The SAGE Handbook of

Propaganda
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 The SAGE Handbook of
Propaganda

Edited by
Paul Baines,
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy,
and Nancy Snow
SAGE Publications Ltd Introduction & editorial arrangement © Paul Baines, Nicholas
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Chapter 13 © Efe Sevin, Kadir Chapter 30 © Mira Sotirovic,
Jun Ayhan, Won Yong Jang & 2020
Hyelim Lee, 2020 Chapter 31 © Emma L. Briant,
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This Handbook is dedicated to those who have needlessly lost their lives in terrorist attacks
throughout the world.
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

List of Figures and Tables xi

Notes on the Editors and Contributors xiii
Introductionxxiii
Paul Baines, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy and Nancy Snow

PART I CONCEPTS, PRECEPTS AND TECHNIQUES IN

PROPAGANDA RESEARCH 1

1 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins 3

Neville Bolt

2 Atrocity Propaganda in Australia and Great Britain During the First World War 22
Emily Robertson

3 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda 38

Thomas Colley

4 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past 55

Nicholas O’Shaughnessy

5 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment 71

Ignas Kalpokas

6 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda 85

Alicia Wanless and Michael Berk

7 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience 105

Aaron Delwiche

8 Visual Propaganda and Social Media 126

Hyunjin Seo

9 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda 137

Jordi Xifra

PART II METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES IN PROPAGANDA

RESEARCH153

10 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda 155

Chris Miles

11 Content Analysis and the Examination of Digital Propaganda on Social Media 171
Darren Lilleker and Paweł Surowiec
viii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

12 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda 189

Sergei A. Samoilenko and Margarita Karnysheva

13 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access

Case Study 205
Efe Sevin, Kadir Jun Ayhan, Won Yong Jang, and Hyelim Lee

14 Towards the Measurement of Islamist Propaganda Effectiveness:

A Marketing Perspective 223
Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy

PART III TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES IN COUNTER-PROPAGANDA

RESEARCH243

15 Propaganda and Disinformation: How a Historical Perspective

Aids Critical Response Development 245
Gill Bennett

16 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I 261

Ewan Lawson

17 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda 272

Ron Schleifer

18 Defending against Russian Propaganda 286

Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews

19 Fighting and Framing Fake News 303

Maria Haigh and Thomas Haigh

20 Measuring the Unmeasurable: Evaluating the Effectiveness of US Strategic

Counterterrorism Communications 323
Alberto M. Fernandez

21 Countering the Fear in Propaganda 336

Paul Baines and Nigel Jones

22 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology 350

Dianne Dean and Haseeb Shabbir

PART IV  PROPAGANDA IN CONTEXT 369

23 Propaganda and Information Operations in Southeast Asia: Constructing

Colonialism and Its Antithesis, Statehood and Peaceful Ambiguity 371
Alan Chong

24 The Construction of the Chinese Dream 405

Chung-Min Tsai
 Contents ix

25 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan 422

Nancy Snow

26 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare 441

Greg Simons

27 Cold War Propaganda in Civil War Greece, 1946–1949: From State

of Emergency to Normalization 459
Zinovia Lialiouti

28 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 476

Daniel Aguirre and Caroline Avila

29 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft

as Statecraft 492
Tina Burrett

30 Trumpaganda: The War on Facts, Press, and Democracy 510

Mira Sotirovic

31 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes 532

Emma L Briant

32 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises 550

Louisa Tarras-Wahlberg

33 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics 566

Charlie Winter and Craig Whiteside

34 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace 577

Gabriel Weimann

Index 593
This page intentionally left blank
 List of Figures and Tables

LIST OF FIGURES

0.1 Word Cloud Outlining The Main Foci of the Handbook xxxvii
2.1 Edmund J. Sullivan (1915), ‘The Gentleman German’, The Kaiser’s Garland,
London: William Heinemann 30
2.2 Norman Lindsay, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, 1 July 1915, The Bulletin31
6.1 Total number of page followers, as of 6 June 2018 96
6.2 Follower engagement on page, 7 May to 6 June 2018 97
6.3 Shares: support + real + political 98
6.4 Comments: support + real + political 98
6.5 Message amplification 99
8.1 An image posted to the Syrian President’s Facebook page 131
8.2 An image posted to the Syrian National Coalition Facebook page 132
14.1 A rich picture of the terrorist propaganda effectiveness measurement space 225
14.2 The Extended Parallel Response Model 229
14.3 Stages of terrorist recruitment with associated social media metrics 233
19.1 Wardle’s (2017) taxonomy of ‘7 types of mis- and dis-information’
is centered on the intent of the creator of fake news, which may be
challenging to determine 304
19.2 This satirical bingo card, produced by StopFake, summarizes the most
common fake news and biased media tropes used against Ukraine
around 2017 310
22.1 Marketing & Propaganda (Dis)similarities. 357
22.2 Replication and counter branding strategies. 362
27.1 The front-cover of the edition: Rodocanachi, C. P. (1949), A Great work
of civic readaptation in Greece, Athens, 1949 465
27.2 Photo from the visit of the Royal Couple to Makronissos, published by the
newspaper Kairoi, 4 March 24, 1949 465
27.3 Kairoi frontpage, March 20, 1949 469
27.4 Snapshot from “Agricultural day” published at Kairoi, 22/3/1949 471
28.1 Time-series press-freedom rank in South America 485
29.1 Putin Approval and Disapproval Ratings September 2013-September
2014 (%) 498
29.2 Is the Rise of China a Threat to Russia’s Interests? 502
31.1 Taken in the Goddard–Gunster Boardroom, ‘Celebration of the
45th Presidential Inauguration with Nigel Farage’ event was
‘Sponsored by LeaveEU’ 538
31.2 Graph showing VL Daily Total Facebook Ad Impressions 541
32.1 Push and Pull Factors Towards Radicalisation 554
xii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

LIST OF TABLES

0.1 Some of the Key Themes Covered in this Handbook xxxviii

6.1 Measuring the second information wave 98
11.1 Uses of content analysis in political communication research 173
11.2 Overview of major content analysis research of propaganda on social
media platforms 175
14.1 Aims, narratives, lines of persuasion and dissemination
used by four main Islamist terrorist groups 241
20.1 Growth of DOT Arabic language YouTube videos 326
20.2 Total views of DOT Arabic language YouTube videos 326
20.3 DOT Arabic video production/views on YouTube, 2011–2017 329
26.1 Article sample 449
28.1 A Populist Communication Framework for Comparative Propaganda
Analysis482
29.1 Putin’s Propaganda Operations in 2000 and 2018 Compared 494
30.1 People and things Trump insulted on Twitter more than 10 times 518
30.2 Topics of Trump’s false and misleading claims 519
30.3 Sources of Trump’s false or misleading claims 520
 Notes on the Editors
and Contributors

THE EDITORS

Paul Baines is Professor of Political Marketing and Associate Dean (business and civic
engagement) at the University of Leicester. He is a Visiting Professor at Cranfield University
and an Associate Fellow at King’s College London. He is the author/co-author of more than a
hundred published articles, book chapters and books on political marketing issues. Over the last
20 years, Paul’s research has focused on political marketing, public opinion and propaganda.
He has published in, inter alia, the Journal of Business Research, Journal of the American
Statistical Association, European Journal of Marketing and Psychology & Marketing. His cur-
rent and recent research work includes grant funding for a project to evaluate the effectiveness
of police social marketing/counter-terrorism communications (i to i research/Department for
Transport) and a project to explore the effectiveness of guilt-elicitation in marketing commu-
nications (British Academy). He is a Fellow of the Market Research Society and the Institute
of Directors (IOD). Paul’s most recent book is Marketing 5E (Oxford University Press, 2019)
with Chris Fill, Sara Rosengren and Paolo Antonetti. Paul’s marketing research/strategy con-
sultancy includes experience working with numerous government departments on strategic
communication research projects as well as small, medium and large private enterprises includ-
ing IBM, 3M, Saint Gobain Glassolutions, Fulham Football Club and many others over the
years. He is a non-executive director of the Business Continuity Institute and operates his own
strategic marketing and market research consultancy, Baines Associates Limited.

Nicholas O’Shaughnessy is Professor of Communication in the School of Business and

Management at Queen Mary, University of London, Visiting Professor at King’s College,
London and a Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge University. He is the author and
co-author of numerous journal articles, edited chapters and books on marketing and political
communication, including The Phenomenon of Political Marketing (Macmillan /St. Martin’s
Press, 1990), Persuasion in Advertising (Routledge, 2003, co-author), The Marketing Power
of Emotion (Oxford, 2003, co-author), Propaganda and Politics: Weapons of Mass Seduction
(Manchester, MI, 2004), Propaganda (four volumes, Sage, 2012, co-editor), Theory and
Concepts in Political Marketing (Sage, 2013, co-author), Selling Hitler: Propaganda and
the Nazi Brand (Hurst, 2016) and Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, Packaging and
Propaganda (Routledge, 2017). He is on the editorial board of various journals and is a Senior
Editor of the Journal of Political Marketing.

Nancy Snow has been a Japan observer since the Prime Minister’s Office sponsored her first
trip in 1993 as a US Information Agency official. Since 2015, she has spent most of her time
in Japan, where she teaches as the country’s only titled professor of public diplomacy. Her
chapter (Chapter 25) is based in part on her Social Science Research Council Abe Fellowship,
a research project in which she interviewed well over one hundred Japan observers, including
foreign correspondents and foreign professors, as well as Japanese leaders in university and
xiv THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

government. The chapter explains the landscape of Japan’s media and propaganda environment
through a series of situations and events that are challenging Japan’s ability to successfully
manage global information in the run-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

THE CONTRIBUTORS

Daniel Aguirre is a member of the Faculty of Communications, Universidad del Desarrollo in

Santiago, Chile. He holds a Master of Arts in International Studies and is a PhD Candidate in
Communication at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research focuses on
international political communication, publishing on topics related to public diplomacy and
comparative political communication. He has also co-edited a book volume on digital
diplomacy in the Americas and Spain, and published on public diplomacy in scientific journals.
He is an active member of the International Studies Association within the sections of
International Communication, Diplomatic Studies and the Global South Caucus.

Caroline Avila is a professor at Universidad del Azuay, Ecuador. She holds a PhD in
Communication from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Her work is related to the
field of political communication, specifically studying the role of government communication
in a Latin American context such as populism. Her research analyses topics such as populist
communication, government myth, media relations and communication policies. Part of her
work has been published in scientific journals, and she has collaborated on several book
chapters. She has presented at academic congresses in Prague, Montreal, Fukuoka, London and
Cartagena, among others. She is a member of the International Communication Association and
the International Association for Media and Communication Research.

Kadir Jun Ayhan is a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Graduate School
of International and Area Studies. Ayhan’s main research interests include public diplomacy,
power and status in world politics, active learning pedagogy for international studies and Korean
foreign policy. Kadir Jun Ayhan has been a member of Public Diplomacy Scholars Group (later
renamed Dol Dahm Club) within Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) since 2013.
Ayhan’s work have been published in several academic journals and edited volumes including
International Studies Perspectives, Korea Observer and Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia.

Gill Bennett, MA, OBE, FRHistS was Chief Historian of the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office from 1995 to 2005, and Senior Editor of the UK’s official history of British foreign
policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas. Since then she has been involved in a number of
research and writing projects both within Whitehall and more widely. Gill is a Senior Associate
Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute. Her publications include Churchill’s Man of
Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence (Routledge, 2006), Six Moments of
Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Zinoviev Letter:
The Conspiracy That Never Dies (Oxford University Press, 2018). She is currently working on
the history of counter-disinformation.

Michael Berk is a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Cyber Security and International
Relations, University of Florence, and Principal at Alton Corporation. Building on his career in
defence and security, he studies cyber and information threats and their effects on government
 Notes on the Editors and Contributors xv

decision-making and group behaviours. Since 2014, he combines consulting, academic research
and policy work on information security topics to acquire a multidisciplinary and cross-industry
perspective on best practices allowing states to address emerging national security challenges
online. His recent projects included managing an international capacity building program on
ICT/cyber policy development in FSU countries, work with the OSCE on enhancing CBMs
in cyberspace, contribution to the development of a strategic communications doctrine, and
analysis of the Ukrainian information environment during the 2019 elections cycle, among
others.

Neville Bolt is the Director of the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications, and Reader
in Strategic Communications at King’s College London where he convenes the Masters pro-
gramme in Strategic Communications. He is Editor-in-Chief of NATO’s academic journal
Defence Strategic Communications, and Chief Academic Advisor to NATO’s Terminology
Working Group (Riga). Formerly a television journalist-producer specialising in war zone cov-
erage, and communications strategist for the UK Labour Party and African National Congress
(ANC), he now advises governments on responses to political and geopolitical threats. His book
The Violent Image: Insurgent Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries (Columbia University
Press, 2012) proposed a new theory of the Propaganda of the Deed: it received the CHOICE
‘outstanding academic status award’. He was the Teaching Excellence Award Winner 2017 at
King’s College London.

Emma L. Briant is Associate Researcher at Bard College and specializes in researching and
publishing in political communication and propaganda studies. She is most interested in the
rapid evolution of contemporary propaganda and its implications for democracy, security,
inequality and human rights. Dr Briant analyzed the coordination and increasing impacts of
the digitalization of defense propaganda for her book Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism:
Strategies for Global Change (Manchester University Press, 2015). She spent 11 years
researching SCL Group and Cambridge Analytica and was central in revealing their wrongdoing
in 2018 – this research formed the basis for important evidence submitted to the UK Parliament
and the Senate Judiciary Committee among other public inquiries. She is now consolidating
her recent research–which straddles her interests in politics, security and the reproduction of
inequality–into a book project: Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the
Digital Influence Industry. Dr Briant is also working on a long term co-authored book project
with Professor Robert M Entman: What’s Wrong with the Democrats? Media Bias, Inequality
and the rise of Donald Trump. Her first book was Bad News for Refugees, (Pluto Press, 2013,
co-authored with Greg Philo and Pauline Donald) examined UK political and media discourse
on migration prior to ‘Brexit’, and its impact on migrants and UK communities.

Tina Burrett is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia
University, Japan. Her recent publications include Press Freedom in Contemporary Asia
(co-edited with Jeff Kingston) (Routledge 2019), “Russian State Television Coverage of the
2016 US Presidential Election”, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization
2018, “Mixed Signals: Democratisation and the Myanmar Media”, Politics and Governance,
2017. She is author of Television and Presidential Power in Putin’s Russia, (Routledge 2013).

Alan Chong is Associate Professor at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies in Singapore. He has published widely on the notion of soft
power and the role of ideas in constructing the international relations of Singapore and Asia.
xvi THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

These ideational angles have also led to inquiry into some aspects of ‘non-traditional security’
issues in Asia. His publications have appeared in The Pacific Review, International Relations of
the Asia-Pacific; Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Survey, East Asia: An International
Quarterly, Politics, Religion and Ideology, the Review of International Studies, the Cambridge
Review of International Affairs, Armed Forces and Society, the Journal of Strategic Studies,
Global Change, Peace and Security, the Asian Journal of Comparative Politics, Asian Journal
of Comparative Politics and the Japanese Journal of Political Science. He is also the author of
Foreign Policy in Global Information Space: Actualizing Soft Power (Palgrave, 2007) and co-
editor (with Faizal bin Yahya) of State, Society and Information Technology in Asia (Ashgate/
Routledge, 2014/15). He is currently working on several projects exploring the notion of ‘Asian
international theory’. His interest in soft power has also led to inquiry into the sociological and
philosophical foundations of international communication. In tandem, he has pursued a fledgling
interest in researching cyber security issues and international discursive conflicts. He has fre-
quently been interviewed in the Asian media and consulted by think-tank networks in the region.

Thomas Colley is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London,
and a Fellow of the King’s Centre for Strategic Communications. His research interests include
propaganda, strategic communications and their historical and contemporary use in war. His
recent research has examined strategic narratives from the perspectives of ordinary citizens,
focusing on the British public’s understanding of war.

Dianne Dean is a Reader at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University. She has
published extensively in leading journals including European Journal of Marketing, Journal of
Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research and the Journal of Marketing Management. She
specialises in Political Marketing with a focus on propaganda and persuasion.

Aaron Delwiche (Ph.D. University of Washington) is a Professor in the Department of

Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He teaches courses on top-
ics such as game development, transmedia storytelling and political propaganda. In 2018,
with support from the Mellon Foundation, Aaron overhauled the 25-year-old site “https://
propagandacritic.com/”Propaganda Critic, adding nearly two dozen articles exploring the
emergence of computational propaganda, explaining common propaganda techniques, and
teaching users how to identify bots, trolls, and sockpuppets in online spaces. The co-editor of
the Participatory Cultures Handbook (2012), Aaron’s recent work includes a chapter about
the history of computer bulletin board systems in the Sage Handbook of Social Media (2018),
an article about teaching game programming to liberal arts students in Coding Pedagogy
(2019), a co-authored chapter about Propaganda Critic for Project Censored 2020, and a
co-authored chapter identifying how media literacy educators can respond to the threat of
computational propaganda in the forthcoming Routledge anthology Media Literacy in a
Disruptive Environment.

Alberto M. Fernandez is President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which

oversees all U.S. funded broadcasting in Arabic. A career foreign service officer for more
than three decades, Ambassador Fernandez served as the U.S. State Department’s Coordinator
for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications from 2012 to 2015, retiring from the State
Department in May 2015. He also served in senior diplomatic positions in the U.S. embassies in
Sudan, Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, and in the State Department’s Bureau of Near East
and North African Affairs (NEA). After his retirement from government service, he was Vice-
President of MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute (2015 to 2017) in Washington,
 Notes on the Editors and Contributors xvii

D.C. and is a member of the board of directors of George Washington University’s Center for
Cyber and Homeland Security and Non-Resident Fellow in Middle East Politics and Media at
TRENDS Research Foundation in Abu Dhabi.

Maria Haigh is an Associate professor in the School of Information at the University of

Wisconsin Milwaukee and Comenius Visiting Professor at the Siegen University iSchool. Maria
Haigh holds a degree in cybernetics from Shevchenko National University in Kiev Ukraine
and PhD in Information Systems and Scholarly Communications from Drexel University in
Philadelphia, PA, USA. Maria studies information practices, policies, and institutions in the
former Soviet bloc. She has published multiple articles about online file-sharing practices in the
post Soviet world and their relationship to cultural constructions of copyright. In addition, her
research explores the social construction of Ukrainian libraries and library education, and their
co-evolution with Ukrainian national identity. Maria’s current research focuses on methods of
disinformation and media literacy programs in Ukraine.

Thomas Haigh is a Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and

Comenius Visiting Professor in the History of Computing at Siegen University. He is the pri-
mary author of ENIAC In Action (MIT, 2016) and the editor of Histories of Computing (Harvard,
2011) and Exploring the Early Digital (Springer, 2019). His interest in fake news is an extension
of his work on Internet history, which included coediting a special issue of Information & Culture,
serving on the editorial board of Internet Histories, and making network history a major theme
in the new version of A History of Modern Computing he is writing with Paul Ceruzzi (MIT,
forthcoming).

Won Yong Jang is Professor of Integrated Strategic Communication at the University of

Wisconsin at Eau Claire. His writings about communications have appeared in Communication
Theory, Journal of International Communication, Handbook of International and Intercultural
Communication, International Communication Gazette, Media International Australia, and
Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, among other. His current research interests
include global communication issues, relationships between media and society in East Asian
societies, health Communication across borders, and political communication. He teaches courses
on research methodology, strategic communication, international communication, and media law.

Nigel Jones specialises in the cultural and social aspects of security, strategy and international
relations, having an extensive practitioner, business and academic background. He is particu-
larly interested in the interplay of social and technological factors in real world communica-
tions, security and risk challenges. He is CEO of the Information Assurance Advisory Council,
which has a mission to advance Information Assurance (IA) and cyber security to ensure that
the UK’s Information Society has a robust, resilient and secure foundation. He also consults and
researches on social and cultural issues affecting leadership. He is a visiting fellow at King’s
College London Department of Defence Studies.

Ignas Kalpokas is Associate Professor at Vytautas Magnus University and Assistant Profesor
at LCC International University. He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Nottingham
and his main research areas include (1) identity formation though political communication,
particularly focusing on post-truth; (2) algorithmic governance of political life, particularly of
political emotions; (3) more broadly, tensions between the constituent and the constituted powers
in modern democracies. He is the author of Creativity and Limitation in Political Communities
(Routledge, 2018) and A Political Theory of Post-Truth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
xviii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Margarita Karnysheva received her BA and MA degrees in History of Japan from Saint-
Petersburg University, Russia and her PhD in History of Japan and Soviet Military History from
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. She is currently involved in a research project in Russian
museums that deals with memories of the Russian Civil War and the World War II. In addition, she
is co-authoring a book on the legacy of the anti-Soviet White movement in contemporary Russia.
Her professional interest focuses on the Soviet military history, Soviet-Japanese and Soviet-
American relations, Soviet propaganda, Russian nationalism, and memory studies.

Ewan Lawson is a former officer in the British military with experience of information
warfare. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a Senior
Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University where he
researches and teaches on contemporary international security issues.

Hyelim Lee is a doctoral student in Seoul National University, South Korea. Her main research
interests are Public Diplomacy, Political Strategic Communication and Gender & Media.
She has written and published several policy papers, journal articles and book chapters. She
is currently working on her doctoral dissertation discussing a relationship between network
effects of social media and the citizens’ political engagement.

Zinovia Lialiouti is assistant professor of Modern and Contemporary European History, in

the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens. She has collaborated as a researcher with the Academy of Athens, the
UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She
is the author of the books: Anti-Americanism in Greece 1947–1989, (Asini Publishing, Athens
2016) (in Greek) and The ‘Other’ Cold War. American Cultural Diplomacy in Greece 1953–
1973, University Press of Crete, Rethymnon 2019 (in Greek). She has published several papers
in peer-review journal and edited volumes on Greek political history, the Cold War ideology and
culture, and the study of political discourse and national identities

Darren G. Lilleker is Associate Professor in Political Communication in The Faculty of Media

& Communication, Bournemouth University and is Head of the Corporate and Marketing
Communication Academic Department. He is Convenor of the Centre for Politics & Media
Research and teaches across the BA Politics, MA International Political Communication and
MA Political Psychology programmes; and visiting professor at the University of Zagreb,
Croatia. Dr Lilleker’s expertise is in the intersecting areas of political campaigning and public
engagement in politics, and in particular how public engagement can be potentiated and
facilitated using innovations facilitated by digital technological developments. He has worked
with the UK House of Lords as well as local communication agencies, political parties and
pressure groups. Dr Lilleker has published widely on the professionalisation and marketisation
of political communication and its societal impacts including Political Communication and
Cognition (Palgrave, 2014).

Miriam Matthews is a senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation, where
she conducts research in the areas of political psychology and diversity and multiculturalism.
She has published research on multiple topics, including the factors that contribute to negative
intergroup attitudes among Americans and Arabs, the effects of threats on political attitudes,
and the situations that influence support for anti-Western jihad. Matthews earned her Ph.D. in
social psychology from Claremont Graduate University, and she was a postdoctoral research
fellow with the University of Oxford.
 Notes on the Editors and Contributors xix

Chris Miles is Senior Lecturer in Marketing and Communication in the Department of

Corporate and Marketing Communication, Bournemouth University. His research deals
with the discursive construction of marketing theory and practice, particularly as it relates to
communication, rhetoric and control. His most recent book is Marketing, Rhetoric and Control:
The Magical Foundations of Marketing Theory (Routledge, 2018).

Christopher Paul is a Senior Social Scientist working out of RAND’s Pittsburgh office. He
also teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and in the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Prior
to joining RAND full-time in July of 2002, he worked at RAND as adjunct staff for six years.
Chris received his Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 2001; he spent academic year 2001–02 on
the UCLA statistics faculty. Chris has developed methodological competencies in comparative
historical and case study approaches, quantitative analysis, and evaluation research. Current
research interests include operations in and through the information environment, security
cooperation, counterinsurgency, and irregular warfare.

Emily Robertson specialises in the relationship between ideology, international law and war
propaganda and has published several journal articles and book chapters on the topic. She is
a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales and teaches at the Strategic Defence
Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

Sergei A. Samoilenko is an instructor in the Department of Communication at George Mason

University. Sergei is a co-founder of the Research Lab for Character Assassination and Reputation
Politics (CARP), an interdisciplinary research team of scholars at George Mason University
and the University of Amsterdam. He is the past president of the Communication Association of
Eurasian Researchers (CAER), an association established to facilitate communication education
in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the United States. His research focuses on issues
in crisis communication, reputation management, and post-Soviet studies. He is a co-editor
of The Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, and
Handbook of Research on Deception, Fake News, and Misinformation Online.

Ron Schleifer specializes in the connected disciplines of communications, information

warfare, history of propaganda, and the Middle East. He is a senior lecturer at the School
of Communication Ariel University of Samaria. He founded the Ariel Research Center for
Defense and Communications (ARCDC) which deals with issues concerning the role of image
in modern warfare and specifically in the Middle East. His articles deal with the manipulation of
intellectuals and students in current information wars, PLO and HAMAS PSYOP campaigns in
the Arab-Israeli Conflict. His recent book on Psychological Warfare in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
was published at Palgrave Macmillan.

Hyunjin Seo is an associate professor and Docking Faculty Scholar in the William Allen White
School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. She is also a fellow
at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University. Seo’s research program
focuses on identifying emerging properties of networked communication and understanding
their implications for social change, collective action, and civic engagement. She is also the
founder director of the KU Center for Digital Inclusion which provides technology education
for underserved populations. Before joining academia, Seo was a diplomatic correspondent
for South Korean and international media outlets. She has also consulted to U.S. and Korea-
based nongovernmental organizations regarding their social media strategies and relations with
international press.
xx THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Efe Sevin is an assistant professor of public relations at the Department of Mass Communication
at Towson University (Maryland, US). His current research focuses on the identifying and
measuring the impacts of social networks on place branding and public diplomacy cam-
paigns. Prior to joining Towson University, he worked at Reinhardt University (Georgia,
US), University of Fribourg (Switzerland), and Kadir Has University (Turkey). His works
have been published in several academic journals and books including American Behavioral
Scientist, Public Relations Review, and Cities. His most recent book, Public Diplomacy and
the Implementation of Foreign Policy in the US, Sweden and Turkey, was published by Palgrave
MacMillan in 2017.

Haseeb Shabbir is a senior lecturer in marketing at Hull University Business School. He has
published extensively on marketing and ethics, including Journal of Advertising, Journal of
Advertising Research and Journal of Business Ethics. He has also published in other leading
marketing journals including in Journal of Services Research, European Journal of Marketing,
Industrial Marketing Management and Psychology & Marketing.

Greg Simons graduated with a PhD from the University of Canterbury in 2004, Associate
Professor Greg Simons is currently a researcher at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies
(IRES) at Uppsala University, Leading Researcher in Media and Communication at the Business
Technology Institute at Turiba University and a lecturer at the Department of Communication
Science at Turiba University in Riga, Latvia. He is on the Senior Editorial Board of the Journal
for Political Marketing. His research interests include: changing political dynamics and relation-
ships, mass media, public diplomacy, political marketing, crisis management communications,
media and armed conflict, and the Russian Orthodox Church. He also researches the relation-
ships and connections between information, politics and armed conflict more broadly, such as
the GWOT and Arab Spring. Simons is the author/editor of numerous refereed articles, chapters
and books: Academia EDU Profile https://uppsala.academia.edu/GregSimons.

Mira Sotirovic is an Associate Professor and Karin and Folke Dovring Scholar in Propaganda
in the Department of Journalism at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received
her Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research
interests are in news media effects on how people think and perceive social issues, and how
those perceptions may affect support for social policies. She has published chapters in books
such as the Handbook of Political Communication Research and articles in scholarly journals
such as Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society and others.

Paweł Surowiec is a PhD, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Communication at the Department of

Journalism Studies, University of Sheffield, UK. He is a researcher in the field of political com-
munication, with a particular focus on European politics. His research has examined political
public relations, nation branding, public diplomacy and political campaigning. He is the author of
the monograph, ‘Nation Branding, Public Relations and Soft Power: Corporatising Poland’, co-
edited ‘Social Media and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe’, and has published his research
in academic journals in the field. Paweł serves as a Board Member and the Treasurer for the
European Communication Research and Education Association. He tweets at @PawelSurowiec.

Louisa Tarras-Wahlberg is a Research Fellow at the International Center for the Study of
Violent Extremism. She graduated with distinction in Political Science from Stockholm
University, and carried out in-depth studies in International Relations at University of
 Notes on the Editors and Contributors xxi

Washington as part of her degree. Tarras-Wahlberg holds a postgraduate degree with distinction
in Security Policy from the Swedish Defence University. She has worked within the Swedish
Government Offices preventing violent extremism and has also developed and implemented
a preventive strategy against violent extremism for the city of Stockholm. Tarras-Wahlberg
currently holds a position as a Research Assistant at the Swedish Defence University where she
carries out in-depth research on disinformation and information influence campaigns.

Chung-Min Tsai is an associate professor and chair at the Department of Political Science and
the deputy director of the Institute of International Relations at National Chengchi University,
Taiwan, R.O.C. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California,
Berkeley. His research interests include comparative politics, political economy, and China
studies with a focus on state regulation. He has published articles in the Problems of Post-
Communism, The China Quarterly, Asian Survey, Taiwanese Political Science Review, Issues &
Studies, and edited volumes

Alicia Wanless is a PhD researcher at King’s College London in War Studies where she explores
alternative frameworks for understanding the information environment. With more than a decade
of experience in propaganda research, Alicia has developed original models for identifying and
analysing digital propaganda campaigns. She applies this learning to integrating information
activities in support of tech companies, governments and military attempting to address related
challenges, including in training exercises. Alicia has shared her work and insights with senior
government, military, industry leaders and academic experts at Wilton Park, the Munich Security
Conference, the Hedayah Centre, NATO’s ARRC and the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. Her work has been featured in the CBC, Forbes, and The Strategy Bridge, and she
has co-authored numerous academic papers and chapters related to propaganda.

Gabriel Weimann is a Full Professor at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzelia, Israel and a
Full Professor (Emertus) at the Department of Communication at Haifa University, Israel. His
research interests include the study of political campaigns, persuasion and influence, modern
terrorism and the mass media. He has published nine books and over 190 scientific articles.
His books on media and terrorism include The Theater of Terror, Freedom and Terror, Terror
on the Internet and Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation. He has received numerous
research grants from NIJ (National Institute of Justice, United States), Humboldt Stiftung
(Germany), the Fulbright Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Center, United States Institute of
Peace (USIP) and more. He was a Visiting Professor at leading universities including Stanford
University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Maryland, University of Miami (in the
US), Carleton University (Canada), University of Mainz and University of Munich (Germany),
the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the NYU branch in Shanghai (China).

Craig Whiteside is an Associate Professor for the US Naval War College program at the Naval
Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is currently a fellow at the George Washington
University Program on Extremism, and the International Centre for Counterterrorism - The
Hague.

Charlie Winter Charlie’s research specialism is terrorism and insurgency, with a focus on
online and offline strategic communication. He is studying for a PhD in War Studies, examin-
ing how militant groups cultivate creative approaches to governance and war. Alongside his
work at ICSR, which is supported by Facebook as part of the Online Civil Courage Initiative,
xxii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

he is an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in the Hague and an
Associate of the Imperial War Museum Institute in London.He has written for the BBC and The
Guardian and has had work published by Critical Studies in Media Communication, Studies in
Conflict and Terrorism, the CTC Sentinel, Philosophia, The Atlantic, War On The Rocks, and
Jihadology, among others. He holds an undergraduate degree in Arabic from the University of
Edinburgh and an MA in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London.

Jordi Xifra is Professor at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), where he teaches strategic
public relations, public diplomacy and the history of propaganda and public relations. His
programme of research centres on interest groups’ communication – in particular those of think
tanks and lobbyists –cinematic propaganda and public relations, and the intellectual history of
public relations. He is the author and editor of more than 40 books and book chapters on public
relations, propaganda and public affairs and has published papers in Public Relations Review,
Journal of Public Relations Research, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Political
Marketing, Comunicar and Historia y Comunicación Social, among others.

Paul Baines, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
and Nancy Snow
INTRODUCTION
A SAGE Handbook of Propaganda, including
chapters from major contributors from around
the world on the topic of propaganda studies/
research/praxis, is required now more than
ever. This volume comes at a most precipitous
time. We live in what might be termed the
‘Apocryphal Era’, a time of doubtful authen-
ticity, where information is less about power
and more about suspicion. When asked, we
often yearn for the true, authentic, and genu-
ine to make sense of our media environment,
but our authority systems stretching from aca-
deme, to the faith-based, public or private, have
emerged as deficient in providing tools and
pathways to reality. The world at present seem
riven with a global dialectical: he vs. she, us vs.
them, leave vs. stay, left vs. right. It is into this
vacuum of ‘truth’ that propaganda inserts itself,
and in which it thrives. This volume is about
how propaganda is freshly relevant, not because
it ever went away, but because it is even more
prevalent than it ever was. The sheer volume of
Introduction
propaganda and the speed with which it is dis-
seminated is new.
Propaganda is also newly relevant because
we thought it had largely either gone away
or ceased to be a problem, particularly in
the 1990s (the ‘end of the cold war’), and so
academe seemed to have largely ignored the
genre. It took the horrific bombing of the
World Trade Center by Al Qaeda and the loss
of 2996 lives (Katersky, 2018), and the pre- and
post-propaganda that succored the attacks, to
bring propaganda studies front and center into
academic focus. Suicide bombings, car bomb-
ings and terrorist spree killings seemed to
increase inexorably. Since George W. Bush’s
‘War on Terror’ following September 2001,
we have witnessed terrorist attacks throughout
the world (e.g. Boston, Madrid, Bali, London,
Mumbai, Islamabad, Paris, Brussels, Sousse).
These attacks are often conjoined with, and
frequently preceded by, the use of propaganda
to enhance the sense of terror in the target pop-
ulation. This is not to say that terrorist attacks
xxiv THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
are either new or newly accompanied by prop-
aganda; they are not.
Given this renewed focus on propaganda
studies, the editors felt that it was important
to draw together a series of chapters from
propaganda experts from around the world
in multiple geographies and across multiple
themes. This is important because there has
not previously been an attempt to map the
discipline comprehensively from an interdis-
ciplinary perspective, with the exception of
the work previously undertaken by the edi-
tors (see Baines and O’Shaughnessy, 2013;
Snow and Taylor, 2008) and the more nar-
rowly focused, but nevertheless useful, work
of Auerbach and Castronovo (2013), which
brings together essays on propaganda by
English language scholars but does not con-
sider recent Islamist terrorist propaganda or
that of the Far Right.
To provide a comprehensive overview
of chapter readings on the discipline, this
Handbook is broken up into the following
four Parts, each of which is described in fur-
ther detail below, along with a discussion of
the individual chapters that constitute the
Part.
Part 1: Concepts, Precepts and Techniques in Propa-
ganda Research
Part 2: Methodological Approaches in Propaganda
Research
Part 3: Tools and Techniques in Counter-Propaganda
Research
Part 4: Propaganda in Context
Propaganda’s (Im)moral Stance
Not all the authors in this volume will agree
on assigning propaganda a normative weight.
One view holds that, like a hammer that can
be used to build a house or strike a victim,
purposive intention and manipulation make
all the difference in attributing moral judg-
ment and condemnation. This more hands-
off scientific approach to propaganda is in
keeping with Harold Lasswell’s observation
that ‘as the technique of controlling attitudes
by the manipulation of significant symbols,
[propaganda] is no more moral or immoral
than a pump handle’ (1928: 264). This utili-
tarian focus on effectiveness in messaging
and reaching the target audience drove
research between two world wars, in part to
first clinically observe how propaganda is
manufactured, before assigning values and
norms. What is far more erroneous is to dis-
miss propaganda’s deterministic reputation
as unworthy of any study at all. Doob (1966)
said that no purification ceremony will
expunge society of propaganda’s odor. It is
part of mass society and mass media rela-
tions. We need to confront propaganda’s
inevitability in our modern lives, unless we
want to return to a pre-lapsarian order devoid
of mass media and technology. Many con-
tributors take on the subject with passion and
fervor, as they should, while others provide
analysis with a technician’s detached
observer hand. Both approaches, we hope,
will inspire the reader to recognize the radi-
cal functioning and role of propaganda in our
daily lives and neither filter out nor ignore its
debased intents. Nevertheless, the question
arises as to what is propaganda really, both
conceptually and operationally? We now turn
to this topic.
Why Study Propaganda?
Methods and channels of propaganda remain
heterogeneous; the digital world, for example,
has not replaced all the forms of propaganda
but rather it has expanded the channels:
old formats continue to prosper, everything
from polemical books to posters to public
performances and demonstrations.
Governments are, unsurprisingly, increasingly
concerned that propaganda, particularly but
not only from radical Islamist groups and
(increasingly) Far Right groups, plays an
important role in a person’s radicalization or
pathway to extremism. Grievances are, thus,
talked into people via propaganda. Some eras
of history have been more marked by their
 Introduction
propaganda content than others – eras as
distinct as the English Civil War or the 1930s,
when Nazism, Communism and Fascism
were rife. This raises questions about today:
are we indeed in a new era of super-
propaganda and, if we are, how long will it
last? There are several essential reasons for
this concern, the first being the rise of
globalism and with it the struggles that have
gone global in the fight for self-­legitimation.
Moreover, a world of hierarchical authority
and dictatorship has been replaced by
something different. We have seen the rise of
regimes which claim democratic legitimacy,
for example, Russia and Iran both have
parliaments and elections but neither country
can be regarded as democratic, coming 144th
equal and 150th respectively out of 167 in the
Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy
index rankings (EIU, 2019). Such countries,
among many others, are essentially
authoritarian and use propaganda to justify
their actions and obfuscate their real intentions.
Defining Propaganda:
What Is It (Not) Anyway?
There is considerable definitional fog about
what constitutes propaganda. Propaganda,
despite its use over millennia, remains feebly
defined and frequently misunderstood. It is
particularly poorly understood in layman’s
terms where propaganda subsumes (usually)
inept marketing and promotional activity, or
any communication with which someone dis-
agrees. A useful description of propaganda,
however, according to Ellul (1973:25), defines
it based on its principle aims, which are:
To provoke action … to make the individual cling
irrationally to a process of action. It is no longer to
lead to a choice, but to loosen the reflexes … to
arouse an active and mythical belief. (Ellul, 1973)
This action imperative in propaganda makes
it an obvious military and government com-
munications tool, i.e. weaponized advocacy.
Definitional opacity aside, there is consensus
xxv
about how propaganda takes shape. First, it is
directed and sponsored information. There
must be some institutional backing in place
for the propaganda to be engaged. Major
sponsors of propaganda methods, particularly
from a military perspective, include the UK,
France, the United States, the Soviet Union
and the Nazi German regime. In the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries, the use of propa-
ganda has also been undertaken by rogue
states, e.g. North Korea, Iraq and Iran, as well
as by stateless terrorist groups or terrorist
groups seeking to found states, e.g. Al Qaeda,
Hamas, Daesh and Hezbollah.
Second, propaganda information serves
the primary interests of the sponsors, which
invokes the common pattern of one-way,
manipulative campaigns that solicit the action
(and sometimes inaction) of the masses.
While conventional wisdom may view such
campaigns as primitive or anachronistic, they
still work, especially on easily distracted,
multi-tasking populations who seek selective
information as a crutch for their biases. For
example, how often do we critically exam-
ine our social media feeds and internet news
stories for source and beneficiary content?
Although digital age participants have ample
access to contrarian, contradictory and debat-
able assumptions online, they do not neces-
sarily or even usually discard rigid opinions
when challenged. Online communities also
offer more opportunity for like-minded
people to connect in ideological fraternity,
thereby challenging the notion that as peo-
ple become isolated, they cease to voice their
opinions (see Noelle-Neumann, 1974, on her
spiral of silence theory from the pre-internet
era).
Propaganda does not ask for belief, nor
does it usually employ a rational appeal. It
does not seek credibility based on the pro-
vision of accurate information: rather, the
genre is almost exclusively defined by its
emotive content and rejection of non-emotive
forms of persuasion, e.g. use of fear. When
everything is under suspicion, nothing is
sacred, including facts (statements embedded
xxvi THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
in propaganda content frequently lack cred-
ibility with at least some of their target
audience). Propaganda operates by creating
simulacra of rationality, e.g. by the selective
use of statistics or seemingly factual claims
which cannot be affirmed empirically. Facts
become just true or false (an oxymoron, of
course), and they are subsumed by the narra-
tive, the story whose characters drive engage-
ment and reach. A good story will trump the
truth almost every time. As the old adage
goes: ‘a lie can travel halfway around the
world while the truth is still putting on its
shoes’ (usually attributed to Mark Twain, but
fittingly was probably developed by Jonathan
Swift, according to Chokshi, 2017).
The old propaganda appeals continue to
work: propagandists continue to exploit the
fear appeal and the notion of existential threat.
Far right concepts like the so-called ‘Death
of Europe’ (see Murray 2017) or ‘the great
replacement’ (i.e. the notion that the Christian
people of Europe are being ‘replaced’ by non-
Europeans and particularly Muslims from the
Middle East and Africa, see Camus, 2015) are
packaged and sold by incendiary propaganda
that portrays a nightmarish world of threat and
terror. For example, Camus’ work was used in
the justification of the Christchurch shootings
that resulted in the killing of 50 Muslims in
New Zealand in 2019 (McAuley, 2019). The
political consequences of propaganda are
substantial, and they include, for the first time
since World War II, the rise of a mass Far Right
in Europe and extensive radicalization apparent
in the mainstreaming of reactionary discourse.
Moreover, people are not rational agents, what
they seek is solidarity, the membership of a
group, and intellectual doubt is consequently
surrendered to gain this: that is an adequate,
if incomplete, explanation for the persuasive
power of propaganda.
Propaganda is also, of course, used in
peacetime (or pre-war to justify war), by
governments and organizations as a way of
homogenizing certain desired attitudes in the
population. Consider, for example, Prime
Minister Blair’s attempts to sell the Iraq War
to the British people circa 2002/3, which were
a largely failed attempt to unify the British
people around the government’s war plans.
The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
was mobilized to persuade the British pub-
lic of the rightness of war through Operation
Mass Appeal, which planted stories in the
media of the menace of Saddam Hussein’s
weapons of mass destruction (Rufford, 2003).
Equally propagandistic is the toxic negative
advertising used in political campaigns (par-
ticularly in America), often slandering oppo-
nents with lurid accusations garnered through
opposition research, with the aim of reducing
the opposition’s voter turnout and galvaniz-
ing one’s own supporters to get out the vote.
Who (Needs to) Believe(s)
this Stuff Anyway?
Early notions of propaganda as being highly
effective and being ‘swallowed’ by the public
in their entirety (see the hypodermic needle or
stimulus-response model associated with
Lasswell, 1971) have been replaced by much
subtler notions. This is specifically the idea
that propaganda is a co-production between
communicator and audience, and that the
target audience, far from being naive, is a
willing accomplice in their own persuasion, at
least partly through self-deceit. Further,
propaganda services the needs of its producers
as well as its consumers: propaganda is a
psychological resource to affirm and reinforce
the conviction of those who construct it. In
addition, the outlandish imagery and ideas that
are often projected by propagandists are not an
appeal to rationality, but rather an invitation to
share a fantasy – of fear, of enmity, of
existential threat. Outlandish, oversized and
even exotic fiction is often proffered by
propagandists; a refusal to face facts is
accommodated with the invention of new ones.
Credulity and delusionality may be
character traits both of those receiving
and those creating the propaganda. For
propagandists, the conscious transmission of
 Introduction
untruths is not really the point, and such is
their ideological conviction that a lie is really
just a different form of truth; it is about ‘right’
and conveys the ‘right’ tone. Thus, many
countries around the world face the stubborn,
even intractable problem of vicious alienation
arising out of propaganda-fed delusions. There
are radicalizing Muslims (e.g. UK, United
Sates, Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco, Russia) and
Far Right radicals (e.g. United Sates, UK,
Germany, Russia). There is also the continuing
threat presented by Al Qaeda (the original
and archetypal global terrorist group) and
its various regional franchises (e.g. Islamic
Maghreb, Arabian Peninsula). Daesh, despite
losing much of the territory it controlled in Iraq
and Syria between 2013 and 2019, to a large
extent copied the AQ model of franchising, but
has been much more successful in attracting
recruits quickly, in disseminating its messages
and in the number of people it has killed,
e.g. in its attacks in 2017 (START, 2018). That
some people are persuaded by propaganda,
in this case Islamist propaganda, is clear but
what also deserves further research is how
the relative brand competition between these
organizations (e.g. Daesh and Al Qaeda, and
Daesh vs. Far Right ideologues) plays out and
its effects on adherents.
WHAT WE HAVE COVERED
IN THIS HANDBOOK
Part 1: Concepts, Precepts and
Techniques in Propaganda
Research
The following chapters of Part 1 review
aspects of propaganda that are historical, psy-
chological and sociological. The chapters
focus, for example, on the historical signifi-
cance and contemporary imperative of the
idea of disinformation and fake news, demon-
strating its ubiquity (but also posing the ques-
tion of why such crudeness appears to work).
The chapters illuminate core themes via two
xxvii
central and related forms, that is to say tech-
nique and technology, and from this we can
derive the integuments of a conceptual
framework.
The inherent lesson from this, the first sec-
tion of the SAGE Handbook of Propaganda,
is that the idea of propaganda is more open-
ended and, in a sense, omnivorous than stand-
ard texts have represented it as being thus
far. Specifically, these chapters focus on the
power of atrocity propaganda to create and
sustain a momentum toward war; but they
also illuminate the relevance of things usu-
ally held to be external to the realm of propa-
ganda, for example, strategy in war (which it
is argued should have a narrative and propa-
ganda imperative as well as a strictly military
one). Other examples of issues that extend
the orthodox domains of propaganda include
terrorism, the random violence of the agitator
and revolutionary. For these too make propa-
ganda, but bloodily, since their violent deeds
are a symbolic language per se – the targets,
the methods and the rejection of normative
values are all part of this psychotic medium.
These chapters focus on the three central
theatres for the performance of propaganda,
that is to say politics (civic and un-civic), war
and latterly, though not surprisingly, business
and consumption, and the techniques and
technologies that facilitate this performance.
There is the digital world’s intoxication with
the visual for example, or the rise of the so-
called ‘sock puppets’ and ‘bots’, methods for
creating the illusion of audience, or the con-
scription of real audiences as online ampli-
fiers and loyal verbalizers. Therefore, our
contributors discuss those aspects of tech-
nique which are driven by digital technology
and which offer possibilities of conceptual
evolution in the meaning and content of the
word propaganda.
Our approaches and conceptual discussions
are also enlightened by a critical awareness.
The role of atrocity propaganda in Australia
in World War I, for example, is revealed as
self-limiting: people simply ceased to have
faith. Disinformation, on the other hand, has
xxviii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
currency not because people are naïve but
because they have a wish to believe and it is a
co-production between creator and consumer,
and it ministers especially to the psychological
needs of its producers. It is not necessarily a lie
but is it therefore an alternative form of truth?
In Chapter 1, ‘Propaganda of the Deed
and its Anarchist Origins’, Neville Bolt’s
work on the Propaganda of the Deed is
highly original. He analyses the debates and
tensions within the mid-nineteenth century
radical left and the different conclusions
taken from them, manifest in the ideologi-
cal split between the Anarchists and the
Communists, and Anarchism’s seeking of
the violent overthrow of the state not through
mass revolution but through sporadic acts of
terror against the social targets of its rage,
expressive of both the depths of its alienation
and norm rejection. The chronicle of such
incidents, even now and through the miasma
of history, make for grim reading. They rep-
resent a form of propaganda no less worthy
of such categorization than posters, tracts
and incendiary speeches. The ‘Propaganda
of the Deed’ is a language without speech, a
symbolic grammar that assaults friends and
enemies and the bourgeois nation state they
stand against. Its aim of creating a pervasive
fear skulking beneath the surfaces of urban
life is no less relevant today than it was then.
It is this conceptual anatomy that Bolt evokes
and diagnoses.
In Chapter 2, ‘Atrocity Propaganda in
Australia and Great Britain during the
First World War’, Emily Robertson dis-
cusses World War I as the ultimate case study
in the power of atrocity propaganda. This
has broader ramifications and history does
not offer a superior one. Propaganda was
particularly important in Australia because
that country did not introduce conscription
– all its soldiers were volunteers. This case
illustrates how we foster notions of sub-­
humanity to dehumanize an enemy and make
their killing possible, and how universal was
the belief in the bestiality of the Germans.
People believed because they wanted to (i.e.
confirmation bias). Moreover, there is the
specific effectiveness of the notion of ‘baby
killers’ in mobilizing anger (as Richardson,
2006, also discusses). These are important
generic notions on the utility of atrocity prop-
aganda. Robertson’s exploration of atrocity
propaganda, however, also incorporates the
emergent notion and evolution of human
rights codes as universal imperatives. The
chapter furthers discourse in a number of
important ways. It highlights, for example,
the salience of bureaucratic propaganda, as
where the official reports were exploited by
polemicists. It also attests to the idea that
successful propaganda contains a particle
of truth: for example, the image of German
‘frightfulness’ was not entirely imaginary,
the shelling of Scarborough in December
1914 or the Zeppelin raids, for example. A
critical point here is how any appeal, if taken
to an extreme, can create cognitive exhaus-
tion or even cynicism: and Robertson’s work
illuminates how the power of atrocity propa-
ganda waned toward the end of the war.
In Chapter 3, ‘Strategic Narratives and
War Propaganda’, Thomas Colley explains
how persuasion is the core dynamic of his-
tory. The persuasion-war nexus goes way
back in time. War itself is narrative and yet
its practitioners seldom conduct it as such.
The organization of campaigns, the choice
of targets, and weapons and the nature
of victories or defeats is such as to com-
municate meaning via a story. Colley’s
argument is that such properties deter-
mine how war is ‘read’ – is it a ‘just’ war
of liberation or the action of an overween-
ing bully against a defenseless target? Yet,
as Colley explains, military commanders
and politicians possess the ability to frame
the narrative – to choose who to act against,
how to do it and what methods to use. The
Falklands War (fought in 1982 between
the UK and Argentina over sovereignty of
the Falkland Islands), for example, had a
coherent although by no means universally
accepted narrative; that of defending a free
people against a foreign tyrant and its military
 Introduction
regime. This line of persuasion was broadly
accepted by the British public. With the Iraq
war, the UK government and military origi-
nally held mastery of the narrative content
and momentum. They began to lose it both
because of the intractable insurgency that fol-
lowed, the consequent deaths of civilians, and
the emergent counter-narrative of a war cre-
ated on a false prospectus. Colley argues that
wars are begun, continued and concluded,
largely in ignorance of the centrality of the
narrative-framing device to their success,
and that military/political actions undermine
rhetoric/narratives and create message inco-
herence. He concludes that we possess con-
siderable autonomy in choosing who we fight
or not, and how we fight wars, but that such
choices are often made without incorporating
questions of meaning. Herein lies the source
of abject failure and frustration.
In Chapter 4, ‘From Disinformation
to Fake News: Forwards into the Past’,
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy seeks to answer the
question ‘why fake news?’ by positioning
fake news, or disinformation, as a potent his-
toric force which has simply assumed more
power in our own era for reasons technologi-
cal, sociological and psychological. The role
of disinformation in history needs no embel-
lishment, it encompasses everything from the
Trojan Horse to the fabled Zinoviev letter,
to the appalling ‘Protocols of the Elders of
Zion’, fictions and frauds that have beguiled
nations and deluded their senates and lead-
erships. But O’Shaughnessy’s claim is that
there is more to this than meets the eye and
it is not merely – or even at all – a question
of credulous, dumb masses à la Gustav Le
Bon (Le Bon, 2014). Rather, the resonance
of disinformation arises because of the need
to believe, a force so strong that we really
can speak of fake news as a co-production
in which the target is not victim but ally
conspirator.
In Chapter 5, ‘Post-Truth and the
Changing Information Environment’,
Ignas Kalpokas explains that ‘post- truth’ has
become our leitmotif, an idea inscribed in so
xxix
many daily headlines. It has come to define
us, a phrase we use to both describe our era
and ourselves. We are so convinced that we
do indeed live in an age of post-truth, that is
to say a kind of merchandised serial fiction,
that nothing is truly true any longer: instead,
we live in a looking-glass world where eve-
rything is believed or maybe everything is
disbelieved. We never quite know. What has
happened is the comprehensive penetration
of cognitive and intellectual defenses. For
example, people once possessed the defense
mechanism of a well-supported national press
and its scribes. Post-truth also exploits vulner-
abilities in psychological make-up, for exam-
ple, the power of ‘confirmation bias’ when
we look for evidence to support our exist-
ing predispositions. Kalpokas does not seek
to simplify what is a complex phenomenon.
Rather, he points out the intrinsic momentum
of post-truth, that as its highly targeted nar-
ratives are empowering and the motivations
for engaging it are pleasure seeking, it
becomes quite simply a form of enjoyment
and a leisure activity. Nevertheless, it is one
that pays a psychological dividend, for it
reinforces self-conviction; the very exist-
ence of the filter bubble repels all ideological
or factual challenge, thereby protecting our
comfort-zone.
In Chapter 6, ‘The Audience is the
Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda’,
Alicia Wanless and Michael Berk seek to
augment history and theory with modern
practice. Propaganda has existed in some
form since the first forging of civilizations
but in general its characteristic down the
millennia was its elite origin, in the sense of
groups who were able to afford the time and
money to build monuments or publish posters
or write polemics or make films and so on.
Frequently, they were acolytes of the regime,
but even those claiming to speak for the
masses were often themselves self-selected
tribunes of the people. Therefore, the digital
revolution represents a change as dynamic in
its way as the arrival of print, and certainly
as the arrival of radio: its unique enabling
xxx THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
characteristic has been permitting anyone
to participate as either creator, responder or
indeed saboteur. Unfortunately, the further
consequence has been less a plurality of
voices than a reinforcing of the loudest chorus
in the social media echo chamber. However,
the clever propagandist knows and exploits
this, persuading the mass demotic voice that
they ‘own’ the cause (rather than merely
project it) and that they possess autonomy.
Hence, as of yore, the cognitive elites remain
in control, cunningly enlisting the unwitting
into the ranks of partisan voices.
In Chapter 7, ‘Computational
Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake
Audience’ Aaron Delwiche describes some of
the technological advances underpinning our
theorizing and the conceptual frameworks,
which exist today. Aaron enlightens as to
how fakery is implemented via the provision
of false audiences manipulated by true
people, the agents of disinformation and
political polarization. These ‘sock puppets’
so-called, and ‘bots’, mimic real people and
real audiences but they are, in fact, totally
imaginary, a phantom legion of bogus beings.
Technology, in other words, enables deceit
on the grand scale and creates fraud as the
defining feature of our propaganda, people
erroneously believing that there is an audience
out there endorsing their perspective. It is
a way for politicians to inflate their image
and for demagogues of all kinds to claim
a larger following than they, in fact, have.
Such psycho-technical engineering is little
understood and beyond the radar screen
of the media for the most part. Delwiche’s
chapter helps clarify just how propaganda is
orchestrated today.
In Chapter 8, ‘Visual Propaganda and
Social Media’, Hyunjin Seo explains how
visuality has always been an integument of
propaganda: Pope Gregory the Great called
statues ‘books for the illiterate’ and all down
the centuries paintings, posters, prints and
other visual images have had a galvanizing
effect. This is because they are a form of
speech, a visual grammar that can say far
more than formal rhetoric: they represent
condensed meaning. Vividness of image says
everything without the need for literary expo-
sition, it commands attention, it trespasses on
the mind unbidden. Historically, posters in
public places were a great way of doing this,
and today social media and Facebook memes
are simply this – a cyberspace version of the
poster in all its visceral power. The chapter
evokes a cyberspace that has come to offer
a turbo-charged imagery: the saturation of
our consciousness with memes, with gifs,
with short films. These are endlessly dis-
tracting, but very often contain a pithy, and
polarizing, political message. By no means
is such visuality a force for benevolence. It
has, for example, been thoroughly mastered
by the mavens of the so-called Alt Right and
yet imagery is perhaps the principal form of
political consumption of our era, a remorse-
less politicizing of the visual, or crude aes-
theticization, which merges very comfortably
into the realms of entertainment, hence its
persuasive power.
In Chapter 9, ‘Public Relations and
Corporate Propaganda’, Jordi Xifra
explains how the word ‘propaganda’ has sel-
dom been applied to modern corporations
and the term ‘public relations’ has always
been employed to invoke their externally
manipulative operations. Yet these opera-
tions are designed to conceal as much as
reveal. Like all advocacy, they repress some
things and express others, but they also
exist – ­ occasionally, periodically, though
not ­ invariably – to sanitize the dark side.
This essay enlarges our frame of discourse
by incorporating the practice and ideology
of corporations and consumption within the
notion of propaganda. The corporation has
ceased to be exclusively a provider of utili-
tarian solutions, a purveyor of instrumen-
tality. Instead, their brands have become a
public language, one that telegraphs status.
Everything about an organization talks, and
when we buy the brand, we consciously buy
meaning and in consuming that meaning, we
affirm the particular set of ideas and ideology
 Introduction
with which the corporation has publicly
sought to associate. The merit of Jordi Xifra’s
article is to remind us that what companies
actually do to enhance their brands is really
propaganda, and conforms to the core defi-
nition of the term and its related practices.
The corporation is therefore a political entity,
a form of government, sometimes with world-
wide powers, and in applying the term propa-
ganda, we are merely unveiling a key truth.
Part 2: Methodological
Approaches in Propaganda
Research
The following chapters of Part 2 review
methodological approaches in propaganda
studies. This is an area seldom discussed in
its own right but is actually sorely needed.
The means by which we investigate propa-
ganda and its effects is, and should be, more
than just an appendage to an article. This
importance is particularly enhanced by the
potentially devastating effects of propaganda;
consider for example the millions of lives
lost in the Rwandan Genocide incited through
radio-based propaganda. Just as propaganda
itself is completely multi-faceted, ranging
from the patriotic posters of the Soviet
Union, through the raging radio broadcasts
of the Rwandan Genocide, to the homicidal
YouTube clips of Daesh, so are the method-
ologies by which we interrogate these com-
munications. What methods work to analyze
the content of Twitter feeds will not work for
posters, or for radio broadcasts. Similarly,
the sheer complexity of the content of much
propaganda today and in yesteryear gives
rise to different attempts to analyze its mean-
ing, often through linguistic techniques in
analyzing structures of meaning including
denotation and connotation. Nevertheless,
the methods for constituting propaganda also
differ. While some is developed to integrate
and unify public opinion, other propaganda
is developed to disintegrate public opinion.
In Part 2, we consider an important
xxxi
consideration in propaganda studies, namely:
how do we determine its effectiveness? This
topic is particularly hampered by the fact that
it is often difficult to evaluate the effects
when one does not have access, or have lim-
ited access, to those targeted.
In Chapter 10, ‘Rhetorical Methods and
Metaphor in Viral Propaganda’, Chris
Miles interrogates the rhetorical properties of
‘viral’ propaganda, considering for instance
who benefits from the notion that propaganda
works to ‘infect’ its target audience? He also
considers memetics and its transformation
into a popular culture practice. By discussing
the links between memetics and contempo-
rary propaganda, Miles highlights how main-
stream techniques have influenced political
communication. The chapter seeks to make
a methodological contribution by demon-
strating the benefits of discourse analysis to
‘hypermodern’ political communication such
as propaganda.
In Chapter 11, ‘Content Analysis and
the Examination of Digital Propaganda
on Social Media’, Darren Lilleker and
Paweł Surowiec critique content analysis
as a research method used in examining
digital propaganda. They discuss the types
of research question that content analy-
sis seeks to answer when examining digi-
tal propaganda, before critically examining
issues which digital propaganda researchers
encounter in their fieldwork. Lilleker and
Surowiec also discuss how content analysis
of propaganda can serve to reveal its compu-
tational, software-generated features.
In Chapter 12, ‘Character Assassination
as Modus Operandi of Soviet
Propaganda’, Sergei A. Samoilenko and
Margarita Karnysheva discuss the surpris-
ingly neglected concept of character assas-
sination; a concept they believe is as old as
the hills. The authors posit that the increasing
use of character assassination relates to the
rise of information warfare and online disin-
formation in international politics. Character
assassination is discussed within the con-
text of Soviet propaganda o­ riginating in the
xxxii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
nineteenth century, and its evolution into con-
temporary Russian propaganda. Samoilenko
and Karnysheva argue that character assassi-
nation was an innovation and central feature
of Marxism-Leninism, becoming a neces-
sary tool to perpetuate the class struggle.
Character assassination is therefore outlined
as a set of stratagems to discredit influential
public figures with opposing ideologies, via
disinformation. The chapter discusses how
the heritage of the subversive propaganda of
early revolutionaries and Soviet ideological
doctrines remains relevant in contemporary
Russia and beyond.
In Chapter 13, ‘Assessing Propaganda
Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited
Access Case Study’, Efe Sevin, Kadir Jun
Ayhan, Won Yong Jang and Hyelim Lee pre-
sent a discussion of how to measure the effec-
tiveness of propaganda projects conducted by
select South Korean non-state actors directed
at North Korean audiences. The chapter repre-
sents an interesting study of how to measure
the effectiveness of propaganda when there is
a near-total lack of access to the target audi-
ence, as is the case in North Korea. The authors
build their discussion based on propaganda
documents, interviews with select practition-
ers and an impressionistic survey of North
Korean defectors. Their findings indicate that
South Korean practitioners might use a three-
pronged approach to assess the effectiveness
of their propaganda projects: via analysis of
content, platform and indirect outcomes.
In Chapter 14, ‘Towards the
Measurement of Islamist Propaganda
Effectiveness: A Marketing Perspective’,
Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
set out to develop a rich picture of the eco-
system around the measurement of the effec-
tiveness of Islamist terrorist propaganda.
Writing from a marketing perspective, they
posit that the problem-space of effectiveness
measurement is multi-faceted, incorporating
considerations of: barriers to measurement;
identifying suitable measures of effective-
ness and suitable methodologies by which
to measure effectiveness; recognizing the
centrality of fear appeal use in propaganda
and measuring its effect accordingly; and
evaluating the effect of terrorist leaders. They
also explore locating the center of gravity in
terrorist group propaganda usage, and how to
measure the effectiveness of terrorist group
efforts to move people through the recruit-
ment funnel (from attentiveness through
persuasion/­ influence, to engagement, to
action/conversion within the terrorist net-
work). They go on to provide a set of met-
rics to monitor the use of propaganda at each
stage of recruitment progression.
Part 3: Tools and Techniques in
Counter-Propaganda Research
The following chapters in Part 3 consider the
important topic of counter-propaganda.
Given the rise in terrorism and its accompa-
nying propaganda, governments are increas-
ingly concerned with how to limit the power
of their opponents’ propaganda. The chapters
in this Part discuss a variety of topics includ-
ing how fake news differs from disinforma-
tion; how atrocity propaganda was improperly
countered in World War I; how Israel has
improperly sought to counter Hamas and
Hezbollah propaganda; how its adversaries
should defend against Russian propaganda as
opposed to countering it; how fake news in
general is framed and should be countered;
how US counterterrorism communication
efforts have been evaluated since 9/11; how
the route to tackling propaganda is via its
central fear appeal; and why peace marketing
might be a credible alternative to counter-
propaganda efforts. We consider each of
these chapters in more detail below.
In Chapter 15, ‘Propaganda and Dis­
information: How an Historical Perspective
Aids Critical Response Development’,
the Chief Historian of the UK Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, Gill Bennett, com-
pares and contrasts ‘fake news’, disinforma-
tion and propaganda. She concludes that the
distinction between these concepts is less than
 Introduction
clear-cut. She argues that both propaganda
and disinformation have been employed as
tools of statecraft for centuries in the ser-
vice of worthy and unworthy causes. In the
age of instant global media and the 24-hour
news cycle, she argues that it is increasingly
important for policymakers and the general
public to try to discern the differences and
similarities between them.
In Chapter 16, ‘Atrocities, Investigations
and Propaganda: Lessons from World War
I’, Ewan Lawson, a former Commanding
Officer of the UK Psychological Operations
Group and the Royal United Service’s
Institute’s expert on influence operations,
seeks to address the challenge of so-called
fake news and propaganda. He argues that
challenging the falsehoods and identifying
the organizations and approaches of adver-
sary propaganda is essential to countering its
pernicious effects. This chapter argues that
to do this successfully, we must understand
earlier critiques of propaganda that have led
to its overwhelmingly negative image. The
chapter tackles the role of atrocity reporting
and propaganda during World War I, outlin-
ing efforts made by the allies in the first year
of the war to identify and report on German
atrocities in Belgium and Northern France,
recognizing that as well as being intended to
hold the Germans to account, they were also
employed to influence domestic and neutral
public opinion. Lawson highlights that the
evidence was largely ignored or suspected
in the post-war period and that this served
to hide the actual details of real atrocities,
affecting the attention given to war crimes in
the Paris Peace Process.
In Chapter 17, ‘Countering Hamas and
Hezbollah Propaganda’, Ron Schleifer
describes how Hezbollah and Hamas have
successfully developed their propaganda
strategies to assist in their battle against a
militarily superior Israel, with an aim to
bring them a de facto state, split Israeli pub-
lic opinion and embitter Israel’s existential
route. He characterizes Israel’s response
to this propaganda as feeble. Schleifer,
xxxiii
controversially, argues that the Palestinian-
Israeli battle has wider implications beyond
the Middle East, given both organizations
(seeking to represent Shiite and Sunni com-
munities respectively) are actually branches
of global radical Islamic networks that reach
the Western world as well.
In Chapter 18, ‘Defending Against Russian
Propaganda’, Christopher Paul and Miriam
Matthews reprise their characterization of
Russia’s contemporary propaganda model
(which they title the ‘firehose of false-
hood’), review the psychology behind the
model’s potential effectiveness and discuss
how target audiences might defend them-
selves. They suggest distinguishing between
defending against propaganda and ‘counter-­
propaganda’, given the connotation of the
latter to focus on the opponent and their
propaganda. This model is applied to con-
temporary Russian propaganda, which they
characterize as high-volume, multichannel,
rapid, continuous and repetitive, in order
to evaluate its effectiveness from a psycho-
logical perspective. Proceeding through this
route allows them to identify how to defend
against propaganda, using an array of defen-
sive measures.
In Chapter 19, ‘Fighting and Framing
Fake News’, Maria Haigh and Thomas Haigh
consider definitions of fake news, using
Ukraine, a country on the frontline of the fight
against fake news since 2014, and the United
States as case studies. Intriguingly, they take
ideas from science studies and philosophy to
argue that the status of a news story as real or
fake depends not on its truth content per se
or even on the intention of its producer, but
on the process by which it was constructed.
This allows them to document various frames
to explain fake news production, which leads
on to proposed and attempted methods of
fighting fake news.
In Chapter 20, ‘Measuring the
Un­measur­able: Evaluating the
Effectiveness of US Strategic Counter­
terrorism Communications’, former US
Ambassador and Coordinator for Strategic
xxxiv THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC)
at the US Department of State (2012 to
2015), Alberto Fernandez, discusses efforts
to evaluate public diplomacy programs
against extremism and anti-Americanism,
from the period after 9/11 until after the
establishment of the interagency Center for
Strategic Counterterrorism Communications
(CSCC) in late 2010. He argues that data-
driven evaluation of CSCC’s efforts focused
on one key but short-term part of its over-
all work, the overt communications initia-
tives of the Digital Outreach Team (DOT).
Documenting and analyzing DOT’s Arabic
video production from its beginning in 2011
to today revealed a rise to peak audience
numbers in 2014. He argues that the launch
of the joint USG-UAE Sawab Center in 2015
took up some of the slack in the change of
DOT content, focus and style, but explains
that that program remains in need of public
evaluation to assess its effectiveness.
In Chapter 21, ‘Countering the Fear in
Propaganda’, Paul Baines and Nigel Jones
review how counter-propaganda efforts
should work specifically to counter what is
often central in most adversary propaganda,
the fear appeals they contain, especially those
disseminated by bullying state actors and
terrorist groups. By reviewing a variety of fear
appeal models, they argue that adversaries’
propaganda efforts should be evaluated in
terms of how severe is the threat posed and
how susceptible the target audience feels to
that threat. Any counter-propaganda effort
must offer a credible solution to reducing
or eradicating the fear generated by the
adversary, framing that solution as one that
is genuinely likely to work to reduce that
fear and that the individual in the target
audience feels they can actually implement
themselves. This Fear Appeal framework
provides a novel new way of dissecting
adversary propaganda compared with,
for example, the SCAME model (Source-
Content-Audience-Media-Effects), and is
(importantly) more focused on effectively
countering that propaganda.
In Chapter 22, ‘Peace Marketing
as Counter Propaganda? Towards a
Methodology’, Dianne Dean and Haseeb
Shabbir argue that one way of countering
propaganda, and the physical conflict it often
supports, is to market its antithesis – peace.
Although the marketing of peace might ini-
tially sound implausible, it has in fact been
achieved in various places, including to some
degree, in Northern Ireland and Colombia
previously. The authors argue that while the
search for peace has been explored in a range
of disciplines including psychology, war and
conflict studies, peace studies and public
diplomacy, there has not yet been any mean-
ingful breakthrough, and sustainable peace
remains elusive in many conflicts, even in
the presence of peace talks. They consider
whether a novel form of marketing, despite
marketing’s baggage (of being character-
ized as manipulative), might instead fill this
conceptual and practical gap. They argue
that a peace marketing program would work
to segment citizens into key actor groups,
understand how the benefits of peace can be
positioned to each group and then develop an
overarching strategy in which peace is posi-
tioned to aid target audiences in preparing for
the end of conflict. This way, target audiences
would envision a new pathway to peace.
Part 4: Propaganda in Context
The following chapters in Part 4 consider
propaganda in context. We felt that this sec-
tion was necessary given that propaganda
practice is heavily context-dependent and
that there are great differences in its use. The
chapters in Part 4 begin by discussing a vari-
ety of contemporary propaganda contexts
including how Southeast Asian nations use
propaganda to create peace, how the Chinese
government use propaganda to promote inte-
gration propaganda through their ‘Chinese
Dream’ narrative – a me-too derivative of the
US ‘American dream’ of good citizenship,
how Japanese peace propaganda operates to
 Introduction
stifle dissent and how propaganda has been
used to perpetuate war in Syria. The exam-
ples which follow mix contemporary and
historical contexts, considering: Cold War
propaganda in Greece during the civil war
between 1946 and 1949; the nexus between
left-wing national populism in Bolivia,
Ecuador and Venezuela; Putin’s form of ultra-­
nationalist propaganda between 2000 and
2018; how Trump’s propaganda has served to
cow an uncritical, domestic US press; a
polemic on the ‘Far Right’ propaganda of the
Leave.EU campaign during the 2016 UK-EU
referendum campaign; how Daesh used prop-
aganda to target and lure female foreign
adherents; how Daesh designed and dissemi-
nated its propaganda messages; how terrorist
propaganda has evolved in cyberspace
since 9/11; and how the UK used counter-­
propaganda methods against a nimble enemy
in the Middle East with maximum effect. We
consider each of these chapters in more detail
below.
In Chapter 23, ‘Propaganda and
Information Operations in Southeast
Asia: Constructing Colonialism and
its Antithesis, Statehood and Peaceful
Ambiguity’, Alan Chong uncovers the vari-
ety in propaganda from justifying colonial-
ism over a century to today’s reinforcement
of state legitimacy and the ‘ASEAN Way’.
His chapter reveals that propaganda and
information operations are not constrained
by regional or national boundaries, are not
restricted to warfare, but can also be used to
enforce a peaceful ambiguity in diplomatic
discourse that maintains a status quo. The key
contribution is a Southeast Asian creation of
narratives in war and an imperfect peace.
In Chapter 24, ‘The Construction of the
Chinese Dream’, Chung-Min Tsai exam-
ines the construction of the Chinese Dream
through its use of humiliation discourse and
rejuvenation narratives. The Chinese Dream
is a widespread meme of Xi Jinping that
came with few concrete examples but is now
closely integrated into policymaking goals
in sustainable development, economic and
xxxv
political reforms, and China’s international
influence. Chung-Min Tsai lays out the three
stages of the Chinese Dream from political
slogan to ideological symbol and a rationale
for maintaining the dream through Chinese
Communist Party rule. He explores the con-
cept from a multidimensional perspective in
history, politics, economics and China’s rise
in global affairs.
In Chapter 25, ‘Darkness and Light:
Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan’,
Nancy Snow reinforces the role of mythmak-
ing in propaganda, or how reproducing and
extending myths (Japanese homogeneity
and consensus) can drive a state to a form of
democratic totalitarianism where social soli-
darity is prized above civic effectiveness and
with a real intolerance of dissent. It uncovers
the propaganda of integration embedded in
the culture, presented as a positive narrative
by all citizens in all circumstances and, criti-
cally, without the oversight of a police state
to enforce conformity.
In Chapter 26, ‘Syria: Propaganda
as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information
Warfare’, Greg Simons applies propaganda
rhetoric within an information warfare set-
ting in Syria. Binary realities have taken hold
since the beginning of the conflict, where
what Simons describes as the propaganda
of aversion is in constant contrast with the
propaganda of attraction. Through a content
analysis of selected newspapers in the after-
math of an alleged chemical attack in Douma,
Simons shows how media content can be dis-
torted and manipulated to such a degree that
they act as an instrument to perpetuate war
through reinforcing binary realities.
In Chapter 27, ‘Cold War Propaganda
in Civil War Greece, 1946–1949: From
State of Emergency to Normalization’,
Zinovia Lialiouti undertakes a post-World
War II Cold War analysis that crosses the
Atlantic between Greece and the United
States. Propaganda is viewed as a landscape
for power struggles and power relations, with
one state pushing an anti-Communist agenda
where both physical and psychological
xxxvi THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
actions were used against Greek Communists
and their sympathizers to convert them. This
conversion process is framed as healing and
reformative and evolves into a transnational
military and ideological battle with the anti-
Communist Cold War Marshall Plan and
Truman Doctrine formulas bringing atten-
tion to the ‘Greek problem’. Zialiouti’s chap-
ter includes a case study of the ‘Work and
Victory Week’ of 1949.
In Chapter 28, ‘Propaganda and Populist
Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and
Venezuela’, Daniel Aguirre and Caroline
Avila make an important contextual contribu-
tion in regional populist communication prac-
tices. Three country studies are presented to
show the ebbs and flows of Latin American
populism in legacy and current practice. This
review of the nexus between propaganda and
populism on rhetorical and structural grounds
offers a refreshing departure from the domi-
nant media coverage of right-wing national
populism in Europe and the United States.
In Chapter 29, ‘Evaluating Putin’s
Propa­ ganda Performance 2000–2018:
Stagecraft as Statecraft’, Tina Burrett
draws on content analysis, survey data and
interviews with Moscow-based journalists to
examine the stagecraft of Russian president
Vladimir Putin over nearly 20 years. Burrett
deftly deconstructs the Putin mystique and
how he rose from obscurity to use his secu-
rity credentials as a symbol of Russian ultra-
nationalism in order for Russia to take on the
world as a new super patriot power. Burrett
examines Putin’s foreign and domestic oper-
ations and the chapter offers a landscape
perspective on not only Putin but the short-
comings of the Russian media environment
and its ancillary role in the rise of Putin.
In Chapter 30, ‘Trumpaganda: The War
on Facts, Press and Democracy’, Mira
Sotirovic provides a window into the Trump
administration’s misinformation campaigns
known as Trumpaganda and how President
Donald Trump is able to make mainstream
news media outlets enemies of the state. She
shows how the US news media, when used as
a daily punching bag, are complicit in falling
for the Trump insults instead of serving the
public interest and the truth-seeking function
of the press, impacting important policies
like healthcare.
In Chapter 31, ‘LeaveEU: Dark Money,
Dark Ads and Data Crimes’, Emma L.
Briant offers an unapologetic characteriza-
tion of the Leave.EU campaign to support
Brexit as Far Right propaganda. This chapter
does not attempt to uncover the propaganda
elements of the opposing Remain campaign,
but rather offers an impassioned analysis of the
Leave.EU campaign. Briant seeks to demon-
strate, through documents and interviews with
principals from Leave.EU and Cambridge
Analytica, that the campaign actively pro-
moted and leveraged anti-immigration, racist
and nativist narratives to reinforce stereotypes
that Britain was under invasion.
In Chapter 32, ‘ISIS Female Recruits:
The Alluring Propaganda Promises’,
Louisa Tarras-Wahlberg takes a gendered
approach to propaganda recruitment with
her chapter on how Daesh attracts female
recruits. Using a qualitative text analysis of
two Daesh magazines, Dabiq and Rumiyah,
she reveals the pull factors – the offer of sup-
port promises in exchange for their sisterly
assistance – and adds that the Western media
coverage of these recruits was ill-informed
about the reciprocal benefits of the recruit-
ment relationship.
In Chapter 33, ‘IS’s Strategic
Communication Tactics’, Charlie Winter
and Craig Whiteside address the innovative
strategic communication tactics of Daesh
from the commercial perspective of build-
ing a product from scratch. From the level
of message design to dissemination of its
message in off- and online and pre- and post-
Mosul contexts, the authors demonstrate that
the media and persuasion tactics used have
rarely been without precedent.
In Chapter 34, ‘The Evolution of
Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace’,
Gabriel Weimann addresses the open nature
of the internet as an ideal platform for terrorist
 Introduction
propaganda. Its free and open network prop-
erties provide anonymity and decentralization
unavailable through mainstream media chan-
nels. Weimann carries the reader from the
post-9/11 war on terrorism period through to
relocation on social media and most recently
to deeper migration flows to the Dark Web,
all in an effort to conceal and protect terrorist
messaging and their activities.
If we use a synthetic review approach to
consider, across all four Parts of the Handbook,
what themes, and geographies, have been
covered, we can see that the Handbook has
embraced a wide area of the propaganda stud-
ies field (see Table 0.1), including: propaganda
from around the world; integrative and ‘peace
propaganda’ approaches; countering violent
extremist propaganda; countering disinforma-
tion and fake news; atrocity propaganda; and
countering cyberspace propaganda and other
technological developments. These themes
are not mutually exclusive and there is some
crossover in topics.
An analysis of the word frequencies
contained in the abstracts in NVivo, based
on each précis outlined above, reveals the
broad topics that are covered in the book.
When these are placed into a word cloud
format (see Figure 0.1), they reveal how the
Handbook particularly focuses on important
contemporary topics such as propaganda
effectiveness measurement, fake news, disin-
formation, war propaganda and propaganda
in the digital era.
Figure 0.1  Word Cloud Outlining The Main Foci of the Handbook
xxxvii
We also consider what has not been cov-
ered in the Handbook; we turn to this topic in
the next section.
WHAT WE HAVE NOT COVERED
IN THIS HANDBOOK
In considering what areas of propaganda stud-
ies have been covered, we are able to develop
an agenda for further research in the field of
propaganda and counter-propaganda studies
by considering what has not been discussed.
The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda could
have covered in more detail, for example, the
following areas:
• Certain regions where propaganda use is rife
(e.g. parts of Africa, including Nigeria, for exam-
ple, where Boko Haram operate, and Somalia,
where Al Shabab operate).
• Contributions from under-published academic
communities, particularly those outside the
Anglosphere, for example, including more Far
Eastern, African and Latin American contributors.
• Some methodologies that can, and have been used,
to interrogate propaganda texts (e.g. semiotic
analysis) and propaganda dissemination (e.g.
social network analysis), among many others.
• Corporate propaganda in more than the limited
detail contained herein; this is an important topic
that deserves much greater consideration devoted
to it and, consequently, this represents an impor-
tant agenda for future academic research.
• The effects of propaganda, particularly on demo-
cratic and authoritarian systems and on public
xxxviii THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Table 0.1  Some of the Key Themes Covered in this Handbook

