Genuine two-way communication is not just dissemination. Information doesn't equal indoctrination. There's a line between getting attention and agitprop. Providing proof or evidence is not the same as the truth. Truth is a conclusion the other person gets to make.
These were some of the principles I discussed in a conversation at Web 2.0 On November 19, 2009. You can see the visuals I used at the link. I cautioned communication professionals to exercise some self-awareness:
- Is what I'm saying true?
- Have I presented my client or product in a fair manner?
- Am I still listening?
- Have I made my affiliations or motivations clear?
- Am I prepared to accept the conclusions of my potential customer?
We need similar questions for the explosion of news channels and sources. So we can question whether what we're reading is accurate, and especially look into affiliations and motivations.
Meaning and origin of propaganda
Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognition, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. Propagating was used by the Catholic Church to signify the set forth and spread of information. Reproduction of plants and animals in mid-15c.
As a definition it sounds a little like public relations, doesn't it? Until you look at elements of propaganda. They include coercion, selective presentation of the facts, insistence on only ONE conclusion, broadcasting, or outright falsehood. Agitprop is from Russian agitatsiya or agitation (1938) plus propaganda, from German.
You can find examples of propaganda as far back as recorded history permits. Inscriptions, documents regarding warfare, and message dissemination efforts during political campaigns are some early examples. Roman historiography made heavy use of it.
The printing press and Reformation, particularly in Germany, put propaganda on steroids. More people with the ability and tools to publish their thoughts. It's possible the evolution was similar to what we experienced with the Internet. Experimenting, then optimizing on what gets attention.
Mass persuasion
But it wasn't until the rise of mass media that propaganda became a favorite tool of persuasion for political ends. Think the French Revolution, Napoleon, and the rebellion against the British East India Company. Newspapers in 1857 didn't fact check much. In America it was activists and the pro-slavery camp prior to the Civil War.
Propaganda techniques improved by use. The explosion of new communication technologies — radio, silent motion pictures, etc. — opened the door to refinements. Advertising and public relations studied ways to make it more effective.
Sociologists started studying and codifying the nascent techniques. Gabriel Tarde with the Laws of Imitation as early as 1843. Gustave LeBon published The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind in 1896. But large-scale applications didn't come until 1914, with the war.
The German and British governments made generous use of propaganda to convince people the war was just, and to dram up recruits. Germany established the Central Office for Foreign Services to run unofficial campaigns and issue publications for occupied territories. Britain but the undersea cables to minimize its impact.
A war of rhetoric developed alongside the trench-war. And it was no less miserable in its reciprocal analysis and sophistication. Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays participated in the Committee on Public Information (CPI) in America to help sway public opinion.
Bernays, a relative of Sigmund Freud, is considered the father of public relations. What he did in his campaigns was very different from the ad product promotion of the day. His work focused on changing the opinions of the general public. Thus creating demand for a product indirectly.
Performers sent to the White House to visit Calvin Coolidge won the stern President press coverage while having fun, and the election of 1924. The American Tobacco Company benefited from his work in the 1920s. Though smoking was pervasive after the war, smoking in public carried a stigma for women. Bernays convinced them it was a good alternative to candy and dessert to help with weight loss.
Consulting with a New York psychoanalyst who studied Freud, Bernays learned that women were seeking freedom. And smoking represented it in the late 1920s. The upcoming annual Easter Sunday parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City was the perfect prop. He arranged for women to smoke while strolling or at important landmarks.
Bernays booked a photographer as well, just in case the newspapers missed the shots. “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of Freedom,” read the New York Times article the next day. Describing dozens of women strolling by St. Patrick's Cathedral, the article noted how cigarettes were “lighting the way to the day when women would smoke on the street as casually as men.”
Bernays wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion in 1923, and Propaganda in 1928. A soap-carving contest for Procter & Gamble won the company the business of children (and adults) for Ivory Soap. He got media coverage for the juicy $1,675 prize and the artistic entries in 1929. Contests became a national fad.
News business and the politicization of everything
In 1962, Jacques Ellul wrote about the role of news as a trigger in Propaganda [h/t Alan Jacobs].
To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; he is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect.
There is never any awareness — of himself, of his condition, of his society — for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. We already have mentioned man’s inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them.
One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited.
This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and — to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person — against inconsistencies.
The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today’s events his life by obliterating yesterday’s news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented.
This situation makes the “current-events man” a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist.
People don't think about facts or event anymore, they feel them. Which is how you prepare people for reacting on impulse. And we see plenty of impulse online. The algorithm incentivizes quick hits by appealing directly to the ego. Social media can thus be gamed by people and/or bots.
Jay Rosen says the most common technique to confuse the issue is to “flood the zone.” Bury the potential kernel of actual information under an avalanche of nonsense. Rosen used to edit political stories at the Chicago Tribune; he's professor at NYU.
News publications should be in the business of informing readers and citizens, says Rosen. Not transcribe talking points and sensationalize for hits and clicks, commercial pressure, ideology, or prestige. Which takes advantage of both people feeling and algorithms feeding the news.
And therein is the difference. Anything less, and what you've got is propaganda.
[Image by Tayeb MEZAHDIA, Pixabay]