Propaganda

Types of Propaganda

Defining propaganda is a difficult task. For nearly a century, definitions of both criteria and limits characterizing this phenomenon have been highly contested. For instance, there has been no consensus about whether propaganda should be seen as a subform of advertising or the other way around. While, at the beginning of the 20th century, propaganda was predominantly used as a synonym for advertising in the commercial sphere, social scientists after World War I tended to see it as an exclusively political technique. In National Socialist Germany it was prohibited by law to apply the word propaganda to commercial promotion because the regime reserved the term for its own politics of persuasion. Today, propaganda is widely considered either a historical phenomenon of the 20th century—closely linked to the propaganda regimes in Germany, Italy, Russia, and China, yet without much significance for the present—or one perceives propaganda as a not very precise collective term for all promotional activities in the political realm.

There are at least three major types of propaganda in modern society.

• 1
  War propaganda (also termed psychological warfare, public diplomacy, psychological operations) consists of communicative campaigns designed to serve as auxiliaries in warfare. The typical techniques here are deception, defection, and other devices that help to weaken the adversary's power and to strengthen one's own forces. Propaganda is directed against enemy civilians and troops and to the home front in an attempt to fortify the morale. War propaganda is usually performed by the military; its deployment is limited to the time of crisis. War propaganda is applied in democracies as well as in authoritarian systems.
• 2
  “Sociological” propaganda in totalitarian regimes. Totalitarian regimes of the 20th century have intensively sought to create “a new mankind” by using propaganda and permanent persuasion. The population of National Socialist Germany or the Soviet Union, for instance, was exposed to constant propaganda. Every aspect of society was penetrated by persuasive communication to ensure the dominance of the ruling ideology and to make people act according to the wants and needs of the regime. The French sociologist Jacques Ellul termed this type of all-pervasive persuasion “sociological propaganda.”
• 3
  Political propaganda in democracies. Some scholars define ongoing political contests in democracies, especially during election campaigns, as propaganda. When the term propaganda is used in this context, it reflects a close relationship to political communication, public relations, and campaigning and implies a rather weak impact on the audience. [Page 659]Competing parties openly admit that they try to persuade the electorate, and the media can comment freely on the various positions. Propaganda competes as one position among many on the market of opinions.

Origins of Propaganda

The Latin word propagare means “to spread out, to enlarge.” It has been used since the Middle Ages to characterize the missionary work of the Roman Catholic Church. The Spanish Carmelite Thomas A. Jesu published in 1613 a book titled De erigenda Congregatione pro fide propaganda, in which he made detailed suggestions for the improvement of missionary work. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV founded the Sacra Congregatio de propaganda fide (“holy congregation”), a secret board responsible for the missionary work of the Catholic Church. During the Enlightenment, many intellectuals identified this agency, which still exists today, as the center of the anti-Enlightenment. They considered propaganda to be a secret and dangerous technique for deluding the people and making them act against their will and their interests. Over time the word became a collective expression for all kinds of persuasive communication techniques directed at public opinion and was conceptualized as a specific means of political action that could be employed wherever political ideas were at stake.

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