Expert Blog: What is propaganda - a short essay

Propaganda has been defined by Hans Morgenthau as the “use and creation of intellectual convictions, moral valuations, and emotional preferences in support of one’s own interests.”[i] While the Handbook of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defines the concept in more practical terms as “Any information, ideas, doctrines or special appeals, disseminated to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes or behaviour of any specified group, in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly.” This latter definition has been adopted and actively used by countries around the world in their official discussions of propaganda.[ii] Researchers interested in propaganda and mass manipulation assert that the key aspect when differentiating public information from propaganda is found in the intent and strategy of the communicator. While the consequence of the communication – the clear link between ‘hate radio’ and the 1994 Rwandan genocide as an extreme example – is also important but it is not a determinant factor in deciding whether propaganda is at play or not. This is because the ‘effect’ of communications upon an audience member is an area of dispute on account of the variation in response that can occur among individuals receiving the same message and the element of free will and agency found within each recipient.

Nevertheless, the definitions of propaganda highlight that it is always self-interested and purposeful, although sometimes unintended consequences happen or there is minimal effect at all. It need not involve lying or deceit, as is its common association, but the ‘truth’ provided is always a selective one. For example, while accurate data may be used by the communicator, it will have been selected, manipulated or filtered to add weight to the communicator’s aims. Furthermore, the communicator – in making the decision to pursue a propaganda strategy – has decided that their own needs are more important than the freedom of the target audience to make an independent decision. This occurs regardless of context or of the ethical concerns that surround the specific communication. Propaganda therefore emanates from the communicator’s belief, will, sense of entitlement, or perceived right to manipulate others. The use of propaganda thus reflects the extent to which all power held by humans is insecure, with propaganda deemed necessary to maintain the constructs that surround power and to justify prevailing power inequalities. Propaganda is thus an inherently egotistical act, but also an act regularly emanating from false consciousness.

This was the argument of Guy Debord and several other French social theorists of the mid twentieth century. Writing in 1967, Debord argued that the growth in quantity and intensity of media communications after World War II had made it the modern world a “domain of delusion”. Visual communications – those that are screen-based in particular – represent a simulation of life and a disconnect from reality despite them trying to claim that they are real. It is ‘life’ that can only be looked at. A passive life. Rather than life being lived through authentic interaction, connection and independent judgement. However, because of the seduction, hedonism, pleasure and perhaps eventual addiction to the medium, no one, not even the communications professionals in charge of content production – whether as marketers, advertisers, public relations executives, media experts, influencers etc – are prepared to acknowledge the extent to which ‘the spectacle’ has come to prevail in society. Society begins to drown in deception, self-deception and denial.[iii] Jean-Paul Sartre also contributed to the discussion when he explained that this mass denial towards the truer nature of the modern world’s relationship with images is only ever partial. Most people ultimately ‘know’ at some level that they are being stifled by the telecommunications products of the digital age but struggle to fully acknowledge that predicament, their own complicity in it, and how much of themselves they are potentially losing by not seeing the world as it really is.[iv]

As such, propaganda is first and foremost concerned with the attainment or retainment of power through communications. In the context of colonialism, for example, far from a system built solely upon conquest, violence or the threat of violence and direct repression, Albert Memmi discussed the process through which its administrators created the respective roles of master and slave through a plethora of mass manipulation techniques that moulded and subdued colonial subjects. This was achieved by creating the sense of inferiority and superiority between groups of people that still pervades today in many aspects of international politics.[v] Thus, in all instances of propaganda, a key concern of the communicator is to restrict the minds of their target audience only to thoughts, viewpoints, ideological premises, and correlations between cause and effect that align with the communicator’s interests. Furthermore, the propaganda with greatest visibility at a given time is that which reflects the priorities of the prevailing ideology under which a society operates. Fringe groups can also use propaganda as part of their efforts to critique dominant groups. However, these communications – often simply on account of their content cutting against the ideological grain – struggle for traction. As Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell make clear, propaganda thus forms the essential process through which “dominant ideological meanings are constructed and interpreted by people”.[vi]

Propaganda is most effective when used subtly or when it operates beneath the target audience’s conscious awareness. It is on account of these subtleties that it is marginalised from full public consciousness and struggles to achieve the quality and quantity of critical attention that merits its influence over individual and collective decision-making. For example, propaganda is usually perceived as a part of warfare, when, in reality, it represents a much fuller part of the explanation for why these abhorrent acts of mass violence continue to be accepted by publics in their name, why combatants enlist, why publics support wars, and why most politicians and civilians cannot conceive of a world without war or have limited will to make it illegal. Propaganda is not just a part of war – it represents much of the reason for why wars exist. Few academics, even those in communications studies, fully appreciate this not least because there are barriers to getting academic works on propaganda funded and published (regardless of the factual accuracy or importance of the content).

To this end, propaganda usually involves discourse intended to provoke emotional attachment to a cause, belief, concept or individual. It discourages rational thoughts – although the propagandist may claim rational or ‘common sense’ logics. It regularly adopts or aligns with readily held ideological tenets and cultural symbols (flags, patriotism, the Royal Family, positive moments within collective memory - war victories, for example) to achieve its aims. This is where common understanding of propaganda usually ends. Beyond this, much of the work of the propagandist involves influencing the social, economic and political circumstances that encourage their eminence above others. It is a process that results in the marginalising of inconvenient alternatives, encouraging the conditions of censorship and self-censorship, buying influence, using the spectacle of entertainment, shock or controversy to attract attention, manipulating the rule of law and threats of legal consequences to compel compliance.

Dr Colin Alexander is a senior lecturer in political communications in the School of Social Sciences