Key themes covered Chapters where topic Geographic considerations Principal author’s location
explicitly covered

Propaganda by country context
Integrative and peace
propaganda approaches
Islamist propaganda
Far Right propaganda
Countering disinformation and
fake news
Atrocity propaganda
Propaganda in cyberspace and
other technological advances
2,8,12,13,20,23,24, UK, Australia, USA, Russia, North Australia, Spain, Russia,
25,26,27,28,29 Korea, Ukraine, Southeast South Korea, Singapore,
Asia, Japan, Syria, Iraq, Greece, Taiwan, Sweden, Greece,
Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela Chile, Japan
9,12,22,23,24,25 Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Spain, UK, USA, Singapore,
Russia Taiwan, Japan
3,14,17,23,32,33,35 UK, Palestine, Israel, Southeast UK, Israel, Sweden, Taiwan
Asia, Syria, Iraq
8,31 USA, UK UK, USA
4,5,7,12,15,18,19,21, UK, USA, Russia, Ukraine UK, USA, Lithuania
30
2,16 UK, Australia UK, Australia
1,5,6,7,8,10,11,20,33, UK, USA Canada, USA, Israel
34,35

opinion, over time. This is a separate discussion
from the effectiveness of (counter) propaganda,
for example, and one which demands much
greater consideration.
CONCLUSION
We hope you feel, like we do, that the SAGE
Handbook of Propaganda covers an impres-
sive array of propaganda practice, illuminating
its use through the modern and historical world
via a global perspective. These chapters, from
an impressive list of contributors ranging from
academics to practitioners, cover a wide array
of themes prevalent in propaganda today and
in yesteryear. Our intention is to provide
propaganda researchers and practitioners with
a much more informed understanding of how
propaganda functions, how it can be countered
and how the effectiveness of both can be meas-
ured more accurately. We believe this is the
first time a Handbook of Propaganda has been
developed with this specific managerialist
focus to aid policymakers, and this serves to
supplement wider societal perspectives on
propaganda also available in this Handbook
and elsewhere. While we have tried to be com-
prehensive in developing the content for this
Handbook and have benefitted enormously
from the support given to us by our editorial
board (see below), any omissions in content
remain the fault of the three main editors alone.
This is a large book and it has been less a
labor of love than an impassioned task driven
by perceived necessity, urgency even, because
of the imbalance between the saturation levels
of propaganda we encounter and the paucity of
the tools we possess, cognitive and otherwise,
to constrain or decode it. For us, then, this
book has been a compulsive act; for you, the
reader, the opportunity to explore the terrible
grandeur of the edifice and speculate on what
might happen next, on what kind of society
might arise from this inferno of rhetoric and
visual foment. For that, we have no answer. We
can only pose those perplexing questions that
new generations, who came to maturity in this
climate of polemic, might seek understanding
and find resolution.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To develop this Handbook required the labor
of a larger number of people who diligently
reviewed each of the chapters, and these
comments together with those of the editors,
 Introduction
were passed on to the author(s) in order that
they could improve their submissions. The
following reviewers, outlined below, were
critical in helping the editors to improve the
final chapters.
Ms Emily Robertson, School of Humanities and Social
Sciences, UNSW Canberra, Australia
Dr Thomas Colley, Department of War Studies, King’s
College London, UK
Ms Alicia Wanless, The SecDev Foundation, Canada
Prof. Aaron Delwiche, Department of Communication,
Trinity University, USA
Dr Hyunjin Seo, William Allen White School of Jour-
nalism and Mass Communications, University of
Kansas, USA
Prof. Ignas Kalpokas, Department of Public Communica-
tion, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
Dr Chris Miles, Promotional Cultures and Communica-
tion Centre, Bournemouth University, UK
Dr Darren Lilleker, The Media School, Bournemouth
University, UK
Mr Sergei Samoilenko, College of Humanities and
Social Sciences, George Mason University, USA
Dr Maria Haigh, School of Information Studies,
­University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
Dr Thomas Haigh, College of Letters & Science,
­University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
Dr Christopher Paul, RAND Corporation, USA
Dr Miriam Matthews, RAND Corporation, USA
Ms Gill Bennett, Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
HM Government, UK
Mr Nigel Jones, Georgina Capel Associates Ltd, UK
Mr Alberto Fernandez, Middle East Broadcasting Net-
works, USA
Dr Emma Briant, Journalism Studies, University of
Sheffield, UK
Prof. Gabriel Weimann, Department of Communication,
University of Haifa, Israel
Ms Louisa Tarras-Wahlberg, International Center for
the Study of Violent Extremism, Sweden
Dr Zinovia Lialiouti, Center for Modern Greek History,
Academy of Athens, Greece
Prof. Tina Burrett, Global Studies, Sophia University,
Japan
Dr Mira Sotirovic, Department of Journalism, University
of Illinois, USA
Dr Alan Chong, RSIS, Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore.
In putting together a book of this size, with
this shape, focus, and international reach, we
xxxix
are grateful for the advice we received from
our editorial review board, outlined below:
Dr Greg Simons, Institute for Russian and Eurasian
Studies, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Mr Ewan Lawson, Royal United Services Institute, UK.
Dr Dianne Dean, Faculty of Business, Law and Politics,
University of Hull, UK.
Dr Ron Schleifer, School of Mass Communication,
Ariel University, Israel.
Dr Neville Bolt, Department of War Studies, King’s
College London, UK.
Prof. Jordi Xifra, Department of Communication,
Pompeu Fabra University, Spain.
Kadir Jun Ayhan, Graduate School of International
and Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign
Studies, South Korea.
Prof. Chiyuki Aoi, School of Public Policy, University
of Tokyo, Japan.
The editors would also like to thank Delia
Alfonso Martinez, our senior editor, for her
help in driving the very idea of a propaganda
handbook, and for her considerable help in
scoping and shaping the final product. Her
energy and dedication, our (sometimes vexed)
conversations on politics and ideology (includ-
ing Spanish and Catalonian politics), and her
professionalism all helped drive this unique
project forward; it is what it is because of her
considerable input. We would like to thank
Umeeka Raichura for her help on the (not
inconsiderable) administration associated with
the Handbook, including administering the
reviewing and chasing us all up to ensure the
book was out on time. We would also like to
thank Amber Turner Flanders for her adminis-
trative support during her internship with
Sage, supporting Umeeka, and Colette Wilson
for her help in sorting out what we all think is
a brilliant cover design. In addition, we would
like to thank the production editor, Jessica
Masih, for the sterling work undertaken to
bring our project into physical and digital real-
ity. Finally, we have done our best to ensure
that the Handbook is as error-free as possible
and contains all the necessary permissions.
Where any errors persist after publication, the
fault remains with the three main editors.
xl THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
REFERENCES
Auerbach, J. and Castronovo, R. (Eds.). (2013).
The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda
Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baines, P. and O’Shaughnessy (Eds.) (2013).
Propaganda, Vols. I–IV. London: Sage
Publications.
Camus, R. (2015). Le grand Remplacement.
Plieux: Chez L’Auteur.
Chokshi, N. (2017). That wasn’t Mark Twain:
How a Misquotation is born. The New York
Times, 26 April. Retrieved from: www.
nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-
misquotations.html (accessed 14 April 2019).
Doob, L. (1966). Public Opinion and
Propaganda. New York: Henry Holt.
EIU (2019). Democracy Index 2018: Me Too?
Political Participation, Protest and Democracy.
London: Economist Intelligence Unit. Retrieved
from: www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index
(accessed 14 April 2019).
Ellul, J. (1973). Propaganda: The Formation of
Men’s Attitudes. Trans. Konrad Kellen and
Jean Lerner. New York: Vintage Books.
Katersky, A. (2018). The 9/11 toll still grows: More
than 16,000 Ground Zero responders who got
sick found eligible for awards. ABC News, 10
September. Retrieved from: https://abcnews.
go.com/US/911-toll-growsl-16000-ground-
responders-sick-found/story?id=57669657
(accessed 15 April 2019).
Lasswell, H.D. (1928). The Function of the
Propagandist. International Journal of Ethics,
38(3), 258–278.
Lasswell, H.D. (1971). Propaganda Technique
in World War I. Boston, MA: MIT Press.
Le Bon, G. (2014). The Crowd: A Study of the
Popular Mind. Scott’s Valley, CA: CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform.
McAuley, J. (2019). The New Zealand attack
ratchets up pressure on Europe’s
anti-immigrant right. Washington Post, 19
March. Retrieved from: www.
washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-
new-zealand-attack-ratchets-up-pressure-
on-europes-anti-immigrant-right/2019/
03/19/a9447624-49cf-11e9-8cfc-
2c5d0999c21e_story.html?noredirect=
on&utm_term=.916e31e81802 (accessed
15 April 2019).
Mahler, J. and Rutenberg, J. (2019). How Rupert
Murdoch’s empire of influence remade the
world. New York Times. www.nytimes.com/
interactive/2019/04/03/magazine/rupert-
murdoch-fox-news-trump.html (accessed
14 April 2019)
Murray, D. (2017). The Strange Death of
Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. London:
Bloomsbury Publishing.
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of
silence: a theory of public opinion. Journal of
Communication, 24(2), 43–51
Richardson, L. (2006). What Terrorists Want.
London: John Murray.
Rufford, N. (2003). Spooks helped sex up
Saddam report, confirms Blair govt. The
Times of India, 29 December, 1.
Snow, N. (2019). Propaganda. The International
Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. Tim P.
Vos and Folker Hanusch (General Editors),
Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou, Margaretha
Geertsema-Sligh and Annika Sehl (Associate
Editors). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.
Snow, N., & Taylor, P. M. (Eds.). (2008).
Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy.
Oxford: Routledge.
START (2018). Annex of Statistical Information:
Country Reports on Terrorism 2017. National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and
Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland,
College Park, MD, September. Retrieved from:
www.state.gov/documents/organization/
283097.pdf (accessed 15 April 2019).
 PART I
Concepts, Precepts
and Techniques in
Propaganda Research
This page intentionally left blank

Propaganda of the Deed and Its
Anarchist Origins
INTRODUCTION
In the late 19th century, Propaganda of the
Deed (or by Deed), the twin to the Propaganda
of the Word, sought to bring about the fall of
the state through acts of violence. These were
to be operationally effective while symboli-
cally charged events. As an instrument of
direct action, they proclaimed that deeds
speak louder than words. By goading the
state through acts of violence aimed at sym-
bolic targets, the state would be forced to
overreact. That inevitably meant overstep-
ping its remit, employing disproportionate
measures. The consequent escalation in
levels of violence would reveal the state’s
true draconian nature but inherent, moral
weakness too. Thus, would it undermine its
own legitimacy in the eyes of the population.
And accelerate its own demise.
In its original context, Propaganda of the
Deed (POTD) was a crude tool conceived to
bring down the state. Some acts were strategic
in their intent, targeted and planned. Others
1
Neville Bolt
appeared more random and less considered.
All too often they were committed by indi-
viduals. Today, many of these militants might
be described as lone wolves. By emphasis-
ing state rather than government, POTD’s
ambitions and genealogy become apparent.
As a tool of revolutionaries, it emerges from
certain anarchist or anti-authoritarian social-
ist groups within the 19th-century Left who
came to espouse the use of violence, and
existentially reject the state as an institu-
tion of governance, control, and ultimately
oppression. That meant activists turning their
backs on a gradualist approach to constitu-
tional change or what they perceived to be
the elitist tendencies of more authoritarian
groups of the Left. By contrast, the latter’s
scientific socialism saw seizure of the state
as only a stage in an historical process des-
tined to culminate in the ‘withering away’ of
the state. To their anti-authoritarian contem-
poraries, these authoritarian activists were
viewed as statist, centralist, and potentially
self-serving.
4 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
1878 Versus 2020
The revolutionary Paris Commune was finally
overwhelmed by the combined military forces
of Prussia and France in 1871. What soon fol-
lowed was the break-up of a decade-long
attempt to unify a disparate and cantankerous
Left under the aegis of the International
Working Men’s Association (IWMA) or
International. With the schism of the Left,
bombings and shootings would become a
fixture in the repertoire of fin-de-siècle poli-
tics, only to be silenced eventually by the
artillery shells of the Great War. The trauma
that would claim some ten million civilian
lives and a similar number of military casual-
ties between 1914 and 1918, was ostensibly
set in motion by the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The pages of
the New York Times wasted no time in show-
casing the anarchist Alexander Berkman. On
that fateful day in June 1914, they ran his
claim that ‘Austria-Hungary was a hotbed of
revolution’: readers were left in no doubt that
the attack had been an anarchist attempt to
undermine the iron rule of the Emperor.1
The decades in which POTD flourished
saw societal turbulence in countries stretch-
ing from Russia to America. Economic boom
and bust, dramatic expansion of capital, rapid
growth of wealthy middle classes alongside
urban poverty and disease, waves of migra-
tion from the countryside to industrial towns,
no less from Europe to the United States,
accompanied the development of nation-
state bureaucracies. All the while, a shared
identity was growing among working men.
Metaphors of the masses and the psycho-
logical crowd began to ring alarm bells with
nervous governments.
Nineteenth-century POTD would win
many battles but lose its war. If killing heads
of state is merely a measure of tactical suc-
cess, then its proponents indeed failed stra-
tegically to bring down governments and
the ultimate prize of the state as an institu-
tion of governance and command and con-
trol. Prussia’s Kaiser Wilhelm I was lucky
to survive the assassin’s bullet (1878). The
same could not be said for other high-ranking
targets. Russia’s Tsar Alexander II (1881),
French President Carnot (1894), Spanish
Prime Minister Cánovas (1897), Empress
Elisabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto of
Italy (1900), US President William McKinley
(1901), King Carlos I of Portugal (1908),
Spanish Prime Minister Canalejas (1912),
Greece’s King George I (1913), and Austro-
Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1914)
all died, victims of POTD.
I have argued in The Violent Image (2011)
that a failure to exert a unified vision across
a spectrum of political tendencies, from the
pacifist to the messianic, restricted the his-
torical influence of POTD.2 Their messages,
if coherent, were less than cohesive. Even
more important in a period when daily and
weekly newspapers were attracting millions
of buyers for their mass-produced editions,
the interpretation of terror outrages was left
for newspaper reporters and their owners to
frame. Unsurprisingly, these would be con-
sistent with press barons’ interests in main-
taining political and business stability. A
far cry from insurrection. Revolutionaries,
meanwhile, toiled at their ad hoc printing
presses which were repeatedly detected and
closed down by security services. At the same
time, as media theorist Robert McChesney
has pointed out, the nature of the press in
19th-century America was shifting; so too
in Britain. The very logic of the publishing
industry ‘changed from being primarily polit-
ical to being primarily commercial. The press
system remained explicitly partisan, but it
increasingly became an engine of great prof-
its as costs plummeted, population increased,
and advertising- which emerged as a key
source of revenues- mushroomed’.3 So when
confronting the resources of vested interests
and the status quo, radical and anarchist pub-
lishers lacked continuity of production, mass
distribution, and politically, a uniform and
consistent proposition. They were not just
coming a poor second in the circulation bat-
tle, they were losing the information war.
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
Success and failure cannot be solely
judged on ownership or efficiencies of dis-
tribution. As modern communicators would
remind us, this is to measure performance or
output rather than impact or outcome. The
cultural theorist Stuart Hall highlights the
period between the 1880s and the 1920s as
one of a revival in popular culture. He prefers
to see the run-up to these decades through the
lens of displacement and superimposition.
We can see clearly how the liberal middle class
press of the mid-nineteenth century was con-
structed on the back of the active destruction and
marginalisation of the indigenous radical and
working-class press. But, on top of that process,
something qualitatively new occurs towards the
end of the nineteenth century and the beginning
of the twentieth century in this area: the active,
mass insertion of a developed and mature
working-class audience into a new kind of popu-
lar, commercial press.4
Popular culture for him is a work in progress
subject to constant flux. Hence, he sees at
play at this time ‘the reconstituting of the
cultural and political relations between the
dominant and dominated classes’ through
new technologies, labour processes, and the
commercial press.5 This has echoes for today.
But it also requires that we understand better
how ideas of change are absorbed into a
public consciousness that is by no means
static or hegemonic.
By the late 20th and early 21st century, the
transformation of the information environ-
ment and consumer access to technologies
for disseminating information would allow
for a dramatic change in the character and
potential success of POTD. Exemplified by
al-Qaeda’s strike on New York’s Twin Towers
in 2001 – even more breath-taking than those
of the Provisional IRA or PLO of earlier
generations – that attack would inspire insur-
gents to conceive events played out in ‘real
time’ across global media. More recently,
some four billion mobile phones connect to
multi-platform digital technologies enabling
images, words, and ideas to circulate instanta-
neously in global feedback loops. Populations
5
and individuals connect to one another with
the potential that the messages they trans-
mit can multiply exponentially should they
be sufficiently ‘sticky’ or attractive to wider
audiences.6 In these changed circumstances,
POTD would evolve. It would shift from
‘using the weight of the state against the state’
to ‘using the weight of the media against the
media’: this is a central argument I make in
The Violent Image.7 In this important respect,
perpetrators of POTD became sensitive to
a shift in society’s centre of gravity, from
the state circumscribing the arena of pub-
lic information flows to a communications
environment driven by media technologies,
producers, and consumers who could at once
receive, originate, and co-produce output.
This discussion is mindful of being unduly
coloured by technological determinism.
Notwithstanding, something undisputedly
changed between the late 19th and early
21st centuries. And dramatically so. Not the
helter-skelter change that every generation
feels it is living through. Although the new
consumers of the 1800s had every right to
think they were thoroughly modern in their
embrace of new communications technolo-
gies: 1830s steam ships, newspapers; 1860s
railways, mail, telegraph; 1890s telephones,
cinema; 1900s popular press, gramophone.
But by the millennium, the transition from
analogue to digital technologies would
replace the multiplied messaging of analogue
with exponential messaging of digital. Once
populations around the world were connected
in the blink of an eye via digital laptops and
mobile phones, any lingering ambitions
states or state challengers might have had to
control or at least manage information flows
would have to face the sobering reality that
content might now only be influenced.
I have further argued that there should be
two key components for theorising POTD.
First, the shock and awe of the violent action
prompts an immediate cognitive rupture, then
a subsequent vacuum in the minds of observ-
ers.8 That vacuum creates an opportunity
space which carefully constructed messages,
6 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
previously disseminated within society, can
fill. Where the state is found wanting, insur-
gents offer a way forward with messages they
have prepared. This is shock doctrine.
Second, the violent act is not simply
operational in the military sense. Rather, its
true purpose is to trigger associations with
grievances in an archipelago of injustices
and violent acts. This memory of coalescing
dissatisfaction becomes the binding agent
within a politicised community; it allows
like-minded individuals to bond around a
common identity.9 Hence, POTD becomes
the trigger that activates emotive associations
in a triad of memory creation, storytelling,
and the passage of time. By creating a new
memory, insurgents aim to rewrite the past
as it is commonly understood in the public
mind. Namely, a past created by the state as
the official account of history using all cul-
tural and educational resources at the control
of governments. Insurgents push back against
official history. They seek to control the past,
to legitimately own the present, in order to
lay claim to the future.10
A Revolutionary Century
The following discussion focuses on the
original manifestation of POTD in the late
19th century. It looks to the sponsors of this
newly conceptualised but under-theorised
political weapon and the context from which
it emerged. First, it offers a political economy
overview of the later decades of the century
before exploring the confluence and subse-
quent break-up of the International Working
Men’s Association, the new hub of socialist
activism. It moves on to chart the emergence
of POTD from a schism between international
socialists before offering an insight into acts
of political violence that some committed in
different countries across Europe and North
America. Hence, its focus is deliberately
narrow and excludes wider debates around
the question whether states too, rather than
simply insurgents, commit acts of POTD. In
so doing, I shall draw on various lenses from
insurgency theory, discourse theory, and com-
munications theory, and weave them into an
historical account. Consequently, POTD is to
be understood as acts of symbolic violence.
These acts of terror are techniques in the
insurgent’s arsenal which may or may not be
selected for political ends. There is no sug-
gestion that they form part of any phenome-
non or ‘ism’ as in terrorism.
By isolating 19th century POTD from
its later manifestations, particularly in the
TV era of the 1960s–1980s, and the post-
millennial digital age, this discussion side-
steps any anachronistic comparison or fail-
ure to relativise any political movement to
its time. Consistent with insurgency theory
where all insurrections are understood as spe-
cific to their cultural and political contexts,
it should be noted that activists on the Left
were transnational in both outlook and travel,
yet frequently local in the way they sought
to effect change. Their national situations
varied even if they shared a common under-
standing of the causes of oppression and suf-
fering. Their understandings of how to shape
the future were clearly divergent.
No Eureka Moment
POTD did not appear overnight. The climax
of political violence towards the end of the
19th century was firmly rooted in the intel-
lectual reverberations from the previous 100
years. Ideological struggles on the political
Left accompanied the inexorable advance
towards mass movements and democracy.
The grievance of failed revolutions in 1789,
1830, 1848, and 1870 cut deep. These sim-
mered in the cauldron of industrial exploita-
tion, rural unrest, and capitalist
wealth-creation. Against the enduring legacy
of two revolutions which transformed the
19th century – the ideological, political
French Revolution and economic British
Industrial Revolution – emerged the struggle
of proletarian movements. ‘European (or
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
indeed world) politics between 1789 and
1917 were largely the struggle for and against
the principles of 1789, or even more incendi-
ary ones of 1793’.11 The idea of ‘permanent
revolution’ appeared early in the 19th cen-
tury. But the 1848 failed revolution meant
gradual reform would now look for sponsor-
ship beyond the bourgeoisie.12
The 1848 ‘year of revolutions’ was a year
of world economic slump. An insurrection-
ist contagion spread from Paris to south
west Germany, Bavaria, Berlin, Vienna, and
Hungary in barely three weeks. However, it fal-
tered, foreshadowing universal defeat within
six months.13 Impoverished by fragile organi-
sation, inconsistent ideology, led by commu-
nists and socialists, these ‘social revolutions
of the labouring poor’ collapsed. Europe’s
moderate liberals would conclude ‘revolution
was dangerous and that some of their substan-
tial demands (especially in economic matters)
could be met without it’. The moderate bour-
geoisie, ‘ceased to be a revolutionary force’.14
Notwithstanding, 1848 proved a watershed,
shifting politics into the domain of the people.
The years to 1873 saw cheap capital and
primary commodities, and rapid price escala-
tion drive an unprecedented period of global
economic boom, interrupted only by brief
depressions in 1857–1858 and 1866–1868.
The ‘permanent revolution’ went into tem-
porary abeyance. Instead, the revolution was
in capital. New industrial processes needed
pools of surplus labour. Mass migrations
around the world saw millions settle in fast
urbanising centres of industrial production.
Some nine million economic migrants, four
times the number of people living in London,
abandoned Europe; most were bound for
the United States between 1846 and 1875.15
This would increase steadily. Soon 700,000
to 800,000 were migrating annually, under-
taking the 12-day voyage to New York in
search of a better life. From 1900, the flow
became a torrent, almost doubling annu-
ally. Capital and communications exploded
in unison. Railways transported the migrant
poor across continents. By the mid-1860s,
7
106,886 kilometres of track had been laid;
a decade later, that had more than doubled.
Steamships ferried migrants between con-
tinents; overall tonnage increased from
1,423,232 to 3,293,072.16 Migrants exploded
the size of cities along road and rail routes.
What awaited their arrival were overcrowded
one or two room slum-dwellings with poor
sanitation: ethnic ghettos where they clus-
tered for safety and opportunity. Bourgeois
ideologues and activists were not immune to
social iniquity. Even if the growing middle
class chose to see past the suffering.
The post-Enlightenment revolution in
science had been harnessed first to steam-
powered, then electricity-driven industrial
revolutions. Increased demands of capital and
a supply side desire to stimulate industrial
production fuelled the international ambitions
of European and American nation-states. An
acceleration in media innovation was deeply
interwoven with this process. Mass newspa-
pers had since the 1840s offered a new prod-
uct to the urban consumer. A single package
with its blend of enticing adverts, graphic and
photographic illustrations, opinion pieces,
and reportage from the familiar to the exotic –
often more subjective and jingoistic than
journalistically objective – was brought to
market at an affordable price. The transition
to printing presses with metal plates fed by
continuous rolls of paper meant machines
could produce millions of sheets each day. By
the turn of the 20th century, the typewriter,
telegraph, photograph, telephone, cinema,
and radio would have made their debuts.17
These social and economic contexts
informed political debates of the period. In
turn, they would radicalise certain groups to
embrace the violent deed.
The Genealogy of POTD
The shadow of three men hung over the
International Working Men’s Association,
spelling the eventual destruction of this his-
toric attempt to unify an array of anarchists
8 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and socialists. By the late 19th century, one
anarchist, the Frenchman Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, was already dead. Another,
Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin had
devoted long years in exile to creating secret
revolutionary groups in Italy. The former
would come to be seen as the father of the
late 19th century anarchist movement, the
latter as the father of anarchist terrorism.18 A
third personality, Dr Karl Marx, German
journalist and communist ideologue, had
delivered the inaugural address to the IWMA
in London in October 1864.19 Roads of
extreme circumstance had led to this point,
he declared:
After the failure of the Revolution of 1848, all
party organizations and party journals of the work-
ing classes were, on the Continent, crushed by the
iron hand of force, the most advanced sons of
labour fled in despair to the transatlantic republic,
and the short-lived dreams of emancipation van-
ished before an epoch of industrial fever, moral
marasmus, and political reaction.20
Bakunin and his followers, under the sobri-
quet Collectivists, would join the movement
in 1868. But earlier engagements during the
revolutionary 1840s had already unearthed
an antipathy between Bakunin and Marx
which proved more than personal. Of Marx,
Bakunin wrote: ‘(h)e called me a sentimental
idealist – and he was right. I called him vain,
perfidious and sly’.21 Marx saw in the Russian
a buffoon, an ‘amorphous pan-destroyer’.22
For Proudhon, Marx was the ‘tapeworm of
socialism’.23 The German responded by
damning the Proudhonian faction from Paris
attending the 1864 International:
They disdain any revolutionary action that ema-
nates from class struggle itself, any centralised
social movement.24
Years earlier, the ambiguous Proudhon had
precluded any discussion of revolution:
I believe we have no need of it in order to succeed;
and that consequently we should not put forward
revolutionary action as a means of social reform,
because that pretended means would simply be an
appeal to force, to arbitrariness, in brief, a
contradiction.25
This all too tangible personality clash then
masked fundamental ideological differences
between authoritarian socialists and libertar-
ian anarchists. Subsequent congresses
between 1868 and 1872 became the battle-
ground for Marx and Bakunin, both equally
committed to revolution but espousing mutu-
ally exclusive strategies and doctrines.26
At stake were fundamental principles:
‘Authoritarian versus libertarian, political
action versus industrial action, transitional
proletarian dictatorship versus immediate
abolition of all State power’.27 But the essen-
tial conflict resided in the issue of the state.
Marxist revolutionaries would first seize
political power, and only then destroy the
bourgeois state-machine. Marx’s collabora-
tor, Friedrich Engels had argued:
the taking possession of the means of production
in the name of society – is at the same time its last
independent act as a state … The state is not
‘abolished’, it withers away to a non-state.28
Lenin was later unequivocal in highlighting
Marxian state doctrine:
All the revolutions which have occurred up to now
have helped to perfect the state machine, whereas
it must be smashed, broken.29
The political Left had found in Charles
Darwin’s evolutionary theories that Man was
no longer the object of divine creation; rather
one should look to historical development.
Marx’s 30-year project of a universal theory
of human society through the prism of dialec-
tical materialism (Das Kapital: Kritik der
Politischen Ökonomie, 1867) would see pub-
lication shortly after Proudhon’s death. Its
antecedents were eclectic. ‘He took the sub-
ject of materialist history from Feuerbach, the
class struggle from Saint-Simon, the dictator-
ship of the proletariat (which he soon rejected)
from Babeuf, the labour theory of value from
Adam Smith, the theory of surplus value
from Bray and Thompson, the principle of
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
dialectical progress from Hegel’.30 But cru-
cially, it emphasised the centrality of the
state. Marx’s attack, however, targeted
authoritarianism within the ownership of the
means of production, the ‘despotism of capi-
tal’, and only then the authoritarianism of the
state.31 By contrast, anarchists saw in the
state itself the means of evil oppression.
Thus, its extreme destruction should be
immediate. As a family within the extended,
dysfunctional socialist family, anarchists rep-
resented an anti-authoritarian tendency, a
counterpoint to authoritarian communists.32
However, for Lenin, authority and autonomy
were ‘relative terms’. While for Engels, anar-
chists were disingenuous:
A revolution is undoubtedly the most authoritarian
thing there is … one part of the population
imposes its will upon the other part by means of
rifles, bayonets and cannon, which are authoritar-
ian means if ever there were any.33
Because anarchists rejected ‘statism’ – the
centralised, industrialised state – they attracted
enemies on two fronts, the ‘landlords and
priests of the old order’, and ‘revolutionary
tyrants and bureaucrats’ within movements
which sought to transform society.34 Yet as
much as the struggle was ideological, it
remained personal too. Against the context of
the rise of mass movements, and for the future
of POTD, these fractures assumed prime
importance.
POTD, like much anarchist doctrine,
appears contradictory, rooted in a clash
between two temperaments, the religious
and the rationalist, the apocalyptic and the
humanist. Its intellectual legacy from the
Enlightenment must therefore be informed
by the psychology of religious faith.35 Across
the anarchist and socialist spectrum, the
rational and the millenarian were finely inter-
woven strands. That did not mean the path
would inevitably lead to violent deeds. But
for some it did. Utopian socialism creating a
new society from ground-level small commu-
nities, appealed to anarchists. But suspicion
of the kind of rigid planning and proletarian
9
power expressed through the political party,
as Marx theorised, would lead groups down
different paths.
If POTD was born of a schism within com-
munists, its DNA contained the dominant
genes of anarchism. POTD and anarchism
fed off the growing power of the nation-
state. Rooted in spontaneity and decen-
tralisation, anarchism stressed the ability of
people to innovate their own political and
economic forms of administration free of
constitution, political party, or state admin-
istration with its inevitable authoritarianism.
Political parties mirrored the state in so far
as they precluded individuals from negotiat-
ing free and ad hoc contracts. Accordingly,
the price of freedom was to reject the state
with its law making and refuse to perpetu-
ate iniquities that bred social conflict. This
credo dated back to the 17th-century English
Commonwealth. More recently, William
Godwin wrote at the height of France’s revo-
lutionary Terror: ‘Government lays its hands
upon the spring that is in society and puts a
stop to its motion’.36 Institutions corrupt man
where man is fundamentally good, rational
and open to persuasion thus ultimately per-
fectible. Virtue leads to happiness for the
individual, where happiness and justice are
inextricably joined. But for Godwin, the root
of unhappiness, crime, and evil was property.
The solution therefore was simply to abolish
property. Necessity should override excess
and luxury.
Proudhon went further, proposing a Europe
without borders, states, governments, or top-
down laws. Majority laws were the laws of
force; government arising from such laws
was the government of force: ‘Whoever lays
his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and
tyrant, I declare him my enemy’.37 Society
had neither right to judge nor punish. Only
the individual possessed the right to judge
himself, not the laws. Justice is an act of
conscience, thus voluntary. Attacking exces-
sive private ownership, ‘What is property?
Property is theft’38 would become a maxim
embraced by countless revolutionists. Labour
10 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
value and dignity too lay at the heart of an
ethical value system; the minute an individ-
ual’s labour equated directly to his family’s
needs, exploitation would disappear. Surplus
appropriation for owner or proprietor became
redundant. This was Proudhon’s revolution.
But not Marx’s, for whom labour was ines-
capably enslaved to the ownership of the
means of production. His revolution hung on
the historical process of class struggle.
Within the anarchist tendency resides a
tension between the individual and collec-
tive that underpins POTD. The same tension
affected perpetrators who chose to act as indi-
viduals rather than through organised cells.
German philosopher Max Stirner espoused
individualist rather than collective anar-
chism. Freedom meant being free from all
institutional control: ‘My project is built on
nothingness’, he proclaimed enigmatically.39
States divide, subordinate, and subject the
individual will to the collective. Individuals
must be freed from man’s respect for laws,
and imposing rights through force. Hence the
mobilising factor in society turns on utility.
People and resources are fair game for indi-
vidual enjoyment and sublimation. The earth
should be consumed by any and everyone, as
and when. Remove the state and the Union
of Egoists becomes the unregulated meeting-
place for mutual advantage.40
Nevertheless, if the essence of POTD was
utopian, its defining characteristic would
be violence. Bakunin and his successor, the
social anarchist Peter Kropotkin, shared
a visceral loathing of Russia’s autocracy.
Tsarist on-off policies – sometimes social
reform, sometimes repression – had been
partly fired by the Decembrists’ challenge to
the state, a failed uprising of army officers in
1825. Bakunin’s doctrine became out-and-
out messianic. Activism could only mean
violent state overthrow. Significantly, it was
a doctrine that would fix its venom on Marx
and his supporters who sought to dominate
the floor of the International: ‘Communists
believe that they must organise the work-
ing class in order to seize power in states’,
he accused, but ‘(r)evolutionary socialists
(meaning anarchists) organise in order to
destroy states’.41
The Storm Before the Torrent
The International Working Men’s Association
or International proved to have a tempestuous,
and brief life, riven with the manoeuvrings and
contests of two rival camps of Marx and
Bakunin. Captured memorably in the under-
statement of Marx’s mouthpiece George
Eccarius – ‘Marx will be terribly annoyed’42 –
the Basel Congress in 1869 saw Marxists suffer
a dramatic setback. From the opening session,
division was in the air. One by one, decisive
initiatives on direct legislation by the people;
abolishing the right of inheritance; land owner-
ship whether by state, agricultural collective, or
peasants; and the value and future role of trade
unions went decisively pro the better prepared
Bakunists. It proved to be a turning-point. Yet
by 1872, The Hague congress witnessed a
fight-back and complete reversal.
Through Le Réveil’s pages, Bakunin was
attacked as a failed revolutionary and suspected
police agent. His links with the extreme radical
Sergey Nechayev were pilloried. Between the
two congresses, the International made little
progress in organising the European working
class.43 Internecine warfare spread between
the General Council and local branches. At
The Hague Congress, Bakunin’s anarchists
were isolated and Bakunin’s expulsion by the
Marxists was finally achieved.44 The General
Council, newly under Marxist domination,
relocated to New York far from the influence of
leading anarchists. It would subsequently fold
at the Philadelphia Congress in 1876. A new
rival Anarchist International of Saint-Imier
appeared in Switzerland in September 1872
but failed to see out 1877. What was perceived
as having been a rigged vote at The Hague was
quickly rejected by national federations: Jura
federation (St Imier congress) in September
1872; French congress, September 1872;
Italian federation, December 1872; Belgian
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
federation, December 1872; Spanish fed-
eration (Cordoba congress), December 1872;
American federation (New York), January
1873; English federation (London congress),
January 1873; Dutch federation, February
1873.45 Franz Mehring described ‘stormy
scenes’ from the outset in The Hague. But the
mood music of the times was one of sustained
violence. The General Committee report:
scourged all the acts of violence which had been
committed against the International since the
Bonapartist plebiscite, the bloody suppression of
the Paris Commune, the villainies of Thiers and
Favre, the infamies of the French chamber, and the
high treason trials in Germany; even the English
government was taken to task on account of its
terrorism against the Irish sections.46
Significantly, Bakunin’s ejection was the cue
for his followers to renew a more violent line
of direct rather than political action.47 What
would become POTD was thus intricately
rooted in a fierce contest over the optimum
path to state and societal transformation, not
merely operational utility.
Bakunin had spent the post-revolutionary
1860s organising a secret international
association of revolutionaries in Italy. This
assumed an imaginative, mystical structure of
three tiers: International Brothers; National
Brothers; and the semi-secret International
Alliance of Social Democracy. Each should
remain distinct, unknown to the others in the
hierarchy throughout Europe and America as
they sought to ‘accelerate the universal revo-
lution’. Lack of support spelled collapse. A
phoenix-like Alliance Internationale de la
Democratie Socialiste survived. Its credo
preached atheism and abolishing religion;
political, social, and economic equality
between classes by destroying government
and inheritance rights; an end to all political
action and the assumption of all industrial
processes by groups of producers; and the
subjugation of all centralised political organi-
sation to total personal liberty.48
Bakunin would often revise his violent ide-
ology. While attacking Marx’s manipulation
of the International, he had allied his efforts
11
to a fellow Russian, Sergey Nechayev.49 The
collaborative outcome was The Revolutionary
Catechism (1869), a doctrine of 26 articles
celebrating political violence. ‘The object
remains always the same: the quickest and sur-
est way of destroying this filthy order’,50 pro-
claimed one catechism, amplifying Bakunin’s
earlier maxim that ‘[t]he desire for destruction
is at the same time a creative desire’.51 Their
mission was terrifying and conjured up the
uncompromising spirit of the Jacobin Terror:
‘Our task is terrible, inexorable, and univer-
sal destruction’.52 To be a revolutionary was
to be judged ‘not by words but by deeds’.53
Selflessness was to guide their actions:
The revolutionary enters the world of the State, of
the privileged classes, of the so-called civilisation,
and he lives in this world for the purpose of bring-
ing about its speedy and total destruction … He
should not hesitate to destroy any position, any
place, or any man in this world. He must hate eve-
ryone and everything in it with an equal hatred.54
Gradually Propaganda of the Deed, or by
Deed, entered the discourse. According to
the radical, Italian nationalist Carlo Pisicane:
The propaganda of the idea is a chimera. Ideas
result from deeds, not the latter from the former,
and the people will not be free when they are
educated, but educated when they are free.55
Meanwhile, four young revolutionaries had
coalesced around the volatile Bakunin: Carlo
Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, Paul Brousse, and
Prince Peter Kropotkin. One of them, Paul
Brousse commented on the recent appear-
ance of the phrase ‘la Propagandie par le
fait’ in an article he wrote for the Bulletin of
the Jura Fédération:56
from one individual to another, propaganda in
public meetings or conferences, propaganda in
newspapers, pamphlets or books. These methods
work only for theoretical propaganda; moreover,
they are becoming increasingly hard to use effec-
tively…something else had to be found.57
Notwithstanding, Brousse’s plea fell short of
endorsing assassination to secure political
transformation.58 It would fall to another in
12 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the group, Kropotkin to elaborate. Inspired
by Bakunin’s and Nechayev’s principles,
Kropotkin nevertheless modified their con-
cept of insurrection, injecting a step-by-step
methodology:
A single deed makes more propaganda in a few
days than a thousand pamphlets. The government
defends itself, it rages pitilessly; but by this it only
causes further deeds to be committed by one or
more persons, and drives the insurgents to hero-
ism. One deed brings forth another; opponents
join the mutiny, the government splits into fac-
tions; harshness intensifies the conflict; conces-
sions come too late; the revolution breaks out.59
Trained groups or individuals, adept in the
techniques of POTD, set forth to awaken the
spirit of revolt in the masses. Over the follow-
ing years, the deed claimed high-profile,
symbolic state-targets. It would be unwise to
underestimate their impact on mass audi-
ences of the day in societies more respectful
of social hierarchy than today’s. Despite the
hostile ways government elites and newspa-
per entrepreneurs framed terrorist acts to their
readers, those deeds were widely reported,
inevitably attracting some new adherents.
‘Selfless Slave of Her Idea’
As the month of March 1878 drew to a close,
Vera Zasulich, a Russian political activist,
walked out of the St. Petersburg Circuit
Court a free woman. Her trial and particu-
larly its judgement had been a tumultuous
affair. Brought before the dock for having
shot, injured but failed to kill General Fyodor
Trepov, her appeal to the jury might have
surprised any 21st century audience. Trepov
was, after all, the head of state security in St.
Petersburg. Zasulich had a ten-year record
with the security services, having been kept
consistently under surveillance or arrest.
While she was working as a typesetter on the
publication Zemlya i Volya (Land and
Liberty), a prison inmate, Bogolubov, had
been savagely whipped on Trepov’s orders.60
Corporal punishment, however, at this
moment albeit for a brief hiatus, was consid-
ered illegal by the Russian state. Zasulich
claimed to have felt the prisoner’s pain as if
her own body had suffered all 25 strokes of
the rod. The jail population too had been
stirred to boiling point. Not so the press and
public opinion; they chose to remain silent.
It was left to the young activist to fight his
corner. Later in court she revealed her strategy,
‘the silenced question about Bogolubov’s pun-
ishment will arise; my crime will provoke a
public trial, and Russia, in the person of her peo-
ple’s representatives, the jury, will be compelled
to pronounce a verdict not on me alone’.61
Her defence counsel went on to claim the
high moral ground:
Attention should be paid to the typical moral fea-
tures of crimes against the state. The nature of
such crimes changes very often. What was consid-
ered a crime yesterday, becomes a glorious deed
of civic valor today or tomorrow. A crime against
the state is often the expression of a doctrine
aiming at premature reform, at propagation of
something not yet grown to full maturity and for
which the time is not yet ripe.62
For all that her defence rested on rhetoric and
the Propaganda of the Word, her aim was to
gain sympathy for Propaganda of the Deed in
the public consciousness. After all, her deed
had opened the public space for the word to
shape a new discourse.
Zasulich’s act in what has been labelled
the ‘year of assassinations’, 1878, repre-
sents the first self-conscious act of POTD
when viewed from a formal perspective in
a still under-theorised area of direct action.
The wider context in which it played out was
one of ‘arrested modernisation’, namely two
Russias described by the father of Populism
Alexander Herzen as:63
governmental, imperial, aristocratic Russia, rich in
money, armed not only with bayonets but with all
the bureaucratic and police techniques taken from
Germany … Russia of the dark people, poor, agri-
cultural, communal, democratic, disarmed, taken
by surprise, conquered, as it were, without battle.64
What is instructive is the broad make-up of
prison detainees between 1873 and 1877 that
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
immediately preceded Zasulich’s most recent
incarceration: 1,611 propagandists (85%
male, 15% female), 425 deemed ‘especially
criminal’. The ‘criminals’ ranged in age: 117
(under 21 years), 199 (21–25), 93 (25–30),
and 42 (30+). But more revealing perhaps
was the class make-up. There were 147
nobles, 90 clergy, 58 sons of high officers, 11
soldiers, 65 peasants, and 54 bourgeois,
although the peasants and bourgeois were
actually factory workers and artisans. A regis-
ter of those sentenced is equally interesting:
279 nobles, 117 sons of high officers, 13 sol-
diers, 27 ‘commoners’, and 68 Jews.65 This
new form of anarchist assertion would appeal
across class, gender, and national divides.
Archipelago of Violence
More accessible targets were chosen too,
more prosaic and not always operationally
coherent. Incidents were as eclectic as they
were enigmatic. Italy’s political instability in
the 1870s provided firewood for Bakunin’s
adherents. Police estimates of 30,000 anar-
chist sympathisers could only add to the
conflagration. Italy’s unification struggle
after the removal of the Austrians and the
Bourbon monarchy exacerbated the eco-
nomic hardships of increased taxation, bad
harvests, and the European economic down-
turn. Peasant and unskilled labour unrest
spread. For Andrea Costa and Errico
Malatesta, it was an opportunity to launch
their own version of the Paris Commune.
However, the chief organiser Costa was
arrested before the insurrection had fired a
shot in anger. The quixotic Bologna rising of
1874 marked the last appearance of the ailing
Bakunin, whose latest failure had produced a
fitting epitaph to an unfulfilled revolutionary
career.66
By contrast, in Lyons, in 1882, a bomb
was thrown in the early hours into the
Théâtre Bellecour, a music hall hosting ‘the
flower of the bourgeoisie and commerce’.
It prompted the arrest, imprisonment, and
13
instant martyrdom of one young Swiss anar-
chist Antoine Cyvogt, whose guilt remained
far from proven. Not surprisingly, the local
anarchist press seized the moment. Nor
did it hold back from fanning the flames
of revolutionary strikes among coalminers
in Montceau-les-Mines, near Lyons. In the
pages of Le Révolté, the desirability of the
revolutionary strike consumed heated col-
umn inches, claiming ‘a strike is a revolt or
a folly’.67 What was needed was an anarchist
strike, a strike followed by a riot, the harbin-
ger of revolution: ‘the war of clenched fists,
fists clenched around the handle of a knife or
gun’.68 A 44-day strike in Roanne of 4,000
weavers provided the opportunity when it
ended in a lock-out. One unemployed worker
fired a shot at a mill-owner, was apprehended,
and condemned to eight years hard labour.
But for glorifying the act as the ‘most fertile,
most popular propaganda of the deed’, the
editor of the anarchist Droit Social received
a 12-month prison sentence.69 For some time,
accounts of clandestine, nocturnal meetings
of the Bande Noire had been reported in the
area. The group soon mobilised with a series
of dynamite attacks on religious targets,
prompting 150 rioters to march on Montceau,
before torching a chapel. Three brigades of
gendarmes and a company of troops guard-
ing the trial of 23 arrested, testified to the
fear of the authorities that a general uprising
was afoot. The following year, the worldwide
economic slump cut deep. Workers were
dismissed from Montceau’s mines for their
political affiliations. The dynamite campaign
resumed with increasing ferocity. This time,
by contrast, the authors claimed responsibil-
ity as anarchists, writing to Le Révolté under
sobriquets ‘L’Affamé, La Dynamite, La
Suppression des Bourgeois, La Revolver à la
Main’.70 Recruiting a miner as paid informant
yielded ambiguous dividends for the authori-
ties and mine-owners. Of 32 suspects arrested,
ten were condemned to hard labour ranging
from five to 20 years. One had confessed to
being an anarchist, another to having been in
possession of copies of Le Révolté.
14 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Throughout, the authorities feared a sys-
tematic movement devised by the antiau-
toritaire Internationale. Lyons was a focus
for anarchist propaganda and agitation. Police
sweeps from Paris to Lyons led to 66 arrests.
These numbered most leading French anar-
chists of the time: Bernard, Bordat, Gautier,
Faure, Ricard, Martin, Liégeon, Reclus, and
also Kropotkin on a brief visit to France.
Other detainees had allegedly accepted posi-
tions in the insurrectionist organisation,
knowingly conspired in its development by
receiving subscriptions, procuring mem-
bers or propagating its doctrines. Kropotkin
joined the other leaders Gautier, Bernard, and
Bordat, serving a five-year prison sentence,
suffering 2,000 francs damages, and endur-
ing ten years of surveillance and four years
of suspended civil rights.71
In 1887, Charles Gallo was convicted of
throwing vitriol at brokers on the trading-floor
of the Paris stock exchange. At his trial, his
90-minute harangue proclaimed his had been
‘an act of propaganda by the deed for anar-
chist doctrine’, in other words, a symbolic
strike. Another prominent state symbol, the
Paris Chamber of Deputies witnessed a bomb
attack by an impoverished anarchist Auguste
Vaillant in 1893. There were no fatalities; the
assailant was later convicted and sentenced to
death.72 POTD had its cause célèbre.73
Paris experienced 11 explosions between
1892 and 1894. One committed by Emile
Henry shocked fellow anarchists who
claimed it a watershed. Not overtly symbolic,
the Café Terminus at the Gare St Lazare
was regularly frequented by office workers
and shopkeepers. During evening rush-hour
Henry secreted a bomb which exploded in the
large crowd, injuring 20, killing one. At his
trial ‘Il n’ya pas d’innocents’ was his defiant
retort to the accusation that he had deliber-
ately targeted innocent people. Refusing all
mitigation of insanity to commute his death
sentence, he declared:
I wanted to show the bourgeoisie that their pleas-
ures would no longer be complete, that their
insolent triumphs would be disturbed, that their
golden calf would tremble violently on its pedestal,
until the final shock would cast it down in mud
and blood.74
When a new manifestation of the
Revolutionary-Socialist or Anarchist
Congress convened in Paris in May 1881,
some 200 activists vigorously passed two
resolutions committing the movement first to
Propaganda by Deed, and second to the abo-
lition of property, thereby changing the face
of European anarchism. By adopting the
deed, the leadership of the movement in
Germany and Austria would be all but annihi-
lated by mid-decade, its operational safe
haven of Switzerland lost.75 The delegates
resolved:
to exert every effort towards propagating, by deeds,
the revolutionary idea and to arouse the spirit of
revolt in those sections of the popular masses who
still harbour illusions about the effectiveness of legal
methods … to win them (agricultural workers) to
our cause, and to keep in mind that a deed per-
formed against the existing institutions appeals to
the masses much more than thousands of leaflets
and torrents of words, and that ‘Propaganda by
Deed’ is of greater importance in the countryside
than in the cities.76
Three anarchist publications – Most’s
Freiheit, Kropotkin’s Le Révolte, Serreaux’s
La Révolution Sociale threw their weight
behind the congress’s new message.77 Indeed,
the pattern of Johann Most’s publishing
would herald the 21st-century paradigm: con-
tributions were both celebratory and propa-
gandist, and instructional and operational.78
His articles in Freiheit (1880–1885) educated
workers in the techniques of manufacturing
and deploying bombs, poisons, and weapons.
His job in a Jersey City Heights explosives
factory meant he could extract both know-
how and ready-made matériel. Freiheit cele-
brated the deeds which ensued, preaching an
uncompromising commitment to violence:
We will murder those who must be killed in order
to be free … We do not dispute over whether it is
right or wrong. Say what you will, do what you do,
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins 15

but the victor is right. Comrades of Freiheit, we say to the head under the gaze of his two small
murder the murderers. Rescue mankind through children and their tutor. The attacker pro-
blood, iron, poison, and dynamite.79
ceeded to silence all witnesses; only the tutor
survived the carnage. This latest violence
Beyond the polemic, Most spread the word
crossed a rubicon for a shocked Austrian
through instruction. The title of his handbook
public. Investigations revealed the St Gallen
of revolutionary war-science left little to the
meeting to be the common factor.
imagination. It read: ‘for the use and produc-
That same month, police officer Blöch was
tion of nitro-glycerine, dynamite, trigger-
killed passing a stone-quarry near Vienna. The
mechanisms, explosive mercury, bombs,
assailant tried to shoot his way to escape when
fuses, poisons etc’.80 A spate of murders and
blocked by workers. Police searching his pock-
assaults throughout 1883 spread alarm
ets revealed a ‘metal-box-bomb containing
through the Austro-Hungarian empire lead-
two and a half kilograms of dynamite which
ing to widespread detainment of hundreds of
was not fused … two revolvers, a quantity of
radicals, censorship of their press, and
ammunition, a knife, and two bottles filled
imprisonment. Increased co-operation
with a liquid used to apply and to remove a
between police agencies in Germany, Austria,
false beard’.82 The killer Stellmacher, recently
Russia, and Switzerland was the inevitable
fired by Most as editor of Freiheit in Zürich
outcome. Germany’s Socialist Law aimed at
before the anarchist paper’s relocation to New
the Social Democratic movement was rein-
York, and his friend Anton Kammerer, who
forced by Bismarck with new legislation
when arrested was carrying a ‘revolver, a file
directed at proscribing the use of dynamite.81
sharpened to a point and two kilograms of
But Most’s press, although carefully moni-
dynamite and some fuses’, reveals the oppor-
tored, was allowed to continue above ground,
tunism of exponents of the deed. Kammerer
partly to facilitate police intelligence, partly
had killed the pharmacist Lienhard and the
to provide a source of stories that might be
banker Heilbronner. But the first victim was an
harnessed to the state’s counter-propaganda
opportunistic killing, following the failure to
effort. Particularly, alleged attempts on the
locate a different target, namely Mühlhausen’s
Kaiser’s life were used to fan popular fears
Police Chief. Both assailants were executed,
and heighten tension gripping the country.
triggering a wave of arrests, repression of rad-
Assaults on bourgeois figureheads and
ical activities, and new legislation proscribing
property owners proliferated. Many were
their organisation and assembly. Future anar-
opportunistic, ill-conceived, and poorly
chist prosecutions would be subjected to the
executed. Meeting in St Gallen in 1883
remit of a special tribunal. The movement was
anarchists voted to use all means possible
effectively destroyed. Radicals who evaded
to achieve their ends. A new strategy was
imprisonment found exile across Europe and
adopted encouraging peasants and factory
the United States. There in relative safety,
workers to form clandestine groups of two
Most celebrated these two martyrs of the
or three rather than engage in mass struggle
social revolution to the endorsement of wides-
in the open. They held true to their word. A
cale anarchist demonstrations, particularly in
Strasbourg pharmacist Lienhard was sub-
New York.83
sequently murdered by four assailants, a
Stuttgart banker Heilbronner fatally attacked
in his office by three men who absconded A Mystery Inside an Enigma
with gold and bonds, and Vienna’s Police
Commissioner Hlubek was shot dead. A Why Russia should have provided the
Viennese money-changer Heinrich Eisert ­engine-room of a theory of POTD is a com-
was the next victim, killed by an axe blow plex question. It is there that its systematic
16 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
development is most apparent. In the stifling
bureaucracy of Tsarist autocracy, feudal peas-
ants rooted the social pyramid, superseded by
a powerless bourgeoisie, a nascent urban
worker class, and above these underpinning
the regime – church, army, and aristocracy.
Secular and spiritual power remained concen-
trated in the Tsar. A central and provincial
civil bureaucracy had been built so that a far
from wealthy landed nobility with a weak
power base in class or estate was dependent
on bureaucratic advancement. Even the top
40% of nobility had no serfs,84 despite the
ratios of landowner to peasant (1:234), land
owned by master to peasant (11.5:1), incomes
of master to peasant (97.5:2.5), and ratio of
city workers to peasant (1:100).85 Rural work-
ers, the serf mir, emerged at the heart of
Leftist theory. An intelligentsia moved pre-
cariously towards a theorised opposition,
characterised as populist and Russophile. It
romanticised the peasantry as the route to a
new socialism – far from the model taking
hold in Western Europe.86
Various ideological strands had trodden
the path to popular movements in 19th-
century Russia. A small, weak middle class
sought constitutional reforms and civil rights
through liberalism. Those who disavowed
liberal political action adopted revolutionary
populism, a movement between the 1860s
and 1880s blending socialist values with tra-
ditional peasant communes. These Narodniks
encouraged students to live among the rural
poor disseminating socialism. The failure of
the masses and peasantry to respond turned
many intellectuals to violence and POTD.
Only with the advent of policies of indus-
trialisation in the 1870s did Marxists find a
theatre in which to perform. However, theirs
was a gradualist approach to change, since
Marx had prescribed the need for a capitalist
phase as the precursor to revolution.
Tsar Alexander II’s ‘Westernisation’ pro-
gramme had included legislative reforms
freeing serfs with the chance to own their
property. Yet the budgetary gap between
promise and delivery, expectation and reality,
to a third of the country’s population spurred
widespread political destabilisation and riots
which only the army’s brutality could con-
tain. Anarchist strategy capitalised on this.
The failed assassination of Alexander II
(1866) put paid to a period of social reforms
and journalistic freedoms. As the Nihilists of
the 1860s’ generation had given way to the
Populists, so the society of Zemlya i Volya
(Land and Liberty) emerged in 1876, only to
spawn the Black Partition advocating social
and economic action, and Narodnaya Volya
(People’s Will) which chose the more violent
path. This latter group achieved a remarkable
success. A team of bombers eventually killed
Tsar Alexander II in 1881, prompting a wave
of repression that almost annihilated the
group. One conspirator, Zhelyabov, charted
the insurgent’s trajectory: they began by
living like workers, moved onto promoting
Populism while going among the peasants,
before setting about representing their inter-
ests. Then, finally, did they embrace POTD:
(i)nstead of spreading Socialist ideas, we gave first
place to our determination to awaken the people
by agitation … instead of a peaceful fight we
applied ourselves to a fight with deeds.87
Thus did the flower of the 1881 assassination
spring from the soil of 1878 and Vera
Zasulich’s deed,88 widely credited as Russia’s
first POTD. Her ‘unsanctioned’, unsuccess-
ful attack on St Petersburg’s Governor-
General Trepov had failed to avenge the
flogging of an anarchist comrade. Now the
killing of the Tsar ushered in a reactionary
commitment from his successor to ‘faith in
the power and right of autocracy’.89
It would also drive a wedge between mod-
erates and radicals. Sergey Kravchinski’s
Death for a Death in 1878 was intended
to be a landmark theoretical manifesto. It
would both justify the subsequent murder of
General Mezentsev, the Tsar’s police chief,
and represent the final act in the ‘trial of the
hundred and ninety three’. This event would
mark the turning-point for a new offensive
front to open up, targeting the bourgeoisie
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
and capitalism, the true enemies of social-
ism. In the newspaper Zemlya I Volya he
argued that terrorists were the military van-
guard of the revolution, but only the masses
as a class could bring about that revolution.
The subsequent hostility and split between
those who argued for the deed, an act of
political terror, to be employed only in spe-
cial cases (Plekhanov and Aptekman), those
who favoured ‘pure terror’ (Morozov), and
those espousing a Jacobin coup where the
deed would be retribution for the repressive
Tsar and his circle (Zhelyabov) grew to fever
pitch.90
As the mood induced by state repression
and economic hardship gradually turned to
armed struggle, the strategy shifted from
self-defence to attack, from targeted acts
of retribution for comrades made to suf-
fer, to direct action as a means to guiding
the masses towards the target of state over-
throw.91 For Morozov, terrorism was a novel,
‘cost effective’ method of attritional combat
against asymmetric superiority of govern-
ment force. Yet human inventiveness – that
inexhaustible resource – expressed through
networks of insurgents would oblige the
government to secure bourgeois support
and grant constitutional change. Similarly,
Romanenko and Zhelyabov saw that cost
efficiency could be humanitarian. Since the
intelligentsia, not apathetic masses, would
be the first to fall when confronting the
state’s guns, better then to pinpoint strike-
targets than to face frontal assault and lose
the pick of the crop.
The strategic dispersal of POTD’s perpe-
trators proved no match for repressive state
agencies following Alexander’s assassina-
tion. Organisations were suppressed; lead-
ers not executed were exiled. The population
remained indolent. While Russia’s rapid
industrialisation in the following years pro-
vided Marxists with at least the foundations
for a capitalist phase, the pre-condition to
revolutionary class struggle. And so lead-
ing Populists (Plekhanov, Akselrod) slowly
abandoned direct action for Marxism.92
17
CONCLUSION
Wherever flows of mass migration across
countries and continents have transported
people, ideas, and their grievances, POTD
has left a trail of incidents and accidents. The
Haymarket Massacre or Affair in Chicago in
1886, where an initially peaceful protest was
interrupted by police attempts to disperse the
crowd – at which point a bomb was thrown –
would lead to the arrest of several anarchists
and their prosecution for murder. Celebrated
as the Chicago Eight, of their number, August
Spies and three other defendants were hanged
the following year. In Britain, suffragette
Emily Wilding Davison’s apparent POTD
suicide under the hooves of King George V’s
horse at the Derby on June 4th, 1913, has
been recently questioned. By applying new
technology to contemporaneous nitrate film
recordings of the incident, a likelier interpre-
tation suggests she was not attempting to pull
down the royal racehorse, rather trying to
attach a scarf to its bridle.93 Nevertheless,
recently explored archives containing per-
sonal papers of the music hall actress and
dancer Kitty Marion reinforce the account of
suffragette commitment to political violence.
Newspaper clippings describing arson attacks
that she had carried out alongside press
reports of bombings about which she
remained silent fill the actress Kitty’s scrap-
book. Later that month, on the 13th, she
sought revenge for Davison’s death by set-
ting ablaze a racecourse grandstand. During
her subsequent imprisonment, she records
being force-fed 232 times in one day.94
Late 19th-century and early 20th-century
politics were tumultuous as befits an account
of national economies buffeted by boom and
bust and social upheaval. In The Violent Image,
I proposed that the transformation from
one media rich environment of the second
Industrial Revolution, powered by electricity,
to the digital ecology of the third Industrial
Revolution, driven by microprocessors, goes
some way to explaining how POTD achieved
different impacts at different times. Not that
18 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the anarchist model was lightly dismissed
in its day. On the contrary, it would prompt
US President Theodore Roosevelt to declare
a War on Terror in 1901 – a familiar refrain
from a White House incumbent a century
later. But once insurgents had seen its poten-
tial as consumer societies in the West brought
television viewing to the heart of family lives,
so movements like the Irish Republican Army
(IRA) and Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO) exploited their ability to project a
‘soap opera’ of hijacks and bombing outrages
into the physical space of people’s homes.
More significantly, into the cognitive space
of their minds. At the turn of the new century,
the militant movement al-Qaeda would take
advantage of a globally connected media sys-
tem when it struck the Twin Towers in New
York, crashing two airliners into the build-
ings live on television. Their relationship to
viewing audiences, more significantly their
attempts to let symbolic events resonate with
scattered global diasporas emotionally con-
nected to places of grievance across the Arab
and Muslim worlds, would take POTD to a
new level of spectacle and impact.
Twenty-first century POTD would become
a strategy in ‘shock and awe’ politics. At the
moment of visual impact caught on camera,
it would open up an opportunity space. In
the shock of the moment, public doubt and
the state’s temporary inability to explain the
event could be exploited. Discourses, care-
fully shaped and placed amid the population,
could be triggered by revolutionaries and
insurgents. This was the means to bring to the
fore a palimpsest of memory creation, blend-
ing historic and ongoing grievances with
personal and collective identities. And these
ideas – initially rumours, turning quickly to
conversations – would shake the status quo
and undermine state legitimacy.
Yet the effect from incidents of extreme
political violence brought about by their
19th- century precursors should not be under-
estimated. Anarchists raised the temperature
of debate and the threat level of atrocity.
Emile Zola captured the spirit of anarchist
agitators in the coalfields of northern France
in his novel Germinal; Joseph Conrad’s
Secret Agent reflected the silent presence
of the solitary bomber in London’s urban
crowds; and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons
suggested the power of persuasion of his
charismatic anarchist in the drawing rooms
of bourgeois Russia. Archives alone cannot
recreate the lived experience of a time lost.
Novelists bring us one step closer to under-
standing why some political actors embrace
the shock and awe of violence to put an end
to perceived and entrenched injustice. But
neither novelist nor historian can adequately
capture the fear or excitement of revolution-
ary zeal that would change the world, driven
to the outer limits of political communica-
tion. That so elusive mood music or Zeitgeist
of days past evades our ears.
Notes
1  New York Times (1914) Calls It Anarchist Plot,
June 29th, 1914, p. 3.
2  Bolt, Neville (2011) The Violent Image: Insurgent
Propaganda and the New Revolutionaries. New
York: Columbia University Press.
3  McChesney, Robert (2008) The Political Economy
of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas.
New York: Monthly Review Press, p. 27. He notes
that cities like St Louis had some ten daily news-
papers from the middle to late 19th century.
Bach Jensen, Richard (2014) The Battle Against
International Terrorism: An International History
1878–1934, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, p. 55. Jensen notes that France’s leading
anarchist publication Le Révolté was printing
8,000 copies every fortnight by the late 1880s.
Les Temps Nouveaux launched in 1895 printed
18,000 copies at its height before stabilising
around 7,000 by 1901.
4  Hall, Stuart (1981) Notes on Deconstructing the
Popular. In R. Samuel (ed.), People’s History and
Socialist Theory, pp. 227–239, London: Rout-
ledge, italics sic.
5  Ibid.
6  Manuel Castells similarly underlines the primacy
of the Information Age and Network Society.
Castells, Manuel (2004) The Information Age:
The Power of Identity, Malden MA and Oxford:
Blackwell; (2009) Communication Power, Oxford:
Oxford University Press
 Propaganda of the Deed and Its Anarchist Origins
7  Bolt (2011).
8  By comparison Emile Zola already writes in his
Ebauche of the novel Germinal: ‘The subject of
the novel is the revolt of the workers, the jolt
given to society, which for a moment cracks: in a
word the struggle between capital and labour’.
Zakarian, Richard (1972) Zola’s Germinal: A
Critical Study of its Primary Sources. Geneva:
Librarie Droz - Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Manuscript Department, manuscript 10.307,
folio 401.
9  Bolt (2011).
10  Bolt (2011).
11  Hobsbawm (1978), p. 73.
12  Calhoun, Craig (1989) Classical Social Theory
and the French Revolution of 1848. Sociological
Theory, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 210.
13  Hobsbawm (1988), p. 22.
14  Ibid, p. 33.
15  Ibid, pp. 228–229.
16  Ibid, p. 362 (table 2).
17  Ward, Ken (1989) Mass Communications and
the Modern World. Basingstoke: Macmillan Edu-
cation; Starr, Paul (2004) The Creation of the
Media: Political Origins of Modern Communica-
tions. New York: Basic Books; Lee, Alfred (1937)
The Daily Newspaper in America. New York:
Macmillan; Chalaby, Jean (1997) No Ordinary
Press Owners: Press Barons as a Weberian Ideal
Type. Media, Culture & Society, Vol. 19, No. 4,
pp. 621–644.
18  Maitron (1951), p. 35: Bulletin de la Fédération
Jurassienne (No. 39: 24/9/1874).
19  Inaugural Address of the International Working
Men’s Association, The First International. www.
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/10/27.htm.
20  Davey Smith, George; Dorling, Daniel; Shaw
Mary (2001) Poverty, Inequality and Health in
Britain: 1800–2000. Bristol: Policy Press, p. 94.
21  Woodcock, George (1986) Anarchism: A History
of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Harmond-
sworth: Penguin, p. 37, see Bakunin, Mikhail
(1873, 2002) Statism and Anarchy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
22  Hunter (1919), p. 7.
23  Calhoun (1989), p. 217.
24  Guillaume (1905), L’International: Documents et
Souvenirs. Paris, Vol. 4, No. 31, p. 26.
25  Woodcock (1986), p. 138: Letter to Marx
(17/5/1846).
26  Congresses: Geneva (1866), Lausanne (1867),
Brussels (1868), Basel (1869), London (1871), The
Hague (1872).
27  Woodcock (1986), p. 42.
28  Lenin, (1918, 1992), p.16.
29  Lenin, Vladimir (1918, 1992). The State and Rev-
olution, London: Penguin.
19
30  Davies (1996), p. 837.
31  Tucker (1969), pp. 88–89.
32  Maitron (1951), pp. 14–15.
33  Lenin, p. 63.
34  Joll (1964, 1979), p. ix.
35  Ibid, p. 12.
36  Godwin (1992) Enquiry Concerning Political Jus-
tice (1793).
37  Proudhon (1851), p. 31, Idée Générale de la
Révolution.
38  Proudhon (1840), Qu’est-ce que c’est la pro-
priété?
39  Stirner (1844) Ich hab’ mein Sach’ auf Nichts
gestellt (Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.
40  Carlson (1972), pp. 58–60.
41  Davies (1996), p. 840.
42  Hunter (1919), p. 169.
43  Mehring, Franz (1918) Karl Marx: The Story of his
Life, Chapter 14. www.marxists.org/archive/meh-
ring/1918/marx/index.htm.
44  Hunter (1919), pp. 162–171.
45  Guérin, Daniel (ed) (2005), p. 683, note 3 No
Gods, No Masters, Oakland CA: AK Press.
46  Mehring, Chapter 13.
47  For developments between congresses, see Web-
ster, Nesta (1921) World Revolution: The Plot
Against Civilisation, London: Constable; Nico-
laievsky, Boris & Maenchen-Helfen, Otto (2015)
Karl Marx: Man and Fighter, London and New
York: Routledge.
48  Hunter (1919), pp. 11–16.
49  The charismatic activist Sergei Nechaev would
inspire Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons, in
particular his character Pyotr Stepanovich Verk-
hovensky. First published in 1871–1872 in The
Russian Messenger.
50  Nechayev (1869) Catechism No.3 www.marxists.
org/subject/anarchism/nechayev/catechism.htm.
51  Bakunin (1842) La Reaction en Allemagne, frag-
ment, par un Francais.
52  Catechism No. 24.
53  Catechism 12, ibid.
54  Catechism 13, ibid (italics sic).
55  Woodcock (1986), p. 43; see Marshall, Peter
(2010) Demanding the Impossible: A History of
Anarchism, Oakland CA: PM Press.
56  Guillaume (1905), p. 224.
57  Ibid, p. 225, my translation.
58  Laqueur (1987), p. 48.
59  Hunter (1919), p. 52.
60  Yarmolinsky, Avrahm (2014), Road to Revolution,
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 220.
61  Kucherov, Samuel (1952) The Case of Vera Zasu-
lich. Russian Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, p. 91.
62  Ibid, p. 90.
63  Tucker (1969), p. 1.
64  Ibid, pp. 113–120.
20 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
65  Venturi (1960), pp. 595–596.
66  Joll (1964, 1979), pp. 100–102.
67  Maitron (1951), p. 137: Le Révolté No.49, 26/3-
1/4/1887.
68  Ibid, p. 138: Le Révolté No.4, 30/4-6/5/1887.
69  Ibid: Le Révolté No. 3, 1/4/1882.
70  Maitron (1951), p. 146: Le Révolté No.13:17-
30/8/1882.
71  Ibid, pp. 153–155.
72  Joll (1964, 1979), pp. 112–113.
73  Goldman (1910).
74  Joll (1964, 1979), pp. 117–118.
75  Carlson (1972), p. 252.
76  Ibid
77  Serraux was widely held to be an undercover
agent of the Paris police force. Cf Graham, Rob-
ert (2015) We Do Not Fear Anarchy-We Invoke
It: The First International and the Origins of the
Anarchist Movement. Chico, CA: AK Press.
78  For implications for 21st century POTD see
O’Shaughnessy, Nicholas & Baines, Paul (2009) Sell-
ing Terror: The Symbolization and Positioning of
Jihad. Marketing Theory, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp, 207–221.
79  Carlson (1972), p. 254.
80  My translation.
81  Bach (2014), p. 47.
82  Carlson (1972), pp. 259–265.
83  Carlson (1972), pp. 268–269.
84  Skocpol (1999), p. 87.
85  Berlin (2001), p. xxii, (cf: Venturi 1960).
86  Wilkinson (1974), p. 60–62.
87  Venturi (1960), p. 719.
88  Ibid.
89  Wilkinson (1974), p. 63.
90  Laqueur (1987), pp. 33–34.
91  Laqueur (1987), pp. 30–34.
92  Berlin, pp. xxvi–xxvii.
93  see www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/26/
emily-davison-suffragette-death-derby-1913 The
Guardian (2013) Truth Behind the Death of Suf-
fragette Emily Davison is Finally Revealed, Van-
essa Thorpe.
94  see www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44210012 BBC
(2018) Kitty Marion: The Actress Who Became a
‘Terrorist’, Meghan Mohan.
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Atrocity Propaganda in
Australia and Great Britain
During the First World War
INTRODUCTION
The First World War has been cited as the pro-
genitor of a number of significant develop-
ments in war that influenced future conflicts.
The war, David Zabecki argues, ‘was history’s
single largest revolution in military tactics and
technologies’. Air power, tanks and the devel-
opment of the operational level of war are
generally regarded as some of the most signifi-
cant developments in war fighting (2015). It
was also the conflict in which mass media and
near-total war combined to make propaganda a
critical part of modern warfare. Historian
David Welch has observed that one of the most
significant aspects of the war was ‘that public
opinion could no longer be ignored as a deter-
mining factor in the formulation of govern-
ment policies’ (2014, p.58). Propaganda was
the means through which public opinion was
aligned with the policy aims of government.
This was a resource hungry conflict that
required not only the acquiescence, but also the
active support, of the population. Propaganda
2
Emily Robertson
assisted with raising funds, recruiting men to
fight, and provided an imaginative bridge
between those fighting and those at home. The
Great War was, therefore, very much the origin
point of thinking in new ways about war lead-
ing into the twentieth century, and propaganda
was one area in which war was modernised.
Out of all of the genres of propaganda pro-
duced by the British and Australians during the
war, atrocity propaganda most exemplifies the
linkages between ideology, propaganda
and war fighting that came to be so crucial
to prosecuting conflicts which required
mass participation.
The ideological underpinnings of British
atrocity propaganda were present in Australian
atrocity propaganda throughout the war.
Despite the complex bureaucratic structure
that oversaw propaganda production in Great
Britain, and the chaotic method of dissemina-
tion to the Dominions, colonies, allied neutrals
and within Britain itself, there was nonetheless
a consistent, underlying message that tran-
scended jingoistic imperialism to present the
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
war as a humanitarian intervention. This dis-
tinctly liberal way of conceiving of the war –
as one fought to defend civilisation and to
defend the rights of small nations – was the cri
de coeur that rallied people across classes, and
across the globe. The unity of message was
due to a shared moral code that existed both
in Great Britain, and by extension, Australia.
Australia was connected to Great Britain not
just through imperial ties, but also through
shared ideology, and shared culture (Lehane,
2013). The consistent messaging contained in
atrocity propaganda about the Allies uphold-
ing ‘civilisation’ against German ‘barbarism’,
was transmitted in both government and non-
government pro-war propaganda and was a
powerful way to both justify the war and quell
internal divisions on the home front.
Grand strategy, which is concerned with
‘all the resources of a nation’, was in the early
stages of development during the conflict
(Silove, 2017, p.35). In terms of exploiting the
psychological elements in prosecuting war, by
the end of the war the British and Australian
governments were highly advanced in their
use of mass psychology for strategic gain.
An examination of the use of atrocity propa-
ganda by both governments during the Great
War demonstrates grand strategy was well
underway in terms of official recognition that
some aspects of modern war lay outside of the
purview of the military. While ‘grand strategy’
as it pertains to the use of propaganda in the
Great War was not conceptualised until 1941
by British strategists Antony Sargeaunt and
Geoffrey West, it is clear that the psychologi-
cal elements they identified as being central
to a grand strategic approach were recognised
by both the British and Australian govern-
ments during the First World War. West and
Sargeaunt’s theory acknowledged the impor-
tance of ‘the relationship between war and
society’ (Milevski, 2017, p.45). Atrocity prop-
aganda of the First World War anticipated West
and Sargeaunt’s theory, as it played a crucial
role in the war by linking the political and ide-
ological realm with the military mobilisation
of the state in both Great Britain and Australia.
23
ATROCITY PROPAGANDA:
CONCEPT AND THEORY
As governments scrambled at the outset of the
war to harness the expertise of the advertising
industry to engage with a mass audience,
propaganda became an essential part of the
war effort. The war historian George Bruntz
explains, ‘drastically changed the relationship
of the established order of society to propa-
ganda’. He continues, ‘participating govern-
ments saw at once that psychological war
must accompany economic war and military
war. They took seriously the task of psycho-
logical mobilisation, and they felt the impact
of the psychological campaigns of their rivals’
(1938, p.vii). A state of near-total war
demanded a strong degree of civilian partici-
pation, and therefore civilian support, for the
war. The high volume of propaganda pro-
duced by the British and Australian govern-
ments in the First World War attests to the
ongoing need of the authorities to persuade
men to fight and, in addition, to the need to
convince voters to support a war that drained
the economy and killed or crippled a genera-
tion of young men. Because it relied entirely
upon voluntary enlistments throughout the
conflict, the amount of government propa-
ganda produced in Australia was higher than
in Great Britain. Thus, while the British
Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC)
wound up its work in May 1916 following the
introduction of compulsory service in Great
Britain, Australia continued to produce costly
recruiting campaigns until the end of the war
(Douglas, 1970, p.585).
Atrocity propaganda was one of the most
important genres for the Allies during the
Great War. It is a genre that has drawn upon
consistent tropes of the killing of innocents,
and its visual and linguistic grammar was
established during the religious wars in
Europe between Protestants and Catholics.
It has largely been used to dehumanise the
enemy by painting him as ‘savage, bar-
baric’, which mobilises sentiment against the
enemy (Welch, 2003, p.24). More recently,
24 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
‘propaganda by deed’ has been employed
by terrorists who have terrorists willingly
taking on the role of ‘barbarian’ by commit-
ting atrocities to gain maximum publicity.
As Louise Richardson writes of the killing
of 186 children in the Beslan school siege by
Chechan terrorists, ‘the larger the number of
casualties, the more innovative the tactic, the
greater the symbolic significance of the target,
the more heinous the crime, the more public-
ity accrues to the perpetrators’ (2006, p.95).
Barbarism as a military strategy can therefore
be used for the strategic gain, or at the strate-
gic expense, of the perpetrator. In the case of
the Great War, barbarism was a poor overall
military strategy for the Germans. While it
may have been a militarily expedient means
for quickly pacifying Belgium, it delivered
the ultimate propaganda weapon to the Allies.
The complex interplay between the actions
of the enemy, and the way those actions are
portrayed in propaganda, reveals that despite
its simplistic presentation, propaganda can
be a sophisticated means of communica-
tion. Propaganda has been regarded by some
scholars as a means through which to alter the
behaviour of people (Welch, 2003). Lindley
Fraser, for example, defined it as ‘the activ-
ity, or the art, of inducing others to behave in
a way in which they would not behave in its
absence’ (1957, p.1). It is questionable, how-
ever, if First World War atrocity propaganda
would have been appealing if it were not so
closely aligned with the culture that produced
it. While atrocity propaganda is a ‘time-
honoured technique of propagandists’ and has
been used in the West since the Crusades, the
atrocity propaganda employed in the Great
War was particular to the political culture that
produced it (Welch, 2003, p.23). First World
War atrocity propaganda incorporated liberal
ideology about the just conduct of war that had
been developing over the past 50 years, and its
success was due to its inclusion of pre-existing
values about the rights of non-combatants.
Atrocity propaganda therefore inflamed
emotions, rather than created them. The intense
wave of volunteerism which was the bedrock
of recruiting in both in Great Britain and
Australia in the early stages of the war dem-
onstrates the depth of feeling associated with
the war. Stephen Badsey asserts, ‘Whatever
motivated the volunteer movement of 1914, it
was a reflection of a very deep-seated consen-
sus within British and Imperial society; propa-
ganda is too small a word for it’ (2008, p.29).
Indeed, as this chapter demonstrates, atrocity
propaganda was a form of propaganda that
had a deep-seated connection to established
concepts about how war should be conducted.
The German invasion of Belgium and
France, the shelling of British towns, Zeppelin
attacks on cities and the sinking of passen-
ger liners all featured in posters, pamphlets,
films and newspapers. German atrocities
were discussed frequently in the British and
Australian media, and regularly featured in
speeches by politicians. Atrocity propaganda
drew upon a variety of cultural, philosophical
and ideological influences to represent the
German, or the ‘Hun’, as a monstrous threat
to civilisation. It played a fundamental role
in depicting the conflict as a just war, one
fought to defend women and children from a
ruthless and militaristic enemy.
The moral absolutism of atrocity propa-
ganda from the Great War had a direct role
in bringing the term ‘propaganda’ into dis-
repute. Although ‘propaganda’ was a neu-
tral concept before the First World War,
following the conflict, it developed a very
poor reputation, largely because of the more
exaggerated and egregious forms of atroc-
ity propaganda that were produced during
the war. The German invasion of Belgium in
August 1914 provided the initial material for
atrocity propaganda, with stories of the rape
of women, and the killing of children and
unarmed men providing horrific material that
became synonymous with ‘German frightful-
ness’. The subsequent invasion of France by
Germany provided further material, as did the
genocidal activities of the Ottoman Empire
against the Armenians. While a large amount
of atrocity propaganda provided reasonably
factual accounts of wartime atrocities, there
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
were a number of tasteless tales – including
the ‘Corpse Conversion factory’ (in which the
bodies of dead German soldiers were alleg-
edly being turned into soap) and the ‘Crucified
Canadian’ – which came to embody the mis-
leading nature of Allied atrocity propaganda
after the war was over. It is important to note
that work by historians John Horne and Alan
Kramer demonstrated that the Germans did
commit a number of atrocities during their
invasion of Belgium (2001). Later work by
Isabel V Hull also provided further evidence
the Germans had disregarded the contempo-
rary laws of armed conflict during their inva-
sion of Belgium and France (2005; 2014).
For propaganda to be successful, it must
not only appeal to the values of the target
audience, it must also have some factual
basis, and the bombing of small British towns
and the killing of civilians by German zeppe-
lins provided confirmation that the German
military did not respect the rules of armed
conflict (Robertson, 2014, pp.261–262). First
World War atrocity propaganda, while guilty
of grotesque exaggeration, therefore also had
an intellectual base, and drew upon a curious
combination of liberal humanitarianism and
racial slurs to present the conflict as a just war.
Notwithstanding the factual basis of some
atrocity propaganda, the post-war reputation
of atrocity propaganda was largely due to its
brutal dehumanisation of the German enemy.
The term ‘Hun’ was a vile shorthand for the
German solider. In both Australia and Great
Britain, the hatred of the ‘Hun’ unleashed
mass protests and riots against naturalised
Germans. In London, the deaths of civilians
that resulted from the 1915 sinking of passen-
ger liner the Lusitania by a German U-boat
resulted in neighbours turning on each other
and damaging property (Gullace, 2005).
In both Australia and Great Britain, people
of German descent were stripped ‘of their
civil and constitutional rights’. They were
deprived, Gerhard Fischer has written, ‘of
their property and professions, they were per-
secuted and attacked by enraged street mobs,
sacked from their jobs, interned without trial
25
and deported without a chance to protest their
case and prove their loyalty’ (1989, p.6).
Hatred and intolerance were stoked by atroc-
ity propaganda. As Cate Haste stated, ‘The
essence of propaganda is simplification. In
wartime, the intricate patterns of politics are
refined into simple and crude images of right
and wrong’ (1977, p.80).
Despite the simplistic and intolerant nature
of First World War atrocity propaganda, the
circumstances around its production and its
reliance upon ideology makes it a nuanced
form of communication. Propaganda is not
merely a tool with which to influence the mob,
it is also the means through which ideologi-
cal discourse is transmitted in a mass society.
Ideology describes how a group organises
its ‘self image … identity, actions, aims,
norms and values’; this group then perpetu-
ates and confirms these notions ‘through dis-
course’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p.115). I argue that
propaganda – which can be visual, textual
and even musical – is a form of discourse that
when it is at its most persuasive, confirms ide-
ologies; it does not invent them. As Ernst Kris
and Nathan Leites have observed, First World
War propaganda relied heavily upon ‘moral
argumentation’ (1972, p.42). An analysis of
atrocity propaganda therefore provides us with
a window into the ideological discourse – that
of liberal humanitarianism – which was influ-
ential during the course of the First World War.
War, therefore, is not simply the application
of force to a situation; it is also a ‘cultural phe-
nomenon’ – in other words, the way a society
promotes a war reflects the values and morals
of the society conducting the war (Kern, 1988,
p.1). Recruiters in the Australian Imperial
Force (AIF) realised that shallow jingoism
and patriotism were not enough to inspire
reluctant men to join; deeper arguments were
required. In 1917, a staff member on the NSW
Recruiting Committee noted that:
A successful appeal would provide the necessary
moral force that would compel the indifferent and
the selfish … to realise their duty, and bring them
flocking in their thousands to take their places in
the AIF.1
26 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Atrocity propaganda provided the source
of ‘moral force’ in both Great Britain and
Australia during the Great War. It formed part
of an intricate nexus between the government,
international law, morality and the masses.
The ideology that buttressed atrocity prop-
aganda was popularised in Great Britain by
Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone in
the late nineteenth century. Gladstone’s tar-
get was the Ottomans, who had committed
atrocities against Bulgarians and Armenian
civilians. While he never successfully insti-
gated a war against the Ottomans, the notion
that the British Empire had a responsibility to
intervene against military powers that abused
civilians was popular both among the mid-
dle and the working classes. It marked the
beginning of the Gladstonian tradition that
Peter Clarke has identified as the basis for
the narrative of the Great War, which was the
struggle of the Allied forces of ‘civilisation’
against the ‘barbarism’ of the Germans and
Ottomans (1996, p.72). Gladstone’s vision of
humanitarian intervention was highly influ-
ential and provided the means for the British
elite to craft a morally compelling argument
to justify Britain’s involvement in the Great
War. The narrative of ‘humanitarian inter-
vention’ was the means through which to
convince millions of people to commit them-
selves to fight on the behalf of a foreign peo-
ple across the ocean.
The growth of humanitarian sentiment in
Great Britain occurred against the backdrop
of two international conferences called the
Hague Conventions, which led to the formu-
lation of treaties and declarations that formed
the basis of early humanitarian approaches to
the laws of armed conflict and also a codifi-
cation of what constituted war crimes (Hartle,
1986, p.112). Gladstone’s humanitarianism
was part of a larger evolution about how war
was thought about in Europe: ‘at this time’,
Michael Barnett has written, ‘natural law-
based theories led to a stronger distinction
between combatants and non-combatants,
the view that not all violence was neces-
sary or justified’ (2011, p.78). By this point,
this emerging form of humanitarianism had
become an almost centrifugal force in British
(and by extension, Australian) politics, par-
ticularly in relation to wartime atrocities
against civilians.
Atrocity propaganda, with its depictions of
vulnerable non-combatants and militaristic
Germans, perfectly encapsulated the moral
values that were held by liberal humani-
tarians. The German invasion of Belgium
in August 1914, as Peter Buitenhuis has
observed, provided the British ‘with a ready-
made subject for their propaganda efforts’
(1989, p.10). The outrage in British society
was immediate and intense; Australia, which
shared the same liberal humanitarian per-
spectives about war, was quick to follow the
British in their outrage.
Thus, while atrocity propaganda was used
as a tool for recruiting, it was also a tool
for raising funds for humanitarian relief. In
1915, the Belgian Consul in Australia sold a
pamphlet titled, The Story of Belgium: From
Prosperity to Desolation; Murder, Rapine
and Ruin (Turner, 1915). Proceeds from the
pamphlet would go to the Australian Belgian
Relief Fund. The pamphlet dwelt at great
length upon German destruction of Belgian
culture, the deaths of women and children,
and the rape of women, at the hands of the
German military. The German soldiers had,
the pamphlet states, ‘introduced a species of
callous brutality and savagery which belongs
to a far distant period in the world’s his-
tory’. For their ‘crimes against humanity’,
Germany ‘must be left to bear such punish-
ment as can justly be inflicted by an outraged
world’ (pp.79–80). Humanitarian sentiment
was therefore intrinsically linked to the rheto-
ric that eventually led to the uncompromising
conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. Atrocity
propaganda encapsulates the complex (and
to modern audiences, contradictory) ideolo-
gies of liberal humanitarian intervention that
drove the Allied justification for the war. The
complexity of atrocity propaganda was due
largely to the idealism of those who formed
its intellectual framework.
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
THE ARCHITECTS OF ATROCITY
PROPAGANDA
Atrocity propagandists saw the conflict as a
means through which to reshape the world
into one which would not tolerate militarism
and violence against civilians. It was the ulti-
mate progressive war, as it would eliminate
the backwards, uncivilised German culture
and create a new world order in which peace
would prevail. The conflict ‘was being fought
because big issues were perceived to be at
stake’, Welch has written. It was a war of ‘big
ideas’ which were generated by the intellec-
tual elite (2014, p.73). In Great Britain, this
elite had a large role in legitimating atrocity
propaganda by funnelling these big ideas into
legal investigations and philosophical pam-
phlets. Many of them were inclined towards
the liberal side of politics, and, with the
exception of the head of Wellington House
Charles Masterman (who went to Cambridge),
were educated at Oxford. These Oxbridge
liberals provided the raw, intellectual mate-
rial that would be decanted into sensational-
ist posters and pamphlets.
Gilbert Murray was one Oxford scholar
who was part of the elite intellectual circle
that promoted the war. He produced several
influential pamphlets supporting the war, and,
at the behest of Charles Masterman, travelled
to neutral nations and gave speeches in favour
of the war.2 An Australian-born Oxford classi-
cist, Murray was Vice-President of the ‘Fight
for right’ movement, which was essentially
a large, privately funded group that sought
to convince Britons that the Great War was
fought for ‘the best interest of humanity’
(Creswick Advertiser, 14 April 1916, p.3).
Humanitarian sentiment was central to his
work as an atrocity propagandist. In his 1915
pamphlet Ethical Problems of the War, Murray
discussed the process ‘by which a highly civi-
lised and ordinarily humane nation has gone
on from what I can only call atrocity to atroc-
ity’. He wondered how the Germans could
‘stand by passive and apparently approving,
while deeds like the new Armenian massacres
27
are going on under their aegis … all this
passes one’s imagination’ (pp.8–9).
The most significant publication to emerge
from the British liberal intelligentsia was
the Bryce report (full name, Report of the
Committee on Alleged German Outrages).
Viscount James Bryce, former Ambassador
to the United States, Liberal politician and
jurisprudence scholar, was approached by
Attorney General John Simon to provide
his interpretation of thousands of deposi-
tions from Belgium refugees. Simon wrote
to Bryce stating that the government wished
to form a committee ‘of persons of fair and
independent judgement to report what the
conclusions at which they arrive on the evi-
dence available’.3 The impetus behind the
Bryce report was multifaceted; on one level,
it was an exercise in gathering evidence of
German war crimes within the context of
the international law of armed conflict. The
report, along with those produced by other
countries such as France, was part of the
development of legal inquiry into war crimes
that led to ‘the dawn of the modern system
of international criminal justice’ in the post-
war period (Schabas, 2018, p.396). The ques-
tion was not whether or not atrocities were
an inevitable consequence of the violence of
war, but whether or not the offending nation
had a policy of pursuing violence against
civilians as part of its war strategy. Bryce
Committee member and parliamentarian Sir
Edward Clarke wrote a letter to Bryce in
which he noted in relation to atrocities, ‘such
excesses are found in the course of every
war … the main question here is how far the
German government is to be held responsi-
ble for them’. On another level, however, the
report was a propaganda exercise, and Clarke
recognised it as such:
The object of our appointment is, I presume, that
a careful ascertainment and statement of the
wrongs committed by the Germans shall deprive
them of any support in the judgement of neutral
countries, and shall stiffen the resolution of our
own people to carry on the war until atonement
has been made.4
28 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
While Belgium was the main focus of the
Bryce Committee, allegations of German
atrocities in France were also investigated.
Professor John Hartmann Morgan had been
commissioned specifically by the Secretary
of State for Home Affairs to investigate the
impact of the German invasion upon civilians
in France (Morgan, 1915, p.3). Like Bryce,
Morgan was a committed liberal and active
in national politics. His production of First
World War atrocity propaganda was also,
like Bryce, interlinked with his involvement
in legal activities that related to the laws of
armed conflict and to wartime atrocities.5
INTERNATIONAL LAW AS
PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA
AND GREAT BRITAIN
Morgan and Bryce’s legal investigations
played a crucial role in legitimating atrocity
propaganda through the framework of interna-
tional law. While news stories about the August
invasion of Belgium had had an impact, offi-
cial reports reassured sceptical readers that
atrocities had occurred. Belgian Henry Segaert
noted in 1916 that Australians were ‘incredu-
lous’ when the media reported atrocities in
December 1914; this doubt, however, ‘became
impossible’ when the British and French
Commissions published their reports (p.140).
Official reports were therefore crucial to
lending credibility to atrocity propaganda.
Morgan and Bryce’s reports inevitably circu-
lated in Australia, as did reports from France,
Russia and Belgium. Drawing on the devel-
oping language of international humanitar-
ian law, official reports translated well across
national and imperial boundaries and were
circulated in various forms in Australia dur-
ing the war. Invariably, the reports focused
upon alleged abuse of non-combatants and
POWs – areas that had been confirmed as war
crimes by the Hague Conventions.
The NSW government published extracts
of The Report of Commission of Inquiry
appointed by the President of the French
Republic in the Gazette, ‘believing that a
perusal of this document will illustrate to
many the criminal nature of the aggres-
sion which it is now sought to check by the
armies of the allies’. It was to give people an
understanding of the ‘barbarism’ that was
being conducted, and to understand what
Australian men were fighting. In addition,
while the ‘incidents narrated are of a charac-
ter almost impossible’ to publish (these inci-
dents presumably being the torture and rape
of women), it was also to the women of NSW
that the publication was aimed – not just
men. They needed to ‘fully realise the nature
of the cause in which the men of Australia
are called upon to fight’ (1915, p.3150). As
with the Bryce report that had been released
a month earlier, the perception that there was
an official tone in reports was very important
to contemporaries when considering the truth
value contained in the document. British
propagandists such as Charles Masterman
believed that ‘the appearance of objectiv-
ity’ was of central importance to establish-
ing credibility (Sanders and Taylor, 1982,
p.143). The French report’s tone appealed to
the anonymous author of the NSW Gazette,
who assessed the truth value of the official
document by examining emotional qualities
in the writing; the less emotion and the less
hyperbole, the more truthful the document
could be assumed to be:
It is written with calm restraint – one might say
almost without feeling. The most horrifying facts
are set forth with a cold severity which is typical of
the French nation at the present time. There is no
emotion exhibited in the wording of the report,
but one feels that beneath the words is a passion-
ate resolve of which there is no need to give
expression. (p.3149)
These reports provided the source material
for abridged pamphlets and also posters. As
information from official reports was sum-
marised into shorter forms, the language
devolved from the unemotional tone of official
legal depositions, into sensationalist descrip-
tions that served to not only dehumanise
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
the German enemy, but also the victims. An
Australian pamphlet published in 1915 that
reproduced sections of France’s Commission
did not shy away from discussing the rape
of women. The front cover reads: ‘Orgies
of Rapine, Fire and Carnage; and Outrages
on Women and Children unparalleled in the
History of the Universe’ on the front cover
(German Atrocities in France, 1915).
Morgan and Bryce’s investigations were
summarised in a similar manner by the
Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (PRC)
in Great Britain. The Bryce report was
condensed into a small publication titled
The Truth about German Atrocities, and
Morgan’s investigations originally (included
in the Appendix of the Bryce report) into
Germany’s Dishonoured Army: Additional
Records of German Atrocities in France.
These publications were popular – RH Davies
of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee
claimed that the Bryce report-based pamphlet
The Truth about German Atrocities ‘had been
much in demand’ in the UK (1915); they
were accordingly regarded with keen interest
as tools for influencing public opinion in the
Dominions and Colonies.6
These publications were distributed by the
British government in Australia. They were
tabled by the NSW Premier in the Legislative
Assembly, and the contents were reported
by the press (Sydney Morning Herald,
13 October 1915, p.12). Following this, the
Legislative Assembly published the pam-
phlets, calling them ‘official papers’ and
‘Imperial documents’, and sent them to the
NSW press which dutifully repeated their
grisly contents in their columns. The ghast-
liest depositions from the Bryce investiga-
tion had been cherry picked by the PRC
as highlights in the pamphlets, and the
language altered to dramatise the allega-
tions. For example, the original report has
a section titled ‘The Treatment of Women
and Children’; in the pamphlet this section
was divided into two new ones: ‘Women
Murdered and Outraged’ and ‘The Murder
and Ill-Treatment of Children’ (pp.15–16).
29
Where the original report used more cau-
tious language about how women fared under
the German occupation, the pamphlet com-
pressed stories from the report into bullet
points in order to create a more compelling
narrative. Morgan’s depositions were trans-
formed into sections that included subhead-
ings such as German Officers’ Bestial Ways,
and Methods of Savages (1915, Germany’s
Dishonoured Army, pp.11–12). Essentially,
the pamphlets highlighted the rape stories
about women, and placed the reports of non-
sexual violence in the background.
The PRC pamphlet version of the Bryce
report also focused upon the more extraordi-
nary stories, some of which would become
notorious by the end of the war. Perhaps the
most shocking story from the entire Bryce
report was that of the German soldier in
Malines who allegedly speared a two-year-
old with his bayonet: the child was lifted
‘into the air on his bayonet’ and he walked
away with the impaled child, ‘his comrades
still singing’ (p.17). Among other tales of
murder and mutilation of Belgian children,
this story dominated in the Australian press.
In early 1916, the Goulburn Evening Penny
Post provided a short summary of assaults on
children, stating ‘As there may be some peo-
ple fatuous enough to disbelieve the accounts
of German barbarity to children’ they would
quote the relevant passages from the report.
The depositions from the pamphlet were
compressed into a series of stories focusing
on the mutilation of children. Among the
most horrendous accounts of dismember-
ment was the toddler being bayoneted by the
soldier (1 Jan 1916, p.6).
The most effective method of decant-
ing international law into a more succinct
form of propaganda was visual, and it was
in the visual realm that the story of the baby
being bayoneted achieved iconic force. In
both Great Britain and Australia, artists
seized upon this gruesome image. In ‘The
Gentleman German’, British artist Edmund
J. Sullivan aligned the innocence of the child
with that of God’s angels, depicting a brutish
30 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Figure 2.1  Edmund J. Sullivan (1915), ‘The
Gentleman German’, The Kaiser’s Garland.
London: William Heinemann
German in a pickelhaube holding the body
of a cherub speared on the end of his bayo-
net (Figure 2.1). Australian artist Norman
Lindsay included the bayoneted child amidst
a tumbling morass of war crimes: the bayo-
net wielding soldier has his jack boot upon
a fallen woman; drunken soldiers carouse
among the chaos of poisonous gas, Zeppelins
deploying bombs against civilians, and a
crucified Belgian peasant languishes in the
background (Figure 2.2).
As can be seen from the progression of
atrocity propaganda from official reports to
unofficial atrocity propaganda, the bounda-
ries between official and unofficial propa-
ganda were very fluid. The shared liberal
humanitarian ideology that had developed
during the late nineteenth century, and was
codified in the Hague Conventions, created
an environment in which these allegations
would be readily received and then re-
transmitted in another form. Australia was
very open to both reproducing atrocity prop-
aganda from abroad, and also producing its
own. It was arguably the most significant
theme in Australian pro-war propaganda.
AUSTRALIAN ATROCITY
PROPAGANDA
Atrocity propaganda had a significant impact
upon how Australians regarded the war. The
liberal and humanitarian concerns articulated
in atrocity propaganda were powerful enough
to unite disparate groups. Labour movement
newspapers such as the Westralian Worker
used the same strong language about German
atrocities as Melbourne’s conservative
newspaper, The Argus. German soldiers, The
Argus reported, were ‘Inhuman monsters’
(7 December 1914, p.9). Across the continent,
the Westralian concurred, stating that the
Germans had committed ‘hideous barbarities’
(13 August 1915, p.3). Atrocities provided a
strong moral imperative to fight which
spanned political, social and class divisions.
Concern about atrocities was omnipresent
in the first years of the war. News of German
atrocities in particular occupied Australians.
Writing in late 1915, ‘Message’ of the
Industrial Workers of the World described
the atmosphere in Sydney: ‘We read in the
papers every day, “German Atrocities”.
At every workshop, tram car, we hear peo-
ple talking about German cruelties’ (Direct
Action, 11 September 1915, p.1). In the same
year, Albert B. Dreher wrote in the Minyip
Guardian and Sheep Hills Advocate that the
‘only topic of conversation in the town for
days’ had been the sinking of British passen-
ger liner, the Lusitania, by a German U-boats
in 1915 (15 June 1915, p.2). The topic was
so ubiquitous that it even appeared at the first
celebration of Anzac Day in 1915, which was
also a celebration of the Eight Hour Day. In
one display, the Felt Hatters presented a vari-
ety of hats in different shapes and sizes to rep-
resent ‘Kultur’ and ‘Atrocities’ (Bongiorno
et al., p.2). As the Daily Herald explained:
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Figure 2.2  Norman Lindsay, ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’, 1 July 1915, The Bulletin
Labor, in its celebration of its day of victory, was
not forgetful of the gallantry of those brave boys
who are fighting that the Australian workmen may
not have to see his advantages swept away by the
rough hand of Prussianism. (14 October 1915, p.6)
Although other forms of jingoistic propa-
ganda were prominent, atrocity propaganda
was the most significant genre. Throughout
the conflict, novelists, filmmakers, poets,
cartoonists and publishers circled around
the topic of ‘poor little Belgium’ and other
German atrocities. Some even made tremen-
dous profits from doing so. For example, the
1916 film ‘The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell’,
about a British nurse executed by the German
military, grossed 25,000 pounds. According
to one insider, the film ‘put several showmen
on Easy Street for a long time’ (Cooper and
Pike, 1981, p.79). Indeed, a large amount of
31
atrocity propaganda came from unofficial
rather than government sources. One of the
most significant producers of atrocity propa-
ganda was newspaper owner Critchley Parker.
Parker was notable for extending the rheto-
ric of the ‘civilised’ Allies against the ‘bar-
baric Huns’ into a venomous diatribe for
the destruction of the Germans. He repro-
duced numerous items of British propaganda
(including the Bryce report) and published
explicit photographs of the bodies of the
Allied civilian victims of war. His style was
unashamedly bigoted – in a War Supplement
to the Statesman and Mining Standard in July
1915, Parker stated (alongside photographs of
French peasants who have been shot by the
German military) that ‘the only way to win’
was to force sentiment such as mercy ‘and
tenderness and humanity’ in dealing with the
32 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
German nation out of the Allied mind. For, he
states, one would not think of exercising these
‘virtues if attacked by a tiger or a shark or a
cobra or even, to take perhaps the truest simile
of all, by a mad dog’ (p.1). He also produced
posters that went to great lengths to dehuman-
ise the German enemy. One poster titled ‘The
Only Good German is a Dead German’ had
images of German military leaders and con-
tained these lines: ‘The Allies must so finish
the War that Germans will not dare raise their
eyes to a White Man’s level for a century’.
The logic behind Parker’s poster was that
the Germans had reverted to savagery, and in
doing so, had renounced both civilisation and
their ‘whiteness’ (15 February 1917, supple-
ment, the Statesman and Mining Standard).
The immorality of the militaristic ‘Huns’
and the depredations they exacted upon
Belgian women and children were also fre-
quently alluded to in the media, not just by
politicians, but by journalists and the public
in letters to the editor. During the war, dis-
cussions about German atrocities were part
of the everyday fabric of Australians’ lives.
The story of Nurse Cavell had inspired not
just films, but also sermons that were later
published in pamphlet form, and also the
raising of memorial funds.7 Films such as ‘If
the Huns Came to Melbourne’ imagined an
Australia experiencing the full devastation of
a German invasion (Cooper and Pike, p.83).
Poets and novelists were also inspired by
the events in Europe, and the Belgian atroci-
ties featured in three books by prominent
Australian authors. Children’s book author
Mary Grant Bruce featured a scene in From
Billabong to London, in which the father’s
permission for his son to go to war was
entirely based upon the Belgian cause:
There isn’t any room for further doubt. Every day
brings evidence of what the job is going to be –
the biggest the Empire ever had to tackle. And the
cry from Belgium comes home to every decent
man. (2015, p.31)
Renowned Australian poet CJ Dennis was also
preoccupied by Belgium. His redoubtable
larrikin Ginger Mick was inspired to enlist
by their plight. In Dennis’s 1916 book The
Moods of Ginger Mick, the protagonist was
initially disgusted by the ‘flamin’ war …
wot’s old England got snake-’eaded for?’
Watching a car with ‘two fat toffs be’ind two
fat cigars’ glide by does nothing to inspire
Mick to enlist. Taking a leaf from the anti-
capitalist rhetoric of the labour movement,
Mick mutters ‘Struth! I’d fight fer that sort –
I don’t think’. Mick then asks his mate about
why the war was being fought. His mate tells
‘im wot I read about the ‘Uns, an’ wot they
done in Beljum an’ in France’. Mick listens
intently to the narrator’s story of atrocities:
Be burnin’ pore coves ‘omes an’ killin’ kids,
An’ comin’ it real crook wiv decent tarts,
An’ fightin’ foul, as orl the rules forbids,
Leavin’ a string uv stiff-uns in their track.
While Mick is outraged by these stories, he
claims ‘it’s no affair uv mine’ (pp.23–26).
Yet in the very next chapter he has enlisted.
As The Sydney Morning Herald observed in
a contemporary review of the book, the sto-
ries of Belgium had been very effective and
Mick’s decision to enlist ‘surprises no-one’
(21 October 1916, p.8).
Where Ginger Mick is the epitome of the
working-class Australian male, Brigid and
the Cub by Ethel Turner used a very differ-
ent protagonist – a young middle-class British
girl who becomes caught up in the invasion of
Liège and witnesses an atrocity (Turner, 1919).
This children’s book was initially published
in serial form in The Daily Telegraph, and its
first few instalments would have been very
topical when they were first produced in 1915
(The World’s News, 27 December 1919, p.29).
Turner’s atrocity scenario is interesting, as the
first killing is made not by a German, but by
a Belgian: after a German soldier has dragged
the bedridden wife out of bed, the crippled
husband (Lemulquinier), unable to physically
defend his wife, shoots the German soldier
in the heart. The other soldiers retaliate by
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
killing the husband, wife and baby. Brigid and
Lemulquinier’s surviving child Josette witness
the horrific scene while hidden in the rafters of
the house. Josette the pitiable Belgian orphan
is eventually adopted by Brigid’s family and
taken to Australia. Turner’s tender depiction of
Josette would have roused sympathy among
many of the Australian population.
These discussions about German deprav-
ity were deeply inspiring for some young
Australians. For example, 13-year-old Denis
Cullilane wrote in a letter to The Catholic Press
of his desire to join the AIF in October 1915:
If I were able I should go and fight to avenge the
broad Belgian and French acres, made desolate by
the German troops, the countless innocent people
maimed or murdered by the barbarous Germans,
the air raids by Germans on undefended English
towns, the sinking of passenger ships and the
blowing up of churches &c., by the ruthless
Germans. (‘A Soldier’, p.42)
This personal response to the stories of
German atrocities provide a glimpse into why
recruiters were so keen to use atrocity propa-
ganda: they believed it was effective. Not
only that, when these stories were combined
with the power of the cinema, they appeared
to whip potential recruits into a frenzy. In
early 1917, a man in the small Victorian town
of Nhill became so ‘enraged’ by a series of
films detailing German atrocities in Europe
that he attempted to attack the Germans on
the screen. Shouting, ‘Kill the Germans!’
the unidentified man had to be physically
restrained lest he damage the screen. That
evening, the residents of Nhill and surround-
ing areas had been exposed to a veritable
cornucopia of atrocity propaganda, with sub-
titles ranging from ‘German Frightfulness’
to ‘The truth about German atrocities’ (Nhill
Free Press, 24 April 1917, p.2). Following
their viewing of Why Britain Went to War,
eight local men enlisted in the AIF. Several
months earlier in South Yarra, Melbourne, a
woman had also reportedly ‘jumped up out of
the audience and rushed towards the screen to
attack the German in the picture’. As a result,
six men had presented themselves to enlist.
33
The Vice-Chairman of the Victorian
Recruiting Committee presented the story of
these two incidents (and the resulting recruits)
to the Director-General of Recruiting as evi-
dence of the efficacy of film, in particular
atrocity-focused films like Why Britain Went
to War.8 While the film no longer exists, the
subtitles give some indication about the con-
tent. They explained that the German system of
Kultur was one in which ‘the individual belongs
body and soul to the State and must do any-
thing demanded by the state: – even to murder’.
It covered the ‘terrible record’ of the German
invasion of Belgium: ‘At Melen’, read another
subtitle, ‘in one household alone the father and
mother were shot, the daughter died after being
outraged, and the son wounded’.9 One reporter
who viewed the film in Maryborough believed
the film had brought about the realities of the
war abroad with an intensity that was particular
to the medium of film: ‘The whole picture was
produced with a vividness that brought home
forcibly to the minds of all who saw it the ruth-
lessness of the barbaric enemy against whom
we have to fight, and was responsible for sev-
eral men enlisting’ (Maryborough and Dunolly
Advertiser, 11 May 1917, p.2).
Recruiting authorities at this point cer-
tainly believed that propaganda was a highly
effective hypodermic needle, and that the
film Why Britain Went to War provided a
potent dose of patriotism. Sergeant Pickett,
who had provided an account of the hyste-
ria at Nhill, stated, ‘I feel very confident in
predicting many more enlistments from this
district as a result of the screening of this pic-
ture’.10 JG Swan, also of the Victorian State
Recruiting Committee, wrote in of the film in
Graphic of Australia
The object of the film is to pictorially place the
facts of the war before the people in such a way
as to impress the mind of onlookers, and to legiti-
mately act on those brain centres that are respon-
sible for such necessary national feelings as pride
of race, duty to one’s country, family affection and
personal manhood. (27 April 1917, p.5)
Those higher up in the organisation also
hoped that the combination of atrocities and
34 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the cinema would arrest the great decline in
recruiting numbers that had commenced in
the middle of 1916.11 In April 1917, a federal
conference was held to discuss the tactics of
the various recruiting committees throughout
Australia. Most of the states felt that their
use of cinema in recruiting had been very
effective. Captain Dash of the Queensland
Recruiting Committee asserted that ‘the pic-
tures were the best method of getting recruits’.
Mr Noyes concurred, stating that ‘pictures
were responsible for forty percent of the
recruits being obtained in Victoria’. Senator
Newland of South Australia also agreed and
‘hoped it would be continued’. The Victorians
seemed to be the keenest proponents of film.
Noyes stated: ‘The cinematograph films seem
to be the best means we have yet discovered
to get audiences, and I am receiving more
encouraging reports from the country in con-
sequence of showing them’.12
Towards the end of the war, the decline of
voluntary recruits forced official Australian
propagandists to travel further down the
path of Critchley Parker to adopt his virulent
style. By early 1918, rates of enlistment had
plummeted, and authorities were desperate
to increase the numbers (Robertson, 2016).
While The Story of Belgium had begun to
lose its power in the face of declining living
standards and high levels of dead and injured
troops, atrocity propaganda was nonetheless
used to try to stimulate people to remember
what the war had been for. On the fourth anni-
versary of the German invasion of Belgium,
an editorial in Cairns Post attempted to coun-
ter the negative change in sentiment by stat-
ing that the invasion of Belgium ‘gave to the
war its peculiar moral significance … The
man who feels no particular abhorrence of
the unprovoked attack on Belgium (to say
nothing of that on France) is a person whose
opinion is no longer worth taking into any
consideration’ (‘Remember Belgium’, 1918,
p.4). The Australian federal government in a
desperate last attempt to boost recruiting pro-
duced a series of posters and pamphlets that
dwelt at great length upon the depravity of
the German; the campaign was too late. First,
the grotesque nature of the campaign meant
it was met with derision even by pro-war par-
liamentarians. Second, it was launched in late
October, a mere two weeks before Armistice
(Robertson, 2016). Atrocity propaganda had
lost its relevance, and the contempt it was
held in by late 1918 merely foreshadowed its
poor reputation following the war.
CONCLUSION
Atrocity propaganda of the Great War has a
complicated legacy. As this chapter has dem-
onstrated, atrocity propaganda was the most
visible and enduring manifestation of the
liberal humanitarian justification for the con-
flict. It was produced by both government
bodies and private organisations and indi-
vidual citizens, and was part of the broad
consensus in Australia and Great Britain
about the rights of civilians in war zones.
Simultaneously, the exaggerations and racial
cruelty contained in atrocity propaganda led
to such deep disaffection and cynicism about
allegations of harm against ‘innocent civil-
ians’ that, despite the horror of the Holocaust,
very little atrocity propaganda was used by
the Allies in the Second World War.
The Nazis made adroit use of the poor repu-
tation of First World War atrocity propaganda
to discredit stories that were emerging in the
international press about the mistreatment of
Jews and a concerted public relations cam-
paign was run to counter the atrocity stories
from the Great War (Robertson, 2015, p.44).
In 1935, the Cairns Post reported that a group
of Australian schoolboys visiting Germany
had had their young minds ‘purged’ of the lies
from the war. The article stated that German
‘newspapers candidly declare that this rare
opportunity of impressing young educated
Australians must not be missed, because no
country was so flooded with “atrocity sto-
ries” as Australia’ (‘Purging Young Minds’, 4
September 1935, p.6). The sophistication of
 ATROCITY PROPAGANDA IN AUSTRALIA AND GREAT BRITAIN DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR
the Nazi propaganda machine was due to the
sophistication of Allied propaganda from the
preceding war. As Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
has observed, First World War propaganda pro-
vided ‘key lessons’ for the Nazis – it had been
a ‘protracted seminar on inflammatory persua-
sion’ (2012, p.32). This use of First World War
atrocity propaganda against the Allies explains,
in part, why so little Australian and British
Second World War propaganda discussed the
atrocities occurring against the Jews.
Atrocity propaganda re-merged after the
Second World War to play key roles in some
conflicts. From the Vietnam War in the 1960s
and 1970s, to the recent civil war in Syria,
atrocities have contributed to both fuelling
and ending wars. During the Vietnam War,
the revelation of American atrocities against
Vietnamese civilians led to increased anti-war
protests in the United States and Australia.
Now, in the twenty-first century, atrocities
against civilians have become a flash point
for Western nations. In the Syrian civil war,
allegations of atrocities by the Assad regime
featured prominently in Western news stories
which speculated that a liberal humanitar-
ian intervention was required to ensure the
safety of non-combatants. The Salafi jihad-
ists, ranging from Al Qaida to ISIL, have
used atrocities in a different way. Rather
than alleging atrocities against themselves,
they have deliberately committed atrocities
against civilians to goad Western nations
into fighting wars in the Middle East and
Afghanistan (Richardson, 2006, p.99). Their
use of atrocity propaganda has been contigu-
ous with that of the First World War atroc-
ity propagandists, in that it has been part of
a strategic use of psychology to further the
policy aims of their organisations.
Rather than dismissing atrocity propaganda
as a simple means to whip up hate in the popu-
lace, it is crucial to unpack why this complex
genre is so appealing – and so devastating.
Future research into the link between atrocity
propaganda, grand strategy and military strat-
egy needs to be undertaken, and the cultural
factors analysed. While atrocity propaganda,
35
and the atrocities themselves alter within the
political context of the time, they remain cen-
tral to how conflict – be it terrorist, asymmetri-
cal or conventional – is conducted.
Notes
1  Lieutenant McCulloch, NSW State Recruiting
Committee, 9 February 1917. Scheme for rein-
forcements presented to the Director-General of
Recruiting. MP367/1 609/30/699, NAA Melbourne.
2  See correspondence between G Murray and
C Masterman, Box 29, Papers of Gilbert Murray,
Bodleian Library.
3  John Simon, Attorney General to James Bryce,
4 December 1914, Bryce Papers, Bodleian Library.
4  Sir Edward Clarke to James Bryce, 21 December
1914, Bryce Papers, Bodleian Library.
5  JH Morgan to Thomas Inskip, Lord Chancellor of
Great Britain, 19 March 1940, LCO 2/2972, TNA.
6  RH Davies, Parliamentary Recruiting Commit-
tee to JCC Davidson, Colonial Office, 12 August
1915, CO 323/692, TNA.
7  ‘Nurse Cavell Memorial: Will You Help’, [no pub-
lication details], Mitchell Library, SLNSW.; W.G.
Hindley, Archdeacon of Melbourne, ‘In Memo-
riam: Nurse Cavell’ [no publication details],
Mitchell Library, SLNSW. There is a bust of Edith
Cavell situated close to the Shrine of Remem-
brance in Melbourne’s King’s Domain.
8  Henry Noyes to Donald Mackinnon, 2 May 1917,
MP 367/1 560/2/27 NAA Melbourne.
9  ‘Synopsis of Films for Recruiting Campaign’, c.
May 1917, MP 367/1 560/2/27 NAA Melbourne.
10  Sergeant Pickett to Captain AL Baird, Secretary,
State Recruiting Committee [Victoria], 1 May
1917, MP 367/1 560/2/27 NAA Melbourne.
11  AWM 38 3DRL 6673/169 PART 1, Donald Mackin-
non memo to historian 15 July 1919, p.1, AWM.
12  Henry Noyes to Donald Mackinnon, 14 March
1917, MP 367/1 560/2/27, NAA Melbourne.
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Strategic Narratives and
War Propaganda
INTRODUCTION
In the last decade, a particular set of circum-
stances has led to the emergence of strategic
narrative as a discursive weapon claimed to
be of such power that it might be decisive in
contemporary war. The story goes as follows.
The onset of the Information Age has trans-
formed armed conflict. War now takes place
primarily through the media, making the key
battleground the minds of target audiences
(Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2010). Since the
‘cognitive domain’ is assumed to be the key
battlespace, information is the most impor-
tant weapon in contemporary conflict, with
military force increasingly subordinate to
‘information warfare’ (Roennfeldt, 2011). A
strategist should therefore look to communi-
cate in the most effective way, and research
suggests that narratives are a uniquely per-
suasive mode of communication and integral
to human understanding and identity forma-
tion (Riessman, 2008). Because of this,
the most powerful propaganda devices are
3
Thomas Colley
narratives, to the point where ‘whose story
wins’ is thought as important as ‘whose army
wins’ today (Nye, 2004: p.106). Strategists
should therefore pay closer attention to stra-
tegic narratives as the key ‘munitions of
the mind’ in contemporary conflict (Taylor,
2003; Freedman, 2006).
The intuitiveness of stories being the most
compelling way to make information under-
stood fostered over a decade of theory and
practice in which it was hoped that strate-
gic narratives could produce more coherent
strategy (Simpson, 2012), sustain diverse
alliances (Miskimmon et  al., 2013), secure
public support (De Graaf et al., 2015), coun-
ter radicalisation (Archetti, 2013), project
soft power (Roselle et  al., 2014) and ulti-
mately win wars. These ideas were especially
appealing in the West – referring loosely
here to the American-led military coalitions
fighting the expeditionary campaigns of the
War on Terror. Facing what they saw as a
surprising difficulty to convince local popu-
lations in Iraq and Afghanistan to embrace
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
liberal democracy, and struggling to convince
domestic publics that the effort was worth it,
strategic narratives were hailed as a potential
solution to their communication challenges.
Despite these hopes, the West’s strate-
gic narratives have generally failed to meet
expectations. Claims that narratives are
unique in theory are undermined by a ten-
dency to treat them as everything said about
an issue in practice. The need to achieve
coherence among large coalitions has led
to a drive for succinctness that removes
the unique aspects of narrative in favour
of soundbites and catchphrases. The result
more closely resembles spin than storytell-
ing. The complex, digital media ecology
defies control or predictability, and even if
a narrative reaching target audiences is still
recognisable, Western audiences appear
increasingly sceptical of the utility of force
and of attempts to persuade them to support it
(Betz, 2008). These audiences remain poorly
understood, for the rationalist search for the
optimum story to deploy in the ‘battle of the
narratives’ has obscured the fact that narra-
tives are deeply interpretive, shaped through
the prism of individual understandings of the
world (Archetti, 2013).
Insights from the history of propaganda in
war have sometimes been missed by strate-
gic narrative advocates seeking to avoid the
negative connotations of the word. Instead,
strategic narratives are more often associated
with a new, honest and transparent form of
strategic communication. This distinction
might avoid the negative consequences of
being seen to conduct propaganda, but it also
ignores the selective and partial way stories
represent reality, which is at the root of their
persuasive power.
As this chapter will argue, there is much
that military actors can do better to harness
whatever power narrative has to achieve
political objectives in contemporary war.
Particularly important is to develop a more
nuanced grasp of the properties that differ-
entiate narrative from other ways of commu-
nicating and understand far better the stories
39
told by target audiences (Colley, 2017b). The
prominence of fears of fake news implies that
it is now possible for the stories one tells to
deviate further from material reality than in
the past. The history of propaganda suggests
caution: words, whether structured in the
form of narratives or otherwise, can only do
so much.
STRATEGIC NARRATIVE: CONCEPT
AND THEORY
Strategic narrative came to prominence in
military circles at a time of soul searching
concerning the West’s military failures in
Afghanistan and Iraq. These campaigns,
started in 2001 and 2003 by US-led coalitions
as part of the post 9/11 ‘War on Terror’, began
with swift military victories. In Afghanistan,
the Taliban regime and Al Qaeda were routed
within weeks. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi gov-
ernment was overthrown swiftly. In both cases
however, initial victory was soured by the
development of insurgencies – armed upris-
ings which rejected new Western-imposed
regimes. To defeat these, Western coalitions
adopted counterinsurgency methods. Early
efforts aimed at finding and eliminating insur-
gents caused civilian casualties that delegiti-
mised their cause. In contrast, the insurgents
appeared adept at persuading local audiences
to support them, despite minimal obvious
technological resources. From 2006 in Iraq,
and later in Afghanistan, Western forces
altered their methods to ‘population-centric’
counterinsurgency, focused more on winning
the ‘hearts and minds’ of local populations
through providing security and good govern-
ance, backed by more extensive strategic com-
munication efforts. Yet frustration remained
about how ‘one man in a cave’ seemed to be
able to ‘out-communicate the world’s greatest
communication society’ (Gates, 2007). Many
answers were offered. The most readily
accepted was that the Salafi-jihadist move-
ment possessed a single, compelling strategic
40 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
narrative – essentially that Islam is under
attack from the West and it is the duty of
Muslims to defend it (Schmid, 2014). This, it
was feared, was allowing them to win the ‘war
of ideas’ which sits at the heart of any contest
between insurgents and counterinsurgents – to
persuade the population that their rule would
be preferable to their opponents.
In comparison, the West struggled to com-
municate the cause and purpose of its mission
clearly enough either to convince local popu-
lations to reject the insurgents or to maintain
domestic support. Claims of being driven by
liberal democratic values were undermined
by images of detainment and torture at Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Western rhet-
oric sought to make the conflict seem exis-
tential while committing extremely limited
resources. Coordinating large coalitions with
divergent interests was proving extremely
challenging. Watching publics found it hard
to reconcile claims that such operations were
preventing terrorism when a steady stream of
attacks continued. It was theorised that if the
West also had a strategic narrative that could
exploit the ‘startling power of story’ (Haven,
2007) it might help resolve these challenges.
The idea that communicating strategic
narratives was fundamental to achieving
political objectives then diffused from the
military sphere to international relations
more broadly. Emerging in constructiv-
ist, but also rationalist and poststructuralist
approaches to international relations, strate-
gic narratives have been theorised as a means
to create consensus around policies, identities
and the nature of the international system, as
well as a tool to shape behaviour through
persuasion and coercion (Miskimmon et al.,
2013, 2017). Today, Western concern has
turned to fake news and Russian hybrid war-
fare. In annexing Crimea in 2014 with mini-
mal opposition and supporting insurgency
in Ukraine, it was feared that Russia had
become uniquely adept at using strategic nar-
ratives to confuse and confound any potential
international response (Pomerantsev, 2014).
As Miskimmon et al. observe, ‘whatever the
crisis, issue, or domain, we now find strategic
narratives’ (2017: p.7).
There is nothing new about artful narration
as a propaganda tool in war. History is replete
with examples, from famous examples such
as Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the
Allies’ Why We Fight films, to human inter-
est stories about the child victims of chemi-
cal weapons attacks, or merely how ordinary
people sustained surprisingly ordinary lives
amidst the privations of war.
The notion that war is an act of commu-
nication aiming to convince opponents and
relevant target audiences to accept one’s pre-
ferred version of reality is not novel either.
Wars can only be fought as long as support-
ers accept that armed conflict is necessary,
and they can only be won when opponents
accept that they are defeated (De Graaf et al.,
2015). What is novel in the last decade is the
assumption that arranging a collection of
words (and images) in the form of narrative
is fundamental to achieving this. But what is
a strategic narrative, and on what is its per-
suasiveness theoretically based?
DEFINITION
Claims of the transformative potential of strate-
gic narratives in contemporary conflict are
based on the assumption that they possess
unique persuasive features that differentiate
them from other ways of organising informa-
tion. This assumption is frequently undermined
in practice because narrative has, like many
concepts, come to be used so broadly that any
sense of its uniqueness is lost. Jeremy Black
(2018) laments that ‘the language of war has
come to be applied to everything and anything
held to require an effort. Similarly, strategy is
now applied to everything requiring a plan’. In
a similar vein, narrative is now seemingly
applied to everything involving the communica-
tion of information. This is problematic because
it fatally undermines the claim that narratives
are uniquely persuasive. All information cannot
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
be uniquely persuasive, and different forms of
communicating, such as narrative and argu-
ment, have been shown to persuade in different
ways (Georgakopoulou & Goutsos, 2000). This
makes differentiating what is and is not narra-
tive vital to any assessment of its utility (Colley,
2017b).
Here, strategic narratives are ‘selec-
tive interpretations of the past, present and
future designed to achieve political objec-
tives through persuasion’ (Colley, 2017a:
p.1). Their strategic nature derives from
their being deliberately designed to achieve
political objectives. As narratives, they are
most clearly distinguished from other modes
of discourse by possessing a plot in which
events play out over time. Simple plots might
consist of movement through past, present
and future. Alternatively, they might revolve
around the resolution of conflict, starting
with an initial situation and then a disrup-
tion to this that may or may not be resolved
(Miskimmon et  al., 2013). An extremely
simple strategic narrative generally applica-
ble to many Western interventions is of an
initial situation of a peaceful international
order that has been disrupted by a dictator or
tyrant (past), whose attacks on innocent civil-
ians or states necessitates military interven-
tion (present) to protect civilians and restore
international peace and security (future). The
temporal element most clearly differenti-
ates narratives from arguments or frames,
which do not necessarily possess temporal-
ity (Miskimmon et  al., 2013). Narratives
also contain characters and settings, though
these do not easily differentiate them from
other modes of discourse used in interna-
tional affairs, which is invariably framed in
terms of what characters (countries, leaders,
groups, organisations etc.) do in the setting of
international politics (the ‘world stage’, the
‘uncertain and complex world’ commonly
described in policy documents, or perhaps
a world in which a ‘clash of civilisations’ is
taking place).
Narrative and story are considered synony-
mous here, although not all authors take this
41
position. In the military sphere, a common
way they have been differentiated is through
analogy to strategy and tactics. From this
perspective, narrative is the master strategic
concept, and its effects are enacted at the tac-
tical level through the telling of stories that
relate more or less coherently to the strategic
narrative (Simpson, 2012). However, as units
of discourse formed of plot, actors and set-
tings, they are structurally the same. More
crucially, these shared structural features are
what supposedly make narratives particularly
persuasive (Davis, 2002), and they are inte-
gral to their utility as propaganda.
PROPAGANDA OR STRATEGIC
COMMUNICATION?
Those endorsing strategic narratives in
Western military thought have tended to dis-
miss claims that they are a form of propa-
ganda, but instead a more transparent and
honest form of ‘strategic communication’
aimed at being ‘first with the truth’ (Petraeus,
2010: p.117; Tatham, 2008). It is questiona-
ble whether this distinction is valid. Their
definitions reveal such overlap that the main
difference appears simply that the strategic
communicator seeks to avoid being described
as a propagandist because of the latter’s
negative connotations. The British govern-
ment, for example, describes strategic com-
munication as ‘the systematic and coordinated
use of all means of communication to deliver
UK national security objectives by influenc-
ing the activities and behaviours of individu-
als, groups and states’ (Ministry of Defence,
2012: pp.1–2). Jowett and O’Donnell define
propaganda as the: ‘deliberate, systematic
attempt to shape perception, manipulate cog-
nitions and direct behaviour to achieve a
response that furthers the desired intent of
the propagandist’ (2011: p.7). There is such
crossover between these ‘deliberate’, ‘sys-
tematic’ attempts to shape thought and
behaviour that it is difficult to credibly
42 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
differentiate them. One way theorists have
sought to do so is to claim that propagandists
hide their intent, but strategic communicators
do not (Bolt, 2012: p.33). A second way is to
suggest that strategic communication is dif-
ferent by being based on discussion and dia-
logue. In contrast, according to Tatham ‘the
propagandist does not engage in genuine
argument and debate, rather their answers are
determined at the outset’ (2008: p.6).
These assertions are not without merit,
in that conscious efforts to be open and
transparent, and engage in public dialogue,
seem more democratic than the underhand
manipulation propaganda is associated with.
However, these arguments fall down in two
ways. First, it is questionable how genuine
engagement is when it is deliberately con-
ducted as a means to shape behaviour. For
example, military strategic communication
practitioners are keen to persuade citizens
in conflict theatres not to support insur-
gent groups. If one’s method to do this is
to engage with citizens, discuss their griev-
ances and address them, their eventual shift
in behaviour is still a reflection of your initial
intent. You have not explained to them first
that ‘I am trying to build trust or show empa-
thy with you because I think that’s a better
way to persuade you’. In that respect, even
the most open, well-intentioned communi-
cation efforts are often more propagandistic
than their advocates claim. Moreover, fail-
ure to comply in a military context may well
be followed by the use of force. It is hard to
argue that this is not propaganda since the
answer really is determined from the outset:
‘stop supporting the insurgency, or else’.
Claims that strategic communication is
open and transparent and thus not propaganda
falter in a more fundamental way, however.
Few if any methods of strategic communica-
tion, no matter how much public engagement
is involved, are openly transparent about the
mechanisms through which the words, deeds
and images they choose persuade at the cog-
nitive level. This is an integral part of the
particular appeal of narrative as a mode of
communication, and something recognised
by propagandists throughout history.
THEORETICAL APPEAL
Three premises help explain the appeal of
strategic narratives and why they are readily
conceptualised as propaganda devices. First,
that they are the most natural way to com-
municate because humans use narrative to
structure information and construct their
identities. Second, that narrative is a uniquely
persuasive text type. Third, because of a
combination of these cognitive and discur-
sive elements, information communicated in
narrative form appears more natural. This
makes it easier to obscure persuasive intent.
NARRATIVE AS CENTRAL TO HUMAN
THOUGHT AND IDENTITY
The assumption that humans understand the
world by telling stories about it emerged out
of the narrative turn in the social sciences,
combining insights from cognitive psychol-
ogy and literary theory. Psychologists such
as Roger Schank (1996) suggested that
human thought is narratively structured,
meaning that humans process new informa-
tion by comparing it to past experiences and
use this to anticipate how events will play out
in future. These scripts inform anything from
how a person thinks their workday will go to
how a military strategist thinks their opera-
tions will play out (Freedman, 2013).
Theorists also suggested something
deeper; that through the selective filtering of
information into emplotted stories, humans
come to make sense of who they are (Davis,
2002). Humans come to see themselves as
good or bad, brave or cowardly, kind or self-
ish, through foregrounding memories that
support these claims and downplaying con-
tradictory events. The same process occurs
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
when people narrate national histories, where
selective emplotment is used to portray one’s
wars as necessary and ultimately benevo-
lent while silencing oppression and barba-
rism (Baumeister & Hastings, 1997). The
assumption that human thought is narratively
structured led to suggestions that persuasive
communication about war should be too.
NARRATIVE AS UNIQUELY
PERSUASIVE
Allied to the assumption that humans under-
stand the world through narratives is the idea
that because of this, narratives are more per-
suasive than other forms of communication.
This notion also has intuitive appeal. Most
humans will remember sitting in a boring
meeting, enlivened with a telling anecdote
that suddenly makes an abstract idea make
sense. They may also recall the heroic tales
they were told as children, when almost since
birth, their minds will have been fed on com-
pelling narratives.
The most common way narrative per-
suasion has been differentiated is through
comparison with argument. These two
modes of persuasion are ideal types; in
everyday language they overlap consid-
erably, and it can be hard to differentiate
them (Georgakopoulou & Goutsos, 2000).
Narratives can be used to argue, and indeed
this is how they are frequently used in propa-
ganda. In the 1930s, when the US Institute
for Propaganda Analysis highlighted seven
propaganda techniques that publics should
be ‘inoculated’ against, the fifth technique
was ‘Plain Folks’, exemplified when a leader
tells a story of their humble origins to portray
them as at one with ordinary people (Sproule,
2001: p.136). Such a leader is using a story
to make an argument: ‘Vote for me because I
understand you’.
Notwithstanding this overlap, narrative
persuasion differs in three notable respects.
First, while formal argument is based on
43
deductive inference from general principles,
narrative uses plot to create a coherent frame-
work of meaning that makes sense of events
as a whole (Colley, 2017a; Davis, 2002).
Through this, a selective mixture of facts,
half-truths, exaggerations and omissions can
be combined together that presents a plau-
sible and coherent interpretation of reality
rather than a logically binding one (Bruner,
2002). This coherence makes narratives less
likely to be challenged and harder to refute
(Davis, 2002). Second, stories are thought
better able to develop emotional identifica-
tion with their characters. The hope then is
that audiences might endorse, enact or aspire
to those behaviours in their daily lives (De
Graaf et  al., 2012). Third, narratives are
thought to persuade through discouraging
critical evaluation. This is achieved through
‘immersion’ or ‘transportation’ into the story
world. Similar to the experience of forgetting
the passage of time while absorbed in a good
book, the idea is that while being immersed
in the drama, audiences may be distracted
from persuasive subtexts (Green & Brock,
2000; Slater & Rouner, 2002). This is very
different from arguments, which invite the
reader to consciously reflect on their mer-
its and, hopefully, reason their way to the
desired conclusion.
NARRATIVE AS LESS OBVIOUSLY
PROPAGANDISTIC?
Taken together, these features explain the
appeal of narrative as a mode of communica-
tion. Contra denials by Western strategic
communication practitioners, they also illus-
trate how strategic narratives can be readily
conceptualised as propaganda. Knowingly
choosing to convey information in a story
rather than an argument is to choose a mode
of communication where the persuasive intent
of its creator is less obvious. It is to choose a
mode of communication that is more sugges-
tive than overt, where the message hopefully
44 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
‘rings true’ without needing to be stated.
Embedding messaging in narrative drama,
however valid the message is, obscures per-
suasive intent. Plot can present highly selec-
tive accounts of events but without explaining
why some events were selected and others are
silenced, all the while making communica-
tion seem as natural as possible. These fea-
tures of storytelling are long recognised, from
Joseph Goebbels to modern-day television
soap directors attempting to address social
issues in their storylines. Strategic narratives
are attempts to persuade, structured in a way
that obscures how they are trying to persuade.
In other words, propaganda.
STRATEGIC NARRATIVES IN PRACTICE
How far strategic narratives have lived up to
theoretical expectations depends who you ask
and whose narratives they are assessing.
Assessments of a decade of Western strategic
communication suggest persistent failure in
contrast to their opponents, be it Salafi-
jihadists thought to have a single, uniquely
compelling strategic narrative or Russians sup-
posedly brilliant in their ability to project a
variety of narratives to distract people from the
truth. However, rarely have these assumptions
been based on robust empirical research dem-
onstrating that the persuasive effect of one
side’s strategic narratives is superior to the
other. This is partly a problem with any
attempt to measure the causal effect of com-
munication. Nevertheless, several issues can
be identified that have limited the effectiveness
of strategic narratives in contemporary war.
MISSION STATEMENT VERSUS
STORYTELLING
The most common way strategic narratives
have been employed in Western military
practice has been what I term the ‘mission
statement’ approach (Colley, 2017b), due to
its similarity with a concept that has become
commonplace throughout business over the
last four decades (Morphew & Hartley,
2016). Just as companies and charities set out
mission statements explaining their actions
and purpose, it was thought that militaries
should do the same. In theory, having set out
this overarching narrative, tactical actions
should then be explained in a way that sup-
ports it (Simpson, 2012). NATO for instance
defines strategic narrative as
a concise but comprehensive written statement of
an organization’s situation and purpose, which can
stand on its own as the principle context to strate-
gic planning directives or be used to support the
creation of individual culturally attuned stories that
will resonate with particular audiences and foster
cohesion within the organization. (2015: p.9)
The aim of strategic narrative when used this
way is to unite an organisation around a
coherent vision. The premise behind this is
that political actors are more efficient inter-
nally if they possess unity of purpose, and
more credible externally if their actions and
words are consistently aligned – or in mili-
tary circles, their ‘say-do gap’ is as small as
possible (Betz, 2017). Strategic narration
thus becomes more about establishing and
maintaining credibility, because if different
people in a politico-military campaign con-
tradict each other, the whole organisation
looks incompetent, disingenuous and poten-
tially untrustworthy. Explaining that the mili-
tary are trying to protect civilians while your
air force are destroying their homes appears
disingenuous. Claiming that you are fighting
to uphold liberal values while images emerge
of your soldiers torturing and humiliating
prisoners looks hypocritical.
Once the coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan
began to project clearer and more consistent
strategic narratives, some countries such as
the UK, Denmark and Germany appeared
to have more success sustaining domestic
support for their missions (De Graaf et  al.,
2015), and the efficiency of coalition military
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
operations improved (Fussell et  al., 2017).
They still struggled to match the quantity
of communication products insurgents were
producing, as the latter were more comfort-
able empowering lower level members to
propagandise on their behalf rather than rely-
ing on a centralised, slower bureaucratic sys-
tem (Betz, 2017). An overarching strategic
narrative to coordinate the diverse coalition in
Afghanistan remained elusive. As Boudreau
(2016) comments, ‘expecting to synthesise
every action, word, signal and match that
with all aspects of policy in an Alliance of 28
nations (and 41 partners) is simply not pos-
sible’ (p.54).
The idea that Western military operations
should be designed and explained in a way
that fit an overarching strategic narrative
came to be known as ‘narrative-led opera-
tions’ (Nissen, 2012). It is not as novel as it
first appeared. That ‘the propaganda conse-
quences of an action must be considered in
planning that action’ was one of Goebbels’
fundamental principles (Doob, 1950: p.424).
But despite this lack of novelty, it was an
improvement on Western military thinking
early in the War on Terror, which largely
assumed that there was little need to explain
the meaning of military force, as the primary
task was to simply find targets and destroy
them using the West’s superior information
technology. Compared with the plan to send
only one public affairs officer to Afghanistan
in 2003 (Loyn, 2017), observers saw the West
as steadily learning to adapt to fighting war
in the digital age, where communicating the
purpose of military force to global audiences
seemed more important than force itself.
The principal limitation with the ‘mis-
sion statement’ strategic narrative approach
is that communication that results from it
rarely possesses the features that suppos-
edly make narratives uniquely persuasive
(Colley, 2017b). Because a strategic nar-
rative needs to coordinate what people say
and do throughout often large organisations,
they tend to become oversimplified – in
the MOD’s words, they need to be ‘short,
45
succinct and simple to explain’ (Ministry
of Defence, 2012: pp.2–10). The problem is
that in an age of soundbites, tweets and short
attention spans, this can lead to strategic nar-
ratives becoming slogans and catchphrases.
This is exacerbated when communicating
within a media ecology that prioritises tweets
and memes over detail. Consequently, stories
communicated to support the overarching
strategic narratives tend to possess very low
‘narrativity’ – in other words, they contain
few of the features thought to make narrative
more persuasive as a medium – emotional
identification with story characters, trans-
porting individuals into a story world, during
which their critical faculties are reduced. The
second danger is that the desire for everyone
to be ‘on message’ leads inexorably to spin –
the attempt to frame everything as supporting
the narrative, however tenuously.
The best one can probably do is allude to
or reference a broader story in the hope that
the target audience knows what story is being
referred to. Distilling deeper meaning into
single words and images to trigger emotional
responses is a staple in the practice of propa-
ganda (Ellul, 1973). But it is questionable to
assume that narrative persuasion is taking
place in the mind of target audiences through
the use of a single word. The effectiveness of
operationalising strategic narratives in such
a parsimonious way also rests on in-depth
understanding of how target audiences inter-
pret such information – a further limitation to
which we shall return.
It may also be counterproductive. As
Goebbels explains, while messaging themes
must be repeated, this would become dam-
aging ‘if the theme became boring or unim-
pressive’ (Doob, 1950: p.435). US President
Donald Trump appears to experience surpris-
ingly limited electoral penalties when his
thoughts and actions are wildly inconsist-
ent, suggesting that inconsistency may seem
more authentic than repeating soundbites
and catchphrases verbatim. As Gaber (2009)
explains, constant communication designed
to maintain a positive impression of one’s
46 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
actions can actually undermine trust, because
target audiences know there is an underly-
ing agenda – to persuade them that your
system of government is preferable to some-
one else’s. This suggests the need for further
reflection on whether a balance needs to be
struck between coherence and authenticity.
STRATEGIC NARRATIVE AS
EVERYTHING
A further issue with the ‘mission statement’
approach to strategic narrative is that it per-
petuates the tendency to treat narrative
vaguely as everything said or done in relation
to an issue over time. The result is that when
people write about ‘Daesh’s’ narrative, it
seems to mean little more than ‘what Daesh
are saying at the moment’. The ‘Syria narra-
tive’ just becomes ‘what is going on in Syria’
or ‘what people are saying about it’.
Seeing everything said about a topic as its
‘narrative’ invalidates the assumption that
narratives are a uniquely persuasive form of
communication. It makes no sense to assume
that narratives are uniquely compelling if
everything said about an issue is narrative.
This conflates narrative and discourse, and
‘shifting the narrative’ or ‘controlling the
narrative’ merely become general references
to whether public discourse concerns topics
you want it to. In war, this typically involves
emphasising victories and humanitarian
efforts and silencing defeats and civilian cas-
ualties. Strategic communication practition-
ers have suggested that the impression of spin
should be avoided (Boudreau, 2016). Yet the
very idea behind messaging in a way that is
consistent with an overall strategic narrative
makes this hard to avoid. Mistakes, such as
civilian casualties, may well be admitted, but
the audience knows any framing of them will
try and be as positive as possible.
This is a long way from the foundational
assumption that narrative is a specific type
of communication with uniquely powerful
features. It risks overestimating the power
of opposing propaganda without a robust
and nuanced evidence base. The claim that
Salafi-jihadists have a simple and remarkably
powerful narrative is widely accepted as self-
evident. By combining this with the assump-
tion that everything relating to the group is
part of its narrative, the result is that every-
thing the group says is assumed to possess
this persuasive power. Such thinking ignores
nuances in the medium used to convey infor-
mation, variation and contestation in nar-
rative construction and interpretation, how
credible the messenger is and how relatively
persuasive arguments, stories, images, sym-
bols, slogans or any other medium might be.
It makes little sense to think that the key to
success in counter-terrorism will come spe-
cifically through constructing a compelling
counter-narrative, or an alternative narrative,
if all this amounts to is ‘saying something
different than one’s opponents’.
Thinking about strategic narrative as eve-
rything said about a topic also invites the ten-
dency to think of effective communication in
terms of the volume of traffic one achieves.
Communicators are likely to think they are
doing well if more of public discourse con-
cerns what they want to say rather than their
opponents. This could be used to suggest one
side is winning the ‘battle of the narratives’.
But this says little about who is persuaded
and how. It amounts to little more than
agenda setting, a long-recognised fundament
of political communication (Scheufele &
Tewksbury, 2006), but neither new nor spe-
cific to narrative.
Advancing understanding of the utility of
narrative in propaganda and strategic com-
munication thus requires a far clearer dif-
ferentiation between narrative as storytelling
and other modes of communication. It also
requires a far more extensive evidence base
comparing how persuasive different modes
are (Colley, 2017a). One should not be unre-
alistic. In the contemporary media ecology, it
is unrealistic to expect politicians or soldiers
to be given the time to elaborate on detailed
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
narratives that immerse audiences in complex
story worlds. But if one is committed to the
assumption that narrative is a unique text type
with specific persuasive properties, then this
distinction should be reflected in practice.
MASTER NARRATIVES, MYTHS AND
RESONANCE
That strategic narrative might create coordi-
nation and coherence in a military campaign
is only one aspect of what is hoped it can
achieve. The other aspect, as NATO’s defini-
tion states, is that a strategic narrative should
‘support the creation of individual culturally
attuned stories that will resonate with partic-
ular audiences’ (NATO, 2015). The idea that
strategic narratives persuade through ‘reso-
nating’ with target audiences is part of their
appeal to which much attention has been
devoted. Though again, it reveals numerous
issues when theory has confronted reality.
The ‘resonance’ metaphor is underpinned
by the assumption that strategic narratives
will be more persuasive when linking two ele-
ments: the narratives of individuals below and
the ‘master narratives’ or ‘meta-narratives’
that order and explain life in a given culture
above. This congruence between individual
narratives, strategic narratives and master
narratives has been described as ‘vertical
coherence’ (Betz, 2008).
Persuasion according to this theory is
less about the processes of narrative persua-
sion such as immersion or transportation
described earlier; the idea is that individu-
als would intuitively believe messages that
are congruent with their worldview regard-
less of the form those messages take (even
though narrative is assumed to be the opti-
mum medium). It is more about tapping into
ideas that are common sense in a particular
culture. For this reason, master narratives
are closely associated with ideology, domi-
nant discourses and myths since they com-
prise frameworks of belief people use, often
47
unknowingly, to understand the world. Their
‘narrativity’ comes from possessing tempo-
rality – movement through time – since they
typically describe how the world has been, is
and will be in future. This might be the pro-
gressive master narratives of Marxism and
liberalism, that the world is on an inexorable
path from feudalism to world socialism, or
despotism to liberal democracy, or perhaps
barbarism to civilisation (Somers, 1994). Or,
as is particularly common in wars, the rise
and fall of great powers that animates calls to
‘make countries great again’.
The distinctions between master narra-
tives and individual narratives is artificial in
a sense, because narratives are never wholly
individual. They are socially shared products
that people construct for an audience, draw-
ing typically on a limited range of narratives
available in a given culture (Archetti, 2013;
Somers, 1994). Strategic narratives might be
best thought of as attempts to establish mas-
ter narratives – to create a common sense
of how things are, have been and will be in
future. They attempt to link the cultural and
the individual by establishing a master nar-
rative which provides a ‘lens’ through which
an individual interprets events in their lives
(Archetti, 2013). As constructivist interna-
tional relations theorists might put it, in the
act of being told and retold, strategic nar-
ratives come to constitute the world they
describe (Miskimmon et  al., 2013). The
power of master narratives is that they come
to be held unknowingly and uncritically.
Consequently, communication that reflects
them appears intuitive, common-sensical
and thus less obviously propagandistic. As
Freedman explains, ‘the greatest power is
that which achieves its effects without notice.
This comes about when established struc-
tures appear settled and uncontentious, part
of the natural and generally benign order of
things’ (2013: p.615).
For example, Salafi-jihadist strategic narra-
tives have sought to inculcate a master narra-
tive that that world is characterised by a clash
of civilisations between the West and Islam
48 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and that Islam’s victory is inevitable. They
have sometimes been helped by the West’s
own communication mistakes – a classic
example being US President George W. Bush
describing the War on Terror as a ‘crusade’,
which merely reinforced Al Qaeda’s strategic
narrative that Islam is under attack from the
West. Salafi-jihadists have used other histori-
cal events as evidence of the West’s desire to
conquer and divide the Islamic world, such as
the Sykes Picot Agreement (1916) to divide
the Middle East between Britain and France
or the Balfour Declaration (1917) promising
the Jews territory in Palestine (Bin Laden,
2002). But while some audiences might find
century-old examples compelling, better
would be to make people interpret the experi-
ences in their daily lives as evidence of this
broader cultural clash. This may include per-
ceived or actual discrimination, islamopho-
bia, targeted surveillance and so on. Success
could be observed when a new event occurs
and the audience intuitively interprets it as an
individual manifestation of the broader phe-
nomenon. Understanding this suggests the
need to focus on two areas: the master nar-
ratives or myths circulating in a given culture
and the extent of variation in how target audi-
ences interpret events in their everyday lives.
BATTLES OF NARRATIVES
In the last decade, Western strategic narrative
efforts have focused extensively on the former
but insufficiently on the latter. Largely this is
because the initial diagnosis of the failure of
Western strategic communication efforts in
the War on Terror was that the Salafi-jihadist
movement had a coherent strategic narrative
and the West did not. Subsequent efforts to
create one have been persistently criticised
for failing to ‘resonate’ with target audiences
domestically and in conflict theatres. Perhaps
the most persistent criticism is that despite a
decade of attempts to improve cultural under-
standing of Afghanistan, Iraq and the nuances
of Islam, the West still lacks the cultural
understanding to be a credible speaker to
Muslims worldwide (Betz, 2017). Thoughtful
suggestions have certainly been made about
how to counter the narratives of opponents.
Corman (2013) suggests that in Afghanistan
it would be useful to avoid reinforcing the
master narrative of repeated success in repel-
ling invaders and instead narrate a story of
progress. This is sensible. But when being
narrated through the words and actions of a
soldier stood on foreign territory, perhaps on
a six-month tour and with limited training in
strategic communication, the message is
unlikely to be communicated credibly
whether it is culturally resonant with existing
master narratives or not (Dimitriu, 2012;
Loyn, 2017).
The corollary of assuming that one per-
suades someone through messaging congru-
ent with myths, ideology or cultural common
sense is that one will in turn be influenced
often unknowingly by what is common sense
in one’s own. This too has been a problem
for Western propaganda efforts. Some gov-
ernments have recognised that they are not
credible when communicating directly with
disaffected Muslim audiences domestically
and internationally, and as a result, outsource
propaganda work to third parties, either pri-
vate companies or community groups. But
as David Betz (2017) explains, such groups
have proved too easily undermined as agents
of government propaganda, because they are
tasked with promoting Western liberal values
that are not necessarily resonant with target
audiences. The fundamental issue for Betz is
that the West has persistently failed to recog-
nise that liberal democracy is not a univer-
sally desirable political order, and there is far
greater sympathy across the Islamic world
for a role of Islam in governance. The West’s
own progressive master narrative of the
eventual triumph of the secular, liberal order
continues to constrain its ability to under-
stand the appeal of alternative forms of gov-
ernance. Despite efforts to improve cultural
understanding, its communication efforts
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
stand out as propaganda because they appear
to be attempts by an outsider to persuade
rather than appearing as a transparent part of
the culture in which they are operating.
IDEOLOGY AND STRATEGIC
NARRATIVES
Expectations of the capability of well-
designed strategic narratives to overcome
significant cultural and ideological differ-
ences have been excessive. As decades of
propaganda research has shown, propaganda
to external, foreign audiences is rarely effec-
tive compared with domestic propaganda
(Ellul, 1973). However, this should provide
some comfort to the West for a simple reason:
their opponents face similar challenges.
Part of the reason that the West expects so
much of strategic narratives is their percep-
tion that their opponents are so powerful.
However, this assessment is shaped partly
by ideological assumptions and inconsistent
measures of effectiveness. For the West, one
lone-wolf suicide attack means ‘our commu-
nication efforts have failed and our opponents
have succeeded’. This is a fair judgment at
the level of the individual attacker, but such
conclusions neglect the cost of such attacks.
In the liberal West, the notion that humans
would actually want to live in a society as
repressive as that under the Islamic State,
for example, is so anathema to assumptions
about human preferences for freedom that
it is assumed that only brainwashing could
have achieved it. It is assumed, quite rightly,
that one typically needs a strong reason to
blow oneself up, and the only way someone
would have that is if they had been persuaded
by something incredibly compelling. In the
discourse on radicalisation, this results in
claims that extremist narratives are so power-
ful that they can radicalise people ‘in weeks’
(Hoskins & O’Loughlin, 2009). Such sensa-
tionalism neglects that they are not working
on blank slates, but using ideas embedded
49
in the cultural fabric over decades, however
distasteful they may be to others. The suicide
attack by one thus reinforces the assumption
that extremist propaganda is incredibly com-
pelling, even if 999,999 are repulsed by it. In
a sense, the West is too hard on itself, because
it is aiming, laudably (if unrealistically), for
100 per cent communication success. As the
Irish Republican Army warned British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher after they nar-
rowly failed to assassinate her in 1984, ‘we
only have to be lucky once – you will have to
be lucky always’ (Getler, 1984).
WARS OF MYTHS
Taking the assumptions of strategic narra-
tive’s cultural ‘resonance’ to their logical
conclusion, ‘battles of the narratives’ are not
just competitions to convince military oppo-
nents that you will win and to convince popu-
lations that you will bring them a better life.
Narrative battles are myth-making competi-
tions, aiming to enshrine as common sense
one’s own mythological worldview. This is
the task of years and decades, not weeks. It is
not easily amenable to short-term political
propaganda campaigns or five-year electoral
cycles, though that is what is expected of it. It
is more akin to developing what Jacques Ellul
(1973) terms ‘sociological p­ ropaganda’  – a
process of ‘slow, constant impregnation’ to
create a societal ‘climate’ or ‘atmosphere’ of
favourable attitudes (pp.15–17). This ‘slow
building up of reflexes and myths, of psycho-
logical environment and prejudices, requires
propaganda of a very long duration’ (p.18).
Only once this has been established will
short-term political propaganda campaigns
be effective. In its hopes for strategic narra-
tive, the West has assumed the latter can suc-
ceed without the former, with the technical
mastery of narrative construction providing
the shortcut.
If sociological propaganda is the key
medium through which the struggle between
50 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the liberal order and the Salafi-jihadist move-
ment is operating, it is far from clear that the
West is disadvantaged. Liberal democracies
have been remarkably effective at globalising
Western cultural values – the Salafi-jihadist
movement is in many ways a reaction to
that success. The disparity in will exhibited
by the comparatively extreme methods the
Salafi-jihadist movement uses to prosecute
war suggests that it faces the greater existen-
tial threat, as insurgencies typically do when
facing states.
Conversely, David Betz suggests that the
West is hamstrung because postmodern-
ism has inculcated what Lyotard described
as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’. As a
result, any attempts to promote a given mas-
ter narrative are quickly rejected by sceptical
domestic audiences:
In the West narratives which are deliberately con-
structed by government are almost immediately
rejected for that reason whatever their inherent
accuracy or falsity. The public is highly sensitized to
‘spin’, the media excels at revealing (and counter-
spinning) it, and no narrative can long survive the
perception that it is based, even in part, on a lie.
(2008: p.516)
This may be so, but it will be the same for
propaganda from other governments and non-
state actors too, whether communicated on the
BBC, Al Jazeera or Russia Today. As Rieger
et al. (2013) have demonstrated, the standard
response to propagandistic material is rejec-
tion, even among audiences supposedly sym-
pathetic to its content. Still, when combined
with the relative reluctance of liberal democ-
racies to stir public passions for war through
myth-making propaganda, conclusions that
the West is fighting war in the cognitive
domain with ‘one hand tied behind [its] back’
are understandable (Betz, 2015: p.53).
A more pressing question is whether an
apparent crisis of faith in liberal democracy is
undermining the credibility and coherence of
Western efforts to inculcate its vision of future
political order. The current popularity of book
titles suggesting democracy is under threat
or that liberalism has failed appears to bear
these conclusions out. Some credit Russia
with contributing to Western confusion and
self-doubt through the promotion of multiple
narratives to undermine trust in a shared ver-
sion of reality necessary for government to
function properly (Taub, in O’Shaughnessy,
2017: p.117). Tactically using multiple nar-
ratives to sow doubt in the liberal order does
little to inculcate an alternative master narra-
tive, however. It is also a long way from lib-
eral democratic self-doubt to a profound shift
in beliefs to support a political order based
on a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia
Law. Liberal democracies may not be clear
what they are any more, but they are still clear
on many things they are not.
Moving forward, noting the difficulty of
even identifying sociological propaganda,
let alone measuring its effect on the strength-
ening or weakening of existing beliefs over
prolonged periods, it is understandable that
short-term proxies of political communication
success are used, be it frequencies of terrorist
plots and attacks, numbers of foreign fighters,
investment in election advertising, numbers
of bots discovered, Twitter accounts deleted,
insurgent defections and so on. But to gain a
balanced picture, perspective is needed from
both sides of conflicts and over the longer
term. If the number of migrants to the Islamic
State is compared with the number who have
fled it, assessments of the persuasiveness of
their strategic narrative’s vision of the future
presents a very different picture.
Another element that would benefit from
greater attention in strategic narrative research
is detailed consideration of how to change
beliefs rather than simply strengthening
existing ideas. Belief that social media algo-
rithms can create ‘echo chambers’ that rein-
force people’s views is now well established,
but ultimately states and their challengers
are in the business of changing attitudes and
behaviours too. The field would benefit from
addressing what can appear as a contradic-
tion between the assumption that strategic
narratives can change attitudes and behav-
iour but by resonating with existing beliefs
 Strategic Narratives and War Propaganda
rather than creating new ones. Jelena Subotić
(2015) makes a similar point about narrative
research in international relations, which may
be able to ‘explain policy choices but [has] a
harder time explaining policy change’ (p.4).
Here research by Ronald Krebs (2015) on
how US national security narratives have
risen or fallen from prominence is useful.
UNDERSTANDING TARGET
AUDIENCES
Ultimately, the effectiveness of strategic narra-
tives depends on how they are interpreted by
different audiences, exposed to a complex
array of narratives circulating within and across
cultures. The attempt to establish overarching
master narratives to explain events leads to
optimism about achieving uniformity in how
complex issues such as war are understood.
This is appealing from a positivist, rationalist
mindset seeking to find a single, optimum nar-
rative that would maximise support. It is also
understandable in a resource-limited policy
environment where pragmatic choices must be
made about what and how to communicate.
However, narratives are not uniformly under-
stood. They are interpretations, filtered through
individuals’ unique experiences (Archetti,
2013). There is need not just to examine the
ideal strategic narrative to project from the top
down, but to examine from the bottom up the
narrative understandings of individual citizens.
This is especially important given that an
attempt to communicate a strategic narrative
might comprise a soundbite, slogan or tweet,
which leaves much of the narrative unsaid and
interpretation uncertain.
Yet in over a decade of interest in strategic
narratives, remarkably few studies examine the
stories told by target audiences at the micro-
level (Colley, 2017a, 2017b). The assumption
that the Salafi-jihadist movement is ani-
mated by a single master narrative has led to
neglect of the variation in how different indi-
viduals interpret it (Archetti, 2013). Western
51
governments seeking to counter this with their
own master narrative have similarly neglected
that the stories their citizens tell about war
can vary significantly. In international rela-
tions, studies have shown how states narrate
their histories selectively to generate singular
‘national biographies’ (Berenskoetter, 2012).
In contrast, limited attention has been paid
to whether their citizens understand the past,
present and future in the same way (Colley,
2017b). Instead, studies of strategic narrative
reception in war have tended to focus on cor-
relating different strategic narratives with pub-
lic opinion over time (De Graaf et al., 2015).
But as Miskimmon et al. (2017) note bluntly,
‘strategic narrative research must research
narratives, not attitudes; otherwise, it is not
narrative research’ (p.323).
Several questions might inform the con-
struction of more compelling strategic narra-
tives in the future. How much variety is there
in how people narrate their countries’ wars?
Where is there contestation, where is there
consensus? How much variation is there in
the building blocks of citizens’ narratives
such as plot, character and setting? Which
historical events and characters do they
emphasise and which do they silence? How
congruent is this with how political elites nar-
rate their country’s past, present and future?
Research has begun to address variations
in how narratives of military intervention
are interpreted by target audiences (Colley,
2017a; 2017b; Miskimmon et al., 2017), but
much more needs to be done in this area.
CONCLUSION
Even armed with a compelling and unifying
strategic narrative and a better understanding
of its likely interpretations, successful persua-
sion may not occur. After more than a decade
of trying to use strategic narratives to oppose
Islamist extremism, some authors have
concluded that there may be ‘no effective
counter-narratives to be disseminated by
52 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Western governments’ because of their lack
of credibility with Muslim audiences (Betz,
2017: p.62). I suggest a slightly different con-
clusion. It is not that there are no counter-
narratives to be disseminated by Western
governments. One cannot not communicate
(Boudreau, 2016), therefore as long as one
opposes a given political order, by the act of
communicating one will be producing counter-
propaganda. One may as well try and do so as
effectively as possible. However, it may be
that there are no counter-narratives that will
achieve significant short-term change in what
is a long-term political struggle to embed
worldviews deeply to the point that they
become mythological, or common sense.
This does not mean one cannot achieve sig-
nificant short-term communication effect in
war. Psy-ops officers attesting to getting insur-
gents to withdraw from territory using leaflet
drops (Hughes, 2017), or Israeli leaflets com-
pelling Palestinians to flee in advance of air
strikes, suggest that communication effects
can be achieved with crude methods without
needing expertise in the art of storytelling. But
what is striking about these cases is how their
persuasiveness derives less from their artful
construction and more from the genuine threat
of force that accompanies them. That persua-
siveness disappears if not backed by credible
sanction, just as the credibility of claims of
genuine commitment of a counterinsurgent to
a local population disappears when political
leaders announce imminent troop withdraw-
als. It is hard to imagine that a collection of
words could be developed that could be as
damaging to the Salafi-jihadist movement in
the short term as the capture of the Caliphate’s
symbolic sites such as Mosul and Raqqa.
Actions may not always speak louder than
words, but they typically do in war.
Therefore, as with any form of propa-
ganda, there is a need to moderate expecta-
tions of the utility of strategic narratives.
They will not be able to resolve fundamental
contradictions between the words one says
and military events on the ground. There is
evidence that using strategic narratives to
improve organisational coherence and unity
can be effective. Thinking about the commu-
nication effects of armed force before apply-
ing it seems a sensible mindset in conflicts
fought primarily in the cognitive domain. If
one believes that narrative is a uniquely per-
suasive mode of communication, one should
not treat it as everything said about an issue
over time. If one believes that strategic nar-
ratives are the key to persuasion in contem-
porary war because they resonate with target
audience worldviews, one should appreci-
ate that shaping such understandings, par-
ticularly of foreign audiences, is a protracted
and difficult affair. Moreover, it will not be
achieved with words alone.
As Miskimmon et al. (2013) explain, ‘one
must assume that communication will fail;
people are hard to convince’ (p.xi). In 1943,
as Germany faced repeated defeats, Goebbels
wrote that ‘at the moment we cannot change
very much through propaganda: we must
once again gain a big victory somewhere’
(Doob, 1950: p.442). There typically are
not quick victories in the wars the West has
recently being fighting, particularly counter-
insurgencies. Propaganda, whether structured
in narrative form or not, can only do so much.
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From Disinformation to Fake
News: Forwards into the Past
INTRODUCTION
The distinctive contribution of this chapter lies
in promulgating an idea of disinformation as
self-service. It introduces two notions not nor-
mally surfaced by the public discourse that
explain the phenomenon in terms of self-
manipulation rather than other-manipulation;
disinformation as psychological crutch. The
claim is that the purpose of disinformation is to
serve the ideological and emotional needs of
its perpetrators as well, such that it is not only
other-deceit but self-deceit. And second, that
the ‘victim’ of disinformation is by no means
necessarily naive: the process could more aptly
be described as a co-production, with the target
being invited to join a shared fantasy. We ask
why given its frequent crudeness does disinfor-
mation succeed – and locate the answer in our
latent wish to believe. Moreover, the objective
of disinformation is not necessarily to persuade
but to sow division, to engender doubt, to
foster acquiescence; and in all of this, actual
belief does not necessarily play any role at all.
4
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
There was no golden age of Truth. P.M
Taylor quotes a 1949 newsreel: ‘Union
Square in New York was the backdrop for
these scenes of red violence. From their ranks
will come the saboteurs, spies and subver-
sives should World War Three be forced upon
America’. More generally, many of the most
widely believed stories in history are the car-
casses of long forgotten disinformation such
as the claim that Queen Mary Antoinette of
France said ‘let them eat cake’ (though in
some stories it is brioche). She never said
this, but disinformation works not because
it is true but because it is plausible. Thus
for Napoleon, history is ‘a myth which peo-
ple choose to believe’: and, under his rule,
conspiracies were ‘discovered’ and pseudo-
elections delivered (Taylor 1990).
Disinformation is part of the larger con-
ceptual realm of propaganda: so it means
lying, but not always, and not necessarily: all
propaganda is not disinformation but on the
other hand all disinformation is propaganda.
Disinformation does not have to be a complete
56 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
lie; it can be largely or partly true and often is
to make it more credible. But the reasons for
the renaissance of disinformation as cognitive
weapon do not lie primarily with the gullibil-
ity of the masses. A more probable explana-
tion is the limited time people have available
to search for truth, or the fact of ‘confirmation
bias’ (where we merely wish to affirm their
own perspective). Moreover, the reaction to
disinformation is rarely belief but rather a gen-
eral doubt and cynicism where everything is
possible and nothing is true. This is a very dif-
ferent proposition from the notion of deluded
masses as manifest in the titles of some works
on propaganda such as ‘Easily Lead, A History
of Propaganda’ (Thomson 1999).
We assume publics are truth seekers who
wish to avoid deception, as rationally they
ought to be, but the reality is more nuanced.
Persuasion does not always ask us for belief,
but assaults us with propositions too absurd
to be credible; like advertising or nonsense
rhymes, they creep beneath our cognitive
defences. We are playing not only on the cre-
dulity of our audience, we are inviting their
participation in a collective fantasy in which
both the target and the creator are complicit.
We conspire to deceive even ourselves –
this might, for example, explain the public
acceptance of justificatory narratives for the
Iraq War. A political fiction is something the
politician very much wants to believe but
knows may be untrue; it is not the same as a
fantasy; nor is it a deception which is merely
a tactical expedient to gain a desired end. A
fiction is something deeper. The politician
has a profound need for it that is not merely
instrumental, in order to vindicate the ideal,
the ideology, the worldview they embody. A
politician is in this sense a novelist.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF
DISINFORMATION
Disinformation is the hidden hand of history
and it is neither a new invention nor something
created in the bowels of the Kremlin. The Old
Testament story of Joshua at the Battle of
Jericho is pertinent because it is one of the first
recorded examples of the utility of fake news:
Joshua and a tiny band of Israelites are able to
take the city of Jericho via disinformation
(Joshua 6 1: 27). Their night attack with torches,
drums and cymbals gives the impression of a
mighty army and the inhabitants of Jericho sur-
render. And this is a timely reminder that disin-
formation has been with us a long time: the
myth of the Trojan horse for example –
‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ – is perhaps
the greatest fable of disinformation. The infer-
ence is that in the ancient world disinforma-
tion was a recognised resource in warfare. Its
subsequent, toxic influence over the modern
world is driven by the evolution in communi-
cation technology, that long journey via print,
image reproduction, photography, recorded
speech and film and radio; finally graduating
at the end of the twentieth century into the
phenomenon of the Internet, offering a vast
new vista of disinformation. Disinformation
and its related crafts played an outsize role in
the story of the twentieth century. This role is
especially associated with, but not confined
to, the two great World Wars and the subse-
quent Cold War between Communism and
the West.
British disinformation in World War One
was a sustained polemic on German brutality
(and a protracted tutorial in method for the
future Nazi leadership). Post-war the belief
took root, specifically in Britain, that the
atrocity propaganda surrounding the German
invasion of Belgium was what we would call
today fake news. In fact, as Philip Knightley
(2000) reminds us, about 6000 Belgian civil-
ians really were murdered by the German
army; but imagination embroidered: ‘A
Nurse Hume was said to have shot a German
officer who had attacked a wounded Belgian,
the Germans then cutting off her left breast.
The story was in fact invented by her sis-
ter, later convicted for forgery, Nurse Hume
herself never having left Huddersfield’. In
post- 1918 Germany the new orthodoxy
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
was that they had lost the war not because
of inferior military skill but superior allied
and British propaganda, of which disinfor-
mation was the key feature. Disinformation
had been a key part of the Nazi script for
seeking power, for wielding it and for wag-
ing war. The war itself was begun under a
smokescreen of lies, the so-called Gleiwicz
incident, manufactured to ‘prove’ a Polish
attack on German soil as casus belli. Here
the corpses of concentration camp inmates
clad in German uniforms were riddled with
bullets (O’Shaughnessy 2017). Then Hitler
hectored the Reichstag.
Yet disinformation was not just a phenom-
enon of the past, or a resource of the enemy.
Disinformation had been an active agent in
all late twentieth-century conflicts. There
was that ‘dodgy dossier’ which the British
government and security apparatus fabricated
to ‘prove’ the existence of Saddam Hussein’s
WMDs (weapons of mass destruction). The
fact that there was no material evidence for
them did not appear to matter; such illusory
‘existence’ was a pre-condition for the inva-
sion of Iraq which otherwise would not have
possessed a fig-leaf of legitimacy.
Nor is disinformation merely a mecha-
nism in politics, war or international rela-
tions: since it represents a tool for gaining
access to power or resources, it is, improb-
ably, a force in science as well. There is a
venerable tradition of crackpot scientists,
believed by publics or their leaders with
catastrophic consequences, the great charla-
tans of scientific disinformation such as the
Soviet fraud scientist Troyfim Lysenko. In
our era a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield,
proclaimed the link between the MMR vac-
cine and autism (Deer 2011): thus many
parents ceased to have their children vac-
cinated and his anti-vaccination movement,
germinated in the UK, spread very quickly to
California. As a result, populations of chil-
dren began to lose herd immunity as vacci-
nations dipped below 80% of the population,
and illnesses long marginalised were resur-
rected among them.
57
