban VIII to train priests for missions.
Throughout history, propaganda has always been evident in momentum social movements such as American independence, the French Revolution, and especially during wartimes. Wartime propaganda is often demanded for shaping public opinions to gain more allies on an international level, as well as calling for citizens to make a contribution and sacrifice to the war on a domestic level. Propaganda was used in the media when the thirteen colonies were trying to separate from Britain. One example from this time period is the Boston Massacre. After this event, the colonists began putting forms of propaganda into the newspapers in an attempt to get more people to rebel against the British.
Governments during the First World War devoted massive resources and huge amounts of effort to producing material designed to shape opinion and action internationally. As Clark claimed, posters in wartime with some visual codes are powerful tools to make people adapt to the new conditions and norms arising from the wars and to accommodate the needs of the war. During the Second World War, the power of propaganda came to the extreme, under the horrors of Nazi Germany. And since then, the word carries more negative connotations than neutral.
Psychological effects
Propaganda often relies on psychological mechanisms to influence individuals. These include emotional appeals, repetition, and the use of persuasive language designed to shape perception and memory.
Research in psychology suggests that individuals may be influenced by propaganda through cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, where people are more likely to accept information that aligns with their existing beliefs.
Emotional messaging can also play a significant role, as fear, anger, or hope may increase the effectiveness of persuasive communication. These techniques are commonly used in both political messaging and advertising.
Social media
With the widespread use of social media platforms, they have become powerful tools for propaganda. Propaganda is promoted on social media by dozens of governments. The Economist reported that in 2020, 81 countries waged "organized disinformation campaigns", up from 27 in 2017. Another element that makes social media effective for sharing propaganda is that it can reach many people with little effort and users can filter the content to remove content they do not want while retaining what they would like to see. This ease of use can be used by ordinary people as well as government agencies and politicians, who can take advantage of the platforms to spread "junk" news in favor of their cause.
In the digital age, propaganda has expanded significantly through social media and online platforms. Information can spread rapidly across networks, often reaching large audiences in a short period of time.
Research from the Pew Research Center indicates that a large portion of the public now consumes news through social media, increasing the potential for exposure to persuasive and misleading content.
Digital environments also allow for targeted messaging, where content can be tailored to specific audiences. This has raised concerns about misinformation, echo chambers, and the amplification of biased or unverified information.
Syria
The Facebook pages of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces in 2013 and 2014, uses images to promote their agendas relating to politics during the conflicts following 2011 uprisings in Syria. Their government uses visual frames to help support the image that President Assad is a "fearless leader protecting its people and that life has continued normally through Syria," and to help strengthen the images of the violence and sufferings of the civilians caused by the Assad regime.
Uganda
The Economist reported that, shortly before the 2021 Ugandan general election, Facebook removed a network of government-linked accounts engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior" to boost support for Yoweri Museveni, the incumbent president.
United States
In 2011, The Guardian reported that the United States Central Command (Centcom) was working with HBGary to develop software that would allow the US government to "secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda." A Centcom spokesman stated that the "interventions" were not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and also said that the propaganda campaigns were not targeting Facebook or Twitter.
In 2013, the Smith-Mundt Act, colloquially known as the "anti-propaganda law" was amended. The amendment repealed the Smith-Mundt's act ban on disseminating "information and material about the United States intended primarily for foreign audiences" to audiences within the USA. Some advocates of repealing the anti-propaganda law did so in the name of "transparency", an approach that The Atlantic called "a remarkably creative spin". Michael Hastings suggested that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act "would open the door to Pentagon propaganda of U.S. audiences", while a Pentagon official was quoted as saying that "'senior public affairs' officers within the Department of Defense want to 'get rid' of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
In October 2018, The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook "banned hundreds of pages and accounts which it says were fraudulently flooding its site with partisan political content – although they came from the US instead of being associated with Russia." In 2022, the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika studied datasets of banned accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives. The Meta dataset included 39 Facebook profiles, 16 pages, two groups, and 26 Instagram accounts. Meta claimed that "individuals associated with the US military" were linked to the propaganda campaign. Some of these accounts were used to put out disinformation online to counter China by dissuading people from receiving China-made vaccines in the Philippines. A retrospective review by the Pentagon also uncovered other social and political messaging that was "many leagues away" from acceptable military objective.
Russia During the 2016 presidential election, 200,000 tweets deemed as "malicious activity" from Russia-linked accounts were outed on Twitter. The accounts pushed hundreds of thousands of these tweets claiming that Democrats were practicing witchcraft and posed as Black Lives Matter activists. Investigators were able to trace the account to a Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit. It was founded in 2013 and known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).
Saudi Arabia The New York Times reported in late October 2018 that Saudi Arabia used an online army of Twitter trolls.
United States In 2011, The Guardian reported that the United States Central Command (Centcom) was working with HBGary to develop software that would allow the US government to "secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda." A Centcom spokesman stated that the "interventions" were not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and also said that the propaganda campaigns were not targeting Facebook or Twitter.
In 2022, the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika studied banned accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives.