PROPAGANDA

"Propaganda" has been and continues to be a troublesome term. Many social scientists believe that the term is not particularly useful, since arriving at a workable definition of propaganda remains difficult. Other scholars are convinced that propaganda can and must be studied as a separate subject in its own right. No consensus on the definition of propaganda seems likely in the near future, but, after several decades in which almost no studies of propaganda were published, propaganda enjoyed a modest comeback in the 1980s and 1990s. Several important books and academic journal articles devoted to the subject appeared during those decades.

While labeling something as "propaganda" was widely perceived as pejorative through most of the twentieth century, the term did not always have an unpleasant connotation. While Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell (1999) traced the systematic study and application of propaganda techniques to ancient Greece and Rome in the Western world, the earliest use of propaganda in a way resembling the word's contemporary meaning occurred on June 22, 1622, when Pope Gregory XV established what was commonly called the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide ("Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith"). This group was charged with evangelization in the "New World" of the Americas and with countering the Protestant Reformation by promoting orthodox Roman Catholicism. However, widespread references to propaganda did not become common until the twentieth century, when propaganda was increasingly associated with the trickery and deceptive mass communication that was employed by the governments involved in the two world wars and in the Cold War. Few people in the contemporary Western world would publicly describe their work as propaganda, since less controversial terms such as "information," "persuasion," and "communication" are available.

The Problem of Definition

The central problem of propaganda studies is one of definition. If propaganda cannot be distinguished practically and theoretically from other kinds of communication, then propaganda becomes nothing more than a disparaging label for a message that someone dislikes. The term is not very useful if it simply becomes an insult or epithet. Several possibilities for defining propaganda have been explored.

Source

One way to define propaganda is to suggest that it is a specific kind of persuasion that comes from a government or corporate source. From this perspective, a lone individual could not engage in propagandizing, but individuals working under the direction of the U.S. government or General Motors could be part of an organized propaganda effort. In the orthodox Marxism-Leninism of the Soviet Union, for example, propaganda was produced by well-trained professionals who worked for the state. This definition suggests that propaganda is ethically neutral, since government or corporate sources are not always or necessarily evil.

Critics of this source-based approach to defining propaganda would argue that this perspective creates another word for official persuasion and/or corporate advocacy and that an additional label is not particularly helpful. Also, some critics of this definition complain that describing propaganda in this way suggests a coordinated, secret, persuasive campaign that involves government and corporate actors, when no such plan exists in fact.

Technology

Another way to define propaganda is to emphasize technology and a variety of modern techniques that are used to reach large audiences. For some scholars, propaganda is in all important respects a synonym for "mass persuasion," whether in government messages or commercial advertising. From this perspective, studies of propaganda only became necessary in the twentieth century when new media technologies (e.g., radio, film, television) began to be used regularly by ordinary citizens. As with the source-based definition, a definition of propaganda that relies on technology is ethically neutral, since mass persuasion could be used for good or ill.

Critics of the technology-centered definition of propaganda would complain that mass persuasion is not inherently different from other kinds of persuasion and should not be given its own, unique label. This complaint is especially compelling when one recognizes that "propaganda" is a term with much negative baggage and that avoiding the term when possible has some intuitive advantages.

Intent and Purpose

A final way to define propaganda is to focus on the intent and purpose of the source that created the message and delivered that message to an audience. Propaganda from this perspective is ethically defective or troublesome because it puts the interests of the propagandist ahead of the interests of the propagandist's audience. Furthermore, propaganda relies on deception to secure agreement on the part of audience members. Even if the propagandist tells the truth, she or he does so as a strategy for facilitating attitude change, rather than because telling the truth is a moral obligation that is normally owed to all other human beings. While propaganda might happen to come from a government source and use mass persuasion techniques, the ethical problems that are inherent in propaganda separate it from more ethical forms of persuasion.

Concentrating on the intent or purpose of the propagandist distinguishes this definitional approach from the others described above. Specifically, while some scholars beginning in the 1930s sought to make propaganda an ethically neutral concept that was amenable to social-scientific analysis, others consistently maintained that propaganda was morally objectionable and, thus, could be distinguished from other kinds of persuasion. If a person who designs a message places her or his interests above those of the audience in the creation of that message, then, by definition, propaganda has occurred. While some versions of this definition compare (inherently unethical) propaganda with (ethical) persuasion, other variations make propaganda an unethical subcategory of persuasion.

Critics of attempts to ascertain intent and purpose in defining propaganda would complain that intent and purpose are hard to pin down since a speaker or writer may not be entirely forthcoming or honest when asked about her or his intent. Also, as was the case above, the justification for a separate label to be used for unethical persuasion is not necessarily compelling.

These three different approaches to defining propaganda illustrate the difficulty of finding a workable definition. Each of these approaches could be constructed as a subcategory of persuasion (organizational, mass, unethical) that does not require the existence of the propaganda label. While Jowett and O'Donnell (1999, p. 4) are right that a "definition sets forth propaganda's characteristics and aids our recognition of it," the need for the term "propaganda" itself is less clear, especially given the long, complex, and largely unhappy history of the term. Nevertheless, scholars who have studied propaganda, not surprisingly, have generally accepted that the references to and research on propaganda make sense given one or more of the definitional approaches described above.

Propaganda During and Between the World Wars

In the United States, the greatest degree of anxiety over the dangers posed by propaganda have involved the U.S. role in military conflicts, beginning with World War I and continuing after the end of the Cold War. During the world wars, preparation for and support of war efforts included extensive government attempts to create pro-war messages and promote attitudes and behaviors that would make victory in these wars more likely. The systematic efforts of governments to influence public opinion were widely characterized as propaganda.

During World War I, the Allied governments produced a variety of propaganda materials that denounced German motives and emphasized the atrocities that were committed by German soldiers. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson facilitated the creation of the Committee on Public Information, which among other activities offered assistance to the film industry and worked to see that pro-war films were created for U.S. audiences. The German government did not make effective or extensive use of propaganda during World War I, but the Nazis learned from the mistakes of their German predecessors and made frequent use of propaganda during the 1930s and 1940s. Adolf Hitler's infamous 1926 book Mein Kampf would later be read as a "how-to" manual for propaganda.

In the years between the two world wars, propaganda was widely studied in the United States, despite the fact that references to propaganda had only been common in the United States since 1918. As the events of World War I were assessed, many scholars and public intellectuals described concerns about the public being misled by unethical communication practices. Driven by their belief that mass communication had a powerful potential to distribute messages that would alter audience attitudes and behaviors, these progressive propaganda critics, as J. Michael Sproule called them in his book Propaganda and Democracy (1997), wanted to educate the public about propaganda and to help people detect deceptive claims and faulty reasoning. The Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1939) identified several techniques of propaganda that are still widely taught. For example, "card stacking" by a propagandist provides evidence that favors one side of an argument while withholding the best evidence that supports the other side of an argument. Furthermore, "name calling" by a propagandist attempts to discredit a person or group by describing the relevant parties in highly negative terms, as when Vietnamese nationals were called "gooks" by some U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam conflict.

In the late 1930s, those people who favored U.S. neutrality during the early days of World War II recalled efforts by British propagandists toencourage U.S. involvement in World War I. In addition, pro-war messages during this time were often denounced as propaganda. However, once the United States entered World War II, propaganda efforts coordinated by the Office of War Information were again defended as a vital part of the total war effort. As explained in a War Department pamphlet, What Is Propaganda? (1944), which was prepared by the American Historical Association, there was a difference between democratic propaganda, which was truthful and provided the information that people need to make up their own minds, and enemy propaganda, which relied on lies in an attempt to fool ordinary citizens into following misguided, dictatorial policies. This pamphlet explained that democratic propaganda was a weapon of modern warfare and that it was vital for spreading accurate information about the war and for inspiring people to sacrifice in order to make victory possible.