WHY DISINFORMATION?
‘Hot’ disinformation is effective because
there is a market for disinformation; in the
end, people have a taste, a predisposition
even, for it. Fake news is fun and has a
swifter and deeper penetration of social
media. ‘Cold’ information by contrast is
more tedious, pedestrian and travels more
slowly. MIT scholars found this was the case
across all subjects, politics and urban legends
of course, but business, science and technol-
ogy too:
False claims were 70% more likely than the truth
to be shared on Twitter. True stories were rarely
re-tweeted by more than 1000 people, but the top
1% of false were routinely shared by 1000 to
100,000 people. And it took true stories about six
times as long as false ones to reach 1500 people.
(Lohr citing Vosoughi et al. 2018)
And bots, apparently, played very little part in
this. The study covers 2009 to 2016: ‘The
researchers identified more than 80,000 posts
on Twitter that contain false claims and sto-
ries. Combined, those posts were re-tweeted
millions of times’ (Lohr citing Vosoughi et al.
2018). Other research, reviewing ten years of
Twitter and 126,000 stories tweeted by three
million people, found the false stories had
superseded the true ones because of their
greater novelty value. For example, Chick-
A–Fil never ran a ‘We don’t like blacks
either’ marketing campaign. But this false
(and utterly non-credible) ‘news’ got 200 re-
tweets in just over four hours (Lohr 2018).
Underlying the fog of disinformation
is undoubtedly the fragmentation of tradi-
tional media. Nearly two-thirds of adults
in the United States are now getting some
of their news on social media, according to
the Pew Research Centre, a polling outfit
(Economist 2016)., Specifically, the decline
of the great news channels such as NBC
and even CNN was balanced by the ascent
of cyberspace-enabled partisan media,
and the rich opportunities that gave for
contrarian and non-orthodox perspectives.
58 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Such were the press closures/ redundancies
at the end of the century’s first decade that
we now had ‘26,000 fewer reporters, editors,
photographers, and columnists to cover the
world, analyse political and economic affairs,
root out corruption and abuse, and write about
culture, entertainment, and sports’ (Massing
2009). The decline of quality journalism was
such that ‘the parasite is slowly killing the
host’. The world we were losing ‘involves
experienced reporters going places, bear-
ing witness, digging into records, develop-
ing sources, checking and double-checking,
backed by editors who try to enforce high
standards’ (Massing 2009). This rise of dis-
information is thus explained by the merging
of news with propaganda and entertainment,
which became the most serious threat to pub-
lic understanding in our time: the news no
longer existed to serve the ideal of objectiv-
ity. But its production has been so contami-
nated both by the thrust for market share and
by the partisan agenda-driven values of
its proprietors, that what emerges is pure
obfuscation – no better seen than in Fox
News’s reporting of the Iraq war.
Then there is the democratisation of politi-
cal expression itself. People are no longer just
spectators but participants and this is signifi-
cant as a source both of sabotage and reforma-
tion in national and international public life
We are inadvertently creating a new kind of
world – for example, the ‘polemical excesses’
of the blogosphere. Blogs in other words are
ferociously partisan and their links connect to
similar polemicists; alternative opinions are
mercilessly excoriated (Massing 2009) (even
Isis operated via the online, open-source
approach, relinquishing corporate control
but permitting thousands of amateurs to self–
author their recruitment propaganda).
The ostensible ubiquity of disinformation
is popularly attributed to the indolence, the
inertia of the Internet media giants includ-
ing Google. When a Facebook executive
was questioned as to why the conspiracy
site Infowars was permitted – it has consist-
ently rubbished the truth of the Sandy Hook
school massacre – he replied that InfoWars
was merely a publisher with ‘a different point
of view’ (Manjoo 2018). And in the 2016
US Presidential campaign, ‘Facebook was a
primary vector for misinformation and state-
sponsored political interference and Facebook
still seems paralysed over how to respond’
(Manjoo 2018). Yuri Miller, the Russian
founder of Mail.ru, ‘had received hundreds
of millions of dollars from the Russian gov-
ernment which he invested in Facebook and
Twitter’ (Vaidhyanathan 2018). Their case
rests essentially on the claim that they are
more analogous to public utilities such as
water providers than a publisher: what they
offer is a conduit and nothing more. But they
have been forced to change that public pos-
ture. These revelations – and the executives
of these Internet service providers must have
known about them for a very long time – go
beyond even an uber-liberal interpretation of
free speech, tolerating everything. For Google
and Facebook turned themselves into a kind of
toxic sump into which the assorted poisons of
mankind were decanted, among them jihadist
terrorism, and also rabid anti-Semitism. Mark
Zuckerberg continued to permit Holocaust
denialism because ‘there are things that dif-
ferent people get wrong’ (Manjoo 2018).
THE AIMS OF DISINFORMATION
Objective: Acquiescence not belief. One pur-
pose and object of disinformation is to create,
sustain and amplify divisions within a rival
political party, a government, a coalition.
Disinformation is a strategy of political con-
trol; internally, within the nation state, its
object is acquiescence not belief. Thus, maybe
we are asking the wrong questions about aims
and objectives. What regimes seek is external
compliance. Such governments may be disbe-
lieved even when they speak truth; indeed,
one Chinese poet/political commentator
(Han) actually thinks the Chinese Communist
Party would be embarrassed by a genuine
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
display of public approbation (Link 2013).
They are asking their citizens not so much to
deny as to selectively see. People must focus
and ignore the peripheral vision.
Objective: sow division. But, externally,
disinformation can also be a tool of national
strategy with the aim of sabotaging interna-
tional consensus, a weapon against a hostile
nation or coalition. It becomes therefore a
method of leveraging advantage in inter-
national relations, a hegemonic tool. Thus,
Russia’s methodology in the US Presidential
election was to amplify extant divisions by
focussing on symbolically charged value
issues and ruthlessly exploiting them, and
elevating the Trump candidacy not by creat-
ing a new negative persona for Clinton but
rather by fostering and canalising existing
perceptions (Shane 2017). But while the noto-
rious Facebook ads that Russia purchased did
sometimes speak of the candidates, they were
mostly issue oriented – focussed on ‘divisive
social and political messages across the ideo-
logical spectrum – touching on topics from
LGBT matters to race issues to immigration
to gun rights’ according to Facebook’s chief
security officer Alex Stamos (Shane and Goel
2017). In other words, they sought merely to
polarise Americans, for example, some ads
pretended to celebrate ultra-liberal perspec-
tives. Facebook subsequently claimed to have
discovered a further 2200 ads (US$50,000)
that were less easily attributable to Russia
(Shane and Goel 2017).
The disinformation technique is thus con-
cealed message origin, what appears to be
derived from activists, patriots, concerned
citizens and so on, actually emerges from
an alien and hostile state. But how impactful
was fake news really in 2016? One study sug-
gested that fake news was only a small pro-
portion of the total news consumed by people
in the 2016 US Presidential election; thus as
a researcher ‘we have to be very careful about
making the inference that fake news has a big
impact’ (Lohr 2018).
Objective: sow confusion. The sluice
gates of disinformation create not belief
59
but perplexity: everything, and nothing, is
believable anymore, the pre-conditions for
political paralysis. Lying is a strategy; the
aim is obscurantist, the object not to cre-
ate belief but spread confusion, and such
regimes do not seek the affection of other
nations. They know they cannot get it. One
is reminded of Mark Twain’s aphorism, that
a lie can travel halfway round the world
while truth is still tying up its shoelaces.
This creation of confusion externally, this
sowing of doubt, is matched internally by
the cultivation of a docile and submissive
public – which does not equate with a trust-
ing public. The Kremlin did not deceive
the other nations: but it did confuse them.
Traditional methods of Russian espionage
include Kompromat, of course (which can be
genuine or fabricated); but also Maskirovka,
which is obfuscating truth in a haze of con-
fusion; and Provocatsiya, a provocation or
deliberate hoax (Macintyre 2017).
Objective: doubt. The spreading of doubt
is a very effective genre of disinformation
since credible phenomena can seldom be
proven absolutely. There is always the pos-
sibility of doubt, and through this rhetorical
crack disinformation seeps in. This was the
technique used to defend the cigarette indus-
try from the time it first came under attack:
‘Beginning in 1953, the largest tobacco com-
panies launched a public relations campaign
to convince the public and the government
that there was no scientific basis for the claim
that cigarette smoking is dangerous’, and
‘The most devious part of the campaign was
the underwriting of researchers who would
support the industry’s claim’. One tobacco
company executive wrote that ‘DOUBT is
our product since it is the best means of com-
peting with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the
mind of the general public’ (Nordhaus 2012).
This disinformation technique has served
corporations and corporate purveyors of
toxic products very well indeed. They can
demand unrealistic standards of truth, and
when this is not forthcoming doubt is cast.
The methodology of doubt is central to the
60 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
defence of organisations offering products
which are under assault from the scientific
community. There can be critiques of meth-
odology, critiques of statistics, a plausible
rationale can always be found to cast doubt
on an apparently watertight scientific case.
Science can be sabotaged with pseudosci-
ence: credibility can always be destroyed by
the application of meretricious counterargu-
ments. Disinformation is the child of our
need for rational explanation as well as our
willingness to consume fantasy, and of the
effective exposition of the pseudo-rational.
Argument is polished with the veneer of
objectivity. The aim is to perplex, for where
we cannot persuade there is always the alter-
native which is to rhetorically create a dense
mist of confusion. As long as they are able
to undermine the argument that ‘scientists
say’, science’s adversaries have not so much
won the debate as kept it in a limbo where it
will remain. Where claims of civic comfort
or political rectitude transcend those of sci-
entific truth: when the uninformed supersede
the informed, the consequences are predict-
able. The problem is that we are polluting
the wellsprings of public information and
the climate debate is a very good example.
Thus, Texas Governor Rick Perry was appar-
ently certain that global warming was ‘self
evidently a con cooked up by grant hun-
gry scientists’ (Tomasky 2011). This is the
polemicisation of policy. Indeed, one poll
found that 43% of Republicans believe cli-
mate change is not happening at all compared
with 10% of Democrats (Economist 2016).
THE METHODOLOGY OF
DISINFORMATION
Lies – historical impact of deception. Lying
and deceit are part of the core definition of
disinformation and indeed what many would
imagine to be its essential method. As we
have seen the notion is broader than this.
Nevertheless, what the Chinese call the ‘wind
of falsification and embellishment’ (Rawski
2002) are indeed important, and a high- risk
activity continuously indulged by parties,
states, politicians. Donald Trump, of course,
is an offender: ‘Pants on Fire’, a fact check-
ing website, convicts Trump of lying more
than any other candidate (Economist 2016).
But other Presidents lie. Lyndon Johnson lied
about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, thus pre-
cipitating America’s Vietnam crisis. And in
1986, Ronald Reagan initially denied the
weapons for hostages deal with Iran, saying
later: ‘My heart and best intentions tell me
that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me
it’s not’ (Economist 2016). Then there were
George W. Bush’s assorted fictions, for
example, that Saddam Hussein had sought
yellow cake uranium from Niger which was
a conscious lie (Bromwich 2010).
Why does lying succeed? And this remains
an enigma – if lies are easily exposed, and
their exposure sabotages the credibility of the
political actor, how to explain their persis-
tence as a tactic? For example, the ‘Kuwaiti
babies atrocity’ was a lie perpetrated by the
daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the
United States (under the auspices of the pub-
lic relations firm Hill and Knowlton), who
posed as a shocked witness to Iraqi soldiers
storming through a hospital and tearing
babies out of incubators (O’Shaughnessy
2004). Subsequent exposure was irrelevant
since events had moved on and nobody was
interested anymore. President George Bush
had even recounted this imaginary tragedy
in a speech to American troops; the trouble
is that it did not happen (O’Shaughnessy
2004). Yet deceitfulness is hardly an
American political monopoly and other
democracies furnish even more outrageous
examples. Nothing quite matches the flesh
tones of Berlusconi’s Italy. Scandals for
example possess a distractive utility and thus
were regularly manufactured – Berlusconi
was ‘able to make and unmake scandals at
will’ (Stille 2010).
Another reason for the perpetuity of dis-
information is the evanescent nature of
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
political and public attack and negativity.
Time marches on, and when the fiction or
the rumour is finally exposed the public is
no longer interested. Exposure of disinfor-
mation is often easy: for example, allegedly
US-made packages of goods that were the
backdrop to a Bush speech were exposed by
the New York Times as having their ‘Made in
China’ stickers pasted over (New York Times
2003). But did it matter? While their lying
may leave a stain on the pages of history and
besmirch the reputation of parties and poli-
ticians, another view would suggest that in
fact these exposures are quickly forgotten.
For example, the deceitful allegations of the
Swiftboat Veterans (founded to expose the
‘fraudulence’ of John Kerry’s Vietnam hero-
ism, see below) were showcased by the ‘new’
media, and their subsequent falsification by
the ‘old’ media was honourable but useless.
Karl Rove for example was past-master of the
liquid libel, allegations that would seep into a
campaign, toxify it and then dry out without
a stain as everyone would have forgotten and
move away: ‘Rove means evidence that only
appears credible, evidence that sprays fast
enough and drips far enough to resist removal
from the popular mind even when the whole
truth comes out later on’ (Bromwich 2010).
Forgery in history. Forgery is a frequent
tool in the disinformation toolbox. There
was the Zinoviev letter, released on the eve
of the British 1924 general election and
purporting to be from the Soviet foreign
minister Zinoviev to the Labour Party in fra-
ternal support (Bennett 2018). The orthodox
view is that it was apparently concocted by
Conservative party officials and MI5. Some
modern scholarship has suggested it did not
in fact affect the Labour vote, the traditional
assumption, but it did on the other hand prove
instrumental in the collapse of the Liberal
Party during that election. Such deceit is a
part of the political art since times immemo-
rial, but it degrades politics and civic society;
for example, the engineering of fake imagery,
specifically, a fake image of John Kerry with
Jane Fonda (Watson 2004) at an anti-Vietnam
61
war rally (it mysteriously emerged during the
2004 Presidential campaign: but they were
never together).
But the status of disinformation as histori-
cal actor and as causal mechanism was signif-
icant throughout the twentieth century. There
is history’s greatest fabrication, the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion (Ben-Itto 2005), a
creation of the Czarist secret police under
the influence of an orthodox priest, Serge
Nillius, based apparently on a nineteenth-
century French satire: it purported to unmask
the existence of a Jewish master plan for
world dominion prepared by the leaders and
enigmatic godfathers of ‘Zion’. Its plausibil-
ity, to the extent that it was plausible, was
because of the first Zionist International, a
conference at Basel Switzerland in August
1897: but there was nothing secret about
that and no plan for global hegemony.
And yet The Times newspaper was briefly
taken in and Henry Ford had the tract pub-
lished in the United States. The Times asked
(May 8, 1920) ‘have we, by straining every
fibre of our national body, escaped a Pax
Germanica only to fall into a Pax Judaica?’
The ‘Protocols’ became an essential text of
Nazism, their final demolition being before
the law courts in Switzerland in a legal case
which exposed their fraudulent and fantastic
nature (the Berne Trial 1933–1935).
Forgery Today. The masters of social media-
enabled disinformation are the Russians.
Inmates of Russia’s ‘troll farms’ concoct fake
narratives for global consumption to sabotage
Russia’s enemies, the United States, Ukraine
and so on; they troll online; they argue on
websites (Dale 2015). Their stories emerge
on social media and they are also fostered
by a Russian propaganda organisation called
the Internet Research Agency (which was
created by Putin). That the government of a
major foreign power intervened radically in
a US presidential election is without prece-
dent. Thus, a combined FBI-CIA-NSA report
accused hundreds of Russian trolls of trash-
ing Hilary Clinton (Shane and Goel 2017);
for example, in 2016, Melvin Redick of
62 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Harrisburg PA, ‘a friendly looking American
with a backward baseball cap and a young
daughter’, posted on Facebook (June 8, 2016)
a link to a fresh new website: ‘These guys
show hidden truth about Hillary Clinton,
George Soros and all the leaders of the US.
Visit at the hashtag DC Leaks website. It’s
really interesting!’ (Shane and Goel 2017).
But this man was a phantom American. And
similarly with Twitter, where many, even
thousands of fake accounts broadcast anti-
Hilary polemics. Facebook subsequently
(September 6, 2017) closed several hundred
Kremlin- linked accounts. The legitimacy of
the 2016 US Presidential result (and indeed
of Brexit, Britain’s Europe Referendum) is
hence now widely questioned.
Alternative narratives. The offer is of an
alternative narrative that neither substitutes
for nor destroys the orthodox one but merely
queries it, surfacing a pre-existent distrust of
government and media. The methodology of
Russia Today (RT), which targets 100 coun-
tries, is this advocacy of an alternative narra-
tive; the Skripal poisoning, for example, was
represented as a convenience for the British
government so as to obscure their contortions
over Brexit (Dimbleby 2018). The conse-
quence is not disbelief, but unease, and per-
vasive cynicism. Such alternative narratives
enter the bloodstream and become part of the
general discourse, so that their tainted source
of origin is forgotten. This was vividly illus-
trated by the saga of the iconic Syrian White
Helmets (Solon 2017), a relief worker group
created by the British and tasked with rescu-
ing the injured from the pitiless bombings by
Russia and Bashir Assad. They became indeed
an almost sacerdotal symbol, their heroism
captured on the nightly news as they carried
the broken bodies to safety under fire. Such
images were the best anti-Assad propaganda.
But very quickly allegations, often retailed on
the Russian international channel RT, began
to circulate that the White Helmets had ties
to Isis, an effective piece of disinformation.
It  was essential that the Assadist/Putinist
propaganda regime discredit them – while
it did not of course achieve this, it did suc-
ceed in generating widespread doubts. For
example, The Working Group on Syria,
Propaganda and Media, a collection of British
academics, has been accused of endorsing the
activities of Assad partisans who circulate
lies about the Syrian war (York 2018)
Pseudo-realities. Reality, for such govern-
ments, is a blank screen upon which they can
scrawl their ideas and febrile dreams; events,
even history itself, can be created, cancelled
or reimagined through the agency of rheto-
ric. The point is their essential plasticity: the
government is an engineer of perception and
this is not politics as conventionally under-
stood. Events are a site of construction, they
are organised and built, their outcomes are
pre-determined. For such a political concept to
operate disinformation is an essential, along-
side such derivatives of disinformation as
pseudo-events: ‘In the course of their training,
they (the KGB) learned that events cannot be
allowed to just happen, they must be controlled
and manipulated’ (Applebaum 2012). Thus,
the director of the Isvetsia publishing house on
one occasion opined that ‘image is not reality,
but, rather, its reflection, which can be made
positive’ (Institute of Modern Russia 2012).
Libel. Lies become myths, and myths are
perpetuated. And this has a long history: thus,
the story of the Tonypandy ‘massacre’ in the
South Wales coalfields, the myth that Home
Secretary Winston Churchill had called in
the troops to confront striking miners and
that they had opened fire. But there were no
troops in Tonypandy itself, and there was no
massacre (Jenkins 2001). Hence, disinforma-
tion also darkens the reputation of historical
actors. Negativity is also the default setting
of American politics (‘crooked Hilary’ etc.).
For many years now US political advertising,
exempt from truth in advertising laws unlike
commercial organisations, has cheerfully
offered a theatre of deceit and fraud, the arti-
fice and contrivance of merchandised insincer-
ity. The disinformation on Obama stands in this
tradition, the accusations that he was a Muslim,
a terrorist or the fabrications of the so-called
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
‘birthers’ – the idea was that he is un-American.
Thus, Newt Gingrich opined (September 2012)
‘what if [Obama] is so outside our comprehen-
sion, but only if you understand Kenyan, anti-
colonial behaviour, can you begin to piece
together [his actions]?’ (Klein 2012).
Disinformation is also a process; it originates
somewhere, obscure perhaps, a point of origin
which is quickly forgotten as the untruth gath-
ers momentum. The Drudge report is a nexus
of disinformation – theirs was the Muslim
Obama fib. But then the ‘sick Hilary’ smear
emerged (via a photo of her losing her balance)
which Fox News purloined, and then Guiliani
urged people to google ‘Hillary Clinton ill-
ness’ (Egan 2016). Breitbart then amplified:
according to Steve Bannon ‘I’m not saying
that, you know, she had a stroke or anything
like that, but this is not the woman we were
used to seeing’. The final stage, the crescendo,
in this biography of a libel was its inclusion in
a Trump speech (Economist 2016).
Outrageous lies solicit attention, and their
free mass-media replication is an intensely
economic form of proselytisation. It is not
that many people actually see such com-
mercials when they air, but subsequently,
via their reproduction in television news and
press. Hence 527 group attack ads penetrated
the other commercial ‘noise’ (these legally
constituted agitation groups were independ-
ent of campaigns and campaign finance rules,
such as the Swift Boat Veterans). And in the
2004 Presidential campaign:
The old-fashioned mainstream press was ignoring
the claims of the Swifties, but on Fox News, the
‘fair and balanced’ cable network whose viewer-
ship was roughly 80% pro-Bush, the Swifties were
getting plenty of air time. And not just on Fox …
the Swifties had brought only a few hundred thou-
sand dollars’ worth of ads, but each played over
and over -free – on the cable channels, CNN and
MSNBC as well as Fox. The Swift Boat charges
were the source of constant debate in the blogo-
sphere. (Thomas and Newsweek Staff 2004)
The Republican achievement was to make
Kerry’s heroism an issue while neutralising
the record of their own candidate.
63
Duplicitous rhetoric. Another method
of disinformation is via duplicitous rheto-
ric. The modern persuader is no Pericles or
Edmund Burke but a thoroughly modern
rhetorician and hence is a labeller and a re-
brander, re-branding unpleasant truths with
pleasant names. He is an engineer of per-
ception and understands the power of labels
to direct thought; for example, the eminent
Republican rhetorical tactician Frank Luntz,
a pollster whose key understanding was that
words, in fact, think for you (McKibben
2004). Deceitful rhetoric acquires a life of
its own. It becomes reality because there is
no truth outside rhetoric, and no force supe-
rior to it which creates, manages and directs
perception: the rhetoric convinces both its
creators and its victims, a curious kind of
circularity. Thus, the pharmaceutical indus-
try has become inter-alia a branch of disin-
formation. Take the example of shyness: it
was originally designated as ‘social phobia’
in 1980. It had mutated into ‘social anxiety
disorder’ by 1994. Glaxo Smith Kline then
decided to promote social anxiety disorder
as ‘a severe medical condition’. It got FDA
approval (Angell 2009).
Particle of truth. The Victorian Englishman
Leslie Stephen observed ‘no good story is
quite true’ (Hastings 2010). The most appar-
ently deranged assertions can remain credible
because not everything about their content is
fiction. What is really being promulgated is
an amalgam of truth and fiction, and the fic-
tion illuminates the truth. So disinformation
works not because it is untrue but because it
is partly true, even though the truth secreted
within it may be a thin sliver. For example,
The Economist argued that the Leave cam-
paigns, that successfully persuaded Britons
to leave the EU, were based on ‘blatant mis-
information’ – that Turkey was likely to join
by 2020, and that the alleged £350 million
weekly cost of the EU could be spent on the
NHS (Economist 2016). And this is now the
orthodox view. Yet, despite a level of deceit-
fulness, some other critiques from Leave hit
their target because they resonated – in other
64 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
words, Leave offered not a lie but a half-truth
which the Remain campaign failed to really
expose.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
DISINFORMATION
Disinformation is effective because it ener-
gises confirmation bias (Nickerson 1988),
that is, the tendency of new information to
merely entrench further the fault lines of
existing perspectives. We see what we want
to see according to the concepts we possess
and internalise, therefore, we may not ‘see’
murder, genocide even, when the radiant
ideal blinds us to the real. We believe because
we wish to: disinformation, even though it be
only partially true or a complete fiction, is
affirmative of perspective.
This effect is sharpened by social media
where we are speaking to our fraternity in a
space populated largely by our own ideologi-
cal cohort. Such disinformation creeps under
our cognitive defences, it beguiles, eludes
the evidentiary demands that we would nor-
mally exact in a different context. Google and
particularly Facebook use algorithms which
customise results, according to historic user
preferences in the case of Google, and ‘likes’
in the case of Facebook: the unanticipated con-
sequence has been to shield people from con-
trarian political perspectives and hence during
the UK Europe Referendum users might see
mainly either pro-Brexit or pro-Remain items,
according to their historic usage (Economist
2016). Thus today, data analytics permit
increased accuracy of targeting via tracking
browser habits or demographics (Maheshwari
2016). Hence, Cambridge Analytica fed on
‘rich behavioural data on at least 87 million
voters’ (Vaidhyanathan 2018). Disinformation
also engineers polarisation effects via entirely
imaginary distinctions, as manifest in the
‘Granfalloon technique’ (Turnbull et  al.
1988). This is a social psychology experiment
where people are randomly divided up into
groups, and the groups assigned purely arbi-
trary labels to which their members begin to
attribute coherent meaning. The consequence
is to make us feel apart from those who are in
fact like us, the ‘narcissism of minor differ-
ences’ or even group narcissism.
Fear: emotion. Disinformation is the
amanuensis of fear. Since public opinion is
often passive, sometimes confused, the rhe-
torical evocation of threat can canalise and
radicalise it, ostensibly resolving all ambigu-
ity. In other words, it invokes the frightened
child within us. The underlying psychology
of this is supported by the thesis of Tversky
and Kahneman (1978), which suggested
that the dissatisfactions of loss are stronger
than the satisfactions of gain. Specifically,
disinformation nourishes conspiracy theo-
ries, which arise where people instinctively
reject alternative and more rational explana-
tions for public phenomena (such as error or
incompetence). Conspiracy theories in par-
ticular are useful because they give coher-
ence and meaning to the inchoate matter of
public events. By evoking an opponent, often
an elite, that is subversive and malign, they
ostensibly explain the inexplicable, but they
also elucidate ambiguity; they are a sense-
making device.
Psychology-delusion. Disinformation exists
to confirm the delusional worldview of its fab-
ricators as well as to persuade others, which
is sometimes a secondary consideration. Faith
is needed to believe in something emotionally
invested in, however absurd, but evidence can
always be distorted in favour of the theory and
to sell the delusion to others. Disinformation is
integral to this process of rationalising the irra-
tional and explaining away contrarian evidence,
so we become reliant on continuous non-
evidence-based assertions. Delusions happen
because of our need to believe, a foolish course
because we thus construct an entire world pic-
ture from faith not evidence. Trumpian history,
for example, is fiction but not fraud since he
appears to believe it: thus, General John Pershing
had Muslim rebels shot with bullets bathed
in pigs’ blood (Shear and Hebberman 2017).
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
Only he did not. Trump also said, ‘there was
no more Islamic terror for 35 years’. Untrue.
Here as elsewhere it is unclear whether he con-
sciously lies: a more likely explanation is that
the concept of truth has a no meaning for him –
an assertion is correct if it feels right, Steve
Colbert’s notion of ‘truthiness’.
Delusion though is not like lying or fak-
ery (which are techniques). Delusion is not
a technique and the disinformation produced
to sustain it is believed by its creators not to
be lying but a form of truth-telling. So, much
disinformation is an earnest fiction that min-
isters to the needs of its creators as much as to
its targets and is a guide to their real agenda.
We can even, therefore, ‘feel something to be
true while knowing it is false’ and thus people
sometimes react as if they believe something
is the case rather than actively believing it.
THE MEANING OF DISINFORMATION
Fiction and the enigma of evidence. This abil-
ity to create a fully fictive or false world and
think it real is a consequence of disinforma-
tion. Misconceptions also arise because of
lack of skill in the evaluation of evidence and
the filtering out of counter- evidence. If the
Holocaust is a lie, then what is actually true?
What does evidence mean anymore? Again,
this presents the problem of evidence in dis-
information and fake news: evidence however
complete or tangible is apparently never
enough, even if it would sustain the classic
legal test of being beyond reasonable doubt,
since unreasonable doubt can always be cast.
But it is a testament to the world of deranged
lunacy we now inhabit that some people were
credulous of the ‘Pizzagate’ myth to the
extent of one outraged partisan (Edgar
Maddison Welch) appearing at the Washington
restaurant Comet Ping-Pong with a semi-
automatic to defend phantom children from
the rapistical onslaughts of Hilary Clinton
and her manic coterie (BBC Trending 2016);
he fired three shots (December 4 2016).
65
The disinformation, random or organised,
following the tragedy of 9/11 is an eloquent
re-affirmation of the power of collusive fan-
tasy. There were, for example, the bizarre
claims that American Airlines Flight 77 had
not smashed into the Pentagon. But the more
alarming feature was the widespread belief,
persistent in the Middle East of course but
even among some educated people in Western
countries, that 9/11 had nothing to do with Al
Qaeda but was in fact either a self-inflicted
wound by the CIA, for whatever purpose; or
was a crazy plot by Mossad, the Israeli secret
service, or more generally something engi-
neered by ‘the Jews’, with, naturally, persis-
tent rumours that no Jew was killed at 9/11.
So these are grotesque fables, and similarly
the Sandy Hook fiction that the massacre
(December 14, 2012) of 27 little schoolchil-
dren and their teachers by a deranged former
pupil (and perpetuated by Alex Jones on the
Infowars site) was a charade (Garber 2018).
The parents were driven to pursue court cases
in order to prove that their murdered children
were actually murdered (see, for example,
a Daily Mail headline, December 4, 2018:
‘Father of six-year old boy killed in Sandy
Hook shooting sues conspiracy theorists’;
Associated Press 2018).
Parallel reality. The methodology of disin-
formation therefore is not merely the prepa-
ration of fiction but something beyond that,
the invention of a complete parallel reality.
This reality has a density and coherence and
an internal logic: not just a description of
things that are not, but of things that might
be and that may become. In that sense, it is
aspirational: it just happens not to be true.
And thus, ‘the age of neutral journalism has
passed’, according to the Kremlin’s propa-
ganda chief, it is impossible ‘because what
you select from the sea of information is
already subjective’ (Economist 2016). A
British journalist ‘described Russia’s actions
as an attempt to undermine the concept of
objective reality itself’ before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2015
(Dale 2015). Patriotic, not literal, truth is what
66 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
really matters: such that Russia, for example,
continues to claim, despite overwhelming
evidence, that it did not shoot down Malaysia
Airlines Flight 17 (17 July 2014), or it is com-
pletely innocent of the Salisbury ‘Skripal’
poisonings (March 4 2018) and other unex-
plained deaths. And Russia is active over a
broad subversive front: the headlines began
to proliferate such as ‘Russian Trolls Spread
Discord Over Vaccine Safety’ (Glenza 2018).
Moreover, in the eyes of the true chauvinist,
lying is immorality in the service of morality;
the nation’s honour, the state and the interests
of civic solidarity are absolute imperatives
that license duplicity in their service. The
lower lie serves the higher truth.
Benevolent lying is not the exclusive pre-
rogative of authoritarian regimes: liberal demo-
cratic governments do it too (so as, for example,
not to stigmatise vulnerable groups). Thus,
Japanese determinedly un-remember World
War Two – ‘as recently as 2008 the serving
head of the Japanese air force was obliged to
resign after publishing a study that suggested
that his country’s wartime operations in China
represented something close to an exercise in
philanthropy’ (Hastings 2010). Not only the
historic past but the contemporary present is
invented; the Trump White House’s ‘Bowling
Green massacre’ simply did not happen (BBC
News 2017). And thus ‘If more than 16% of
Americans could locate Ukraine on a map, it
would have been a really big deal when Trump
said that Russia was not going to invade – two
years after they had invaded it’ (Egan 2016). In
such a civic order, facts are what the public can
be persuaded to believe are facts – for example,
Aquila, hit by an earthquake, was one year later
still bereft of any attempt at reconstruction, but
Berlusconi’s television ‘had been running story
after story about “the miracle” of the Abruzzo
earthquake reconstruction efforts’ (Stille 2010).
Hence ‘much of Berlusconi’s career has been
dedicated to the concept that it is appearance
and not reality that counts’. He has admitted as
much: ‘Don’t you realise that something doesn’t
exist – not an idea, a politician, or a product –
unless it is on television?’ (Stille 2010).
DISINFORMATION AND TRUTH
Fiction is a form of truth. Disinformation is
at one level a superficial phenomenon, easily
understood. But when probed, the idea of
disinformation is capable of endless nuance
and is one of the most subtle phenomena in
politics and international relations. It carries
deeper meanings: for example, as we have
seen, the ostensible target of disinformation
is visible but the secondary target, its crea-
tors, is necessarily hidden; yet it ministers to
their political, power and psychological
needs. Moreover, ‘what people believe gen-
erates consequences and becomes a kind of
truth’; wars, for example, are what we believe
them to be, ultimately, for such is the alchemy
of myth and meaning that they cease to have
an objective truth (Fernandez Armesto 2006).
Fiction has a complex relationship to truth.
Fiction is to the propagandist something
other than a mere lie, it represents, even, a
profounder form of reality, an alternative
narrative which embodies the ideal state of
affairs sought. Since the truth of any situa-
tion is elusive even to the historians who
subsequently study it, fiction in fact becomes
a kind of sense-making device. Fiction then
is not untrue but another form of truth since
it illuminates the deepest anxieties of the
regime: their lies therefore need to be under-
stood as something more than lies; in fact,
they are the key to unlocking the belief sys-
tems and priorities of the government.
Invitation to shared fantasy. The perpetu-
ity of disinformation in history is because of
the willingness of its victims to be complicit
in their victimhood. We are making an offer
of affiliation, soliciting their agency in a col-
lective illusion where both creator and tar-
get, criminal and victim, are co-conspirators.
George W. Bush had convinced Americans
that the United States was pursuing war
against the right enemy in the right place.
Indeed, 42% of Americans thought Saddam
was personally responsible for 9/11; 55%
believed he gave direct support to Al Qaeda
 From Disinformation to Fake News: Forwards into the Past
(Dowd 2003). There was, is and never has
been the slightest thread of evidence, but
it was something people badly wanted to
believe. And so here is an example of disinfor-
mation which transcends the idea of disinfor-
mation, since, rather than only a calculating
lie, it is a fantasy of completion, and therefore
it becomes a kind of alternative truth.
And Trump’s fictions are a co-creation of
speaker and audience: ‘Mexico must pay for
the wall’ or ‘The concept of global warming
was created by and for the Chinese in order
to make US manufacturing non-competitive’
(Tweet, November 6 2012 at 8.15 p.m).
Disinformation is what people sincerely wish
to be true: moreover, since the false story
could over time become true, they may in a
sense think they are anticipating the news.
When Donald Trump made claims (February
18 2017) about a terror attack in Sweden, it
was seen as yet another instalment in the rhe-
torical career of history’s most famous liar; but
he later claimed vindication since there was a
riot in a migrant area two days after he said
there had been an ‘attack’ (Borchers 2018).
IMPACT OF DISINFORMATION
Can something so crude as disinformation
ever really be called effective? And when we
see the strings of the puppet, surely the
manipulation ceases to work, or does it? The
rise of science and universal education, and
the evolution of an empiricist culture, seem to
have had no effect on our credulous thirst for
disinformation. There were the claims,
widely believed among the US public, of an
alliance between Saddam Hussein and Osama
bin Laden, the ultimate nexus of evil.
Disinformation helps orchestrate events
today, that much is obvious from every news-
paper and every news bulletin. There is, for
example, Brexit, and the unresolved question
of covert Russian involvement. Disinformation
plays a critical role in elections and is there-
fore a toxic poison in democracy: but it also
67
affects even the search for scientific truth as
well as relations between the nations. And it
is an annex to war and potential cause of it.
Local impact of disinformation. A new
era represents a retreat from rationality and
the triumph of the irrational. Never since the
Third Reich has fantasy played such a role in
public affairs. False beliefs of all kinds, from
the global conspiracy against Islam that
fuels ISIS/Al Qaeda to the claims that 9/11
was authored by the CIA, even doubts
about the moon landing, fester and prosper.
Disinformation is a disruptive force at the
international but also at the national level.
False information communicated via social
media is inciting violence everywhere. For
example, Facebook has been used to foment
enmity through misinformation by populist
regimes in the Philippines (Duterte), Kenya
(Kenyatta) and India (Modi) (Vaidhyanathan
2018). But at the parish level, its effects can
be truly murderous, as India has found with
some recent incidents where WhatsApp-
enabled viral rumours about child snatchers
have precipitated lynchings of innocent trav-
ellers (Goel et al. 2018); WhatsApp has one-
quarter of a billion Indian users (Confessore
and Dance 2018).
CONCLUSION
Disinformation creeps under our cognitive
defences, it beguiles, eludes the evidentiary
demands that we would normally exact in a
different, non-leisure context. Thus, ‘there is
the role of the Internet as lie factory and
incubator of fabrication’ (Massing 2009). In
such a climate, irrational, irrationalising,
both credulous and incredulous, believing in
both nothing and everything, the arrival of
the ‘hollohoax’ is no surprise either: those
fitful but recurrent attempts (most disgrace-
fully through the midwifery of a genuine
historian, David Irving), to prove that the
Holocaust, the murder primarily by industrial
process of six million Jews, was a fiction.
68 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
The real value of disinformation is that it
provides a source of authority for the gov-
ernment, which is then self-projected as
the benevolent protector against subversive
threats. And no successful autocracy can sur-
vive in rude health without the occasional or
even permanent incorporation of disinforma-
tion into its propaganda: the enemy has to
be found, retained, built up into something
truly menacing. Regimes believe in the effi-
cacy of disinformation; it is a kind of foun-
dation principle of their republic. They seek
self-perpetuity, which is why they are amoral
in the defence of their power: they may not
shrink from murder, but disinformation is
part of their political technology and they will
never discard it. The enigma of disinforma-
tion is that it often serves its producer rather
than its intended consumer, both now and in
history; leaders, regimes, whole groups of
people believe their own lies. Hence in China
under Mao:
if the party leaders wish to make even the best
minds swear that black is white, it was because
they wanted to believe it themselves. Mao did not
wish to know about terminal disaster. Every season
had to produce a bumper harvest, every factory
ever higher production figures, and every scientific
experiment more extraordinary results, because
that is what he wanted to hear. (Spence 2005)
And sometimes in history, more often than
we perhaps realise, it is difficult to separate
truth from fiction. One should never, for
example, interfere with the founding myths
of a regime whether they happen to be false,
or true. A British officer, Reginald Teague-
Jones, was accused by the Bolsheviks of
ordering the White Russian massacre
(September 20, 1918) of the 26 Baku com-
missars who were the original martyrs for the
Soviet state (Minassin 2014). His denials did
not matter and Teague-Jones was forced into
hiding for the rest of his long life, dying one
year before the collapse of the Berlin Wall
(November 1989). The Soviet Union cele-
brated those glorious deaths in literature,
monument and art and they never forgot who
was ‘responsible’. The (complex) truth was
irrelevant.
But at the present moment, disinforma-
tion possesses a ubiquity and intensity that
even threaten the fabric of democracy: disin-
formation seems to saturate everything such
that nothing, no information source, remains
entirely credible. Deceit is a resource of
countries as well their private citizens, but
in seeking to deceive others, they also lie
to themselves so that information is tainted
at source and, consequently, policy is dys-
functional. Authority is challenged. Deluded
individuals affirm increasing faith in their
own expertise, whether medical, rejecting the
MMR vaccine for their children for example,
to pedagogical, replacing state schools with
their own home-schooling. The rise of indi-
vidualism is a fact of our time but disinfor-
mation incentivises it.
It is possible to be overly pessimistic
and perhaps this destructive phenomenon is
merely evanescent. It may be that we have
simply experienced a mighty era of disin-
formation, perhaps the greatest in history.
In time to come – perhaps – this malignant
methodology will be much weakened by a
more sceptical public and a greater alacrity
of exposure.
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Post-Truth and the Changing
Information Environment
INTRODUCTION
Post-truth is perhaps best described as a
manifestation of ‘a qualitatively new dishon-
esty on the part of politicians’ who, instead
of being merely economical with the truth,
‘appear to make up facts to suit their narra-
tives’ (Mair 2017: 3), leading to ‘the dimin-
ishing importance of anchoring political
utterances in relation to verifiable facts’
(Hopkin and Rosamond 2017: 1–2). Hence,
post-truth is qualitatively new in the sense
that facts are not simply twisted or omitted to
obfuscate reality but, instead, new realities
are discursively created to serve a political
message. Consequently, the traditional stand-
ard of truthfulness – anchoring utterances to
verifiable facts – has lost its importance: the
very distinction between factual truth and
falsehood has become irrelevant (see also
Kalpokas 2019). In this sense, it is wrong to
claim that ‘post-truth is when one thinks that
the crowd’s reaction actually does change the
facts about a lie’ (McIntyre 2018: 9) since
5
Ignas Kalpokas
nobody (even, arguably, the propagators of
post-truth narratives themselves) expects the
facts to change – what matters is only public
preference for one set of facts over another.
Crucially, since factual correctness has
become unimportant (thus also making the
term ‘lie’ counter-productive), there is no
need for the facts to change.
As correctly noted by Holmstrom (2015:
124), ‘[t]ruth, as in a fact or piece of informa-
tion, has no intrinsic value’. Instead, the value
of a truth-claim is discursively created through
a story that captivates the target audience. In
this situation, one might reasonably claim that
‘truth is simply a matter of assertion’ (Suiter
2016: 27); however, that assertion must be
effective (people have to start believing in
the assertion). Indeed, it is this effectiveness
of assertion that has become the key indica-
tor and measure of truthfulness. In order to
demonstrate how the shift towards post-truth
has happened, this chapter opens with the dis-
cussion of mediatisation and a shift from the
Information Age, ushered by the advent of the
72 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Internet, to the Experience age, brought about
by ubiquitous socialised connectivity and the
associated an overflow of information and
data. Following that, the key psychological,
technological, and political aspects of post-
truth will be elucidated to get a multifaceted
picture of the present condition.
MEDIATISATION AND AFFECT
It is already becoming something of a truism
that today ‘the social world is not just medi-
ated – it is mediatized’ or, in other words,
‘changed in its dynamics and structure by the
role that media continuously […] play in its
construction’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 15).
In the broadest sense, mediatisation refers to
the media coming not only to constitute an
integral part of the operations of other institu-
tions but also to subject those institutions to
the media’s own logic (Hjarvard 2008: 106;
see also Strömbäck and Van Aelst 2013: 342).
To that effect, ‘mediatization implies a pro-
cess through which core elements of a social
or cultural activity (like work, leisure, play
etc.) assume media form’ (Hjarvard 2014:
48). Crucially, the ‘media’ of mediatisation
have to be taken broadly because our experi-
ence of the lived environment is also made
increasingly dependent on search engines,
algorithms, and databases and their respective
functions of retrieval, ranking, and organisa-
tion/storage (Andersen 2018). In other words,
our ability to obtain and process information
about a relevant aspect of the environment is
progressively dependent not only on the
straightforward supply of information (as in
news media, social media etc.) but also on the
ease of searching and retrieving that informa-
tion which is itself determined by the algo-
rithmic ranking of potential results (and the
criteria that have been built into such algo-
rithms) while the material basis of this world
seems to be located in the organised storage
of databases that, in effect, determine what is
to be known about the world as a grand total.
Society as a whole (and not just disparate
spheres) is increasingly becoming mediatised,
namely, submitted to media logic, particularly
to the media constituting ‘a realm of shared
experience’, that is, ‘a continuous presenta-
tion and interpretation of “the way things
are”’ (Hjarvard 2008: 126), thereby helping
individuals build communal identities while
simultaneously allowing for greater control
over friendships and information exchanges
through the ability to intentionally stage and
articulate their interactions (Hjarvard 2008:
123–126). But perhaps even more funda-
mentally, the self has been mediatised as
well. This development manifests itself on at
least two distinct levels: digital personality
(re)construction and mediatisation of commu-
nication. As for the former, the capacity to iden-
tify, sort, and label individuals in accordance
with their likes, clicks, and connections enables
‘the construction of […] digital doubles or dop-
pelgangers’, thereby creating ‘unprecedented
opportunities to reach into the most intimate
corners of everyday life and direct attention and
action’ (Murdock 2017: 131). The existence of
such datafied doppelgangers allows personal-
ised tailoring of both services and information
in order to maximise consumer experience
and satisfaction. The second level, meanwhile,
arises from the ubiquity and personalisation of
media use, as manifested by near-permanent
immersion in smartphones and other devices
(Miller 2014). Consequently, not only our rela-
tionship with the environment becomes increas-
ingly indirect, happening through media-rich
devices, but also interpersonal communication
and interaction get the same treatment, becom-
ing, among other things, disentangled from the
constraints of time, space, and physical condi-
tions. Instead of direct communication, one
resorts to rather nebulous interaction between
digital doppelgangers. Such interactions are
often non-dialogical and can easily be devoid
of a verbal element (as in e.g. liking or sharing
somebody’s social media post).
In the above context, community-building
must rely on ‘mediated feelings of connected-
ness’ (Papacharissi 2016) and online ‘flows
 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment
of affect’ (Döveling et al. 2018). The latter
is of utmost importance, being ‘something
people engage in, a practice of relational
nature’ (Döveling et  al. 2018: 2) and
thereby providing a glue that bonds com-
munities together through ‘flows of affect’
(Giaxoglou and Döveling 2018). Notably,
not all of such communities are strictly inten-
tional – they can be automatically created
through algorithmic sorting of profiles in
accordance with the digital traces that each
person leaves through their online behav-
iour (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 168). No less
importantly, the presence of dominant affec-
tive flows provides a normative and ordering
input, setting some emotions as default at the
expense of others (Döveling et al. 2018: 2)
and thereby according dominant position
to certain ideas, stories, and interpreta-
tions. Nevertheless, such prioritisation hap-
pens precisely on an affective basis and not
courtesy of factual reality. That, as will be
shown in the sections that follow, is one of
the enabling factors of post-truth. Moreover,
this relegation of factual reality has direct
implications for actors who rely on pub-
lic approval, such as politicians who have
to partake in and source their agenda from
mediatised affective flows (see Mazzoleni
2017: 142). In terms of communication,
therefore, induction of the necessary affect,
instead of strict facticity, becomes the main
value factor of an utterance. Likewise, stra-
tegically inducing ritualised collective out-
bursts of shared affect to unite supporters
both online and offline, such as the ‘Lock
her up’ chants and hashtag ubiquitous in
the 2016 Trump campaign, becomes crucial
in mobilising and retaining the electorate –
much more so than the actual substance (or
lack thereof) underpinning the affect.
THE EXPERIENCE AGE
Another major premise of post-truth (and
one deeply intertwined with mediatisation) is
73
the passing from the Information Age to the
Experience Age (for a general discussion,
see Kalpokas 2019). The change itself is
relatively straightforward: while the
Information Age (still the buzzword for
many) was ushered in by the advent of the
Internet, offering seemingly unlimited
amounts of information at anybody’s finger-
tips, the Experience Age is a means of deal-
ing with a predictable side-effect: information
overload. Indeed, today’s media environment
is characterised by abundance, interactivity,
and mobility (Mazzoleni 2017: 140–141),
creating a need to ‘drastically select from the
environment […] to make it more managea-
ble’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 113). The
latter necessity is further amplified by the
incessant nature of interaction with the
media, caused by ‘the push towards constant
connectivity and 24/7 living’ (Couldry and
Hepp 2017: 108). In fact, a key problem is
that not only we now face a lack of time in
reacting to information and/or utterances
directed at us but also, and perhaps even
more importantly, we do not have the time to
interpret and make sense of them (Couldry
and Hepp 2017: 114). And if everything is
happening and changing quickly, why waste
time verifying and thinking – emotional con-
nection acts as an effective substitute. In this
new environment, what matters is a momen-
tary experiential ‘click’ that either does or
does not happen as we are skimming through
all the different options competing for our
attention. And those options include a broad
range of media, from reputable news web-
sites to conspiracy theory websites to mes-
saging and gaming apps. An option simply
has to offer greater consumer satisfaction
than any competitor. That is the reason
behind, among other things, the emphasis on
parties, movements, politicians, and ideas
being new, fresh, bold, and breaking the
mould, such as in as was the case with, for
example, France’s Emmanuel Macron,
Austria’s Sebastian Kurtz, or new political
forces in Spain (first Podemos and then, on
the opposite side of the spectrum, Vox).
74 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
We are, essentially, entering a pleasure
economy in which the main object of com-
petition is attention and the key resource is
data. The intense competition over informa-
tion arises from the density of today’s media
landscape and is reinforced by the dominance
of ‘entertainment, popular culture, consump-
tion, and massive amounts of information’
(Dahlgren and Alvares 2013: 54). Moreover,
since the media of today ‘offer intense expe-
riential immersions with strong affective
valences’ (Dahlgren and Alvares 2013: 54),
it should come as no surprise that consumers
of the media’s offering expect simply being
entertained by and engaged with content in
a pleasurably experiential way (Newman
2016). In this context of ample attractions
and distractions and competing valences, the
pinnacle of power becomes attracting, man-
aging, and retaining attention as such (Harsin
2015: 332). Indeed, our attention is a scarce
resource that cannot be dedicated to every-
thing and anything simultaneously; however,
since audience attention generates revenue, it
has become an object of fierce competition
in which content related to news and public
affairs is merely one of many options at hand
(Stroud 2017: 479), again having to strive to
outperform competition in terms of generat-
ing pleasurable experiences.
Customer experience is now the key driver
and generator of value, meaning that the cus-
tomer must be at the centre of the offering not
only in terms of product design but also in
terms of purchase and consumption experi-
ence, which must be as unchallenging, com-
fortable, and pleasurable as possible and feel
seamless and tailored. It is an expectation
familiar to almost any consumer of today.
After all, we can get the product anyway (at
least in economically advanced societies), so
we buy experience. Hence, with consumer
experience having become ‘a key competi-
tive differentiator’, necessitating the feeling
of being ‘uniquely understood and important’
(Wladawsky-Berger 2018), the Experience
Age can also be called the ‘me age’ as com-
petitive advantage typically belongs to the
kind of content that ‘makes the consumer a
star’ (Newman 2016). Aiming to create the
most pleasurable experiences possible, the
sellers (of goods, services, information, or
ideas) tend to submit themselves to the cen-
trality of the customer’s ‘me’, striving to
ensure that every consumer of their offering
receives the highest degree of personal(ised)
satisfaction (with the processes of acquisition,
consumption, and post-consumption – i.e. the
feel-good factor about having consumed) as
possible. To do that, acquisition (collection or
purchase) and interpretation of huge amounts
of data is key – one must know what the con-
sumer is like, what they think, wish, expect,
and desire in order to satisfy such demands
that may, even at the time of satisfaction, still
be merely subconscious. That, in turn, leads
to further growth of consumer expectation of
‘me’-centric satisfaction with whatever they
are engaging in, including consumption of
news content.
Moreover, emotions and experiences are
themselves crucial driving factors of human
action. As d’Ancona (2017: 31) rather dra-
matically puts it, ‘emotion is reclaiming its
primacy and truth is in retreat’. Nevertheless,
that should not come as a surprise. After all,
‘[i]t is the behavioural impulses generated
by emotions that give or deny humans the
energy to act on their perceptions’ (Markwica
2018: 87), which in itself is natural given that
affects, emotions, and other subconscious
processes appear to make up around 98 per
cent of brain activities (see e.g. Franks 2014).
Hence, even when engaging in a debate (on
political or any other topics) and striving to
prove something, one must also keep in mind
what counts as proof in the eyes of the tar-
get audience – and that is usually emotion.
Likewise, as already stressed with regards to
mediatisation, in group formation and crea-
tion of following (which are, of course, of
utmost importance in politics), ‘emotional
resonance acts like a conduit bringing people
together’, turning emotion into ‘a relational
resource used for alignment’ (Döveling et al.
2018: 4). And that emotional-experiential
 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment
aligning only further consolidates the present
condition as the Experience Age, making it
reasonable and logical to structure (politi-
cal or other) programmes around emotions.
Likewise, emotional alignment and personal
experience, in a characteristic me-centric
fashion, is becoming the key criterion for
truthfulness, as characterised perhaps most
(in)famously by Michael Gove, one of the
figureheads of the Brexiteers: ‘People in
this country have had enough of experts’
(YouTube 2016). In this line of thinking,
expert knowledge is elitist and out of touch,
whereas the allegedly more authentic experi-
ence and gut feeling of the people is taken to
be the proper representation of reality. Same
applies to Rudy Giuliani’s much-derided quip
that ‘truth isn’t truth’ (NBC News 2018) – in
a post-truth environment, truth indeed only
acquires its truth status if it is experienced
and felt as truth (same applies to statements
that have no relationship with verifiable facts
whatsoever).
INFORMATION (SELF-)TAILORING
Changes to the way we access information
are also of crucial importance. As people rely
on social media for accessing information,
what they see is determined by their friends’
sharing patterns and algorithmic judgement
based on their own previous activities, lead-
ing to the formation of filter bubbles (see e.g.
Mair 2017: 3). In other words, we are under
dual constraints: first, our social media feeds
are bombarded with content that our friends
have interacted with, and the more homoge-
nous our friend circle is, the more one-sided
the information feed will be; and second,
since the display of content is based on algo-
rithmic judgement of what we like, the actual
scope of vision is further narrowed down to
prioritise content which is deemed to give us
the pleasure of opinion confirmation (or be
‘relevant’ in corporate-speak) at the expense
of the few dissenting voices. And it seems
75
that such homophily of contacts is a rule
rather than an exception – we are drawn to
connect and interact based on perceived
similarity of attributes, thereby giving rise to
similarity of opinions and a need of cognitive
closure (Song and Xu 2018).
Of course, the social media filter bubble is
quite likely a mere extension of the offline
one as most people generally tend to immerse
themselves in an environment that is congru-
ent with what they hold dear; nevertheless, the
crucial difference online is ‘the intensity and
richness of technologically mediated social
relationships through which information
trickles’, that is, it is one of scale (Laybats
and Tredinnick 2016: 204). Moreover, not
only we can choose which friends we want
to interact with and which ones to ignore
(by filtering our online contacts) but also,
as more and more activities – from shop-
ping to government services to work – can
be conducted online and do not necessitate
leaving home, we can afford to minimise
even the possibility of chance encounters,
closing ourselves within our comfort zones.
Once that is the case, it becomes extremely
likely that unless we consciously seek infor-
mation (about politics or any other sphere),
we get dragged by the opinions and content
shares of our friends. And since the ubiquity
of news appears to be leading to a news-
finds-me approach whereby the intention to
purposefully seek information is replaced by
the expectation that general media use suf-
fices because any important information will
be encountered anyway (Gil de Zúñiga et al.
2017), the reliance on key nodes within our
networks for information cues is only going
to grow, decreasing competition between
available truth-claims.
The filter bubble further reinforces a psy-
chological aptitude known as confirmation
bias, meaning that we are likely to priori-
tise information similar to what we already
believe instead of challenging our beliefs
(see e.g. Mair 2017). As a result, ‘opinion-
congruent information is rapidly and invol-
untarily associated with truthfulness’ and
76 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
vice versa (Gilead et  al. 2018: 7; see also
Ball 2017: 179). This is the aptitude that
algorithmic ranking of content taps into: as
we derive pleasure from getting our opin-
ions confirmed, feeding us with such content
makes perfect business sense, increasing con-
sumer satisfaction and enticing us to spend
more time on the platform, leading to higher
advertising revenue. However, the nature
of information access on social media (and
online more broadly) also gives more agency
to individuals to actively seek information:
instead of being forced to consume several
catch-all outlets, as was the case with tradi-
tional media, we are now capable of sourc-
ing our information from outlets that tend to
agree with our opinion (and the democratisa-
tion of information supply, brought about by
the Internet, means that there are now outlets
catering for even the most obscure tastes),
while, in a clear display of me-centric behav-
iour, ignoring everything else. Indeed, confir-
mation bias does not involve merely passive
acceptance or discarding: we are inclined to
actively look for information that sustains
our opinions (Ball 2017: 180). Hence, in the
post-truth era, individuals are empowered to
select and immerse themselves in a reality of
their own choice, ultimately reinforcing the
trend that ‘facts and objective evidence are
trumped by existing beliefs and prejudices’;
in this context, not only ‘it becomes permis-
sible to believe whatever one wants’ but also
‘beliefs become harder to change because
contrary evidence fails to find traction’
(Lewandowsky et  al. 2017: 361–362). The
preceding clearly shows the me-centricity of
putting oneself and one’s own opinions forth
as the benchmark of veracity. Likewise, it is
not at all surprising that corrections issued by
fact-checkers are of very limited effective-
ness: people tend to continue holding their
beliefs despite being exposed to corrections;
in fact, sometimes belief in misinformation
might even increase, particularly when it
relates to deeply held beliefs (Lewandowsky
et al. 2017: 355; McIntyre 2018: 48). That is
easy to understand – if individuals feel like
their pleasure in the ‘me’ is threatened, they
leap to its defence.
The above manifestation of me-centricity
is, clearly, technologically enabled. In this
case, the enabling factor has been the rise
of the new media and the ensuing decline
in importance of traditional journalistic
practices and institutional news supply
more broadly; in the face of such weakness
of traditional media behemoths, the entire
information ecosystem becomes fragmented
(and virtually non-curated) and as a result
‘segments of the population are exposed
to different facts, different spectra of opin-
ion and different ideas about the legitimate
boundaries of political discourse’ (Hallin
2018: 8). This change allows for accounts
and counter-accounts of trends, events,
or phenomena to be circulated and pitted
against one another, turning society into ‘a
continually evolving assemblage mixing
diverse accounts’ that are themselves sub-
sequently ‘remixed, circulated, and repro-
duced’, ultimately leading to a condition in
which ‘[t]he dualisms of true/false, virtual/
real, or authentic/fabricated […] are being
questioned and boundaries between these
become blurred’ (Döveling et  al. 2018: 3).
Likewise, whereas in the traditional media
environment verifiability and source author-
ity carried substantive weight, in the current
condition, attention is more readily appor-
tioned in accordance with popularity indi-
cators, such as likes, comments, and shares
(Stroud 2017: 482), once again implying
the importance of immediate pre-cognitive
‘click’. In this context, political struggles
easily blend with not only highly partisan
thinking but also various shades of conspir-
acy theories, from ‘Pizzagate’ of the 2016
US presidential elections (the fake news
story that the Clintons and their associates
ran a paedophile ring from a Washington
DC pizzeria) to the Hungarian government’s
obsession with the financier George Soros
and his alleged plots to foster immigration
and otherwise destroy Hungarian cultural
identity (see e.g. Rankin 2019).
 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment
MAXIMISING AUDIENCE
SATISFACTION
Misinformation tends to be more effective in
reaching and convincing target audiences partly
due to its novelty effect that attracts human
attention and motivates one to demonstrate
being ‘in the know’ and partly because it is
specifically designed to satisfy our desires and
needs (Ball 2017: 242; Vosoughi et al. 2018). In
that case, convincing audiences might well be
unnecessary: one would merely need to frame
pre-existing convictions in a way that serves the
communicating actor’s interests while simulta-
neously reaffirming them. In other words, post-
truth political actors embrace as their strategy
‘openly tailoring a pitch to a selected segment
of the population by entertaining its members
with fantasies or myths that have a particular
appeal to them’ (Davis 2017: 115). In this situ-
ation, it does not matter whether a post-truth
politician adheres to the facts or not; ‘it does,
however, matter that he conveys adherence to
your values’ (Davis 2017: 117). And for that
adherence to take place, one needs to make use
