Propaganda

The Circulation of Propaganda

Propaganda campaigns occur daily and normally use positive messages directed to believers in the supported position but often contain the negative emotions of fear, hate, and negativism directed toward disbelievers or outgroups. The simple use of fear in a message does not make it propaganda. The existence of fear is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the existence of propaganda. The fear may occur simply through emphasizing the believers’ ultimate reward from believing, leaving largely unspoken the unpleasant implication that nonbelievers are going to experience negative consequences.

Propaganda may also introduce an apparently multisided approach by stating the reasoning of opposing views, but in ways that make these views appear ridiculous. Such a propaganda campaign distorts or attempts to hide or discredit relevant evidence, may disguise sources, and discourages rational thought. It is often used to reinforce the beliefs and behavior of groups or audiences that already believe in the desired proposition or movement, as opposed to groups of disbelievers. Propaganda is often associated with emotional appeals, rather than appeals to intellect, and with the use of statements, slogans, or texts that ignore data and arguments to the contrary of its propositions.

The framing or reframing of an issue to concentrate the public’s attention on “good” sounding ideas supporting it, while ignoring or if necessary trivializing even major arguments against the issue, is typical of propaganda. Often used as a tool of establishing government policy, and of influential private interests attempting to sway the public toward the side of the private interests, propaganda also may be found in advertising, religion, education, and other institutional settings such as public relations. Some definitions suggest that propaganda requires total control of the media, which is an unlikely event and one that did not even occur in Hitler’s Germany.

Definitions of propaganda that use “one-sided messages” as a hallmark have limited utility, since such a definition often presumes that there are only two sides to an issue, while issues are normally many sided. There are practical barriers to understanding what all the sides of any issue are, let alone trying to cover all of them in any message campaign, including good practices in education and other areas of application. Propaganda is sometimes referred to as being white, gray, or black, according to properties of the attributed source. As commonly used, in white propaganda the actual source is named as the source. In gray propaganda, either no source is attributed or the source is difficult to discern. In black propaganda the attributed source is not the actual source.

...