Propaganda, Persuasion, and Public Policy
17th October 2009
Matt Armstrong at MountainRunner poses the question:
What is “propaganda”? Is it bad, good, or neutral? Who does it? Is it what “the other guy” does but you don’t?
Is something “propaganda” because of its content, delivery, audience, intent, effect, all the above or none of the above?
I posted a short reply on his blog, but have more to say and rather than offer one of those excessively long comments and clutter up his blog, I’ll take my space.
What is propaganda?
Definition of key terms is a recurring problem in both academic social science research and public policy and “propaganda” is a great illustration of this. Most discussion seems to use the term in much the same way as the debate over pornography and obscenity and the infamous “I know it when I see it” criterion of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. I don’t see much value in this approach other than ensuring a loud, vigorous, and repetitive argument.
I prefer a propaganda concept and definition that comes out of studies of totalitarian governments (boy, there’s a term you don’t see much any more) that controlled virtually all means of public communication and hence controlled public discussion and private opinion. Thus, propaganda is more than disagreeable persuasion (i.e. what comes out of the Fox News channel), but is an instrument of total power and control. We’re talking about who controls the technological means of communication and the reach this obtains.
In the public sphere, if I’m the only one with a transmitter and it reaches everyone else, that’s propaganda. Sure, there may be clandestine listeners huddled over a radio (viva la Resistance!) or nowadays a wireless laptop, but when I’m also disappearing everyone I catch doing this, it is unlikely to be a source of competition in my marketplace of ideas.
It is interesting to read not just histories of totalitarian governments, but to also read novels describing the psychological experience of living such a life. This kind of propaganda produces that Orwellian nightmare even haters of George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News cannot imagine. (Or fill in the serial list with Barack Obama, Keith Olberman, and MSNBC for those playing on that side of the fence.) If you read “1984″ or “Darkness at Noon” with anything remotely approaching an open mind, you know that those worlds are horses of a very different color compared to anything coming out of Fox or MSNBC unless you are a locust eating zealot.
My conceptual preference for the term, propaganda, produces a smaller and tighter set of criteria that are easier to identify, measure, and study. Without doing a careful quantitative analysis, I’d burst out Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Zimbabwe, and probably China and Russia as at least near misses. Right now we’re witnessing the transition from propaganda to an information marketplace in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
From this narrow conceptualization, we can then argue about how many categories there are past propaganda, and that’s okay with me. Since we’re talking about propaganda in the context of public policy, I’d like to keep attention focused upon efficient and effective action which usually means keep things simple, clear, and differentiated. Let’s agree on a hard end point – in my case, that totalitarian communication as propaganda – and understand it first, then move onto shades, variations, or corollaries.
Tools like Strategic Communication, Public Diplomacy, Grand Persuasion, or Soft Power function differently when applied to totalitarian governments using my kind of propaganda. And, for example, the pioneering work of the US at the beginning of the Cold War (particular as outlined in Osgood’s “Total Cold War”) makes more sense and stands as an interesting model. And while both Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong-il are members in good standing with the Axis of Evil, the communication challenge each presents is quite different because one does use propaganda and the other doesn’t.
I also think that my Persuasion Rules form a useful counterpoint to any conceptualization of propaganda. Consider here only one: Power corrupts persuasion. To the extent that a society does not permit the free use of communication to change how freely choosing people think, feel, or act, power and propaganda will operate. Thus, any conceptualization of propaganda must be something very different from persuasion or else we are just synonyming each other into confusion.
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