of enormous amounts of data about target pop-
ulations. Obtaining such data is not particularly
difficult: we already live in a world character-
ised by superabundance of information, col-
lected through the use of ever-more devices
(Libicki 2017: 51) and courtesy of our own
track record of media use. Such data can be
easily obtained on a commercial basis and sub-
sequently employed to determine an audience’s
preconceptions, stereotypes, fears, wishes, and
so on, in order to construct a truth-claim that
can in advance be trusted to ‘stick’. Moreover,
since post-truth-claims are unconstrained by
verifiable facts, they can be tweaked as and
when necessary in response to audience senti-
ment analysis, giving them competitive advan-
tage in maximising customer satisfaction in
comparison with more fact-bound assertions
(see, generally, Kalpokas 2019).
As already implied previously, the logic of
maximising consumer satisfaction through
playing along with the confirmation bias
77
of target audiences is embraced by politi-
cal and other actors who benefit from the
‘strategic extremism’ of their own positions
(Lewandowsky et al. 2017: 359–360). Hence,
what matters while uttering a statement is not
whether it is factually correct but whether the
audience would like it to be correct (Lockie
2016), particularly if more accurate utter-
ances would be less palatable. Consequently,
it pays off to maximise consumer satisfaction
through embracing our tendency to engage
in motivated reasoning, whereby our hopes
and wishes for something to be correct affect
our cognition of what is correct, making us
adjust reality-perceptions to feelings rather
than vice versa (McIntyre 2018: 45). In other
words, seeing is not believing – feeling is.
And even if part of the target audience has at
least a suspicion that the statements uttered
are not strictly factual, such statements are
likely to still hold true for them on an alter-
native – emotional – level; so as long as the
audience likes the utterances in question, the
issue of relation to facts remains marginal
(Horsthemke 2017: 276). Here the notion of
satisfaction also merits further clarification:
it is not necessary for the message itself to
be pleasurable – it only needs to confirm pre-
existing convictions. Pizzagate can serve as
an example again: there is certainly nothing
pleasurable in imagining that children are
sexually abused by leading politicians or
anybody else. Nevertheless, satisfaction is
derived here from the fact that the story offers
confirmation of deeply held beliefs about the
wickedness of elites and provides justifica-
tion for one’s lack of trust in the political
system. Hence, it is the satisfaction of confir-
mation that one has always been right, and if
the facts do not necessarily stack up, they can
be ignored by both senders and, even more
importantly, the recipients of the message in
exchange for that satisfaction.
Submission to confirmation bias to the
extent that even suspected or known non-
veracity is subservient to the pleasure of
opinion confirmation is yet another manifes-
tation of the me-centricity of the Experience
78 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Age: once again, consumer satisfaction vali-
dates a version of reality. That, in turn, leads
to politicians adopting signalling behaviour
to appeal to both true believers and those
more hedonistically inclined. While the true
believers are likely to accept a truth-claim
simply because it confirms and validates their
opinions, stereotypes, and preconceptions,
the hedonists expect a signal that pinpoints to
them where the greatest pleasure is located.
The latter would still embrace a political
actor’s platform because it conforms to their
opinions, stereotypes, and preconceptions,
but perhaps without taking at least some of
the claims, particularly the more egregious
ones, literally: for example, while they may
not embrace, word for word, a candidate’s
claim that all illegal immigrants are rapists,
drug dealers, and otherwise criminals, such
an allegation would still make emotional
sense and be a cause of pleasure as a confir-
mation of a more generalised dislike for ille-
gal (or any) immigrants and/or the feeling of
being threatened by those who are different.
Hence, even when not taken literally, such
claims send a clear signal that the communi-
cator is on ‘our’ side and is ready to please.
And the more egregious the claim, the more
unmissable the signal is. As Davis (2017:
85) observes, ‘sometimes, what you think
is bullshit is actually a costly signal deliver-
ing useful information’. In other words, such
statements simply operate on a different reg-
ister of sense.
COLLECTIVELY AFFORDING
POST-TRUTH
It is also worth noting that once a truth-claim
penetrates our filter bubble, online or offline
(although, as d’Ancona [2017: 49] correctly
notes, this ‘huddling’ effect is particularly
strong online), it is likely to be picked up by
numerous friends sharing similar opinions
and, therefore, embracing the truth-claim,
causing the echo chamber effect, whereby we
are bombarded with the same information
echoing from multiple directions (because
multiple friends are interacting with it),
giving the (most likely false) impression that
everybody is talking about it and unani-
mously expressing their approval, thereby
implying that one ought to believe in that
truth-claim as well. This herd instinct is also
subtly reinforced on social media through
expansive opportunities for gratification:
individuals get locked into an ‘affective feed-
back loop’ that offers ‘a potentially infinite
cycle of inputs/outputs, expressions/rewards’:
we demonstrate our allegiance to the group
by positively interacting with our peers’ con-
tent or uploading contextually appropriate
content ourselves only to be immediately
gratified with positive response or, if such
response is lacking, we are at pains to per-
form better as soon as possible, thus motivat-
ing ourselves to conform with the group
(Boler and Davis 2018: 83–84). There is even
evidence that, to reduce cognitive dissonance,
we are capable even of convincing ourselves
that what the majority claims to be true actu-
ally is true, even if that contradicts our own
observations (McIntyre 2018: 39). Moreover,
once convinced, ‘people tend to persist in
beliefs that they believe to be widely shared’,
regardless of whether they actually are shared
or not, the latter belief being easily sustained
within an echo chamber (Lewandowsky et al.
2017: 362; see also McIntyre 2018: 38).
The incapacity to adequately consider
all new information is not an aberration –
instead, it seems to be a natural condition.
The human mind has not evolved to be an
encyclopaedia that contains all the necessary
information; instead, it specialises in being ‘a
flexible problem solver’ that does not over-
burden itself with information but extracts
what is most useful in particular situations
(Sloman and Fernbach 2017: 5). For that,
humans need to only understand the appar-
ent causes, implying that ‘ignorance is inevi-
table’ (Sloman and Fernbach 2017: 12, 257).
As today’s world is even more complex than
ever before and competition over attention is
 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment
fiercer than at any time in the past, the neces-
sity of being selective in the acquisition of
information is even more pressing. Therefore,
it is not at all surprising that truth becomes
functional, that is, one has to quickly decide
what best serves the necessity to adapt to and
survive in one’s immediate environment. In
other words, truth is what immediately works.
Hence, although knowing the truth might be
seen as an advantage that contributes to sur-
vival, as McIntyre (2018: 55) suggests, in
fact, what matters for survival is what works,
not necessarily what is, and if we can survive
long enough on what works (and, as an addi-
tional benefit, gives us pleasure), then Truth-
with-a-capital-T can be ignored reasonably
safely. It also transpires that humans have
survived believing in various sets of verifi-
ably untrue ideas at least since as far back
as the earliest known cultural artefacts date.
Moreover, in today’s developed societies,
survival and at least some basic necessities
are largely taken for granted, meaning that
there is simply more adaptive leeway avail-
able: one is capable of surviving even while
thinking on false premises. If, for example,
in a hunter-gatherer society thinking that a
predator is harmless (because one cannot be
bothered to fight it off or run away) would
not be a successful adaptive strategy, today
holding factually incorrect views is much less
likely to cause an existential threat (except for
some very extreme false views). Even more
so, given the mediatisation of social relation-
ships and of the self, most premises of human
action (and interaction) have become fluid
and open to interpretation as well as delib-
erate construction. Keeping that in mind, it
would be more surprising if proliferation of
competing truth-claims and disentanglement
of utterances from facts had not happened.
AFFILIATION AND AFFECT
The condition described above naturally
leads us to ‘a polarizing war of facts’ (Lockie
79
2016: 235), in which not factual evidence
and logical reasoning but ‘popularity and
tribal affinity’ have become paramount in
embracing or rejecting a truth-claim (Hannan
2018: 224; see also Horsthemke 2017: 275).
Indeed, as stressed by Gilead et al. (2018: 7),
while the capacity to draw a distinction
between factual truth and mere opinion is
key to proper deliberation, it is also evident
that as far as human psychology is con-
cerned, this distinction is rather murky.
Hence, due to the availability of always yet
another ‘alternative’ set of facts, communi-
ties can easily split themselves apart through
belief in affiliative truths that are ‘affective
and social in creating communities of both
supporters and protesters’ (McGranahan
2017: 243). Such truths tend to be value and
virtue-laden, capable of inciting a sense of
righteousness among supporters, thereby
leading to ‘emotional contagion’ (Brady
et al. 2017). For their supporters, such truths
are also aspirational, presenting a better pic-
ture of themselves or of the future than the
one which would be possible if relying on
verifiable facts (McGranahan 2017: 246).
The resulting affective investment in one’s
favourite version of reality also goes counter
to some of the simplistic attempts to reduce
post-truth into a kind of relativist quasi-
postmodern condition, characterised by ‘a
challenge […] to the existence of reality
itself’ (McIntyre 2018: 10). In fact, the exist-
ence of reality as such is not denied – instead,
something that is taken for reality is believed
in and vehemently defended. While from a
panoramic societal perspective Truth-with-a-
capital-T is made irrelevant through the pro-
liferation of multiple believed realities, each
one of them has not lost its reality status for
its adherents. Even (and, perhaps, especially)
in situations where both sides are engaged in
mutual derogation with the effect of a dizzy-
ing destabilisation of meaning (such as
Trump’s and his opponent’s ceaseless mutual
accusations of spreading ‘fake news’), the
emotional component of belief becomes of
utmost importance (see, generally, Farkas
80 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and Schou 2018). Indeed, if there are no
stable points of reference and nothing makes
any factual sense, the argument that gives
utter visceral identification and sense
becomes even more valuable, acting as a
buoy in the unpredictable stormy waters.
Moreover, reliance on emotion while
conveying a message seems to also give an
efficiency boost as emotional response tends
to be quicker than a reasoned one (Davis
2017: 135). Notably, emotion in itself can be
read as meaningful social information that
immediately conveys prevalent and imitable
attitudes that are to be observed, inducing
‘affective reactions and/or cognitive infer-
ences’ and thereby enabling fast social coor-
dination (Song and Xu 2018: 6). Affective
investment in a truth-claim is further encour-
aged by communicators through their use of
emotional cues in order to attract attention to
and prolong engagement (Suiter 2016: 27). In
a situation where the facticity of truth-claims
has become subservient to their effective-
ness, grounding one’s claims in shared emo-
tions instead of facts is not a disadvantage or
a deficiency any more: on the contrary, and
characteristically to the Experience Age,
‘getting people to share and engage with
content is vital’ while ‘[e]motional connec-
tion is often critical to making this happen’
(Suiter 2016: 27). After all, popularity has
now become a truth arbiter with a power
that appears to have become superior to
logic, proof, and impersonal fact, possess-
ing a persuasive supremacy in a discursive
economy that runs on attention attracted by
content (Hannan 2018: 220). An illustration
of the trend is the rapidly growing popular-
ity and mainstream acceptance of trolling:
once confined to the darker corners of online
fora, it can now ‘rightly be said to be the
new normal’; moreover, whereas the original
trolls, due to their subversive (and often per-
verse) behaviour have tended to embrace the
Internet’s anonymity, it is currently no longer
the case: trolling has become a skill con-
sciously honed by public figures, including
top politicians (Hannan 2018: 220), making
trolling ‘a media spectacle’ and ‘a new genre
of political speech’, so ubiquitous that ‘new
norms and expectations have quickly devel-
oped around it’ (Hannan 2018: 220). And
that is merely one further consequence of
reasoned argumentation giving way to expe-
rience and immediate consumer satisfaction.
CONSTRUCTING A NARRATIVE
Finally, it must be noted that post-truth-claims
do not come as mere agglomerations of facts
and data; instead, they come as narratives that
generate meaning. That, again, taps into
human psychology where narratives serve as
‘a device […] to slot information into a mean-
ingful form’ (Davis 2017: 138). Since post-
truth is not constrained by the necessity to
adhere to verifiable facts, it can be easily
weaved into a narrative that provides quick,
easily accessible, and palatable explanations
of the surrounding world. That is a key com-
petitive advantage against more factually cor-
rect assertions that need to follow empirical
facts which are often non-pleasure maximis-
ing or frustratingly inconclusive and difficult
to understand. Nevertheless, as known from
strategic communications literature, people
need a narrative because it ‘provides explana-
tions’, that is, it ‘describes the past, justifies
the present, and presents a vision of the
future’ (Holmstrom 2015: 120). In other
words, there is a good reason why ‘most of us
find anecdotes more convincing than statis-
tics’ (Ball 2017: 179): the former tells us
something meaningful about the world by
storying select aspects of it. Of course, some
kind of evidence is necessary but when one is
presented with a coherent narrative that liter-
ally makes sense, such a narrative itself
becomes evidence, or self-evidence (Baron
2018: 196). An apt example here could be the
claim that Britain pays 350 million pounds a
week to the EU. Although unfounded, it
quickly found resonance with those con-
cerned with the regulatory and financial
 Post-Truth and the Changing Information Environment
burden of EU membership or simply seeking
to rationalise their Euroscepticism.
Any narratives, however, must be specifi-
cally tailored for the Experience Age, namely,
be catchy, consumer-oriented, and provoking
affective investment. As Hannan (2018: 220)
insightfully notes, in the present communi-
cation environment ‘[l]engthy, detailed dis-
quisitions’ are ineffective, thereby according
competitive advantage to post-truth-claims
that are governed by creative, rather than rep-
resentational, values and are, consequently,
capable of answering ‘the need for simplicity
and emotional resonance’ and giving ‘vis-
ceral meaning’ to the object that is being nar-
rated (d’Ancona 2017: 17). Seeking a quicker
and more satisfying emotional ‘click’, audi-
ences are more than likely to skip suspi-
ciously lengthy well-reasoned arguments in
favour of ‘an instant gratification of feeling
as knowing’ (Harsin 2017: 517). Indeed, it
can be confidently claimed that ‘what mat-
ters to win a referendum or an election is
not evidence (i.e. facts) but meaning’ (Baron
2018: 73). Information, in its pure form, tells
very little, if anything – it is sense and pur-
pose that move people to action instead. In a
similar way, politicians, taken at face value,
are not exciting enough to elicit attention. As
a result, conveying a personal image – that
is, narrating the self (as opposed to, say, an
electoral manifesto) through affect-inducing
personal imagery that imbues the politician’s
face with meaning and facilitates connection
on a personal-emotional basis is becoming an
ever-more prominent communication strat-
egy, observed in the United States already
with Obama but also in seemingly unlikely
countries, such as Sweden (Metz et al. 2019).
Notably, what both fact-checkers and less
post-truth-savvy communicators misunder-
stand in this context is that ‘[m]ore and more
pure information or facts only muddles our
understanding of the world’, increasing the
desire for clear-cut stories which ‘provide them
with relevant information, talking points, and
an explanation of how the topic in question fits
into their worldview’ (Holmstrom 2015: 121),
81
almost unavoidably meaning preference for
post-truth narratives. And once a narrative cap-
tivates the target audience, it ‘crystallizes what
were just vague inclinations into solid ideas
or “truths”’, thereby ‘reinforcing opinions,
hardening prevailing stereotypes and creating
automatic reflexes’ (Holmstrom 2015: 123). In
other words, the narrative becomes true through
its own effects. Another distinct advantage of
post-truth narratives is their stability. While
experts are far from infallible and ‘have been
wrong on a number of very significant things’,
thereby being forced to revise their accounts
of the world in major ways (Baggini 2017:
38–39), post-truth is shielded from changes in
the availability of facts. Hence, paradoxically,
it is truth that is malleable and changing in the
wake of new evidence, while post-truth can
afford to remain stable (as long as it is popular)
because it does not need evidence or any other
support, except its own popularity. This reas-
suring stability, of course, only adds to post-
truth’s appeal. In the end, as Davis (2017: 40)
concedes, arguing with post-truth politicians
and their supporters on a factual basis is futile
– had they thought that facts were important,
they would have checked them up themselves.
And if they have not, then it must be the feeling
of the narrative that matters.
CONCLUSION
To wrap up, post-truth is taken to refer to a
general condition of detachment of truth-
claims from verifiable facts and the primacy
of criteria other than verifiability in the audi-
ences’ decision to affiliate themselves with a
truth-claim. Such claims are pitched to audi-
ences as narrative fictions that constitute their
own lived realities and explain the world. By
being aspirational, these narratives also
empower their adherents. In an environment
where getting audience attention is crucial,
the effectiveness in asserting a truth-claim in
itself becomes the key criterion of truth.
Essentially, something becomes true because
82 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
people would like it to be true while rejecting
alternatives that do not confirm pre-existing
opinions. In this context, polarising affiliative
content enables the communicators to break
through the clutter that has filled today’s
information landscape. On the side of the
audience, meanwhile, ‘online huddling’ of
the similar and the ensuing filter bubbles are
particularly effective in making the audi-
ences convince themselves of the valency of
the message. Even if such self-convincing
does not take place fully, at least one can
choose a narrative that makes them feel good.
Hence, it is possible to conceive of a truth
market where the most attractive (enjoyment-
maximising) proposition lures in the most
customers. Moreover, the propositions them-
selves are not made randomly but, rather, are
informed by extensive knowledge of the
target audience, in particular – of its feelings,
tastes, anxieties, preconceptions, and stereo-
types, thereby maximising the likelihood of
collusive audience participation.
It should by now be clear that post-truth
must be taken seriously, not as a mere aberra-
tion. Hence, instead of self-righteously reject-
ing post-truth as ‘deplorable’ (McIntyre 2018:
9; see, similarly, also Baggini 2017, Ball 2017,
or d’Ancona 2017), we have to devise strate-
gies for living with it because simply denigrat-
ing it will not make it go away. As emphatically
stated by Lewandowsky et al. (2017: 356), post-
truth ‘is not a blemish on the mirror’ – instead,
‘the mirror is a window into an alternative real-
ity’. Being rooted in the current technological
and societal context that has amplified hard-
wired aptitudes of human psychology, it can be
said to describe an increasingly prevalent mode
of relating to one’s social and political envi-
ronment, cutting through traditional divisions,
such as ideological allegiances.
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The Audience is the Amplifier:
Participatory Propaganda
Alicia Wanless and Michael Berk
INTRODUCTION
As propaganda methods continue to evolve
in the Digital Age, acquiring greater reach
and arguably stronger influence on target
audiences, it is paramount that our concep-
tual understanding of these processes and
underlying ‘sender-receiver’ dynamics fol-
lows suit to avoid negative pitfalls associated
with unscrupulous use of such techniques in
a public domain.
Throughout most of the 20th century,
propaganda, and its applied uses in public
relations, advertising or wartime psycho-
logical operations, was typically perceived
as a unidirectional, top-down effort by gov-
ernments, corporations, militaries or other
organised interest groups to influence the
cognition and behaviour of target audiences,
whether in a home country or abroad. The
proliferation of information communication
technologies (ICTs), in particular, social
media, coupled with unprecedented access
to means of communication and resulting
6
interconnectivity of populations across bor-
ders, has not only enhanced methods of
propaganda communications and reach, but
also changed the dynamics of how target
audiences engage with propaganda. As end-
users are increasingly ‘plugged-in’ to com-
municate with each other, seek knowledge or
information or share their stories and expe-
riences, their increasing exposure to persua-
sive content has been matched by their own
ability to generate and spread such content.
As a result, the traditional and established
boundary between producers and consumers
of propagandistic content no longer seems
to be clearly delineated. The confluence of
these important dynamics and what it means
for our ontological understanding of mod-
ern propaganda, political communications
and liberal democracies constitutes the focal
point of this chapter.
The Internet and technological advance-
ments that enable, facilitate and define
modern communications play an extremely
important role in these dynamics. Through
86 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
authentication and management of prefer-
ences, end-users acquire access to various
online products and services, but at the same
time, give away their location, personal data
and other information that whether by itself
or in conjunction with other data can be used
to discern users’ life choices, preferences or
worldviews. This wealth of data, when aggre-
gated by internet giants and social media
platforms as ‘user profiles’, has become a
hot commodity coveted by companies, gov-
ernments and savvy propagandists who cre-
ate and distribute tailored messaging through
growing networks of websites and online
communities to unsuspecting target audi-
ences. Propagandists use a variety of means
to reach and engage target audiences in the
creation and spread of persuasive communi-
cations, including behavioural advertising,
the manipulation of internet algorithms, tar-
geting and provocation of online echo cham-
bers and communities, as well as through
winning the attention of traditional media
coverage. Astroturfing and botnet amplifica-
tion obfuscate staged activities to make them
look authentic, creating the appearance of
organic user engagement. Often such efforts
blur the lines between what is real and what is
not in the information space, raising numer-
ous questions regarding the construction
of individual and collective reality(ies) and
important repercussions for socio-cultural
cohesiveness of modern societies. What is
more worrisome, however, is that such activi-
ties create ample opportunities for skilled
propagandists to perform their craft with a
much greater focus, reach and influence, and
thus set agendas for and influence national
politics or policy choices.
At the same time, modern propaganda can
no longer be viewed as a traditional top-down
process alone. Target audiences are no longer
mere passive consumers of such targeted per-
suasive content, but are also active in its crea-
tion, modification, spread and amplification,
often inadvertently furthering the agenda of
propagandists whose messaging resonates
with their worldview. It is such degree and
intensity of audience engagement with per-
suasive content that savvy propagandists seek
through adjusting content presentation, its
formats and delivery methods.
This chapter explores the emergence of
a qualitatively new phenomenon in propa-
ganda studies – ‘participatory propaganda’ –
a particularly pervasive combination of
modern propaganda techniques first identi-
fied during the US 2016 presidential election
and subsequently found in online political
activity in the UK and Canada. The systemic
integration of various techniques afforded
by ICT advancements, harvesting of user
profiles and savvy use of behavioural sci-
ences through a ‘participatory propaganda
model’, allows a propagandist to purposely
reach out to specific audiences and not only
engage them directly, but what perhaps is
less apparent, reach through them to their
own networks multiplying the propaganda
effects manifold. By referencing numer-
ous academic studies exploring each of the
constituting aspects of the model in depth,
as well as previously conducted studies into
online political activities in the US, UK
and Canada, the chapter presents this new
theoretical concept in propaganda stud-
ies and raises some of the ethical implica-
tions its application could mean for liberal
democracies.
THE EVOLVING NATURE OF
PROPAGANDA
Propaganda, in its basic definition, is the use of
persuasive information to manipulate a target
audience into a behaviour desired by the
propagandist (Bernays, 1928; Lasswell, 1948;
Ellul, 1965; Marlin, 2013; Jowett & O’Donnell,
2015). While deployed throughout human his-
tory, the use of propaganda techniques during
and in the aftermath of World War I by all sides
involved in that conflict gave propaganda, its
methods and adepts a negative connotation.
The ability of mass propaganda campaigns to
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
galvanise through available media popular
support for the war effort in Germany, UK,
US, Russia and other countries demonstrated
the relative ease with which such techniques
could affect the course of political actions. In
particular, the widely acknowledged manipula-
tive nature of propaganda has put its practice at
odds with liberal democracies, where such
influencing of public opinion called into ques-
tion the political agency of voters and their
decision-making during elections (Irwin, 1919;
Lippmann, 1922). Indeed, using manipulation,
such as playing on emotions to win an argu-
ment, has long been derided in political theory,
‘from Plato to Habermas’ (Dryzek, 2000: 52).
However, this did not stop public relations
pioneers from seeing propaganda as an accept-
able means in the hands of professionals and
experts to manage public opinion, ironically
citing concern for how easily perceptions
could be manipulated to justify its use
(Lippmann, 1922; Dewey, 1925; Bernays,
1928).
While the use of persuasive communica-
tions abounds in liberal democracies, the word
‘propaganda’ and associated techniques came
to be viewed as something ‘associated mainly
with totalitarian regimes and war efforts’
(Ross, 2002, 17), and as such, a threat. Instead
of ‘propaganda’, liberal democracies con-
ducted public affairs and public relations at
home (Moloney, 2006) and public diplomacy
or information operations abroad (Garrison,
1999). Regardless of this substitution of
terms, the means and techniques used world-
wide to spread persuasive communications
remained fairly similar throughout most of the
20th century, which is why ‘propaganda’ will
be used throughout this chapter as a generic
term to imply all forms of communications
that intend to sway opinions and behaviours
towards a goal desired by a communicator.
Before the internet, propaganda was
typically distributed in a top-down fashion
since both the content creation and means
of delivering it (newspapers, radio, TV or
movie industry) were often controlled by
either government or corporate interests. The
87
propagandist (be it the government, corpo-
rate, military or political) would issue per-
suasive messaging with a specific outcome
desired among the target audience (the gen-
eral public). This static format of ‘sender-
receiver’ communications is changing in the
Digital Age. The internet, social media and
various widely available technological tools
have drastically altered this traditional for-
mat by democratising access to information
and means of communication. The increased
ability of average users to produce, alter, dis-
seminate and amplify the spread of persuasive
messaging blurred the previously apparent
division between propagandist (sender) and
target audience (receiver).
At the same time, the internet and ICTs
have greatly increased the speed, reach and
scope of how audiences could be engaged
and persuaded into spreading propaganda.
One such concept that outlines a top-down,
unidirectional flow of content using internet
technologies is ‘computational propaganda’.
Wooley and Howard described this new
method of spreading persuasive communica-
tions as:
the assemblage of social media platforms, autono-
mous agents, and big data tasked with the manip-
ulation of public opinion. Autonomous agents,
equipped with big data about our behavior col-
lected from the Internet of things, work over social
media to engage with us on political issues and
advance ideological projects. Computational prop-
aganda involves software programs that are inter-
active and ideologically imbued. They are interactive
within the context of a platform. (2016: 4886)
By examining the role and activities of a
propagandist and technological capabilities at
their disposal, computational propaganda
offers an important glimpse into the world of
modern organised persuasive communica-
tions. It demonstrates how the combination of
technologies and new techniques derived from
the use of these technologies can, in combina-
tion with human operators and their creativity,
facilitate and significantly increase the volume
and speed with which propagandistic content
can be generated and disseminated among
88 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
target audiences. However, it leaves outside
the scope of its focus the potential roles of
audiences, as propaganda objects and sub-
jects, which they play in the generation and
spread of propaganda. As actors who partake,
create, amplify or reject persuasive messaging
in line with their own worldviews and
­preferences, a greater understanding of audi-
ences’ attitudes, behaviours and actions is
required for a more nuanced analysis of the
multi-­
faceted nature of propaganda in the
Digital Age.
AUDIENCE IS THE AMPLIFIER
The traditional and prevailing attitude in media
and communications studies during the 20th
century towards the role of the general public
was that of simply ‘a vulnerable and persuad-
able lot at risk from propaganda’ (Brooker &
Jermyn, 2003: 7). This unidirectional, ‘sender-
receiver-effect’ behaviourist approach to
communications has dominated much of
­
­propaganda research, until ‘the discrediting of
transmission stimulus-response models and
their replacement by transaction models’ start-
ing in the 1940s when a receiver’s role in the
communications process was acknowledged
to be more active (Weaver et  al., 2006: 11).
The persistent behaviourist understanding of
communications positioned audiences as pas-
sive and shaped by their external environment,
‘conditioned to act in certain ways by positive
and negative stimuli’ (Baran & Davis, 2011:
81). In contrast, transactional theories of com-
munication viewed audiences as rational
actors who ‘chose to align with the message
content and its senders’ subject as a result of
some perceived benefit – be it personal, politi-
cal, economic, social, or even pleasurable
gain, for example, in doing so’ (Weaver et al.,
2006: 12). In Bandura’s social cognitive
theory, for example, the audience has agency:
People are self-organizing, proactive, self-­
reflecting, and self-regulating, not just reactive
­rganisms shaped and shepherded by environ-
o
mental events or inner forces. Human self-­
development, adaptation, and change are
embedded in social systems. Therefore, personal
agency operates within a broad network of socio-
structural influences. In these agentic transactions,
people are producers as well as products of social
systems. Personal agency and social structure
operate as codeterminants in an integrated causal
structure rather than as a disembodied duality.
(Bandura, 2001: 266)
This does not mean that audiences cannot be
or are not manipulated by propagandists, but
simply that they are also not merely passive
consumers waiting to be shaped by external
agents or messages. As rational actors who
possess opinions, skills and means to create
and disseminate persuasive messaging, aver-
age users can, and do, participate in shaping
of the information environment in the Digital
Age. It is that active audience engagement
with persuasive communications that
modern propagandists seek for at least three
aims: segmentation, amplification and
obfuscation.
Segmentation
One of the important elements in target audi-
ence management for a propagandist is the
ability to identify and infiltrate or create online
communities with membership that aggre-
gates around a particular interest or hobby.
Sharing similar views that match their pre-
existing perspectives, members in such groups,
called ‘echo chambers’, consume little opposi-
tional content which makes them susceptible
to focused targeting and increases the chances
for content receptivity and its further amplifi-
cation. By correctly identifying group profiles
along ‘issues of concern’ in a larger target
audience and segmenting it accordingly, prop-
agandists can customise content to each group
and inject it in line with campaign objectives,
monitoring the elicited response and adjusting
the content or its regularity at will.
Digital technologies enable the quick crea-
tion of echo chambers, also known as ‘filter
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
bubbles’ (Breitenbach, 2017), through algo-
rithms that sort information (Bakshy et  al.,
2015) or through choices individuals make
about content consumption (Grömping, 2014;
Bessi et al., 2016). Once inside an echo cham-
ber, a user is fed content fitting pre-existing
views and preferences, such as politically
affiliated messages (Wall Street Journal,
2016). Moreover, ‘political echo chambers
not only isolate one from opposing views, but
also help to create incubation chambers for
blatantly false (but highly salient and politi-
cized) fake news stories’ (Pennycook et  al.,
2017). During the 2016 US presidential elec-
tion run-up, echo chambers supporting Trump
shared fake news (BBC, 2016; Dreyfus,
2017), with some hyper-partisan, right-wing
Facebook communities feeding followers
with 38% of fake content (Silverman et  al.,
2016). Online echo chambers also help obfus-
cate fake or misleading content, and so long
as that material conforms to the target audi-
ence’s pre-existing views, it will likely be
consumed and shared further without much
consideration for the original source.
In addition to echo chambers, propagan-
dists may use increasingly sophisticated tools
already deployed in behavioural advertising
to analyse, segment and target audiences.
Marketers, for example, collect informa-
tion about what people do online to posi-
tion extremely targeted ads in front of users
(Matthew, 2017). This tracking information
is used to segment target audiences based
on psychographics (Psychometric Centre,
2017), an extremely accurate way to predict
how a user thinks and what might provoke
them into action (Cohen, 2017).
According to numerous media reports
published in April and May 2018, these tac-
tics were used by Cambridge Analytica to
influence the 2016 US presidential election.
While the techniques the company employed
to acquire data on audience members, namely
harvesting information on Facebook users
and their unsuspecting friends through a per-
sonality survey (Wylie, 2018), were question-
able, the vision for the future of marketing
89
as described by the now defunct firm’s CEO,
Alexander Nix, are spot on the trend:
Today communication is becoming ever increas-
ingly targeted. It’s being individualized for every
single person in this room. So, you will no longer
be receiving adverts on products and services that
you don’t care about, rather you will only receive
adverts that not only are on the products and ser-
vices or in the case of elections issues that you care
about most but have been nuanced to reflect how
you see the world. We are able to match offline
data to cookies to drive digital advertising, social
media banners and the like. We can obviously use
this data to inform direct mail purchases. So, a
husband in a household can receive a piece of mail
but his wife can receive a different piece of mail
possibly on the same issue. Most excitingly of all
probably is the fact that we can take this data and
match it to set top box viewing data, that’s televi-
sion or cable data. Every time you watch TV, the
programs you watch are being recorded and infor-
mation is being sent back to your cable provider
and we can match what you watch in a way that
we can begin to select programs to advertising
that have the highest density of target audience
that we are trying to reach. (2016)
Cambridge Analytica is not alone in using
such techniques. Indeed, behavioural adver-
tising is a big business: 75% of the world’s
most popular websites are tracking visitors
(Lerner et al., 2016). Companies such as Zeta
Global track upwards of 600 million people
with thousands of pieces of data per person
(Ellett, 2018), using billions of tracking
cookies across the internet (Hof, 2017),
which helps advertisers to deliver extremely
targeted messaging. Indeed, by 2017, Zeta
Global had built up 3,000 data points per
person on average in their database (Johnson,
2017). Likewise, Nix had claimed Cambridge
Analytica had built up ‘4 or 5000 data points
on every adult in the United States’ (2016).
While propaganda campaigns aim to elicit
a particular behaviour offline, such as influ-
encing who a target audience should vote for,
engaging identified audience segments in the
creation, adaptation and spread of persuasive
messaging is an equally desirable objective.
People are more likely to believe those they
view as familiar to them (Garrett & Weeks,
90 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
2013) or those they deem to be influential
(Turcotte et al., 2015). As a result, the more
detailed and accurate audience segmentation
is, the more customised content appealing to
these segments can be. This allows propagan-
dists to engage more people in amplifying
propagandistic messaging further through
their networks – an ultimately more effective
and subtle approach than relying solely on
computational propaganda.
Amplification
Engaging as many people as consumers of
persuasive messaging as possible with a
view to influence their opinions and behav-
iours is the ultimate goal of every propagan-
dist. The increased spread, or amplification,
of such communications also plays an
important role in artificially shaping the
information environment by demonstrating
massive support for the propagandist’s cam-
paign. In this regard, while computational
propaganda (botnets) can manipulate real
time news feeds to promote specific content
(Mustafaraj & Metaxas, 2010), the engage-
ment of average users in heavy automation
of supportive posts on social media, through
tools such as Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and
Buffer, enables or at least contributes to, a
more organic amplification effect. For exam-
ple, the Washington Post featured one of
Trump’s more prolific Twitter supporters
during the 2016 election, Daniel John
Sobieski, who maintained two accounts with
65,9341 and 28,4642 followers respectively
and has tweeted nearly two million times
across both accounts since starting in
December 2009. As the feature noted,
‘Sobieski’s two accounts … tweet more than
1,000 times a day using “schedulers” that
work through stacks of his own pre-written
posts in repetitive loops’ (Timberg, 2017).
Such heavy automation can make authentic
accounts appear fake, depending on how
behaviours are defined and distinguished
(Gilani et  al., 2016), but since their
authenticity can be proven, they could suc-
cessfully appeal the shutting down of their
accounts (Burnett, 2018). Consequently,
users who overtly display their perspectives
on social media platforms on politically
identifiable issues would constitute a prime
target for propagandists since they are more
likely to spread such messaging further.
Propagandists deploy several methods to
engage or encourage audiences to spread
messages. Websites with persistent pop-up
windows encourage visitors to sign up for
email lists (Albright, 2016a) that are used
to mobilise support at events or fundraise
(Plouffe, 2010). Audiences have been asked
to turn over their accounts to campaigns, a
pitch made particularly to those with signifi-
cant followers (Katalenas, 2016). One online
community, the United States Freedom Army
(who believes the Left is engaging the Right
in a civil war), offered its members a monthly
directive on how to spread their content on
Twitter and elsewhere in support of Trump
during the 2016 election (Lotan, 2016).
Amplification can be sought for support
and opposition actions alike, and beyond
social platforms. Thus, followers can be
encouraged to troll others online (Buckels
et  al., 2014; Cheng et  al., 2017) to stifle
debate in favour of their preferred candidate.
Requests to re-post materials across multiple
websites or hyperlink between sources will
result in boosting content in Google search
returns (Moz, 2017), and if nothing else,
can bury opposing information from appear-
ing in the first pages of returns (Wanless &
Berk, 2017). This gaming of search engines
can propel a topic to trend online and win
traditional media coverage (Mustafaraj &
Metaxas, 2010), which in turn will generate
more social media posts and so on. While
similar effects can be achieved through com-
putational propaganda, authentic audience
members who spread source material in this
manner, particularly referencing back to it
in comment sections on articles and social
media posts as part of coordinated attacks
(Berk & Wanless, 2018), constitute a more
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
coveted audience for propagandists. This
becomes particularly important as social net-
works target and remove fake accounts more
aggressively. Not only does such audience
engagement enable manipulation of internet
algorithms for better content placement, it
plays on the cognitive bias of ‘social proof’ in
a broader public, whereby people mimic the
behaviour of those like them (Amblee & Bui,
2011). A combination of the factors outlined
previously achieves amplification through
authentic audience engagement and spread-
ing of persuasive content in a more valuable
way to a propagandist than using fake bots.
Obfuscation
Engaging audiences in the creation, person-
alisation and spread of messaging helps
propagandists to obfuscate its origins and
increase receptivity, especially when spread-
ing provocative content, such as strategic
leaks aimed at generating outrage among a
target group (Briant & Wanless, 2019). This
can have significant consequences for a
target audience’s cognitive and behavioural
choices as propagandistic messaging coming
from peers can seem more credible, and as a
result more acceptable (Nielson, 2015).
Obfuscation through audience participa-
tion makes the differentiation between legiti-
mate and illegitimate actors in the information
space very challenging, especially when
monitoring and analysing online debate.
During the 2016 US presidential election, the
Russian-based Internet Research Agency cre-
ated and operated Facebook pages on contro-
versial issues such as racism that pretended
to be American (USA v. Internet Research
Agency, 2018). According to Facebook’s
Chief Security Officer:
approximately $100,000 in ad spending from June
of 2015 to May of 2017 – associated with roughly
3,000 ads – that was connected to about 470
inauthentic accounts and Pages…The vast majority
of ads run by these accounts didn’t specifically
reference the US presidential election, voting or a
91
particular candidate. Rather, the ads and accounts
appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social
and political messages across the ideological­
spectrum – touching on topics from LGBT matters
to race issues to immigration to gun rights.
(Stamos, 2017)
In turn, Twitter identified some 3,814
accounts connected with the same outfit and
notified ‘677,775 people in the United States
who followed one of these accounts or
retweeted or liked a Tweet from these
accounts during the election period’ (Twitter,
2018). Subsequent research indicated that
‘between 2013 and 2018, the IRA’s Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter campaigns reached
tens of millions of users in the United States’
(Howard et  al., 2018), with ‘187 ­ million
engagements’ across the three platforms,
affecting 20 million accounts (DiResta et al.,
2018). While these statistics are staggering,
Benkler et  al. (2018) caution that ‘evidence
of sustained effort is not the same as evi-
dence of impact or prevalence’ (254) and in
their own sweeping study of the media envi-
ronment around the elections concluded that
the ‘U.S. media ecosystem dynamics’ more
than Russian activities shaped the informa-
tion space during the election (65).
In sum, obfuscating origins of persuasive
communications masks the identity of con-
tent creators and facilitates content adoption
among unsuspecting audiences. At the same
time, obfuscation presents concerns regard-
ing the intent or veracity of such content, its
impact on the integrity of a national informa-
tion space and agency of audiences who rely
on information to make informed political or
other decisions.
PARTICIPATORY PROPAGANDA
As we demonstrated so far in this chapter, the
continuing development of advanced ICTs
and their organised, systematic and, often,
manipulative application in persuasive com-
munications and computational propaganda
92 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
by savvy propagandists enables the co-opting
of audiences into subsequent creation and
proliferation of such messaging to their own
networks. This qualitative ‘enhancement’ of
propaganda techniques expands the engage-
ment of audiences beyond the initial, target
group and actively solicits their participation
in propagating the original message, which
significantly increases its reach and potential
influence. The participatory engagement of
audiences can in some ways be equated to
popular engagement in other fields in the
Digital Age, such as in citizen journalism
where anyone with a smartphone and access
to the Internet can record, write and upload
content that may become a breaking news
story (Borger et  al., 2013). Drawing on
Jowett and O’Donnell’s3 definition of propa-
ganda, this more engaging form of organised
persuasive communications can be termed
‘participatory propaganda’ and defined as:
The deliberate, and systematic attempt to shape
perceptions, manipulate cognitions and direct
behaviour of a target audience while seeking to
co-opt its members to actively engage in the
spread of persuasive communications, to achieve a
response that furthers the desired intent of the
propagandist.
The important nuance that warrants the intro-
duction of this new term into propaganda
studies is that while the original goal of a
propagandist remains the same (to influence
the behaviour or cognition of the target audi-
ence), an added objective of every propagan-
distic message becomes to galvanise its
spreading through target audience’s net-
works. In practical terms, as case studies
below will demonstrate further, this means
that the combined application of various
ICTs and behavioural analysis to segment,
obfuscate and amplify persuasive messaging
will make it extremely difficult for an aver-
age user to recognise propagandistic messag-
ing or factual information and make informed
decisions based on it. Such pollution of the
information environment will have important
consequences for political behaviour of
Western electorates and may lead to increas-
ing polarisation of societies due to propaga-
tion of narrow-interest or antagonistic
messaging by individuals consuming content
in echo chambers.
Participatory propaganda moves beyond
a traditional, unidirectional ‘one-to-many’
form of communication, to a ‘one-to-many-
to-many more’ form where each ‘target’
of influence (an individual or group which
is the object of persuasion) can in theory
become the new ‘originator’ (subject) of
content production and distribution, spread-
ing persuasive messaging to others in a
‘snowball’ effect. The original propaganda
message triggers, reinforces or exacerbates
pre-existing sentiments associated with the
message in a way that prompts the con-
sumer to actively engage in its propagation
through available social networks, both on
and offline. Even if modified through the
consumer’s own interpretation, the core mes-
sage is likely to remain within the original
narrative and take on a ‘new life’ (e.g. a new
wave of content dissemination). Throughout
the process, computational propaganda
methods could be used to amplify messaging
and conduct online monitoring to follow and
assess its spread, allowing the propagandist
to adapt strategies in a constant feedback
loop and insert additional content, as and if
required.
The analysis of online political campaigns
highlights the growing participation of audi-
ences in amplifying propagandistic mes-
saging. Applying Jowett and O’Donnell’s
definition, a political campaign can be
viewed as a form of propaganda: the ‘deliber-
ate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions’
(e.g. popular opinions of voters) such that
it ‘directs behaviour to achieve a response’
(e.g. support for a candidate in the form of
online participation and voting), further-
ing ‘the desired intent of the propagandist’
(e.g. to win in elections). As political cam-
paigns begin to increasingly engage with vot-
ers online, they become increasingly more
participatory.
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
In researching the 2016 US presidential
election, a model of participatory propaganda
has emerged in pro-Trump online support
that was distilled into seven steps:
1) Starting with behavioural advertising, conduct
hyper-targeted audience analysis to identify or
confirm target segment profiles and determine
what specific messaging will provoke a group to
act in ways that benefit the campaign (Nix, 2016;
Wylie, 2018).
2) Create relevant provocative content that elicits
action. Such content can include fake news, leaks,
memes (Hern, 2016; Schreckender, 2017; Wanless
& Berk, 2017) or so called ‘dark Facebook’ posts
that are only visible to a specific target audience
(Green & Issenberg, 2016).
3) Purposely spread content through online echo
chambers identified in the audience analysis
(BBC, 2016; Silverman et al., 2016; Dreyfus, 2017)
to reach target audiences and obfuscate the ori-
gins of (provocative) content.
4) Amplify content through bots (Bessi & Ferrara,
2016; Kollanyi & Howard, 2016) and seeding
across multiple websites to game online algo-
rithms for better organic placement in newsfeeds
and search returns (Albright, 2016b; Solon &
Levin, 2016).
5) Encourage followers to act by further creating
and spreading supportive content (Gallucci, 2016;
Kang, 2016), as well as attacking the opposition
(Chmielewski, 2016; Marantz, 2016).
6) Win traditional media coverage (Patterson,
2016), a move that can be facilitated by reaching
out to segregated, insulated but interconnected
online media networks divided along partisan
lines (Benkler et al., 2017).
7) Constantly monitor, measure and adapt cam-
paign efforts for maximum effect (Wylie, 2018).
The various tactics outlined above emerged,
at first, as disparate activities observed during
our own research into the 2016 US presiden-
tial campaign in conjunction with a review of
scholarly studies that largely focused on
separate aspects of either user behaviours or
persuasion techniques. Categorising these
activities in order of a strategic campaign
management process with a view to achieve
maximum propagandistic effect crystallised
some of the theoretical possibilities of the
93
participatory propaganda model, which the
case studies below were aimed to quiz
further.
Case Studies
To investigate this model and its repercus-
sions for increased audience engagement,
social network and content analyses were
conducted focusing on Facebook activity, the
most used platform in the US (Smith &
Anderson, 2018), the UK (Sweney, 2018)
and Canada (Gruzd et al., 2018), which were
also countries that at the time of analysis had
upcoming elections.
For the initial case studies on the US and
UK sets, data was collected using the publicly
available Facebook Graph API with the help
of an online application – Netvizz (Rieder,
2013). Only publicly available data was used,
including public posts to primary Facebook
pages and the secondary pages these pages
‘Liked’. Facebook page ‘Like’ data was ana-
lysed using Social Network Analysis (SNA)
(Scott, 1988) and visualised using the open-
source SNA software, Gephi (Bastion et al.,
2009). SNA has shown to be an effective
method of analysing online group dynamics,
information diffusion processes, and political
polarisation in social media (Gruzd & Roy,
2014; Gruzd & Tsyganova, 2015). Facebook
pages and groups have been analysed to
identify echo chambers (Bakshy et al., 2015;
Grömping, 2014; Del Vicario et  al., 2016),
and content analysis has been conducted to
assess Right-wing populist rhetoric in media
(Bos et al., 2010; Sheets et al., 2015).
US: Data from 17 Facebook pages
collected one month prior to the 2016
­
­election (7 October to 7 November 2016)
was analysed. The pages included three that
supported Trump’s candidacy, as well as
seven conservative-leaning and seven liberal-
leaning media outlets to assess how they
interacted in wider networks and what topics
were covered (Wanless & Berk, 2017). While
the results obtained during this research are
94 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
relevant for this chapter, analysis below will
refer to the pro-Trump network only. The
digital tactics outlined in the participatory
propaganda model above were used as a
frame for investigation.
The three pro-Trump pages were selected as a
sampling of those supporting his candidacy, with
one purporting to be a grassroots coalition back-
ing the candidate (Citizens for Trump), another
(Eagle Rising) found through a literature review
as a group spreading fake news (Silverman
et al., 2016) and a third standing out as a node in
initial, exploratory network analysis (Wake Up
& Reclaim America).4 All three pages were part
of a network of 5,416 pages with 100,208 con-
nections, or edges, between them.
These three seed pages shared provocative
content: all referenced Wikileaks, who in the
lead up to the election had posted more of
the leaked Podesta emails to its website; two
shared memes, accounting for nearly half of
all posts by Wake Up & Reclaim America;
and all shared uncorroborated news con-
tent, including that Hillary Clinton secretly
called for Trump’s assassination, had suf-
fered a brain seizure and that she was a rac-
ist (Wanless & Berk, 2017: 17). Such content
was seeded across multiple websites likely
contributing to the higher placement in search
returns for attacks on Clinton, such as the
first page of results for the query ‘is Hillary
Clinton a racist’ consisting only of posts sug-
gesting she was. Previous studies already
showed that such gaming of online search
returns can sway voter decisions (Epstein &
Robertson, 2015), while algorithms can be
used to enable echo chamber development
(Algorithm Auditing Research Group, 2016).
All three pages in this study also attempted
to mobilise followers to action, encouraging
them to vote for Trump, and actively engaged
with prominent nodes in the Right-leaning
news networks (Fox News and InfoWars)
by sharing news items. In summary, the
case study demonstrated that five steps of
the Participatory Propaganda model (pro-
vocative content, pushed through echo cham-
bers, amplification through bots and content
seeding, encouragement to act and winning
media coverage) were used to support the
2016 Trump campaign.
A similar analysis was conducted during
the 2017 UK General Election as well as on
Canadian political Facebook pages, with two
key alterations: an increase in the number of
initial pages analysed with representation
from both the Left and Right sides of the
political spectrum.
UK: The initial pages for analysis were
identified searching for keywords on Facebook
associated with political party names or issues
that represented political leaning in the UK
(e.g. for/against Brexit). From this initial list,
a total of eight were selected based on the fol-
lowing criteria: recent postings; claiming to be
community-driven; espousing clear political
views; and number of followers. Four pages
on the Left side of the political spectrum (Very
Brexit Problems, Britain For All, Momentum
and Tory Free Zone) and four pages on the
Right (Brexit Britain, Brexit News, The
Political Movement UK and Conservative
Britain) (Wanless, 2017a). All but Momentum
shared provocative content to entice audi-
ences to share it further. The Left-leaning
Facebook pages, except Momentum, shared
content that was satirical, often uncorrobo-
rated, or fake. One typical example included
a viral fake news article from The Canary, a
self-proclaimed independent and progressive
news site, reporting that Manchester would
be banning the newspaper The Sun (an article
eventually retracted and deleted from its web-
site). The article was posted to Britain For All
and enjoyed 14,000 reactions, 636 comments
and 7,249 shares.
All of the Right-leaning Facebook pages
shared some content that was not factual.
One example included an article that claimed
23,000 jihadists were in the UK, which was
shared by three out of four of the Right-
leaning pages in this study. While the article
claimed that intelligence officers had identi-
fied many more terrorists, a point that was
covered by RT, Breitbart and The Times, it
was described quite differently by Radio
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
Free Europe, which quoted Home Secretary
Amber Rudd explaining ‘that intelligence
agencies were monitoring 3,000 suspected
extremists and had a wider pool of 20,000
people of interest’ (RFE/RL, 2017).
All but one of the pages analysed (Very
Brexit Problems) shared mainstream media
links that reflected the page’s political lean-
ings, reinforcing the echo chamber effect
in respective political groups. All but one
Left-leaning page (Very Brexit Problems)
encouraged followers to take specific actions
including motivating young people to vote
(Britain For All), attending rallies (Tory
Free Zone) and take pledges and tag friends
(Momentum). The same was true for all of
the Right-leaning pages who told people to
vote for Theresa May (Brexit Britain) and
the conservatives (Brexit News), candidates
dedicated to leaving the EU (Conservative
Britain) or UKIP (Political Movement UK).
Finally, both the Conservative and Labour
parties benefited from highly automated
Twitter activity in the lead up to the election,
with slightly increased traffic supporting the
latter (Kaminska et al., 2017).
These findings demonstrated that of the
seven identified steps in the Participatory
Propaganda model, at least four (provoca-
tive content, echo chambers, amplification
through bots and algorithms, and encourage-
ment to act) were present in campaigns sup-
porting parties on both the Left and Right of
the political spectrum.
Canada: Similar analysis was carried out
on 20 Canadian Facebook pages, represent-
ing both the political Left and Right evenly
(Wanless, 2017b). The period analysed (17
June to 16 July 2017) was roughly about two
years prior to the federal elections scheduled
for October 2019 and was chosen to gauge
whether some of the Participatory Propaganda
steps may be identifiable in the early politi-
cal activity online.5 The Right-leaning pages
(Canada First, Drain the Canal, Conservative
Tomorrow, The Canadian Daily, Canadian
Political Memes, Share This Canada, Debate
Post, Canadian Liberals, Canada Proud and
95
Elect Conservatives) appeared to be operat-
ing in a coordinated manner. On the Left,
however, the identified pages (Enough
Hate, Occupy Canada, ShitHarperDid.
com, Leadnow.ca, Fight for $15 & Fairness,
Recognition2Action, Born Rebels, Idle No
More, Sustainability the Musical and Black
Lives Matter – Toronto) appeared to be act-
ing with less coordination. More than half of
all posts on the Right-leaning pages criticised
the Liberal government and all pages shared
posts criticising and mocking Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau, his Liberal party and Liberals
in general. These posts often featured humor-
ous memes and attempts to engage users
by posing questions or asking them to tag
Liberal friends in the comment section. The
Right-leaning pages often shared the same
posts, including a series of posts telling fol-
lowers that a million Likes on a post will
result in Trudeau’s resignation. Beyond shar-
ing the same content and each other’s posts,
the Right-leaning pages were also tapping
into official political organisations. Through
a page called Elect Conservatives, the Right-
leaning Facebook pages connected in a page-
like network into the Conservative Party of
Canada and affiliated political figures, helping
to spread their messages. The research also
revealed a network of geographically associ-
ated Facebook pages that included Canada
Proud, Saskatchewan Proud, Manitoba
Proud, BC Proud, Proud Albertan and
Ontario Proud. Most of these Pages appeared
to be dedicated to criticising those provincial
governments that were not Conservative at
the time, a theme which was also manifested
in half of the Right-leaning Pages analysed.
Based on the analysis, four steps out of seven
in the Participatory Propaganda model were
identified in this case, including pushing pro-
vocative content through online communities,
amplification through seeding of content and
encouraging followers to action.
The results stemming from all the case
studies above demonstrated that activi-
ties associated with respective steps in the
Participatory Propaganda model were present
96 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
in all three jurisdictions. Some of the activi-
ties, such as targeted provocative content,
amplification through computational propa-
ganda techniques, calls for action attempt-
ing to galvanise users’ reactions and strong
engagement with media were easily identifi-
able. Other activities, such as hyper-targeted
audience analysis or continuous monitoring
of how messages spread, were impossible to
ascertain empirically without approaching
the group administrators involved. However,
based on indirect evidence (e.g. short time
delays in posting the same content on differ-
ent pages), it is possible to surmise that these
steps could be present in the background as
critical elements of a typical strategic cam-
paign design and management processes. The
considerable degree of resource mobilisation
and organisational coordination required to
engineer a campaign that involves some, or
all, of the Participatory Propaganda steps
point to this inevitable conclusion.
While the empirical evidence gathered dur-
ing this research demonstrated that steps asso-
ciated with the Participatory Propaganda model
are being deployed to influence target audi-
ences, all analysis was done through the prism
of the ‘would-be propagandist’. In the remain-
der of this chapter, we will explore another cru-
cial element of participatory propaganda – how
audiences engage in this process, as well as
outline the challenges it poses to democracies
and further directions for relevant research.
Liberal
PC
NDP
North99
Ontario Proud
0 50,000 1,00,000 1,50,000
Figure 6.1  Total number of page followers, as of 6 June 2018
WHEN PEOPLE PARTICIPATE IN
PROPAGANDA
In order to illustrate how audiences engage
with online propaganda in the political con-
text, a case study was undertaken to analyse
comments and shares on five political
Facebook pages in the month (7 May to
6 June 2018) leading up to the Ontario pro-
vincial election on 7 June 2018. These pages
included the three major official provincial
party pages (Provincial Conservative – PC,
Liberal and New Democratic Party – NDP),
as well as Ontario Proud (pro-Conservative)
and North99 (pro-Liberal). The latter two
pages were created by two former political
staffers from the Conservative and Liberal
parties, respectively (Yun, 2018), purporting
to be grassroots-driven and among the most
popular political Facebook pages in Canada
(Platt, 2018). According to the social analyt-
ics tool, Social Insider, both Ontario Proud
and North99 have double the following of the
respective political parties they support
(Figure 6.1) and garner significant audience
engagement (Figure 6.2).
Both Ontario Proud and North99 operate
with the intent to engage their audiences. In the
top 20 posts6 during the period analysed, 70%
of Ontario Proud’s posts and 85% of North99’s
asked followers to take a specific action,
whereas the parties did so less frequently (NDP
55%, PC 35% and Liberals 15%).
2,00,000 2,50,000 3,00,000 3,50,000 4,00,000
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
Liberals
PC
NDP
North99
Ontario Proud
0.0 5000.0 10000.0
Figure 6.2  Follower engagement on page, 7 May to 6 June 2018
In order to assess how audiences engaged,
the top two posts with political messaging
directly related to the election were selected
for each of the five Facebook pages using
Social Insider.7 On one post, the 50 most
recent public comments were analysed, on
the other post, only shares were examined.
The publicly available profiles for those
users who commented or shared were also
manually examined, totalling 500 Facebook
accounts, respective comments or shares.
Each comment and share were reviewed
and coded as being either supportive, reject-
ing or ambiguous in relation to the original
Facebook page post. The user’s profile was
examined for authenticity (based on inter-
actions with other users and whether or not
they had family within their network) and to
ascertain if they were regularly posting or
sharing other political content to their wall.
On average, across the five Facebook
pages, the majority of users engaging with
posts were authentic (67% of those who made
comments and 97% of those who shared).
Overall, users who posted comments were
more likely to be supportive of posts made
by Ontario Proud (63%) and North99 (65%),
in comparison to comments on the political
pages (PC 19%, NDP 13%, Liberals 17%),
which may indicate a greater level of trust for
pages that are perceived as grassroots rather
than official party pages where more debate
usually takes place. On average, 44% of all
commenters and 68% of all sharers across
all five pages regularly posted other political
97
15000.0 20000.0 25000.0
content on their Facebook walls, suggesting
that they are active in propagating their polit-
ical views to friends online. Authentic users,
who were politically engaged (Figure 6.3),
showed their support for the original post by
sharing it to their network (64% of users in
the study). This finding supports other aca-
demic research arguing that content that reso-
nates with users will have higher chances to
be promoted (Garrett & Weeks, 2013). Most
of the sharing was done with little alteration
of the original post, and only two to nine
shares (4% to 18%) in each group had a user
comment ‘introducing the post’ to their net-
works. The same, however, cannot be said
about users who simply comment on posts as
their level of ‘support’ was relatively low, at
only 14% (Figure 6.4).
Since message amplification is another
aim in participatory propaganda, we also
examined how many secondary shares the
original post received beyond the first group
of 50 users who shared it (the first informa-
tion wave). Table 6.1 below demonstrates the
second information wave that was achieved
in each group as 10% to 52% of users chose
to re-share the original group post to their
own networks, in turn, increasing the mes-
sage amplification. Depending on the group,
content appeal and, likely, communications
and behavioural profiles of users, the second
information wave added anywhere between
14% and 80% amplification to the first round
of shares. Since many Facebook users’ set-
tings do not allow viewing their profiles and
98 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Liberals

