Propaganda

A close conspirator of conspiracy theories, propaganda overlaps with disinformation. At their core, propaganda and disinformation use biased and misleading information to cause harm. All three phenomena disrupt and threaten deliberative and democratic discourse. Propaganda originated in the 1600s in a religious context. The new Latin term comes from Congregatio de propaganda fide or Congregation for propagating the faith and was established by Pope Gregory XV. These days, propaganda is often associated with politics and war and involves the “dissemination of information – facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies – to influence public opinion” and is often transmitted through mass media. Propaganda’s systematic effort to influence what people believe usually has a state sponsor – but not necessarily.

The 1935 German documentary film Triumph of Will, for instance, glorifies Nazism and depicts Adolf Hitler as a divine figure. At its core, this type of propaganda tries to manage “collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols.” This biased and manipulative communication aims to shape public opinion and suppress an individual’s rational inclinations.

Image of protest crowd. The subject of the image is wearing a "V for Vendetta" mask and the hood of their sweater is on their head.

The groundbreaking book Networked Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics analyzes millions of news stories, television broadcasts, YouTube, Twitter (now known as X), and Facebook shares as data. It argues that digital media has disrupted longstanding cultural, political, and institutional norms in the United States, resulting in a “propaganda feedback loop” in that country’s conservative media ecosystem. This, in turn, has radicalized many Americans, making them receptive to domestic and foreign propaganda efforts.

Conspiracy propagandists intentionally spread disinformation and repeat misinformation to advance their agenda to delegitimate officials and governments, repurposing and repackaging old – often antisemitic, racist, sexist and biased – tropes in new forms and conspiracy buzzwords such as the “the Deep State,” “Q Anon,” “COVID-19 Chinese bioweapons” and the “Stop the Steal” narrative.

We swim in a social media-saturated world of biased information. Journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev, in his book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, documents how modern propagandists employ online mobs, cyber-militias and troll farms to “drown out their critics,” spreading lies and misinformation. Where autocratic regimes once contained public dissent by silencing opponents (information scarcity), they now distract and disorient their public with “censorship through noise” (information abundance). This strategy overwhelms people with disinformation, half-truths and competing narratives.

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Propaganda

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