Despite the insistence on a distinction between democratic and enemy propaganda, the practice of propaganda during World War II made this distinction difficult to sustain. For example, as described by Douglas Walton (1997), one 1939 newspaper article in London's Sunday Times recounted the bombing of a British fishing trawler in an exceedingly unbalanced and one-sided way. According to the story, a German submarine deliberately, rather than accidentally, bombed a civilian vessel and sank it, thus proving that Germany was an evil nation. Later, when the German submarine returned to the area to pick up survivors and give them water and shelter, this only proved that Germany was trying to deceive other nations, who would wrongly conclude that the Germans were not so bad after all. German behavior, whether in sinking the vessel or in tending to the survivors, was always interpreted in the most unfavorable manner. This democratic propaganda, even though published by an independent news source, did not provide for multiple interpretations of the same facts.

Additionally, enemy propaganda was not always deceitful during World War II. For example, some Japanese short-wave radio broadcasts during the war were designed for African-American consumption and argued that U.S. involvement in the war was designed to ensure white world supremacy at the expense of both the Japanese and African Americans. Japanese propagandists in this case were often truthful, since they had only to make reference to conditions in the Jim Crow South to support their claims about racial inequality in the United States. In short, conventional distinctions between democratic and nondemocratic propaganda did not seem entirely consistent with the actual propaganda messages of the period.

The Cold War and Its Aftermath

In the transition from World War II to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union—the two great postwar military powers— both countries made extensive use of print and electronic media to disseminate messages that portrayed their economic and political systems on favorable terms. International short-wave radio broadcasts became a popular means of promoting governmental causes. For example, U.S. broadcast services included Voice of America and a variety of other radio and television services.

The United States Information Agency published magazines and bulletins in several countries and, since the 1990s, it has maintained an Internet website. During the Cold War, attempts were periodically made to distinguish between totalitarian propaganda, which relied on central control of the content of messages and was intolerant of dissent, and democratic propaganda, which was truthful and allowed for expression of some differing perspectives. However, not surprisingly, democratic propaganda still sought to portray the experience of democratic political systems as being generally positive.

Despite the end of the Cold War at the conclusion of the 1980s, interest in propaganda was renewed by the sophisticated public relations operation of the U.S. military and the constraints on media coverage of military operations during the Persian Gulf War, as well as by the comparison of the independent news media in purportedly democratic nations with the state-controlled news media of Iraq. The Internet and international television broadcasts via satellite also were examined during the 1990s as new technologies that presumably would provide new capabilities both for the distribution of propaganda and for the challenging of propaganda.

Computer-Based Media and the Future

The future of propaganda and propaganda studies is not at all clear. With the creation of the Internet, access to mass media outlets is no longer limited to the wealthy. While nightly news television programming and commercial print, radio, and television advertising continues to have larger audiences than individual Internet websites, relatively inexpensive desktop publishing, electronic mail, and websites will provide convenient and cost-effective means for distributing information and challenging official sources of news. Unless a national government is willing to ban computers, facsimile machines, and other advanced communication technologies, that government will not be able to restrict the flow of ideas and information among its citizens.

When confronted with charges that some message is a kind of propaganda, perhaps the best response is to remember that those who create such messages are not the only individuals who have important duties to perform. Many communication scholars have argued over the years that, unless misled or intellectually incapable of making tough choices between two or more competing arguments, audience members—receivers of propaganda messages—also have an ethical obligation to think through and critically analyze those messages. In other words, if an audience member thinks that something she or he has heard might be propaganda, it is the job of the audience member to reflect on that message, to do research on it if necessary, and to act accordingly. Propaganda is only effective if audience members allow it to be.

See also:Democracy and the Media; Globalization of Culture through the Media; Internet and the World Wide Web; Social Change and the Media; Social Goals and the Media; Society and the Media.

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Brian R. Mcgee