PC

NDP

North99

Ontario Proud

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Figure 6.3  Shares: support + real + political

Liberals

PC

NDP

North99

Ontario Proud

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

Figure 6.4  Comments: support + real + political

Table 6.1  Measuring the second information wave

Original post Number of shares (A)  Percentage of (A) Number of shares Total shares in
by a group on the original whose post was on the re-post (A) 1st and 2nd waves
post from a group re-shared (2nd wave)
(1st wave) (2nd wave)

North99 50 52% (26) 40 (+80%) 90

Ontario Proud 50 22% (11) 20 (+40%) 70
NDP 50 26% (13) 18 (+36%) 68
PC 50 10% (5)   7 (+14%) 57
Liberal 50 32% (16) 34 (+68%) 84
 The Audience is the Amplifier: Participatory Propaganda
1st Wave
North99
100
80
60
40
Liberal
20
0
PC
Figure 6.5  Message amplification
activities unless they are ‘Friends’, we were
not able to pursue the analysis further beyond
this point to gauge the existence of possible
third or even fourth waves. However, the
amplification percentages observed even in
this small sample suggest the importance of
engaging audience participation in furthering
the propagandist’s objectives (Figure 6.5).
This preliminary analysis illustrated that
authentic audience members are engaging with
persuasive content, and moreover, propagat-
ing views that resonate with their own political
perspective on their personal Facebook walls.
Elements of the Participatory Propaganda
model such as hyper-targeted audience analy-
sis and targeting of echo chambers (followers
of perceived ‘grassroots’ pages in this study),
are instrumental in achieving higher rates of
engagement as knowing user profiles and
interests enables the creation of customisable
content that appeals to target audiences. If
monitoring of user activities and reactions to
content on social media channels can be fur-
ther automated through technological means,
the spread of original posts could be followed
and adjusted in line with campaign goals.
The study also raises questions around how
political propaganda is presented to voters
online. As noted above, while both Ontario
Proud and North99 position themselves as
grassroots, the men who launched these pages
are former political staffers – one for the federal
99
2nd Wave
Ontario Proud
NDP
conservative party and the other for the provin-
cial Liberal party in Ontario, blurring the line
between what is authentically ‘of the people’
and what is driven by bigger political agendas.
CONCLUSION
The internet and various ICTs are enabling
propagandists to engage with target audi-
ences in novel ways, drawing followers into
participating in the creation, adaptation and
­amplification of persuasive messaging. Such
intensified engagement appears to constitute
a qualitatively more enhanced technique of
propaganda delivery that is significantly more
‘pervasive’ – not to mention potentially very
dangerous for liberal democracies. Audience
participation adds an additional layer of com-
plexity for distinguishing between legitimate
(regulated and limited) and illegitimate politi-
cal communications. Abundant opportunities
for obfuscating propaganda sources through
ICTs have significantly increased the geo-
graphic reach for propagandists, enabling the
likes of the Internet Research Agency in
Russia to engage and provoke politically
active and ‘plugged-in’ audiences in the
United States. The use of such techniques
raises serious questions about influence oper-
ations across borders, what may be acceptable
100 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
under international law and how can the nega-
tive impact could be mitigated? At the same
time, tools and methods described in the
Participatory Propaganda case studies are
already in use on domestic audiences by vari-
ous narrow-­ interest and political groups.
While the integration of behavioural advertis-
ing has already greatly increased the ability of
propagandists to persuade target audiences,
the likely addition of machine learning and
artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in the
not too distant future are likely to afford
propagandists another significant advantage,
but also must raise questions about the accept-
ability of extremely targeted messaging that
manipulates emotions and known cognitive
biases.
Lastly, another important conclusion emerged
during our work on these case studies. The
identification of the Participatory Propaganda
model, and initial observations regarding its
systemic nature and far-reaching pervasiveness,
would not have been possible without the com-
bination of empirical studies and analyses of
over 70 academic studies published on dispa-
rate aspects that constitute the model between
2015 and 2018 alone. Following the traditional
separation of disciplines into specialised silos,
most of the studies analysed could not, or did
not, produce results and conclusions that make
it easier on the reader to recognise the sys-
temic nature of what human interactions in,
and with, the continuously changing informa-
tion environment mean for everyday life. At the
same time, the increasing operationalisation of
empirical findings in behavioural and computer
sciences, psychology and other relevant disci-
plines in the information space by savvy propa-
gandists everywhere necessitates an equally
holistic and systematic approach to propaganda
studies. The improved understanding of new
means and methods of influencing public and
individual opinion could then be used to update
the relevant subjects in public education cur-
ricula and educate voters in liberal democracies
as a means of strengthening democratic princi-
ples and improving public discourse on critical
issues.
Notes
1  See:  @gerfingerpoken  https://twitter.com/
gerfingerpoken followers as of 2 July 2018.
2  See:  @gerfingerpoken2  https://twitter.com/
gerfingerpoken2 followers as of 2 July 2018.
3  The original definition of propaganda by Jowett and
O’Donnell reads ‘Propaganda is the deliberate and
systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipu-
late cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a
response that furthers the desired intent of the pro-
pagandist’. (See Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015: 7.)
4  As of June 2018, all of these pages remain
active on the Facebook platform, suggest-
ing they are not part of the Internet Research
Agency network.
5  This posed challenges for identifying relevant
pages, so the process used in the UK study was
modified. Drawing from patterns observed in the
US and UK in naming of pages on the political
Right, such as ‘America First’ and ‘Britain First’,
a similar page was identified in Canada (Canada
First). An equal process on the Left proved to be
more difficult. Ultimately, a page that had been
actively campaigning against the last conservative
Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, emerged, named
Enough Hate. Beginning with these two pages,
nine more were identified on either side of the
political spectrum for being either publicly liked
or having had posts re-shared by the initial seed
page and those connected to it.
6  Social Insider ranks posts by engagement levels,
including comments, reactions and shares.
7  Non-election related posts aimed at gaining new
followers, such as Ontario Proud’s top overall
performing post for the period, a patriotic boast
about Canada’s oceans, lakes, coastline with
pictures and a call to action of ‘Share if you are
Canada proud’ were ruled out.
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Computational Propaganda and
the Rise of the Fake Audience
INTRODUCTION
SOCKPUPPETS, BOTS, AND THE RISE
OF THE FAKE AUDIENCE
On 11 September 2014, troubling news was
reported via social media: terrorists had
attacked the Columbian Chemicals Plant in
St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. Scores of Twitter
users claimed to have witnessed the explo-
sion, and one citizen journalist posted grainy
gas station surveillance video that had
apparently recorded the incident (Chen,
2015). Soon, users were retweeting screen-
shots of CNN articles about President
Obama launching retaliatory airstrikes in
Syria and Iraq (Borthwick, 2015). A
Wikipedia page documented the Columbian
Chemicals Plant explosion, a Facebook
account linked to the Louisiana News
reported ISIS had officially claimed respon-
sibility, and a low-fidelity video clip suppos-
edly created by the terrorist organization
was posted on YouTube (Doctorow, 2015;
7
Aaron Delwiche
Trewinnard, 2016). Disturbing text mes-
sages were sent to the phones of local resi-
dents, urging them to flee the area.
It was a hoax. A press release from
Columbian Chemicals established that there
was no explosion, and residents were not
threatened by toxic fumes (Fedrigon, 2014).
Authorities stopped panic from spreading,
but the scale of the deception was remarkable.
Adrian Chen (2015) described the operation
in the New York Times as ‘a highly-coordi-
nated disinformation campaign involving
dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds
of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures
precisely chosen to generate maximum atten-
tion’. This was clearly not the work of a sin-
gle individual, and Chen argued that it ‘must
have taken a team of programmers and con-
tent producers to pull off’.
Three months later, Chen noticed that
the same Twitter accounts linked to the
Columbian Chemicals hoax were posting
disinformation about an alleged Ebola out-
break in Atlanta. He eventually traced the
106 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
posts back to a Russian organization called
the Internet Research Agency (IRA). At the
IRA office in St. Petersburg, more than 400
‘professional trolls’ were paid to propagate
political opinions in online forums (Thomas,
2015). Relying on proxy servers to conceal
their IP address, these workers went to great
lengths to create fully rounded online perso-
nas, embedding propaganda messages into
‘what appeared to be the nonpolitical mus-
ings of an everyday person’ (Chen, 2015).
This Russian disinformation operation,
and others like it, were thrust into the spot-
light as analysts attempted to make sense of
disinformation circulated during the 2016 US
Presidential election. The IRA was financed
by ‘a close Putin ally with ties to Russian
intelligence’, and these disinformation efforts
were part of a coordinated attempt to influ-
ence the outcome of the election (Office of
the Director of National Intelligence, 2017).
In September 2017, Facebook identified 470
fake pages and accounts linked to the IRA,
turning all related information about these
efforts over to the Special Counsel charged
with investigating the possibility of interfer-
ence in the 2016 election (Lapowsky, 2017).
On 16 February 2018, the Department of
Justice indicted 13 Russians and the Internet
Research Agency for waging ‘information
war against the United States of America’.
According to the 37-page indictment, two
of the Russian propagandists (Aleksandra
Yuryevna Krylova and Anna Vladislavovna
Bogacheva) had visited Louisiana in June
2014, three months before the Columbia
Chemicals Plant hoax.
In December 2018, the US Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) made
public two reports which analyzed the
IRA’s social media campaigns in exhaustive
detail (Shane and Frenkel, 2018). In one of
these reports, researchers affiliated with the
Computational Propaganda Research Project
at Oxford University demonstrated that
more than 30 million Americans shared IRA
Facebook and Instagram posts with others in
their social network between 2013 and 2018
(Howard et  al., 2018). According to these
analysts, Russian propaganda efforts were
originally confined to Twitter, but the IRA
quickly leveraged the potential of Facebook,
Instagram, and other social media platforms
to spread their messages. Across all of these
platforms, the goal was to divide and polar-
ize American voters while undermining faith
in the integrity and significance of electoral
politics. Researchers were surprised to note
that Russian propagandists intensified their
activities after their election interference was
exposed. In fact, ‘engagement rates increased
and covered a widening range of public pol-
icy issues, national security issues, and issues
pertinent to younger voters’ (p. 3).
Two years after Donald Trump’s surprising
electoral upset, propaganda experts worried
that the same tactics would be used to manip-
ulate voters during the US midterm elections
(Syeed, 2017). These concerns turned out
to be warranted. A month before the mid-
terms, Twitter deleted more than 10,000 fake
accounts that were disseminating disinforma-
tion and encouraging citizens to stay home
on election day (Bing, 2018). In one study,
information security researchers found that
a range of influence agents, including bots,
sockpuppets, and partially automated fake
accounts, were responsible for approximately
25% of the support expressed on Twitter for
political candidates in Arizona and Florida
(Morpheus Cyber Security and APCO
Worldwide, 2018). In a database of Russian
propaganda tweets collected by Darren
Linvill and Patrick Warren (Lacour, 2018),
researchers found evidence that Russian
trolls and sockpuppets attempted to influence
the outcome of the Senate race between Ted
Cruz and Beto O’Rourke (Conger, 2018).
In December, Defense Secretary James
Mattis publicly criticized Russian president
Vladimir Putin for ‘mucking around’ in the
US midterm elections (Segers and Gazis,
2018).
The Russian attempt to sway the hearts
and minds of American voters is an impor-
tant story, but obsessive focus on a single
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
nation-state has caused many analysts to
overlook an even more serious development.
The emergence of radically new propaganda
techniques has inflicted considerable dam-
age on the cultural practices associated with
online participatory cultures.
Racing to make sense of these develop-
ments, researchers have landed on ‘com-
putational propaganda’ as a useful term for
understanding how hidden persuaders have
adapted to the information landscape of the
early 21st century (Sanovich, 2017; Woolley
and Howard, 2017; Bradshaw and Howard,
2018). However, many of these defini-
tions focus heavily on computation, plac-
ing less emphasis on the human component.
Propaganda always targets human beings,
and it is most effective when real people
agree to pass it on to others.
For the purposes of this paper, computa-
tional propaganda is defined as the attempt
to influence public opinion and behavior via
strategic synthesis of social media platforms,
autonomous agents, micro-targeting, and data-
mining, with active participation from targeted
individuals who help perpetuate the message.
As Bradshaw and Howard note, this phrase
encompasses ‘the spread of misinformation
on social media platforms, illegal data harvest-
ing and micro-profiling, the exploitation of
social media platforms for foreign influence
operations, the amplification of hate speech
or harmful content through fake accounts or
political bots, and clickbait content for opti-
mized social media consumption’ (p. 4).
Computational propaganda targets social
media channels which are ostensibly designed
to enable free, authentic communication
between citizens of global civil society. As a
result, we are witnessing the rise of a ‘fake
audience’ composed of insincere actors con-
trolling fake online identities known as sock-
puppets, artificially intelligent bots trained to
emulate the behavior of actual human beings,
and cyborg entities who combine elements of
both categories.
Sockpuppets are ‘online identities (or
personas) created to mislead others by
107
pretending to be different from the opera-
tor of the identities, who typically wishes
to remain hidden’ (Desai et al., 2014, p. 4).
Depending upon their motivation, skill, and
technical resources, a single puppet master
can control five, ten, or even 20 different
identities at a time. Bots are ‘algorithmically
controlled accounts that emulate the activity
of human users but operate at a much higher
pace (e.g., automatically producing content
or engaging in social interactions) while
successfully keeping their artificial iden-
tity undisclosed’ (Bessi and Ferrara, 2016).
These ‘automated social actors’ (ASA)
are intrinsically deceptive because they
deliberately conceal their artificial nature
(Abokohodair et  al., 2015). Increasingly
active in online spaces, human actors (sock-
puppets) and artificially intelligent actors
(bots) attempt to convince authentic human
users to propagate their messages.
Fake audiences have been mobilized by
Russian propagandists (Calabresi, 2017), fas-
cist social movements (Marwick and Lewis,
2017), and the Chinese government (King
et  al., 2017), but the technologies which
underpin these operations are not limited to a
single nation-state, social movement or polit-
ical perspective. Computational propaganda
is deployed with increasing frequency by
governments, corporations, and social move-
ments on all sides of the ideological spectrum
(Bradshaw and Howard, 2018). This problem
is much larger than a single election, and it
poses a serious threat to global civil society.
Although data-mining and micro-targeting
are crucial elements of computational prop-
aganda, this chapter focuses primarily on
those aspects of computational propaganda
which undermine the integrity of participa-
tory culture.
It might seem counterintuitive to charac-
terize these developments as the ‘fake audi-
ence’. After all, in the most reductive models
of the mass communication process, a sender
distributes a message to a mass audience
composed of undifferentiated receivers.
In most published work on the topic, bots
108 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and sockpuppets are characterized as send-
ers. However, from the standpoint of other
online participants, the opposite is true. Bots
are programmed to simulate human behav-
ior and those who control sockpuppets adopt
entirely fictional identities. In both instances,
the deception has a single goal: convincing
other members of the online community that
they are ordinary citizens. These dishonest
entities pretend to be fellow audience mem-
bers and are perceived as such by those who
encounter them (New York Times Editorial
Board, 2017).
A recent Pew Research Center study
(2018) shows that 68% of American adults
consume at least a portion of their news
through social media, and Facebook ‘is still
far and away the site Americans most com-
monly use for news’ (p. 3). Yet Facebook and
other social media platforms do not actually
hire reporters to generate news according to
commonly accepted journalistic practices.
When adults say they get their news from
social media, they are really saying that
they rely on stories shared by others in their
personal social networks. This ‘news’ can
take different forms, including posts shared
by one’s friends and family (e.g., personal
anecdotes and observations, links to articles
in established media outlets, and memes/
images about current events), articles that
appear in one’s news feed because a user has
chosen to follow a particular media outlet,
and/or sponsored posts that appear in the feed
as a result of highly targeted advertising.
The rise of the fake audience in digi-
tal spaces such as Facebook is a significant
concern for propaganda researchers because
these spaces were originally envisioned as
a refuge from mass persuasion. In the mid-
1980s, bulletin board systems and the nascent
Internet were widely hailed as alternatives to
the relatively narrow range of political views
expressed by corporate media outlets and
government news agencies (Bowen, 1996).
Decentralized information networks prom-
ised a many-to-many communication frame-
work in which ideas emerged organically
from the ground up. Even as the Internet gold
rush paved the way for the commercialization
of cyberspace, users believed that the voice
of the individual citizen was being heard.
Whether they took the form of consumer
reviews on e-commerce sites, crowd-sourced
projects like Wikipedia, or conferencing
systems which allowed users to upvote and
downvote other posts, these digital spaces
expressed messy, grass-roots democracy and
were seen as a viable alternative to slick com-
mercial messages. At the heart of all this opti-
mism was an unspoken belief in the existence
of an audience that was sincerely committed
to authentic conversation.
In order to understand how these things
have changed, it helps to take a closer look at
the rise of sockpuppets, trolls, and bots.
Sockpuppets and ‘Trolls’
Fake online identities controlled by human
beings with the goal of deceiving other
people are not a new phenomenon. Ever
since the earliest days of the Internet, indi-
viduals have adopted fake online identities
for personal or political reasons. When global
computer networks were smaller, slower, and
powered by dial-up modems, it was rela-
tively easy for users and moderators to know
when someone was attempting to deploy
multiple fake identities. Today, sockpuppetry
has become an increasingly common strategy
‘used by groups seeking to amplify their
voice beyond their active membership’
(Thomler, 2011), feeding upon the very fac-
tors which made it easier for ordinary citi-
zens to express themselves online (e.g.,
user-friendly web publishing, inexpensive
domain hosts, and free e-mail addresses).
Sockpuppets are sometimes referred to
as trolls, but the term is a misnomer. Trolls
provoke anger and fuel discord because they
enjoy watching other people feel bad (Craker
and March, 2016), but this is just one of many
possible motivations driving sockpuppets.
The word ‘troll’ has become the most widely
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
used term to describe this phenomenon in the
popular press, but it is simply inaccurate. Not
all trolls use sockpuppets, and not all sock-
puppets are wielded by trolls.
While trolls attempt to inflict grief on
other users, sockpuppets are deployed to
achieve multiple communication objectives.
For example, they have been used to create
the illusion of false consensus (Hofileña,
2016; Kumar et al., 2017), propagate sharea-
ble content to a target audience in the run-up
to an election (Caruncho, 2016; Harkinson,
2017), demoralize political opponents
(Stone and Richtel, 2007; Ressa, 2016), dis-
credit political opponents (Thomler, 2011),
counteract negative messages (Folkenflik,
2013), marginalize authentic participants by
isolating them within a wall of noise (King
et  al., 2017), distract or redirect public
attention (Desai et al., 2014; Ressa, 2016),
influence online polls, crowd-sourced rating
systems, and other measures of the public
agenda (Maity et al., 2017), undermine the
ability of citizens to discern truth from fic-
tion (Courtney and Paul, 2016), and subvert
collaborative projects such as Wikipedia
(Solorio et al., 2013; Kumari and Srivastava,
2017).
Sockpuppets are used by public and pri-
vate actors around the world. These phony
identities have been deployed by allies of the
Duterte regime in the Philippines in order
to persuade voters and intimidate critics
(Hofileña, 2016; Ressa, 2016), by the co-
founders of Reddit to inflate the perceived
size of the conferencing system’s user base
(Cherader, 2012; Morris, 2012), by the public
relations department at Fox News to counter-
act criticism in the blogosphere (Folkenflik,
2013), by the CEO of Whole Foods to anony-
mously boost the company’s stock (Stone
and Richtel, 2007), by GOP strategists in
New Hampshire to convince Democrats
that they should not attempt to unseat the
incumbent Representative Charles Bass
(Moulitas, 2008; Stone and Richtel, 2007),
by Russian propagandists seeking to erode
support for Hillary Clinton (Shane, 2017), by
109
Democratic researchers ‘experimenting’ with
disinformation tactics in the 2017 Senate
election in Alabama (Timberg et  al., 2019),
and by progressive Democrats who created
fake Facebook pages in the same election in
order to make it appear that some GOP voters
wanted to abolish alcohol sales in Alabama
(Shane and Blinder, 2019).
Sockpuppets were an essential component
of the Internet Research Agency’s attempts
to influence online conversations before and
after the 2016 election. According to inter-
nal documents leaked to Buzzfeed’s investi-
gative news division, the Internet Research
Agency’s ‘brand advocates’ are required to
maintain at least six Facebook accounts and
ten Twitter accounts while growing social
networks that include thousands of follow-
ers (Seddon, 2014). These jobs are usually
occupied by young people who pretend to
be alienated citizens, weaving their political
opinions into comments on more mundane
lifestyle topics (Bugorkova, 2015). In one
remarkable instance, a Russian soldier in
Ukraine pretended to be a 42-year-old house-
wife in the United States (Calabresi, 2017).
In an interview with Radio Free Europe
and Radio Liberty, a former IRA puppet-
master named Marat Burkhard detailed his
experience writing pro-Russian comments
on municipality websites. According to
Burkhard, he and his colleagues followed
a familiar pattern when attempting to dis-
credit critics of the Russian government.
First, a ‘villain troll’ would disagree with a
pro-Russia post, challenging authority fig-
ures. Second, a ‘link troll’ would enter into
debate with the villain, linking to a suppos-
edly relevant pro-government video or web-
site. Finally, a ‘picture troll’ would chime in
by posting an easily shared image. By stag-
ing an online ‘discussion’ between sockpup-
pets, these propagandists give other users the
impression that the original pro-Russia post
was correct.
‘Villain, picture, link’, explained Burkhard.
‘[I]n this way, our little threesome traverses
the country, stopping at every forum, starting
110 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
with Kaliningrad and ending in Vladivostok.
We create the illusion of actual activity
on these forums. We write something, we
answer each other’.
Of course, this phenomenon is not limited
to Russia. The People’s Republic of China
operates an enormous domestic propaganda
unit that is believed to be the largest sock-
puppet operation in existence (Gallagher,
2017; Lau, 2016). The government’s ‘50-cent
army’ fabricates nearly 450 million social
media comments each year in an attempt
to push the party line. Chinese citizens are
aware of this practice, and the term wumau
(50-center) is often used in Chinese social
media sites to describe someone who works
for the government or who holds extremely
pro-government views (Farrell, 2016; Lau,
2016). Rather than provoking arguments
with political opponents, the human beings
who control these sockpuppets seek to neu-
tralize political threats by redirecting atten-
tion away from real-world collective action
(King et al., 2017).
The United States has also used fictional
online identities as part of a psychological
warfare operation in Iraq called Operation
Earnest Voice. In 2011, the United States
Central Command awarded a US$2.7 million
contract to Ntrepid to develop an ‘online per-
sona management service’ that would allow
50 service personnel based in the United States
to control up to ten separate identities each.
The contract required that ‘each fake online
persona must have a convincing background,
history, and supporting details’ (Fielding and
Cobain, 2011). The proposed system relied on
a private server to ensure anonymity and used
traffic mixing protocols to camouflage user
data by blending it in with traffic from real-
world users. In a US Senate hearing, General
James N. Mattis explained that the software
was an attempt by the military to ‘adapt to this
new domain of [cyberspace] warfare’ (Bazley,
2011).
Sockpuppets are sometimes used in
tandem with affiliated applications that
are designed to generate the illusion that
public sentiment leans in a particular direc-
tion. In the UK, the Joint Threats Research
Intelligence Group (JTRIG) – a unit of the
Government Communications Headquarters –
has developed a number of tools that can
be used to ‘manipulate and control online
discourse’ (Greenwald, 2014). Internal
documents leaked by Edward Snowden
list dozens of applications and gadgets
that British intelligence could use to shape
the conversation (Joint Threats Research
Intelligence Group, 2012). According to
a JTRIG (2012) wiki-page titled ‘JTRIG
tools and techniques’, these applications
included: Sylvester (a ‘framework for auto-
mated interaction and alias management on
online social networks’), Birdsong (enabling
‘automated posting of Twitter updates’),
Fusewire (enabling forum monitoring and
allowing ‘staggered postings’), Bomb Bay
(providing ‘the capability to increase web
site hits/rankings’), Clean Sweep (making
it possible to ‘masquerade Facebook wall
posts for individuals or entire countries’),
Gateway (‘artificially increase traffic to a
web site’), Gestator (amplifying video mes-
sages ‘on popular multimedia websites’),
Slipstream (‘ability to inflate page views
on websites’), and Underpass (‘change out-
come of online polls’).
The JTRIG story has received little atten-
tion from scholars, but it is a remarkable
example of how computational propaganda
enables the creation of fake audiences.
Whether manipulating the results of online
polls or fabricating web traffic in order to dis-
tribute content more widely, these tools usurp
power of authentic media audiences and can
be used to paint a completely false impres-
sion of public sentiment.
Nation-states are not the only entities
interested in these technologies. Fringe social
movements view sockpuppets as an ideal
vehicle for conducting asymmetric informa-
tion warfare. In June 2017, white nationalists
based in the United States attempted to sway
the French presidential election in favor of
Marine Le Pen by using online forums as a
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
launch pad for a massive propaganda effort
(Harkinson, 2017). According to the group’s
instructions:
The plan is this: If only 12 dedicated artists created
3 accounts each, we could effectively identify and
manipulate HUNDREDS OF LOCAL NEWS PAGES
and target specific LePen and Macron voting
strongholds to promote LePen’s message and
create an overwhelmingly negative image of
Macron. And that only requires 12 people. It’s so
fucking easy bro … Step 1. Create a French-
looking FB account. See post for a guide on how
to properly do this. Step 2. Find memes, get French
translations, and copy pasta in our discord server
or links in the post. Step 3. Use the catalog to find
Facebook pages and coordinate with others in the
Discord server. Step 4. Crash this EU … with no
survivors. It’s that easy! NOW GET TO WORK,
FAGGOT. THERE’S A WAR ON.
Organizers urged their fellow information
warriors to create Facebook identities that
would be unlikely supporters of the National
Front (‘ideally young, cute girl, gay, Jew,
basically anyone who isn’t supposed to be
pro-[FN]’) and maintained a list of the names
of all the fake accounts on a Discord server
(Broderick, 2017). The group also recom-
mended targeting anti-Islam and anti-
immigration memes toward supporters of the
center-right candidate while aiming anti-
globalism memes at supporters of the social-
ist candidate (Harkinson, 2017).
These sockpuppetry efforts did not tip the
election in LePen’s favor, and Macron won the
2017 French Presidential election with 66.7%
of the vote (Alderman, 2017). According to
European journalists, this propaganda cam-
paign ‘barely registered’ with French voters
because the messages were written primarily
in English and because larger media outlets
did not amplify the signal to a wider audience
(Scott, 2017). However, despite these fail-
ures, LePen’s victory ‘marked a historic high
for the French far right’ (Alderman, 2017).
Sockpuppets did not disappear from
the French political landscape in 2017.
Researchers linked to the cyber security firm
New Knowledge argue that sockpuppets
attempted to amplify popular rage during
111
the ‘Yellow Vests Movement’ in December
2018, with more than 200 monitored
accounts propagating more than 1,600 tweets
and retweets every day (Blakely, 2018). Of
course, as most propaganda scholars would
argue, the attempt to persuade is not the
same thing as effective persuasion. French
researchers at the University of Toulouse
acknowledge the possibility that sockpuppets
had some small effect but argue that ‘it would
be a mistake to attribute the rise of the Yellow
Vests to social manipulation and fake news’
(O’Brien, 2018).
Bots
Sockpuppets are arguably the most important
component of the fake audience, but they are
often deployed in tandem with bots. In the
most generic sense, a bot is a piece of algo-
rithmically controlled software which oper-
ates without human intervention. Many bots
are not used for deceptive and malicious
purposes. Maintenance bots keep the web
humming by fetching user feeds, mining
search engines for keywords, and monitoring
websites for updated content (LaFrance,
2017). Twitter bots can be used to automati-
cally retweet certain hashtags or phrases,
reply to certain types of tweets, follow users
who mention a certain phrase or hashtag,
follow users who follow another user, and
pull and repost publicly available informa-
tion about users (Bessi and Ferrara, 2016).
When bots are used to strengthen online
communities, they are usually upfront about
their synthetic nature. For example, when
users of the Grateful Dead subreddit mention
a specific concert, an account named Herbibot
helpfully posts links to public domain record-
ings of that concert, prefacing each message
with ‘beep. ima bot. below are links to the
show(s) mentioned in your comment. beep’.
These harmless bots can be thought of as
‘legitimate synthetic entities’.
Rather than worrying about these ‘legiti-
mate synthetic entities’, propaganda scholars
112 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
should focus their attention on bots who
attempt to influence behaviors and beliefs
of online users. These bots emulate human
behavior while concealing their own artificial
nature and political objectives. When deployed
for political aims, bots can be used to conceal
influence, polarize political discussions, and
propagate disinformation (Bessi and Ferrara,
2016). They can also be used for misdirection
(encouraging audiences to focus on other types
of content) and to create information smoke-
screens that conceal activities from scrutiny
(Abokohodair et  al., 2015). When deployed
in combination with sockpuppets, bots can be
used to increase the likelihood that a particular
Twitter message will emerge as a search result
when users search for certain keywords as well
as to ensure that certain topics emerge as ‘top
trends’ for all users (Agarwal et  al., 2017).
Increasingly, multiple bots are deployed at
the same time, creating a composite structure
known as ‘a botnet’ (Gallagher, 2017).
The terrorist group ISIL uses botnets to dis-
seminate gruesome images from beheading
videos and to spread other propaganda mes-
sages (Al-Khateeb and Agarwal, 2015). Bots
have been used by governments to demo-
bilize opposition in Argentina, Azerbaijan,
Bahrain, China, Iran, Mexico, Morocco,
Russia, Syria, Tibet, Turkey, and Venezuela
(Woolley, 2016), and bots were responsible
for approximately one out of every five tweets
posted during the run-up to the presidential
election (Bessi and Ferrara, 2016). Limited to
140 characters, Twitter bots are not the ideal
tool to use for developing narrative frames
but they are ideal for bringing ‘propaganda-
riddled’ blog content to ‘as many eyeballs as
possible’ (Agarwal et al., 2017).
Abokohodair et  al. (2015) ‘captured a
Twitter based botnet in the wild’ and ana-
lyzed more than 3,000 tweets in Arabic and
English in an attempt to identify key behav-
ioral characteristics of botnets. Based on this
data, the authors make a distinction between
core bots and peripheral bots (Abokohodair
et al., 2015). Core bots tweeted often (post-
ing a tweet every 1.8 minutes) and they only
retweeted content posted by other members
of the network. Most of these core bots were
either short-lived bots (retweeting often and
not lasting more than six weeks) or long-lived
bots (retweeting often and persisting until
Twitter shuts down the account). However,
the authors also identified the existence of a
core generator bot which posted more than
2,100 original tweets each week but seldom
retweeted. Peripheral bots retweet messages
created by the core bots and play an essential
role in enhancing the perceived legitimacy of
those messages. Intriguingly, these accounts
are most often not bots. Instead, they are
controlled by ‘legitimate human users’ who
have been lured into the bot network and are
‘unwittingly complicit’ in attempts to propa-
gate the botnet’s persuasive messages.
Some might find it reassuring that bots
cannot succeed without human intervention.
Even the most sophisticated network of bots
relies on human beings (whether sockpup-
pets or human beings who have been fooled
by a bot) in order to establish the network’s
legitimacy. Analyzing the failure of the
Columbian Chemicals hoax to spread, the
data scientist Gilad Lotan notes that mes-
sages must be ‘embedded within existing
networks of information flow’ in order to
propagate (Borthwick, 2015). In the case of
the Columbian Chemicals hoax, the decep-
tion was easily detected. The fake Wikipedia
account was created by a brand-new user and
lacked a credible edit history, and the Twitter
bots had not attempted to conceal the fact
that all of their messages were sent from a
broadcast automation tool called ‘Mass Post’
(Doctorow, 2015).
Similar findings were reported by research-
ers who deployed bots in the context of the
May 2015 UK general election (Murthy
et al., 2016). Researchers found that the bots
were much less successful than anticipated
because they lacked friends, followers, and
a history of social interaction. They had no
meaningful social capital. In order for bots
to succeed, they must be followed. This is
where sockpuppets come in.
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
The line which separates bots from sock-
puppets is increasingly blurry. As Agarwal
et al. (2017) observe, the fragmented Internet
landscape ‘creates a gap-filled territory for
exploitation by social bots and hybrid human/
bot collaborations that engage in information
conflicts, or “trolling”, and in the dissemi-
nation of messages’. For example, software
developers patented persona management
software capable of converting a single mes-
sage into one or more writing styles ran-
domly selected from a ‘persona repository’
(Chen et  al., 2009). Individuals claiming to
be linked to the hacker group Anonymous
described this software as a tool for weap-
onizing sockpuppets ‘in order to influence
the face of revolutions that are based within
social networking sites’ (Nouveau, 2011).
We already know that individuals rely on
scripts and macros to operate multiple iden-
tities (Thomler, 2011) and we can expect
to see more of these ‘cyborg puppetmasters’
in the future.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT
FAKE AUDIENCES?
Fake audience technologies are not the total-
ity of computational propaganda, but they are
arguably the most significant component. As
Bradshaw and Howard (2018) note, compu-
tational propaganda also encompasses ‘the
spread of misinformation on social media
platforms, illegal data harvesting and micro-
profiling, the exploitation of social media
platforms for foreign influence operations,
the amplification of hate speech or harmful
content through fake accounts or political
bots, and clickbait content for optimized
social media consumption’ (p. 4). However,
all of these techniques are tightly connected.
Misinformation is spread on social media
platforms by people or bots who pretend to
be real members of the online audience. Data
is illegally harvested from the interactions of
these insincere audience members with real
113
human beings, and this data is then used for
sophisticated micro-targeting.
Ever since communication researchers first
grappled with the significance of emerging
technologies, they have attempted to under-
stand the role of the audience in the mass
communication process. During the past
century, communication researchers have
developed more nuanced understandings of
how individual audience members interact
with media content, recognizing that media
audiences are not passive. Over the past three
decades, individual audience members have
used emerging technologies to create highly
customized media environments, to interact
with each other over great distances at diz-
zying speeds, and to gain a greater voice in
democratic decision-making.
Confronted with the impressive scope and
apparent power of the telegraph, the radio,
and film, researchers initially viewed audi-
ences as passive and pliable. For example, in
his groundbreaking analysis of World War I
propaganda, Harold Lasswell (1938) relied
on the metaphor of the hypodermic needle,
comparing allied propaganda to a ‘subtle
poison’ that ‘industrious men injected into
the veins of a staggering people’ (p. 217).
Similar claims about the passivity of media
audiences emerged in Payne Fund studies
exploring the ways that movies influenced
children. In one of the most famous studies,
the sociologist Herbert Blumer (1933) argued
that cinema induces a form of ‘emotional
possession’ which causes audience members
to lose control over their feelings, thoughts,
and actions (p. 74).
These early claims about strong media
effects would ultimately inhibit attempts to
combat persuasive communication. In many
intellectual histories of the field of communi-
cation, propaganda scholars are said to have
believed that messages functioned like ‘magic
bullets’ that would directly inject their mes-
sages into the minds of a passive audience.
As J. Michael Sproule (1989) has persua-
sively argued, ‘Far from viewing audiences
as passive, alienated and irrational receivers
114 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
whose limitations threatened democracy, the
propaganda analysts reflected the progres-
sive view that democracy required increased
popular participation’ (p. 226). Sproule also
notes that the magic bullet myth served as
‘convenient ideological bridge’ from propa-
ganda scholarship to administrative ‘com-
munication research’ that replaced the term
propaganda with the euphemism ‘effects
research’ (p. 226).
The global, digital civil society which con-
tinues to connect human beings in the second
decade of the 21st century was not the inevi-
table output of technological determinism. It
was created by empowered audiences who
used communication tools to develop far-
flung human associations that transcended
the limits of physical distance. Alienated by
slick marketing, disinformation, and clear
biases of mainstream media outlets on both
the left and the right, citizens fled into the
comforting embrace of online communities,
hoping they could escape an onslaught of
persuasive messages. Successful for a time,
these active audiences managed to accom-
plish great things.
Consider the value of the participatory
project known as Wikipedia. With more than
123,000 editors, the crowd-sourced ency-
clopedia is a stellar example of the good
things accomplished by empowered audi-
ences (Giles, 2005). And this is just one of
many examples, from user-generated sites
like Deviant Art to open source programming
communities and thousands of online sup-
port groups for human beings struggling with
illness, substance abuse, and mental health
problems. In forums and comments sec-
tions around the globe, citizens have used the
Internet to engage in the most fundamental
behaviors of democracy: voluntary associa-
tion and free expression.
Social media platforms and other digital
networking tools have become popular in
an era characterized by deep skepticism of
traditional media outlets. For many users,
crowd-sourced rankings, trending links,
and user-generated content are viewed as
trustworthy because these metrics are suppos-
edly untarnished by corporate influence and
government control. Meanwhile, in digital
spaces dedicated to the discussion of sensi-
tive or controversial topics, users share per-
sonal stories, fears, jokes, and theories about
the world. Even though participants conceal
their real-world identities with fanciful user-
names, they still expect a certain amount of
honest self-expression. Internet users have
learned that people are not always who they
appear to be online, and we are aware of
the existence of immature bots, but we also
assume that most people aren’t attempting to
deceive us. Sadly, all of these online experi-
ments are threatened by the malignant growth
of the fake audience.
REFLECTIONS ON NEXT STEPS
The fake audience poses a serious threat
because so many people have become highly
dependent on the Internet and social media
for news about the world. As one information
security researcher explained to the Senate
Armed Services Committee, Internet users
‘have emerged as an ideal vector of informa-
tion attack’ (Waltzman, 2017, p. 4). In a
provocative 2015 article authored for the
NATO journal Defence Strategic
Communications titled ‘It’s time to embrace
mimetic warfare’, Jeff Giesea (2015), who
later deployed many of these techniques in
support of the Trump campaign, argued that
this type of information warfare is ‘about
taking control of the dialogue, narrative, and
psychological space’ because ‘it’s about den-
igrating, disrupting, and subverting the ene-
my’s effort to do the same’ (p. 71).
The rise of the fake audience has been
facilitated by two important characteristics
of networked communication technologies.
The first of these is anonymity. Ever since
the Internet first emerged in the public con-
sciousness in the mid-1990s, citizens have
understood that individual users are able to
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
conceal their identity when surfing online.
Online anonymity is key to understanding the
punchline of the most widely reproduced New
Yorker cartoon of all time (‘On the Internet,
nobody knows you’re a dog’), and it serves as
a useful narrative engine for romantic com-
edies and television thrillers, but it also makes
it possible for users to communicate with one
another about a wide range of sensitive top-
ics. The second characteristic is accessibil-
ity. Decentralized computer networks also
lowered barriers to individual participation.
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail, Hotmail,
Yahoo, Tumblr, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and
Instagram are used by different types of peo-
ple to satisfy different types of needs, but all
of these applications share at least one thing in
common: these services are ‘free’ to anyone
who has an Internet connection. These two
essential characteristics of our global com-
munication system have been consciously
exploited by deceptive individuals and groups
who deploy sockpuppets and bots for finan-
cial and political reasons (Thomler, 2011;
boyd, 2017b; Waltzman, 2017), but anonym-
ity and accessibility must be preserved.
One of the most remarkable things about
our contemporary propaganda environ-
ment is the speed with which it is changing,
demolishing traditional assumptions that
have underpinned propaganda research for
decades (Paul and Matthews, 2016). In large
part, this is because computer processing
speed continues to accelerate at an astound-
ing rate. In 2012, when the Internet Research
Agency began disseminating propaganda via
Twitter, high-end workstations were powered
by eight-core processors and the average
Internet speed in the United States was 6.7
Mbps (Streams, 2012). Six years later, high-
end workstations boast central processor
units with 48 cores and the average Internet
speed in the United States is approximately
26 Mbps (Mills, 2018).
These numbers will seem laughably slow
to readers in the near future, but they high-
light an essential fact. The tools for creating,
analyzing, and disseminating computational
115
propaganda are significantly faster and more
powerful than just a few years ago. Creating
fake audiences is easier than ever before, and
these trends are likely to continue accelerating
at a logarithmic rate (Cranz, 2018). The speed
with which things are changing poses a seri-
ous challenge for researchers, policymakers,
and citizens alike.
How can we combat fake audiences in
a time of rapid technological and politi-
cal change? What can we do to fight back
while preserving the freedom which makes
the Internet such a promising tool for human
communication? Because of these rapid
changes, we need to be looking for solutions
that transcend specific technologies, focusing
instead on core principles of logic, ethics and
democratic inquiry. If we can work together
to implement the following seven recommen-
dations, the rise of the fake audience can be
reversed – or at least held at bay.
1. Encourage Social Network
Providers to Continue Deleting
Fake Accounts
Motivated by a combination of self-interest
and civic responsibility, leading social net-
work providers have intensified their efforts
to identify the fake accounts exploited by bots
and sockpuppets. In the summer of 2018,
Facebook announced that it had identified
more than 652 fake accounts based in Russia
and Iran that were part of a coordinated disin-
formation campaign (Solon, 2018a) and
Twitter reported that it had purged more than
70 million fake accounts as a direct response
to the use of bots and sockpuppet accounts
by Russian propagandists during the 2016
election (Timberg and Dwoskin, 2018).
In December 2018, YouTube purged a ‘notice-
able’ number of fake accounts, deleting more
than 1.2 million channels and millions of
videos for violating the company’s spam poli-
cies (Velasco, 2018).
These companies should continue identify-
ing fake accounts by analyzing user profiles
116 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and public messages for indicators that are
likely to signal deception. Researchers and
practitioners agree that there is no reliable
solution for consistently detecting bots and
sockpuppets all of the time (Desai et  al.,
2014; Kumar et  al., 2017). At times, this
approach may seem futile. Even if one sock-
puppet army is detected and squashed, it is a
drop in the bucket compared with those that
continue to operate (Owens, 2013).
Ferrara et al. (2016) propose three types of
strategies for detecting bots and sockpuppets:
those that rely on social network information,
crowd-sourced initiatives using real human
beings, and machine learning approaches
which ‘teach’ computers to recognize likely
bots. Unfortunately, the same strategies can
also be deployed by those who engineer the
fake audience in an attempt to escape detec-
tion. ‘As we build better detection systems’,
the authors predict, ‘we expect an arms race
similar to that observed for spam in the past’
(p. 103). However, the adaptive strategies of
fake audiences should not be a reason to stop
tracking them. The battle may not be easy,
but it is essential.
2. Insist That Social Network
Providers Comply with Minimum
Standards Set Forth in the Santa
Clara Principles on Transparency
and Accountability in Content
Moderation
Algorithms can be developed to spot many of
these characteristics, but human intervention
is needed to avoid false positives. If a user is
mistakenly accused of being a sockpuppet, it
could seriously damage their credibility
(Solorio et  al., 2013) and provide the basis
for a libel lawsuit. Unfortunately, leading
social networks have not offered much in the
way of due process for authentic human
users whose accounts and messages are
deleted. Mistakes do happen. During the past
three years, the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
a news anchor in the Philippines, and a
Danish member of Parliament have had con-
tent removed due to a ‘misapplication of Face­
book’s Community Standards’ (Electronic
Frontier Foundation, 2018).
Recently, a small group of scholars and
activists developed a set of standards known
as the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency
and Accountability in Content Moderation.
These standards call on providers to a)
‘publish the numbers of posts removed and
accounts permanently or temporarily sus-
pended due to violations of their content
guidelines’ quarterly ‘in an openly licensed,
machine-readable format’, b) ‘provide notice
to each user whose content is taken down or
whose account is suspended about the reason
for the removal or suspension’, and c) ‘provide
a meaningful opportunity for timely appeal of
any content removal or account suspension’
with ‘notification of the results of the review,
and a statement of the reasoning sufficient
to allow the user to understand the decision’
(Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and
Accountability in Account Moderation, 2018).
In November 2018, a coalition of 88 public
interest organizations including the ACLU,
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the
Freedom Forum, and Human Rights Watch
signed a public letter urging Facebook to
comply with these principles (Kaser, 2018).
Noting that Facebook did not add any sort
of mechanism for appealing account deacti-
vation until 2011, the signatories called ‘on
Facebook to provide a mechanism for all of
its users to appeal content restrictions, and, in
every case, to have the appealed decision re-
reviewed by a human moderator’ (Electronic
Frontier Foundation, 2018).
3. Enlist the Participation of
Smaller Social Networks, Blogging
Platforms, and Independent
Websites
For the most part, researchers and policy-
makers have focused on solutions that can be
implemented by the most popular social
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience
networking sites. While this is a logical start-
ing point, these social sites do not represent
the totality of the Internet (Guta, 2018) and
many users have turned away from the larger
players. According to a Pew Internet Research
study conducted in September 2018, 42% of
US adults have significantly curtailed their
use of Facebook while 26% of adults deleted
the Facebook application from their cell
phone (Perrin, 2018). The number of teenag-
ers using Facebook dropped by 20% between
2015 and 2017 (Solon, 2018b) and hundreds
of thousands of users have pledged to aban-
don Tumblr in response to policies that pro-
hibit the depiction of human genitals or
‘female-presenting nipples’ (Leskin, 2018).
There is no evidence that these users are
giving up their digital lives; they are merely
focusing their attention elsewhere. We do not
know if users will relocate to existing plat-
forms such as Newgrounds and Mastodon,
if they will take up residence in forums and
comments sections linked to independent
websites, or if they will create entirely new
virtual communities, but we do know that
propagandists and fake audiences will be
quick to follow them.
We should educate smaller operators
about these trends and teach them to recog-
nize tell-tale signs of the fake audience. For
example, those who moderate forums, com-
ment sections, and mailing lists can help limit
the spread of sockpuppets by implement-
ing e-mail verification links, Completely
Automated Public Turing test to tell
Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA)
tools, and scripts that scan logs for recurring
IP addresses (Desai et al., 2014).
4. Educate People About Cognitive
Biases Which Make All of Us
Susceptible to Persuasion
Research shows that users tend to rely on
cognitive heuristics (mental shortcuts) to
evaluate the credibility of online information,
often assuming that ‘if a number of people
117
use information, recommend it, and agree
with it, then it is credible’ (Metzger and
Flanagin, 2013, p. 217). Waltzman (2017)
argues that cognitive hacking efforts such as
those that unfolded during the election are
facilitated by ‘unprecedented speed and
extent of disinformation distribution’ and a
savvy reading of the audience’s ‘cognitive
vulnerability – a premise that the audience is
already predisposed to accept because it
appeals to existing fears or anxieties’ (p. 3).
Propaganda experts affiliated with the
Rand Institute note that Russian propaganda
efforts are particularly effective because peo-
ple take cognitive shortcuts to deal with infor-
mation overload (Paul and Matthews, 2016).
As Ferrara et al. (2016) explain in the context
of bots, a serious problem is ‘the fact they
can give the false impression that some piece
of information, regardless of its accuracy, is
highly popular and endorsed by many, exert-
ing an influence against which we haven’t yet
developed antibodies’ (p. 99). These cogni-
tive antibodies require educational initiatives
such as those described below.
5. Update the Media Literacy
Curriculum to Address Fake
Audiences, Source Credibility,
and Source Diversity
Just like propaganda scholars, media literacy
educators are racing to adapt to the changing
propaganda landscape (Hobbs, 2018)
Unfortunately, the media literacy movement
has not yet developed a set of principles or
lessons that specifically focus on computa-
tional propaganda and fake audiences. If we
train students to recognize that sockpuppets
and bots are pervasive in digital spaces, they
might be more inclined to rely on more
sophisticated heuristics for evaluating infor-
mation or turn to multiple sources to verify a
claim.
For example, research shows that sockpup-
pets tend to rely on singular first-person pro-
nouns, shorter sentences, shorter messages,
118 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and profanity when conversing in discussion
forums (Kumar et  al., 2017). We also know
that user profiles can often be recognized by
profile pictures of ‘sexy-looking persons’,
cover photos of gardens or landscapes, and
fewer than 50 friends (Hofileña, 2016). These
findings should be part of the media literacy
curriculum.
Admittedly, media literacy efforts have
encountered challenges. As boyd (2017a)
points out, media literacy educators have
tacitly assumed that there is some sort of
universal agreement that sources such as
New York Times and scientific journals are
credible. Most of us over the age of 30 can
actually imagine what a physical edition of
Time Magazine or Wall Street Journal once
looked like, but younger people do not neces-
sarily have the same touchpoints. Even when
students question their sources, they are not
particularly good at establishing source cred-
ibility. How can we expect students to differ-
entiate the Washington Post from the (fake)
Denver Guardian if they do not understand
journalistic practices?
Audience literacy also requires consum-
ing information from a range of diverse
sources. In order to overcome recent trends
toward tribalism, ‘we need to enable people
to hear different perspectives and make sense
of a very complicated – and in many ways,
overwhelming – information landscape’.
Meedan.Com has launched a crowd-sourced
participatory effort for verifying user-gen-
erated content and authenticating breaking
stories. We can train users to use tools such
as these when confronted with breaking news
stories and potentially dubious user accounts.
6. Teach Users of All Ages to
Recognize Bots, Sockpuppets, and
Other Aspects of Computational
Propaganda
The media literacy curriculum is an excellent
starting point for reaching younger people
who are fortunate enough to encounter such
lessons in the classroom, but the vast major-
ity of human beings on this planet are older
than traditional students. For this reason, we
should continue to develop educational
resources which are accessible to people of
all ages.
In the late 1930s, long before the advent
of the personal computer and cell phone,
our planet was faced with the rise of fascist
movements around the globe, militant skir-
mishes between the far right and the far left,
economic uncertainty, genocide, and iso-
lationism. During these tumultuous years,
propagandists exploited every single commu-
nication channel they could find, including
electronic media (film, radio, and telegraph),
print media (books, magazines, newspapers),
and other cultural artifacts (opera, theatre,
and popular music).
In response to these developments, a
group of social scientists, artists, educators,
and policymakers joined together to form
the Institute of Propaganda Analysis (IPA).
Between 1937 and 1942, the IPA distributed
educational bulletins to thousands of class-
rooms, churches, and fraternal organiza-
tions throughout the United States, training
citizens to recognize the seven most com-
mon propaganda devices (Sproule, 1996;
Delwiche, 2018). Inspired by the IPA’s exam-
ple, the site Propaganda Critic uses non-
partisan examples and accessible prose to
explain contemporary propaganda to people
around the globe. Launched 25 years ago, the
site was recently updated to include dozens
of articles, games, and videos which teach
users about bots, sockpuppets, data-mining,
micro-targeting, cognitive biases, and logical
fallacies (Delwiche and Herring, 2018).
Some users might be interested in explor-
ing more complicated tools that can be used
to spot bots and trace the propagation of
false claims. Botometer, a tool created by the
Indiana University Network Science Institute
(IUNI) and the Center for Complex Networks
and Systems Research (CNetS), evaluates
the likelihood that a given Twitter account
is likely to be a bot (Barakat, 2014). Hoaxy,
 Computational Propaganda and the Rise of the Fake Audience 119

created as a joint project of the Indiana that would require all Internet users to link
University Network Science Institute (IUNI) their online identities to their real-world
and the Center for Complex Networks and identities. This would be a terrible idea for
Systems Research (CNetS), can be used to many reasons. It would exclude anyone
track the cumulative number of shared sto- whose immigration status is in question, it
ries over time and to visualize diffusion net- would neutralize the experimental, creative
works as claims spread from one person to energy that has powered some of the most
the next (Shao et  al., 2016). These are both exciting digital projects, and it would deter
useful tools, but they only work with Twitter. individuals struggling with private personal
issues from seeking help online. It would
also put dissidents and political activists at
7. Resist the Lure of great risk of retaliation on the part of repres-
Surveillance-based Solutions sive governments. In the wake of the Arab
Spring, Egyptian dissidents who were
Some might call on network providers to
unmasked were ‘disappeared’ and citizens in
conduct more active surveillance of individ-
Bahrain lost their jobs (Comninos, 2011).
ual accounts to stop the rise of fake audience
members, but such an approach raises many
ethical concerns. For example, in August
2017, analysts associated with the German
CONCLUSION
Marshall Fund created a dashboard that
monitors hundreds of accounts believed to be
We are facing a new kind of audience, one
directly or indirectly controlled by the
that is increasingly comprised of fake, auto-
Russian government (Syeed, 2017). Should
mated actors. Confronted with this phenom-
Facebook and Twitter use this type of system
enon, we have two choices on how to proceed.
to keep a closer eye on the fake audience?
We can learn how to tell the difference
This might seem like a sensible strategy, but
between the real and the contrived, or we can
it poses risks to innocent users. What hap-
shut down freedom and anonymity for all.
pens when authentic users are caught up in
Just as acts of physical terrorism should not
this digital dragnet simply because they were
stop us from gathering for parades, concerts,
duped by bots and sockpuppets? The tactical
and public demonstrations, the existence of
advantages of this type of surveillance must
the fake audience should not cause us to
be weighed against the drawbacks of living
abandon the democratic aspirations which
in a world in which the propagation of dis-
fueled the growth of the Internet. In the
senting opinions is carefully monitored by
coming days, we must all take time to edu-
social network providers. As Jennifer Jacobs
cate ourselves and others about the rise of
Henderson (2012) argues, freedom of expres-
fake audiences and the steps we can take to
sion is a fundamental value of participatory
combat them. Together, we can turn social
cultures (p. 278) and it should not be under-
media back to a space comprised of authentic
mined simply to identify potential members
actors engaged in meaningful conversations.
of the fake audience.

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Visual Propaganda
and Social Media
INTRODUCTION
While visual imagery has been an important
component of propaganda messaging for a
long time, the increased availability of digital
communication technologies has influenced
how propaganda messages are constructed
and disseminated in recent years (Jowett &
O’Donnell, 2015; Rose, 2012; Seo, 2014;
Seo & Ebrahim, 2016). In this chapter, I use
the term propaganda to refer to an ensemble
of messages aimed at promoting a certain
political or social agenda and thus influenc-
ing the target audience’s point of view (Cull
et al., 2003; Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015). An
increasing number of political actors use
popular social media channels such as
Facebook and Twitter to share visual content
as a part of their propaganda efforts. For
example, the self-proclaimed Islamic State
(ISIS) has used YouTube and other social
media platforms to disseminate graphic
images, including beheading of Westerners
(Martinez & Abdelaziz, 2014). Images of
8
Hyunjin Seo
Syrian civilians injured or killed during
alleged chemical weapons attacks were
widely circulated via social media sites
such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
YouTube. Moreover, parties involved in con-
flicts use social media-based images to elicit
emotional responses favorable to their sides
(Seo, 2014; Seo & Ebrahim, 2016).
The changing dynamics of visuals in
propaganda efforts is in line with the grow-
ing popularity of visual content (Rose, 2012;
Schwalbe & Dougherty, 2015, Seo, 2014;
Seo & Ebrahim, 2016). Empirical data show
that people are more likely to pay attention
to and engage with content including visuals
as contrasted with text only content (Alper,
2014; Conner, 2017; Seo, 2014). That is,
people prefer attention-grabbing, emotion-
eliciting, and easy-to-digest content in this
age of information overload where informa-
tion is generated and shared via a variety of
digital media channels. Consequently, organ-
izations and individuals have invested more
and more resources to develop compelling
 Visual Propaganda and Social Media
visual content to get their messages across
in an effective and informationally efficient
manner (Conner, 2017).
This chapter examines how characteristics
of a networked information society, including
decentralization and nonmarket peer produc-
tion (Benkler, 2006, 2011), influence ways
propaganda messages are created and shared.
In doing so, I will pay particular atten-
tion to how uses of visuals in propaganda
efforts have evolved while providing his-
torical perspectives as well as synthesizing
recent examples. I argue that it is important
to update theoretical frameworks in the area
of visual propaganda to account for change
brought about by digital communication
technologies. Examining these issues will
also provide useful insights for those who
study or practice in the fields of international
communication and visual communication.
PROPAGANDA IN THE DIGITAL
MEDIA AGE
The term propaganda originates from the
Latin propagare meaning to ‘sow’ or ‘propa-
gate’, and first appeared as the name of
Roman Catholic congregation (i.e., College of
Propaganda) in 1622 aimed at propagating the
Christian faith and overseeing Christian mis-
sions abroad (Lewis, 2011; Moore, 2011, 8).
While propaganda was considered to have a
neutral meaning until the 19th century, it has
since often carried a negative connotation of
misrepresentation, as tactics employed by
authoritarian states were labeled as propa-
ganda in the 20th century (Goldstein, 2009;
Lewis, 2011; Moore, 2011). In addition, its
meaning has evolved to be primarily associ-
ated with the dissemination of political ideas
and the promotion of a political agenda.
The increased availability and afford-
ability of information and communication
technologies (ICTs) have important con-
sequences for developing and disseminat-
ing propaganda messages (Cull et  al., 2003;
127
Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015). In this chapter,
I use the term ICTs as an umbrella term for
digital communication technologies includ-
ing the Internet, websites, and social media.
The term social media is used to specifi-
cally refer to applications that allow people
to create and share digital content (Ellison &
boyd, 2013; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Seo
et al., 2014). Leading social media platforms,
including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter,
are important channels through which indi-
viduals and organizations engage directly
with their target audiences without having to
depend on traditional intermediaries like mass
media. These are in line with characteristics
of the networked information society – disin-
termediation, nonmarket peer production, and
democratization of information – facilitated
by ICTs (Benkler, 2006; Castells, 2011;
Shirky, 2011). ICTs have brought about
important changes in our society, particularly
with regard to the ways we create and share
information as well as we connect with others
(Benkler, 2006, 2011; Bennett & Segerberg,
2013; Castells, 2011). For example, an unlim-
ited number of individuals can collaborate to
produce and share information and ideas via
wikis, blogs, and open-source software. These
decentralized and low-cost digital communi-
cation channels allow citizens to participate
in activities such as mobilizing people around
causes which were traditionally reserved for
centralized organizations (Bennett, 2004;
Chadwick, 2006; Moezzi, 2009). As Benkler
(2006) puts it, the Internet has changed ‘the
cultural practice of public communication’
(p. 180).
With more than 2.3 billion active users for
Facebook and 330 million for Twitter world-
wide as of 2018 (Facebook, 2018; Hootsuite,
2018), social media has emerged as an impor-
tant venue for domestic and international
political activities. Indeed, political actors in
recent years used social media platforms to
directly communicate with the public during
election campaigns, conflict situations, and
other important occasions (Seo & Ebrahim,
2016). For example, Israel and Hamas have
128 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
used social media in the wake of renewed
violence in Gaza since 2012 (Seo, 2014). The
two sides launched social media campaigns
as part of their efforts to create more favora-
ble international public opinions. As of 2017,
92% of all UN member states had official
Twitter accounts with a total of 356 million
followers (Burson-Marsteller, 2017). In the
same year, about 88% of the UN member
states had Facebook accounts with a com-
bined total of 283 million followers. As of
2014, 68% of all heads of state and govern-
ment had personal accounts on the platform
(Burson-Marsteller, 2014). Emphasizing
the opportunities of direct communications
with the public afforded by digital commu-
nication technologies, US President Donald
Trump said, ‘Without the tweets, I wouldn’t
be here … I have over 100m [followers]
between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Over
100m. I don’t have to go to the fake media’
(Barber et al., 2017). That is, political actors
are increasingly ‘aware that their every action
is being critically examined within this new
electronic arena, and like the actors that most
politicians are, they are adjusting their pos-
tures and policies to make the most of their
exposure’ (Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015, 303).
The influence of social media is expected
to grow. The latest report from the Pew
Research Center shows that the use of social
media among US adults has increased from
7% in 2005 to about 70% in 2018 (Smith &
Anderson, 2018). Social media platforms are
popular in emerging and developing nations
as well (Poushter, 2016). In this sense, it is
essential to enhance our understanding of how
social media and other communication tech-
nologies are affecting propaganda and persua-
sion efforts by different actors of society.
SOCIAL MEDIA-BASED VISUALS IN
PROPAGANDA
Visual imagery has been a key component of
propaganda for a long time (Green, 2014;
Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015; Rose, 2012).
Examples include ancient coins emblazoned
with images of emperors in Rome, political
posters during World Wars I and II, and
graphic images shared via social media by
the Syrian government in the wake of the
latest Syrian conflict since 2011. These visu-
als are designed to create ‘awe and respect’
and ‘a sense of potency’ to enhance persua-
sion effects while generating emotional
responses to the topic or subject (Jowett &
O’Donnell, 2015, 327; Rose, 2012). Images
are often more effective than words in cap-
turing the attention of the audience and crys-
talizing sentiments (Cloud, 2008; Edwards &
Winkler, 2008; Goldstein, 2009; Rose, 2012).
For this reason, political actors have used
imagery as one of the primary ideological
tools for shaping the public’s perceptions to
their advantage (Cloud, 2008; Davis, 2005;
Edwards & Winkler, 2008; Erickson, 2008;
Hariman & Lucaites, 2008; James, 2006).
Film, photography, and fine art have been
utilized to support political agenda
(Goldstein, 2009). As an example, the Nazis
invested in producing films, photographs,
posters, and art espousing Nazi ideologies
and banned films and art not conforming to
their ideology. The US Office of War
Information during the Roosevelt administra-
tion used visual materials such as films and
photography to influence public opinion.
Green’s (2014) analysis of visual propaganda
related to the German invasion of Belgium
during World War I shows visual representa-
tions were used to manipulate public opinion
in Britain.
The changing communication environment
has rendered visual propaganda ever more
relevant and important. In this increasingly
multi-channel and multi-device media envi-
ronment, people gravitate toward content that
grabs their attention with compelling visuals
(Alper, 2014; Conner, 2017; Seo, 2014). The
rising popularity of infographics, GIFs, pho-
tos, and short videos on social media reflects
people’s information consumption prefer-
ences. For example, empirical data show that
 Visual Propaganda and Social Media
organic Facebook engagement (i.e., content
that is not paid to be promoted) is highest on
posts with videos and photos (Ahmed, 2017).
In addition, there is a higher level of con-
sumer engagement online with infograph-
ics compared with other types of content
(Ahmed, 2017; Li, 2013). Visual imagery is
popular in this time of fast-paced informa-
tion consumption, as it is immediate, easy-to-
digest, and elicits emotion (Li, 2013).
The use of visuals is more relevant and
important when messages need to be com-
municated across different cultures and coun-
tries. Previous research shows that visual
imagery significantly affects one’s percep-
tions of a culture and country that is not one’s
own (Brantner et al., 2011; Cloud, 2008). For
instance, a study of the 2009 Gaza conflict
showed that visual framing of the conflict
influenced viewers’ emotional responses,
evaluations of communicative quality, and
objectivity and perceptions of actor represen-
tation (Brantner et  al., 2011). In fact, social
media-based visuals are increasingly utilized
by governments in efforts to cultivate more
positive perceptions of their country (Seo &
Kinsey, 2012).
Social media-based visual propaganda
has been particularly prominent in con-
flict situations. During the November 2012
Gaza conflict, the Israel Defense Forces and
Hamas’ Alqassam Brigades utilized their
official Twitter accounts to disseminate vis-
ual propaganda messages in an effort to gar-
ner international support for their own side
(Cohen, 2012; Seo, 2014). During the latest
conflicts in Syria that began with popular
uprisings against Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad in 2011, President Assad and the
National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and
Opposition used Facebook pages to share
propaganda images. The increased impor-
tance of social media in the Middle East and
North African (MENA) region is in line with
the rapid growth in the number of Internet
users in the region (Internet World Stats,
2018; Seo & Thorson, 2012, 2017). Stories of
social and political movements and conflicts
129
in the Middle East and North Africa since the
Arab Spring in 2010 were often shared via
popular social media sites like Facebook and
Twitter, as Internet penetration rates in the
regions and around the world have increased
significantly in recent years (Internet World
Stats, 2018). Consequently, main parties in
these conflicts used social media for their
propaganda purposes and shared attention-
grabbing images to enhance propaganda
effects. The following two sections consider
two cases illustrating how visual propaganda
was used in conflict situations in recent
years. The first is the 2012/2013 confronta-
tion between the Israel Defense Forces and
Hamas’ Alqassam Brigades, and the second
one analyzes conflicts between the Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad regime and Syrian
opposition forces following the popular
uprisings in Syria in 2011.
VISUAL PROPAGANDA DURING
ISRAELI-HAMAS CONFLICT IN
2012 AND 2013
In the wake of renewed conflicts with Hamas
in 2012, Israel launched a social media cam-
paign to support its efforts to generate more
favorable international public opinion. Israel
used popular social media platforms such as
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube
to spread information about damages and
casualties in Israel caused by Hamas.
Specifically, the Israeli Defense Forces
posted on its official Twitter account
(@IDFSpokesperson) images of Israeli sol-
diers and civilians killed or injured during the
Hamas attacks. Hamas also launched a social
media-based propaganda campaign. Hamas’
Alqassam Brigades used its official Twitter
account (@AlqassamBrigades) to share
graphic images of Palestinian babies killed by
Israeli airstrikes, with one of its tweets asking
‘Where is the media coverage of Israel’s
crimes in Gaza?’ (Cohen, 2012). Seo’s (2014)
study analyzed how visual imagery was used
130 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
for propaganda by the Israel Defense Forces
and Hamas’ Alqassam Brigades during the
2012 Gaza conflict to examine the role of
visuals in international propaganda in this
digital media age.
Based on visual content analysis of 243
images shared via Twitter by the two sides
from November 2012 to January 2013, the
study found interesting differences and simi-
larities in their use of visuals for social media-
based propaganda messages. In the Twitter
images shared by the Israel Defense Forces,
resistance was the most prominent theme, fol-
lowed by unity, threats from enemy, destruc-
tion, casualties of own civilians, humanity,
and casualties of own soldiers. Prominent
images portraying resistance and shared by
the Israeli Defense Forces include an illustra-
tion featuring Ahmed al-Jabari with a giant
stamp reading ‘ELIMINATED’. Israel’s kill-
ing of the head of the military wing of Hamas
on November 14, 2012, was the main source
of the renewed conflict in 2012. The image
was evocative of a Hollywood film poster,
resulting in criticism that the Israeli Defense
Forces was gamifying the war (Cohen, 2012).
In contrast, casualties of civilians was
the most frequently featured theme in the
Twitter images shared by Hamas’ Alqassam
Brigades. Many messages portraying the
theme were very graphic, with one photo
showing a parent crying in front of the body
of a baby with a big hole in her skull. In
addition, the official Twitter account of the
Alqassam Brigades posted illustrations of
innocent victims to support their message
that Israeli leaders were ‘cold-blooded kill-
ers’. For example, some images described
Netanyahu walking on Palestinian babies or
torturing a Palestinian to bleed while asking
the baby, ‘Tell me where are the Rockets.
Confess’. While many Palestinian civilians
were indeed killed during the conflict, these
images also served to support Hamas’ efforts
to portray Palestinians as ‘victims’ and
Israelis as ‘aggressors’.
In these Twitter images, different prop-
aganda frames were used to enhance
effectiveness of the message (Seo, 2014).
Frames refer to schemata of interpretation
that enable individuals to organize, perceive,
identify, and interpret information (Entman,
1993; Gamson, 1992; Goffman, 1994; Melki,
2014; Reese, 2007; Scheufele & Tewksbury,
2007). A framing approach affects how the
receiver of information understands or inter-
prets the issue presented by making a certain
aspect of an issue more salient. Visual imagery
plays an important role in this identifica-
tion of salience (Borah, 2009; Green, 2014;
Schwalbe & Dougherty, 2015). For instance,
an experimental research study by Brantner
et  al. (2011) showed that visual framing of
international conflicts influences how view-
ers emotionally react to those conflicts. In
addition, an analysis of visual frames used
by Newsweek, Time, and U.S. News & World
Report in covering the 2006 Lebanon War
showed that the news magazines focused on
the war’s negative impact on Lebanon and its
people by using military conflict and human
interest frames (Schwalbe & Dougherty,
2015).
Seo’s (2014) study found important differ-
ences in terms of using propaganda frames
between the Israeli Defense Forces and
Hamas’ Alqassam Brigades. The major-
ity of images posted by the Israel Defense
Forces included the analytical propaganda
frame, whereas a significantly high pro-
portion of images by Hamas’ Alqassam
Brigades featured the emotional propaganda
frame. Specifically, Israeli images tended to
emphasize factual elements concerning dam-
ages incurred to Israel during the conflict
and threats from Hamas. The Israel Defense
Forces frequently communicated mes-
sages by visually presenting data in Israeli
tweets. In contrast, images posted by Hamas’
Alqassam Brigades often utilized an emo-
tional propaganda frame by tweeting photos
of sobbing parents in front of babies or chil-
dren killed or injured by Israeli attacks. The
Alqassam Brigades also posted on Twitter an
image comparing a Caucasian girl sleeping
on a comfortable bed holding a teddy bear
 Visual Propaganda and Social Media
with Palestinian children killed and laid in a
hospital bed.
In addition to engaging in a physical war
on the ground, the Israel Defense Forces and
Hamas’ Alqassam Brigades were involved
in information warfare using social media
sites. They reacted to the other side’s posts
or images on Twitter and called on citizens
in their own country or in other countries
to support their side and amplify their mes-
sages. With the increased use of social media
worldwide, making real-time interactions
with audiences and using compelling visuals
in the process have become important com-
ponents of propaganda.
VISUAL PROPAGANDA DURING
SYRIAN CONFLICTS
Another study examined the use of visual
propaganda during the conflict in Syria in the
wake of popular uprisings against Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2011
(Seo & Ebrahim, 2016). Several years fol-
lowing the onset of the uprisings, the Syrian
government and the National Coalition of
Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces,
which represented Syrian opposition groups
in international meetings (Bouchard, 2014),
used Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and
YouTube to promote their own agenda within
and outside the country and refute the other
side’s claims (Curry, 2013; Sadiki, 2012;
Shehabat, 2012). Digital communication
technologies have become increasingly
important in Syria, although Internet penetra-
tion is still low as compared with other coun-
tries (Internet World Stats, 2018; Seo &
Thorson, 2017). About six million people in
Syria used the Internet with the penetration
rate of 33% as of December 2017, compared
with 30,000 Internet users in 2000 (Internet
World Stats, 2018). An estimated 4.9 million
people used Facebook as of December 2017.
Seo and Ebrahim’s (2016) content analysis
of images posted on Syrian President Bashar
131
al-Assad’s official Facebook page and the
National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and
Opposition Forces (herein, Syrian Coalition)
Facebook page provide useful insights into
visual propaganda in the conflict situation.
Their study analyzed images posted on the
two Facebook pages from April 2013 to
September 2014 covering key events sur-
rounding the Syrian conflict including Syrian
chemical weapons situations and the emer-
gence of ISIS in the Middle East.
Visual imagery on the Syrian govern-
ment’s Facebook page often highlighted
President Bashar al-Assad and portrayed him
as a strong, fearless, and forceful leader who
acts in the best interest of the Syrian people.
In addition, unity within Syria and with for-
eign allies was the most frequently featured
theme in the Facebook images. Many pho-
tos focused on President Assad’s diplomatic
activities with foreign allies – for example,
the Syrian President receiving an award by
Russian officials for ‘defending his peo-
ple’. In addition, the Facebook page posted
images that helped convey the message that
Syrian First Lady Asma al-Assad is ‘a car-
ing mother’ for the country. For instance, the
Syrian First Lady was shown consoling civil-
ians and children affected by the conflict in
some Facebook photos, which conveyed the
theme of humanity (Figure 8.1). Overall, the
Figure 8.1  An image posted to the Syrian
President’s Facebook page
132 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Syrian government’s Facebook page stayed
away from acknowledging political efforts by
opposition forces while using visual imagery
to suggest that life has continued normally
throughout Syria thanks to President Assad.
The Syrian Coalition’s Facebook page
often featured images conveying the themes
of threats from the Syrian government, casu-
alties of civilians, unity, and victory, express-
ing their messages of reviving revolution in
Syria. For instance, visual imagery portrayed
sufferings of children, women, and the elderly,
and citizens’ participation in acts of defiance
toward the Assad regime (Figure 8.2). Most
visuals were aimed at encouraging solidarity
and action among Syrian citizens by expos-
ing government violence and torture. Visual
imagery on the Syrian Coalition Facebook
page also portrayed struggles of resistance in
Syria to broader social issues, such as class
struggles, homelessness, and food secu-
rity. These images help convey an appeal
to all corners of Syrian society to unite and
revive the demands for democratic change,

Figure 8.2  An image posted to the Syrian National Coalition Facebook page
 Visual Propaganda and Social Media
political rights, and economic improvement
many protestors made during the 2011 Syrian
revolution.
In terms of generating audience reactions
on social media, the study found that visuals
conveying the theme of causalities of civil-
ians or military personnel were most likely
to receive higher audience reaction (i.e.,
Facebook likes, comments, or shares). That
was the case for both the Syrian President’s
Facebook page and the Syrian Coalition
Facebook page, even if those themes were
instantiated differently by each side. The
casualties of civilians theme on the Syrian
Coalition Facebook page was often delivered
with graphic images of children or adults
killed by the Syrian government. This aspect
was particularly the case in 2013 when the
Syrian government allegedly launched
chemical weapons attacks on civilians. On
the Syrian President’s Facebook page, the
casualties of civilians theme was visualized
with photos of grieving families and friends
of military personnel who were killed during
fights against Syrian opposition forces.
In addition, the study showed that images
using the emotional or human interest frame
were more likely to generate higher audience
reactions compared with other types of propa-
ganda frames. Visuals including these frames
conveyed personal stories of specific individ-
uals. Indeed, previous studies have shown that
using personal stories in strategic communi-
cation is effective in influencing how people
think about certain issues (Brantner et  al.,
2011; Goldstein, 2009; Jowett & O’Donnell,
2015). Often times, images with the human
interest frame on the Syrian Coalition
Facebook page portrayed civilian sufferings.
Probably for this reason, those images with
the human interest frame garnered a higher
number of comments and shares but a signifi-
cantly lower number of likes. As ‘liking’ on
Facebook is generally considered approving
what is described in the image, Facebook users
may not have wanted to ‘like’ the images. In
this sense, examining specific types of audi-
ence reactions on social media is essential to
133
developing a nuanced understanding of the
interplay between content type and audience
reactions to the content. Empirical research
such as this is an important step toward devel-
oping solid methodological frameworks for
analyzing social media-based visual propa-
ganda and persuasive messages.
CONCLUSION
New and emerging ICTs have significantly
influenced the ways we create and share
information as well as how we connect with
others (Benkler, 2006, 2011; Seo et al., 2014;
Smith & Anderson, 2018). With ICTs ena-
bling direct interactions with and among
their target audiences or stakeholders, gov-
ernments and nongovernmental organiza-
tions have interacted with global publics via
social media and other online-based commu-
nication tools as part of their efforts to under-
stand, inform, and influence them. In some
cases, organizations or individuals use these
digital communication technologies for their
propaganda purposes. While the use of prop-
aganda has been an integral part of human
history dating back to ancient Greece, devel-
opments in ICTs have affected techniques of
propaganda (Cull et  al., 2003; Jowett &
O’Donnell, 2015; Seo, 2014; Seo & Ebrahim,
2016). In particular, visuals have become
more relevant and important in propaganda
messaging, as people are increasingly opting
for easy-to-digest content and share attention-
grabbing images (Conner, 2017; Seo, 2014;
Seo & Ebrahim, 2016).
Despite the significant role of visual propa-
ganda, there is still insufficient empirical or
theoretical research on this topic. While there
are some empirical studies on this (e.g., Green,
2014; Rose, 2012; Schwalbe & Dougherty,
2015; Seo, 2014; Seo & Ebrahim, 2016),
more research is needed to develop solid
theoretical and methodological frameworks
for analyzing visual propaganda and persua-
sive messages in the rapidly changing media
134 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
environment. Previous theories of propa-
ganda provide useful guidance in this (e.g.,
Cull et al., 2003; Herman & Chomsky, 1988;
Jowett & O’Donnell, 2015). However, more
work is needed to better incorporate impor-
tant changes brought about by ICT-facilitated
social collaborative networks. For example,
previous models of propaganda emphasize
the role of mass media and one-way commu-
nication types, whereas increasingly active
multi-path communications between and
among the propagandist and publics is taking
place via social media. As shown in Seo and
Ebrahim’s (2016) study, increased interactiv-
ity between political actors and the public can
result in strengthening or weakening politi-
cal actors’ messages and introducing new
information or arguments. Therefore, it is
important to understand types of interactions
between political actors and the public and
outcomes of these interactions.
Future research should examine how differ-
ent levels of Internet connectivity and availa-
bility of digital communication technologies
might influence creation and dissemination
of propaganda messages and visuals. Equally
important is to understand how characteris-
tics of political, social, and cultural systems
of a society play a role in this. Additionally,
comparing propaganda tactics used in tradi-
tional media with those used in social media
can provide useful context. To examine these
and other related topics, a multilevel approach
to visual propaganda in the digital media
age would be helpful. Research in this area
should have important implications for schol-
arly and policy communities in the fields of
propaganda, persuasion, visual communica-
tion, and international communications.
Note
Parts of this chapter have been reproduced from Seo,
H., & Ebrahim, H. (2016). Visual propaganda
on Facebook: A comparative analysis of Syrian
conflicts. Media, War & Conflict, 9(3), 227–251.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1750635216661648.
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Public Relations and
Corporate Propaganda
INTRODUCTION
In 1928, Edward L. Bernays, the so-called
father of public relations, defined public rela-
tions as a process driven by powerful organi-
zations seeking to gain favor for their
products, services or ideas. This definition
has dominated the field during the years
since its publication in his famous book
Propaganda, considered one of the first
public relations books. In it, Bernays consid-
ered the existence of a positive propaganda,
although this was not unique in the field.
Indeed, as St. John III (2006) pointed out,
today’s conception of propaganda ‘stems
from the years immediately after World War I.
Progressive criticism centered on how the
government used lies and distortions to
convince Americans to intervene in the war’
(p. 221). This progressive criticism has per-
sisted so strongly that it has obscured an
awareness that beneficial and ethical propa-
ganda can serve to move audiences to con-
sensus and action within a democracy. Public
9
Jordi Xifra
relations pioneer Ivy Lee’s efforts to legiti-
matize propaganda have been studied by
scholars – as Moloney (2006) noted, Lee’s
contribution to public relations development
was earlier than Bernays, but is not as com-
monly referred to as Bernays, who wrote
15 books. In 1913 and 1914, Lee orchestrated
a propaganda campaign that sought public and
governmental approval of the Pennsylvania
Railroad’s request for a freight rate increase.
This successful campaign influenced Lee’s
thinking regarding both the theory and prac-
tice of an ethical propaganda campaign.
This argument has an opposing (dark) side –
today’s practice of public relations. Not a lot
of research has been conducted in the field
to show that public relations practitioners act
as propagandists in the service of companies.
Nonetheless, we do have some examples of
how PR firms use public relations not only
to maintain their clients’ hegemony (i.e.,
public relations as power relations, which
is legitimate), but also in ways that follow
the main principles of propaganda used by
138 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
dictatorships: for manipulation and disin-
formation. The turning point came in 1990,
when the world’s largest PR firm, Hill &
Knowlton, was hired by Citizens for a Free
Kuwait, a group predominantly funded by the
Government of Kuwait, to assist its campaign
for US intervention in response to the inva-
sion and annexation of Kuwait by Saddam
Hussein’s regime. The firm arranged for a
Kuwaiti girl, Nayirah, to testify before the
Human Rights Caucus of the United States
Congress in October 1990 about events she
had allegedly witnessed. She reported seeing
Iraqi soldiers kill babies in a Kuwaiti hospi-
tal, before it came to light that she was the
daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the
United States and her story was false. Hill &
Knowlton was accused of spreading false
information to increase support for the Gulf
War, which the company denied. The com-
pany received around US$10 million for their
work for Citizens for a Free Kuwait.
For all of the above reasons, and others we
will present in this chapter, we agree with
the following statement, which firmly stated
the idea of corporate propaganda for the first
time in public relations academia:
US PR grew up in an intellectual climate pessimistic
about mass democracy’s influence on public affairs.
Its first use was to defend ‘robber baron’ US capi-
talism. It was then deployed effectively by the
federal government in support of the First World
War and of the New Deal. It became associated
with ‘corporate propaganda’ and mass psychology
as social control. Its US pioneers (Bernays and Lee)
were supportive of these uses and saw PR’s linkage
with propaganda positively. However, after the US
experience of the fascist regimes between 1919 and
1941, and of the Cold War with communism after
1945, PR had no future as a publicly acceptable
activity in a liberal democracy unless the concep-
tual link with propaganda was fractured. That
fracture was achieved conceptually by Grunig and
Hunt in 1984. (Moloney, 2006, p. 57)
In line with the above perspective, this chapter
deals with today’s corporate propaganda as
not only a new but also the most practiced
form of public relations.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF A LACK OF
AFFECTION
Public relations scholars have been moti-
vated to forge a clear distinction between
the concepts of PR and corporate propa-
ganda, or may only accept propaganda as a
historical antecedent of contemporary public
relations practice. Fortunately, a few schol-
ars, such as L’Etang (2008), have explored
the conceptual and historical connections
between what is usually seen as the trouble-
some link between public relations and
propaganda, and questioned why these con-
cepts are hard to define in relation to each
other.
Despite this, other scholars, such as
Moloney (2006) or Xifra and Heath (2015),
have considered public relations to be a form
of propaganda, or the two terms to be used
interchangeably. For instance, Moloney
argued that ‘public relations is weak propa-
ganda “voicing” interests competing over
policy, material, ideological and reputa-
tional advantage in a market, capitalist, lib-
eral democracy’ (p. 9). However, as Bernays
(1965) observed in his memoirs, the conno-
tations of the term propaganda turned com-
pletely negative over the previous 200 years.
From the perspective of public relations
scholars, what are the reasons for this? We
can find two main motives. Chronologically,
the first is located in Europe, and the second
in the United States.
We find the first reason in the influence
of the French personalist movement led
by Mounier in European public relations.
Indeed, the so-called European School of
Public Relations, which proposed a Christian
humanitarianism approach to public rela-
tions, has to be included as a part of the effects
of Christian phenomenology on French post-
war intellectuals, thinkers and scholars. The
intellectual leader of this school was Lucien
Matrat. According to Boiry (2004), as a pro-
fessional Matrat considered the methods used
by American oil companies to be too similar
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
to those described by Ellul (1973) in his book
on propaganda, and lacking respect for indi-
viduals. He therefore became interested in
the ethical nature of public relations and its
distinction from propaganda and advertis-
ing. With this in mind, Matrat constructed
the bases of a theoretical body of work which
was developed by a group of French profes-
sionals and academics constituting what is
today known as the ‘European doctrine of
public relations’, a term coined by Matrat
himself (Ugeux, 1973).
As Watson (2014) stated, Matrat was a
major figure in western European public rela-
tions over a 30-year period, but has received
little recognition elsewhere. He was consid-
ered the father of public relations in France
and became a dominant figure in the French-
speaking world and in other countries such as
Spain in the early 1970s.
To Matrat (1971), adopting a public rela-
tions policy is, first of all, to reconcile the
interests of the company and of those who
depend on its implementation. To put a public
relations policy into practice is, afterwards –
and only afterwards – to initiate a commu-
nication policy capable of establishing and
maintaining relationships of trust with the
company’s group of publics. This is, accord-
ing to Matrat (1971), the key that separates
public relations from advertising and propa-
ganda. From the moment when advertising
becomes the strategy of desire that motivates
the demand for a product or service and prop-
aganda the conditioning strategy that replaces
reflective actions with reflexive actions, pub-
lic relations becomes the strategy of trust that
awards communication its authenticity. The
basis for this can be found in his position as
a Public Relations manager for the French-
owned Elf petroleum group. He considered
PR methods used by American oil compa-
nies to be propaganda and lacking respect for
individuals. He therefore became interested
in the ethical nature of public relations and
its distinction from propaganda and adver-
tising. His enduring international influence
139
is found in the Code of Athens, the ethical
PR code adopted by The International Public
Relations Association (IPRA), in accordance
with his principle: ‘without ethical practice,
public relations has no purpose’ (Matrat,
1975).
The Code of Athens was based on the
UN’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.
Matrat proposed it as a universal code of
ethics for public relations and an important
differentiator of public relations from what
he considered lesser forms of communica-
tion such as advertising and promotional
propaganda. Perhaps more interesting than
the code itself is its function as a public rela-
tions strategy:
Using a five-step strategy promoted by Matrat,
IPRA had gained support from many national
public relations bodies and had staged photo-
based presentation events that involved Pope
Paul VI, the presidents of India and the Council of
Europe and various heads of state and govern-
ment ministers, as evidenced by numerous photo-
graphs in the IPRA archive … While these gave
‘name check’ value to the Code and promoted its
acceptance in the public relations sector, Matrat’s
strategy was more pragmatic in its desired out-
comes than he had promoted earlier. (Watson,
2014, p. 712)
In fact, Matrat postulated that public rela-
tions was a form of positive persuasive
communication when in comparison with
advertising and propaganda. The effects of
European totalitarian regimes institutional-
izing propaganda affected a deeply Catholic
intellectual such as Matrat, who sought
refuge in public relations to justify persua-
sive communication and reject the one that
had been created by the Catholic Church.
It is not surprising, then, that the Code of
Athens (whose intellectual contribution
is minimal, since it is practically a plagia-
rism of the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights) found one of its most promi-
nent prescribers in the highest spiritual
leader of Catholicism. The event attended
by Pope Paul VI was a symbolic act, which
140 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
legitimized public relations as a form of
Catholic communication above and beyond
the perverted propaganda use made of it by
European totalitarian states.
The second reason for public relations
scholars distancing themselves from propa-
ganda was James E. Grunig designing the
four models of public relations, perhaps the
most important turning point in the academic
history of the discipline. This theory per-
meated public relations research in the last
20 years of the twentieth century, to the point
where it originated a critical theory whose
authors, tired of the almost unified thinking
prevalent among academics of the discipline,
decided to embark upon new, intellectually
much more fertile directions, and on which
our chapter is based.
Grunig introduced four behavioral models
of public relations based on an analysis of the
historical development of his professional
practice. They constitute representations of
values, goals and behaviors considered or
used by organizations when practicing public
relations and are the result of combining two
dichotomous dimensions: the direction (uni-
directional vs. bidirectional) and the balance
(asymmetric vs. symmetric) of the effects
pursued. The names of the models are:
the press agent/publicity model; the public
information model; the bidirectional asym-
metric model; and the bidirectional symmet-
ric model.
In the press agent model, public relations
performs the function of propaganda and
disinformation. Professionals disseminate
information regarding their clients that is
often incomplete and distorted. It is a model
of unidirectional communication, from
the organization to the public. This propa-
gandistic dimension is articulated by apply-
ing the principles of scientific propaganda
developed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries – that is, those of sim-
plicity, sympathy, synthesis, surprise, repe-
tition, saturation, wear, dosage and unity of
orchestration (Xifra, 2017) – and the use of
publicity. The model is the result of a very
narrow vision of propaganda influenced by
the use that the Soviet, German, Italian and
Spanish dictatorships made of propaganda.
Some authors have compared this model
with another based on the spin doctor phe-
nomenon (Sumpter & Tankard, 1994). Such
a comparison clarifies its application to
communication and highlights its manipula-
tive aspect: the creators of image and adver-
tising have known how to give the necessary
effect to their stories. The concept of spin
doctor is, therefore, a current vulgarization
of the press agent of the late nineteenth cen-
tury, as shown by: (1) spin doctors’ aims
being reactive; (2) their use and abuse of
new technologies – social networks, email,
mobile phones, etc. – as a principal means of
communication; (3) their clients consisting
mainly of politicians, high public officials,
public figures involved in judicial processes
or, as was the case with pioneering press
agents, people from the world of entertain-
ment or sports; (4) their contacting jour-
nalists directly, instead of using techniques
such as press releases, press conferences or
corporate advertising; and (5) their tending
to act without any ethical scruples, not try-
ing to achieve too much notoriety and reject-
ing the term ‘spin doctor’.
In the public information model, the pur-
pose of public relations is the dissemination
of information, not necessarily with a persua-
sive purpose. Professionals act, or should act,
as if they were journalists integrated within
the organization; that is, applying the princi-
ples of current information, with the function
of transmitting information about it to the –
internal or external – public. In this model,
communication is also unidirectional, but
with the difference with respect to the previ-
ous one that the information transmitted here
is much more exhaustive.
The bidirectional asymmetric model aims
to scientifically persuade the public; that is,
those professionals who practice bidirectional
asymmetric public relations use methods and
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
techniques from the social sciences to study
the attitudes and behaviors of the public,
with the aim of making them accept the organ-
ization’s point of view and behaving in a way
that backs up its decisions. Communication
in this model is, obviously, bidirectional: it
flows to the public and from the public (feed-
back). Asymmetry is inferred from the fact
that the effects of public relations are unbal-
anced in favor of the organization. In other
words, the organization does not modify its
behavior as a result of public relations, but
seeks to modify the attitudes and behaviors
of the public.
Finally, the bidirectional symmetric model
has been one of the backbones of contem-
porary public relations theory and become
its dominant paradigm. For Grunig, it con-
stitutes the ideal of public relations, the
normative model par excellence, which has
therefore generated most criticism, revisions
and adaptations since its formulation in 1984.
The author himself has adapted it, although
he has not refuted it. According to Grunig, the
public relations professionals who practice it
act as mediators between the organization
and the public in its environment. The goal is
mutual understanding between the two par-
ties. The theory and methods used are those
of communication rather than persuasion.
Symmetric bidirectional communication
translates into a dialogue that should lead, in
the words of Grunig and Hunt (1984), to the
organization and its public modifying their
attitudes and behavior following execution of
the public relations program. This would be
the ideal situation resulting from the exercise
of public relations and is what the authors say
when they consider the sympathetic effect
between both subjects as being good: the
organization and its public communicating
sufficiently to understand each other’s posi-
tion. In terms of relations with the press, one
example is as follows: while the sending of
press releases with no follow-up is a tactic of
the press agent or public information model,
the bidirectional symmetric model would
141
include inviting journalists to develop their
view of the facts (through a press visit, for
example).
An attempt was made to validate this
paradigm through a macro-research project,
the ‘Excellence’ study, a project funded by
the International Association of Business
Communicators (IABC) and initiated in
1985. Excellence in Public Relations and
Communication Management was published
seven years later and represents the first stage
of the project, theory building, which was to
be followed by empirical research. A project
of this length and size would constitute a seri-
ous research effort in any discipline and, to
date, stands out in the field of public relations
(Pieczka, 2006, p. 348). The Excellence study
contributed to shaping the dominant paradigm.
However, ‘practitioners create discourses that
present and justify their view of the world.
When publics accept the practitioner’s view
of the world, hegemony is created and publics
cede power to the organizations’ (Coombs &
Holladay, 2012, p. 881). Furthermore, power
is frequently linked to Gramsci’s (1971) con-
cept of hegemony or ‘domination without
physical coercion through the widespread
acceptance of particular ideologies and con-
sent to the practices associated with those ide-
ologies’ (Roper, 2005, p. 70). Put another way
by the same author:
J. E. Grunig acknowledged that ‘the symmetrical
model actually serves the self-interest of the
organization better than an asymmetrical model
because “organizations get more of what they
want when they give up some of what they
want”’ (J. E. Grunig, 2001, p. 13; J. E. Grunig &
White, 1992, p. 39). Symmetrical communication
can be seen as an ongoing process rather than a
one-off event. So, too, is hegemony, by definition.
(Roper, 2005, p. 83)
Thus, symmetrical communication is also
propaganda, and in particular corporate prop-
aganda within the field of communication
management, because hegemony is, along
with ideology, an ontological pillar of corpo-
rate propaganda.
142 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
THE ONTOLOGY OF CORPORATE
PROPAGANDA: PUBLIC RELATIONS,
CORPORATE IDEOLOGY AND
HEGEMONY
Propaganda is a communicative phenomenon
of an ideological nature that aims to attain,
maintain or strengthen a dominant position
over the receiver, so that the message send-
er’s future aims regarding political power are
met (Pineda, 2007). Ideology plays a func-
tional role in meeting this aim. Hence, as
well as it being a strategic process, the key
elements of propaganda are ideology and
hegemony. From this perspective, in the
propaganda process, strategy can be consid-
ered as ideology by nature, and as hegemony
as outcome as well.
Despite having its linguistic origins in the
seventeenth century, the link between prop-
aganda and ideology was first introduced
in the ancient Near East and developed by
Assyriologists. For scholars of the period,
the concept of ideology was based mainly on
its dissemination through ‘propaganda’. This
critical analytical approach is essential to
the history of public relations and corporate
communication, as it does not take an exclu-
sively manipulative view of propaganda, but
rather offers a new vision of propaganda as
strategic reputation management for rulers.
Indeed, as Xifra and Heath (2015) point
out, the main sources of Assyriological data
are written and iconographic texts with a
notably rhetorical and persuasive dimension
emphasizing the right, obligation and power
of the state to educate the populace about
matters of state and individual activities.
Such documents and works of art function
to legitimize the power of monarchs (Winter,
2010). Topics such as power legitimacy raise
the opportunity to look more deeply into
ancient societies to determine whether public
relations was an important strategic and man-
agerial option that included tools and tactics,
but went far beyond that limited sense of pub-
lic relations roots.
Written texts include royal inscriptions
and official reports about military campaigns.
As Laato (1995) pointed out, most of these
texts were deeply influenced by the prevail-
ing political and religious ideology, even
military campaigns:
The king was regarded as under the protection of
the gods, and this was used to legitimate his posi-
tion among his own people … It can be said that
a social expectation connected with the religious
and political legitimation of the king forced the
king to provide a response. A successful military
campaign provoked a positive response from soci-
ety, especially when the society had the opportu-
nity to celebrate its success. Official ceremonies
were thus arranged when the victorious army of
the king returned from battle. Another important
way of reporting the victory was through inscrip-
tions and reliefs which were displayed in public
places. (pp. 199–200)
Examining documents such as these in
the second half of the twentieth century,
Assyriologists unanimously used ‘propa-
ganda’ to label the form of strategic public
communication used by the monarchs of the
ancient Near East. This topic is one of the
most studied by Assyriology, as evidenced by
the collection of works published by Larsen
(1979) including research on channels and
messaging to legitimize power used by mon-
archs of the age. As Siddall (2013) pointed
out, the Italian school of Assyriology was
influenced by historical materialism and
neo-Marxism. It applied the concepts of
hegemony and ideology proposed by Antonio
Gramsci and Louis Althusser. These themes
focused research mainly on the use of strate-
gically managed communication as a means
to gain and augment power legitimation by
kings in the ancient Near East.
Vital to the historiography of public rela-
tions, such studies suggest that structural ele-
ments of public relations, such as prestige,
reputation, policies, practices and publics,
were present in the ideologically based com-
municative processes of early civilizations.
Therefore, propaganda has been a
structural element of ideology since the
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
very beginning of civilization. That said,
Marxism and postmodernism have muddied
the two concepts. The Marxist influence is
most apparent in the assumption that ideol-
ogy is concerned only with power relations
and therefore any official expression of it
must be aimed at gaining and maintaining
power. This influence has fostered pan-
propagandaism, which comprises those
scholars who believe that in a given field of
communication everything is propaganda.
This school of thought is mainly represented
by functionalist and critical theory authors.
Authors such as Lasswell (1927) or Bernays
(1928), who accept a variety of forms and
techniques in communication under the con-
cept of propaganda, represent the function-
alist school. Thus, Bernays (1928) stated:
‘Propaganda does exist on all sides of us,
and it does change our mental pictures of the
world’ (p. 26).
While the pan-propagandaism of function-
alists lies mainly in the procedural aspect,
that of authors supporting the critical theory
of propaganda basically lies in the ideo-
logical aspect. This is the case with French
sociologist Jacques Ellul. Ellul’s contribu-
tions are crucial because, even though writ-
ing some time after the Second World War,
he suggested that propaganda is not limited
to totalitarian regimes but rather intrinsic to
mass society and as such important for all
kinds of regimes, including democratic ones.
Ellul (1973) rejected the common view that
propaganda was intrinsically evil or manipu-
lative. His sociological approach took the
study of propaganda beyond that of psycho-
logical persuasion. Central to his view was
that education was a pre-requisite for propa-
ganda and not the other way round (L’Etang,
2004). According to Ellul, propaganda was
‘an indispensable condition to the develop-
ment of technological progress and the estab-
lishment of a technological condition’ (p. x).
Specifically, he included public relations
as part of propaganda because such work,
‘seek[s] to adapt the individual to society, to a
living standard, to an activity…, to make him
143
conform, which is the aim of all propaganda’
(p. 64). We can say the same with regard to
strategic communication. The concept of
sociological propaganda is fundamental to
this approach: ‘a phenomenon much more
difficult to grasp than political propaganda,
and [is] rarely discussed. Basically, it is the
penetration of an ideology by means of its
sociological context’ (Ellul, 1973, p. 63).
Accordingly, sociological propaganda com-
bines extremely diverse forms: advertising,
public relations and other forms of strategic
communication, like publicity.
Similarly, Sproule (1989) presented a his-
torically grounded categorization identifying
four responses to propaganda: the human-
ist response, which tries to increase citizen
participation in politics; the professional
response, which sees propaganda as neces-
sary for a complex society and thus opens up
opportunities for a cadre of communication
specialists; the scientific response, which sees
a shift in research in the field from qualitative
to quantitative; and the polemical response,
which is openly partisan and discredits the
sources of some ideas, such as American anti-
communism in the 1950s (L’Etang, 2004).
Sproule’s framework – in particular, the pro-
fessional response – is particularly useful in
helping us to see the emergence of strategic
communication as intrinsically connected to
the deep structures of society.
From the standpoint of public relations,
these approaches have been reinforced with
the idea of strategy as ideology. Certainly, if
we want to distinguish between propaganda
and corporate public relations, the criterion
that the latter is a-ideological is false. As
Shrivastava (1986) claimed, strategic man-
agement is an ideology and the discourse
on strategy helps legitimize existing power
structures and resource inequalities. From
this standpoint, other scholars have defined
corporate strategy as a set of discourses
and practices that transform managers and
employees alike into subjects who secure
their sense of purpose and reality by formu-
lating, evaluating and conducting strategy
144 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
(Frandsen & Johansen, 2015). Such perspec-
tives are consistent with the idea posited by
Hallahan et  al. (2007): ‘Strategic commu-
nication also includes examining how an
organization presents itself in society as a
social actor in the creation of public culture
and in the discussion of public issues’ (p. 27).
This perspective links with the ideas of
truth, knowledge and power of French phi-
losopher Michel Foucault:
For Foucault, truth was not something that was
‘arrived’ at through public discussion, but some-
thing that is ‘produced’ through discourse. …
Discourse structures how we know, understand
and speak about the world. Discourse is both a
symbolic and constitutive system that structures
knowledge and social practice. … This perspective
shifts the role of public relations from information
management and control to the production, con-
testation, and transformation of ideas and mean-
ings that circulate in society. The task for public
relations practitioners is to ensure that certain
ideas and practices become established and under-
stood and thereby attempt to gain the hegemonic
advantage for their clients in this discursive
struggle. … From this critical discourse perspec-
tive, public relations professionals are in the busi-
ness of creating particular knowledge and identity
positions which then influence the types of social
relationships that are possible within and outside
the discourse…discourse is the vehicle through
which knowledge and truth circulate, and the
strategic mode by which social, political and/or
economic power is maintained or transformed.
Key to the acceptance of these social meanings or
interpretation of types of knowledge is the strate-
gic linking of the dominance with self- or public
interest – which in turn explains their social accept-
ance. In these terms, public relations practitioners
are involved in the strategic attempt to have par-
ticular social meanings and interpretations of
events, activities or behaviours. This discursive
hegemonic conceptualisation of public relations
makes it difficult to argue that there is any essen-
tial and substantive difference between PR prac-
tices and propaganda. (Weaver et al., 2006, p. 21)
To be more precise, an organization, as a
social actor, strategically spreads – via strate-
gic communication – one set of ideologies –
for example, that of reputation, that of con-
sumption – over other different or con­
flicting  ideologies. From this perspective,
public relations is a form of (political)
propaganda – a form of ideological propa-
ganda. That is, even if we accept the classical
definition, according to which propaganda
­
disseminates political ideas, and assume that
public relations also disseminates political
ideas – in fact, it spreads capitalist ideas –
then we can conclude that public relations
(or corporate communication) is a form of
propaganda.
Thus, we can define the (persuasive) dis-
course of strategic communication as a form
of (persuasive) political discourse. Public
relations is (a form of) political commu-
nication. Indeed, strategic communication
spreads and propagates capitalist ideology,
the ideology of consumption, the idea that
happiness depends on our relationship of
trust with the organization and its products
or services, the organization’s position in the
reputation rankings; in short, our social status
depends on the purchase and possession of
brands, being members of a particular organi-
zation or attending special events.
However, public relations cannot be defined
as a way of freely expressing ideology. First,
because public relations expresses – at least –
one ideology. Second, because the absence of
ideology is a form of ideology in itself: a way
of expressing a viewpoint on social phenom-
ena, a view shared by social groups aimed
at fulfilling certain social objectives related
to or opposed to other social groups through
what is often the manipulative and strategic
use of language and other semiotic resources.
Not having a position – always allowing for
this being possible – is in itself a way of tak-
ing a position; producing an a-ideological (or
supposedly a-ideological) discourse is itself
an ideological manifestation.
As corporate management is largely a pro-
cess of discourse, the analysis of strategic
communication should focus on the role of
discourse in securing and sustaining organi-
zational inequalities through a process of ide-
ology. Public relations is ideological – and
manipulative as well – because, like other
discourses used by groups aiming to achieve
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
certain socio-discursive goals in competition
with other groups and discourses, it con-
structs and transmits a vision of the world
which is opposed to other dysfunctional
visions in the achievement of its social
goals. In consequence, without necessar-
ily falling into pan-propagandaism, pub-
lic relations is propaganda, and corporate
public relations is corporate propaganda.
From the opposing viewpoint, political,
economic, religious and all other types of
power have produced and continue to pro-
duce a type of communication that can be
referred to as propaganda. Nevertheless,
this concept is also closely related to the
long history of governments that have used
public relations to serve the public within
the framework of a rational and orderly
society (Xifra, 2017).
THE STRUCTURAL DIMENSION OF
CORPORATE PROPAGANDA
Unlike public relations, there is no study in
the communication theory about what is cor-
porate propaganda. The consideration of
public relations as a social sciences disci-
pline that deals with the study of reality and
the problems of communication between
organizations and their public is a very new
phenomenon, since it starts essentially in the
Anglo-Saxon countries from the last quarter
of the last century. The same happens with
propaganda, which has been mainly analyzed
from an interdisciplinary perspective between
mass communication research and social
psychology (Le Bon, 1895, Tchakhotine,
1939). But unlike public relations, propa-
ganda has not had a place in the university
world like the one that public relations has
had. Therefore, this section tries to cover this
epistemological gap through a conceptual
proposal of corporate propaganda that high-
lights its structural dimension as a structuring
frame of the ontological elements exposed in
the previous section.
145
The defining task is very relevant in public
relations field, because ‘definitions play cru-
cial roles both in societal processes and in the
minds of those who study and practice public
relations’ (Gordon, 1997, p. 58). In addition:
The critical writers about PR generally develop their
conclusion of manipulation or propaganda with-
out precise definitions of these phenomena, rely-
ing instead on their structural analysis of unequal
power in the political economy and/or on their
experience of PR. (Moloney, 2006, p. 69)
Corporate propaganda, like public relations,
is a complex phenomenon. Researchers’
attempts to define public relations have not
been precisely pacific. Some scholars prefer
to collect the definitions of third parties than
offer their own, although most do offer their
personal vision. If we add to this the diversity
of existing conceptual perspectives, their vul-
garization and the confusion of the concept
that this entails, deciding on a univocal idea
of public relations is an arduous undertaking.
In our case, the situation is yet more arduous,
because there is no attempt to conceptual-
ize corporate propaganda. Although there is
nowhere to choose from, the different per-
spectives that we find in the domain of public
relations are those that will guide us in our
definition.
The common denominator in most of the
definitions that have been formulated is to
consider public relations as a means of com-
munication management to establish good
relations and a mutual understanding between
an organization and its public. However,
these definitions appear to turn their backs on
practice and ignore the fact that organizations
use the practice of public relations to main-
tain, safeguard and defend their interests. In
addition, many definitions do not mention
that public relations is a persuasive form of
communication, denying the evidence that
persuasion is at the origin of the profession
and has been ever-present throughout its still
short historical trajectory. Not to mention the
fact that, as we will state later, public rela-
tions is also a form of power and control.
146 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
One of the more recent definitions is that
provided by Coombs and Holladay (2010),
for whom public relations is ‘the manage-
ment of mutual influence relationships within
a network of relationships of groups of indi-
viduals in a similar situation’ (p. 3), empha-
sizing that the influence is mutual. That is, it
is not a definition formulated from the angle
of the traditional actors – corporations – but
also includes the perspective of those actors
who are usually studied as mere recipients
of messages, meaning activist groups or any
other strategic public. In other words, the
term ‘corporate’ does not refer to the pro-
moting subject; it has a strategic dimension
that points directly to communication as a
function of organizations. A communication
process that involves concessions between
organizations and their stakeholders, and that
is not at odds with the search for corporate
hegemony. Indeed, Gramsci (1971) pointed
out that if hegemony is to be maintained,
such concessions cannot fundamentally alter
core power relationships:
But there is … no doubt that such sacrifices and
such a compromise cannot touch the essential; for
though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also
be economic, must necessarily be based on the
decisive function exercised by the leading groups in
the decisive nucleus of economic activity. (p. 161)
Corporate propaganda is how power rela-
tions are approached via communication.
Corporate propaganda manages relationships
by representing particular interests, more or
less in accordance with the public interest.
Hence, lobbying is perhaps the paradigmatic
form of corporate propaganda, whose mecha-
nisms are followed in other areas of relation-
ship management between organizations
and their publics. From this perspective, we
define corporate propaganda as the manage-
ment of a strategic communication process
promoted by a social actor – as organization,
brand, idea, cause or interest – to manage
power relations with their public with a view
to creating, maintaining or reinforcing their
hegemony with respect to these publics.
Corporate propaganda is a persuasive
communication process involving two main
actors: the promoters of the process and the
recipients of the messages that this process
channels. The promoters of corporate propa-
ganda are social actors. If these social actors
are companies, they can act as brands. If they
are civil society organizations, they can do
so as causes or ideas. In public affairs, inter-
est groups work to influence public authori-
ties, interposing an interest that they wish to
legitimize. However, regardless of how they
present themselves, there is always an inter-
est behind them. Every corporate propaganda
process is driven by the defense of corporate
interests, which allow the hegemonic system
represented by communication between the
corporation and its environment to be rein-
forced or stabilized.
The recipient of public relations messages
is the public, and in particular stakeholders;
that is, those publics with a strategic dimen-
sion. Like traditional propaganda, the mass
media are fundamental stakeholders in cor-
porate propaganda; but so are other publics
normally reserved for the theory of public
relations or corporate communication, such
as internal stakeholders. Stakeholders are
those publics (people or groups) that affect
or are affected by the activity of the organi-
zation. Coombs and Holladay (2010) opt
for another term, ‘constituencies’, since it
encompasses both stakeholders and organi-
zations. Whatever name we wish to give
them, it is worth highlighting that they must
be strategic publics, because without publics
relevant to the ideological strategy there can
be no hegemony.
Contrary to what the vast majority of pub-
lic relations definitions formulated to date
suggest, corporate public relations is not a
neutral activity. The organizations and indi-
viduals that hire these services do so to defend
their interests and obtain profits. This factor
is crucial in understanding that public rela-
tions is corporate propaganda. The current
practice of public relations has its economic
justification in obtaining profits. Reputation,
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
a key concept in public relations, is not man-
aged by corporate pride. Companies’ con-
cern for their reputation is due to reputation
constituting risk: a reputational crisis is an
economic crisis. That is why corporate pub-
lic relations are power relations. And power
of influence is unequal among organiza-
tions, among stakeholders and between both.
Influence is a type of power when one part
of the relationship can modify the attitude or
behavior of the other. From this perspective,
public relations is ‘a struggle for communi-
cative advantage’ (Moloney, 2005, p. 553) in
which the role of discourse is to secure and
sustain corporate inequalities through a pro-
cess of ideology. In other words, it is corpo-
rate propaganda.
Thus, corporate propaganda is a form of
power, in the Foucauldian sense of the term;
that is, ‘a relation of forces not identifi-
able with any form-institution. These forces,
moreover, never appear on their own, but
in relation to other forces’ (Cortés, 2010).
Another key idea of Foucault’s thinking that
is very useful in defining corporate propa-
ganda is that of biopower. With this concept,
Foucault referred to the practice of modern
states controlling and managing human life
through regulatory and discursive forces
(Foucault, 1976; Macey, 2009). Biopower
‘is the power of regularization’ (Feder, 2007,
p.62), and Holtzhausen (2002) and Place
and Vardeman-Winter (2013) have shown
that public relations professionals perpetu-
ate rules and standardizing practices that help
to conserve power for the already powerful
organizations and their representatives. This
notion fits perfectly with the idea of power
formulated by Castells, who defines it as ‘the
relational capacity that enables a social actor
to influence asymmetrically the decisions of
other social actor(s) in ways that favor the
empowered actor’s will, interests, and val-
ues’ (Castells, 2009, p. 10). When power is
exercised ‘by the construction of meaning
on the basis of the discourses through which
social actors guide their action’ (p. 10), cor-
porate propaganda emerges, among other
147
forms of strategic communication, such as,
for example, advertising. Therefore, we must
not renounce a relational view of corporate
propaganda, as it will help us to explain
power more effectively. From this stand-
point, research by Edwards (2006) reveals
the implicit deceit in the practice of public
relations, which disguises the intentions of
the organization, and consequently distorts
relationships. Indeed, public relations prac-
titioners, for whom language is at the heart
of their work, act ‘as symbolic producers,
transforming or disguising interests into
disinterested meanings and legitimizing
arbitrary power relations’ (Edwards, 2006,
p. 230). This statement justifies the consider-
ation of current public relations as corporate
propaganda.
The purpose of corporate propaganda is
to create, maintain or increase the hegemony
of the organization with respect to its stake-
holders through the management of (power)
relations with these stakeholders. A symbolic
power, like the one in their day noted by think-
ers from Étienne de La Boétie in his Discours
de la servitude volontaire ou Contr’un (1576)
to Thomas Hobbes in Elements of Law,
Natural and Politic (1640), including practi-
cally every one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
works, and that centuries later would be taken
up and retouched by the French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu. A power that is capable of
being recognized, of obtaining recognition.
A power (economic, political, cultural
or otherwise) that has the authority to be
ignored in terms of its true power, violence
and arbitrariness. For this reason, the prac-
tice of corporate propaganda can in many
cases be analyzed from the perspective of the
symbolic violence discussed by Bourdieu: a
violence that is exercised with the tacit com-
plicity of those who suffer it (stakeholders)
and those who exercise it (organizations),
insofar as both are unaware of the suffering
and exercising of this violence (Bourdieu,
1994). Corporate propaganda ‘exercises
symbolic violence on target audiences
through creating this misrepresentation in
148 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
communications that masks the real organi-
zational interest in the activity. By persuad-
ing audiences of a particular point of view,
practitioners work to maintain or improve the
position of their employing organizations in
society’ (Edwards, 2006, p. 230).
At this point, the concept of ‘social capi-
tal’ emerges, viewed as: ‘the aggregate of the
actual or potential resources which are linked
to possession of a durable network of more or
less institutionalized relationships of mutual
acquaintance and recognition’ (Bourdieu,
1985, p. 248). Organizations and stakehold-
ers wish to manage their relations because of
the social capital these generate. Social capi-
tal makes it easier for both organizations and
their publics to achieve their objectives. In
the field of corporate propaganda, this social
capital is fundamental.
Social capital is a concept that is close to
one of the forms of legitimization inherent
in Max Weber’s power: that of charismatic
legitimization. According to Weber (1968),
the concept of charisma revolves around two
central ideas. On the one hand, the extraor-
dinaryness of the charismatic leader and, on
the other, the recognition he receives from his
followers, who, despite not being the basis of
legitimacy, create a legitimizing effect. That
is, it is built through the relationships estab-
lished with those being dominated (even if
relationships between organizations and
stakeholders are ones of power, not domina-
tion). What defines the Weberian charismatic
leader is not only his objectively extraordi-
nary qualities, but the recognition of his fol-
lowers and how they perceive him.
However, this will not always be a sym-
bolic power. Thus, returning to Foucault’s
philosophy, power would be character-
ized by not essentially being repressive, by
being exercised more than it is possessed,
and doing so in the game of mobile and
asymmetric relations, and by affecting both
dominators and dominated, since it passes
through all the forces in the relationship
(Foucault, 1980; Deleuze, 1986). In the field
of corporate propaganda, the link between a
professional and a journalist (or a legislator
in the field of public affairs) is a clear exam-
ple of Foucauldian power, since, in the first
place, it is exercised within the framework of
a media relations strategy. Each has prefer-
ences and aversions, selects games or strate-
gies and measures how to manage preferences
to achieve the best result in the relationship
with the other party, whose strategies are not
usually known. Second, in order to obtain
maximum information coverage, companies
want the information to be published at a spe-
cific time, strategically selected, a time that
should not be contrary to the interests of the
medium. Both, then, have power. The power
is not only in the hands of the organization
that will receive news coverage, but the jour-
nalist will also have his interests satisfied, by
informing his readers, listeners or viewers on
a topic that they consider of informative inter-
est. From the point of view of game theory,
this is a classic duel, in which the strategy of
each of the opponents is not known.
CONCLUSION
L’Etang (2008) states: ‘The generation of
multiple perspectives, however, somewhat
complicates the definitional debate without
particularly resolving it. There is the risk that
the concept “propaganda” can become an
empty concept or a shape-shifter – so broad
as to be meaningless’ (p. 255). However, we
believe the situation to be the opposite. That
is to say, that the concept is fuller than ever,
but that nobody wants to talk about it because
of the negative connotations deriving from its
use in the totalitarian systems of the twenti-
eth century.
A good example can be found in British
history. ‘Some practitioners acknowledge
overlap between PR and propaganda, and in
the UK, history shows that a number of prac-
titioners moved quite smoothly from wartime
careers in propaganda to civilian careers in
public relations’ (L’Etang, 2008, p. 255),
 Public Relations and Corporate Propaganda
thus implying shared practices and concepts.
A clear reality therefore exists: both in the
professional field and in the academic field,
propaganda is limited to times of war or in
the public communication of totalitarian
states.
This is the main reason why there are no
corporate propagandists, even when the prac-
tice of current public relations has an ideo-
logical dimension that links it more to the
concept of propaganda than to any other. In
fact, the history of public relations is the his-
tory of propaganda or, in other words, the
emergence of public relations was nothing
more than the manifestation of the classic
propaganda model in a new scenario derived
from the Industrial Revolution, in which new
actors emerged: companies. Thus, the propa-
gandistic nature of public relations advo-
cated by pioneers such as Edward Bernays
and Ivy Lee should never have been lost
due to a kind of academic and professional
resentment that affected the field of public
relations, which emerged as good persua-
sive communication, based on the truth. As
if the truth were always good. Or, were the
beheadings of the Daesh hostages not true?
But nobody spoke of public relations in rela-
tion to Daesh, rather of propaganda, because
it was the corporate propaganda of a terrorist
organization. It is simply a matter of calling
things by their name, without this meaning
that there are strategic communication activi-
ties that can be considered closer to what was
originally called ‘public relations’ than to
propaganda. Sincerely, however, in a context
of capitalist competitiveness like the one that
has characterized the twentieth and twenty-
first centuries, and an ethical – much more
than economic – crisis, there is little space for
corporate public relations, and there is much
for adapting the techniques of classic propa-
ganda to new contexts (so-called ‘post-truth’
being the latest great example of this).
In this chapter, we have tried to present
how the corporate propaganda concept bet-
ter suits the designation of today’s corporate
public relations practice, since, as Moloney
149
argued: ‘the PR “voices” of dominant groups
in society are heard more than those of less
dominant groups; PR gives advantages to
special interests at costs to the public inter-
est; and this asymmetry of communication
expresses and reinforces unequal power rela-
tionships’ (2006, p. 88).
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 PART II
Methodological Approaches
in Propaganda Research
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 10
Rhetorical Methods and
Metaphor in Viral
Propaganda
Chris Miles

INTRODUCTION ways in which the former can serve the latter

In this chapter, I will be exploring the phe-
nomenon of viral propaganda through the
lens of rhetorical criticism. I will argue that
not only are the artefacts of viral propaganda
profitably analysed from the perspective of
rhetoric but the very idea of the viral nature
of propaganda can be understood as a rhe-
torical construction that influences the way
we think (and feel) about certain types of
communication. I will be investigating the
ways in which viral propaganda and memes
have been defined – in other words, where
have these concepts come from, who is using
them, and to what purpose? How far, indeed,
might it make sense to consider the idea of
viral propaganda as a form of propaganda, or
even a form of virus, itself?
In order to pursue this exploration, I will
first discuss what the terms rhetoric and rhe-
torical criticism can signify. Rhetoric and
propaganda have a very close relationship
and it is important for us to understand the
(O’Shaughnessy, 2004). Rhetorical criticism
thus becomes a valuable method for analys-
ing propaganda output and the ways in which
that output might seek to win in the ‘strug-
gle for perceptions’ (Taylor, 2003, p. 8). One
of the major stylistic devices of rhetoric is
the metaphor, and I will spend a short while
discussing the fundamental importance of
this figure of speech to the ways in which
we view the world. I will then move on to a
consideration of the contagion metaphor that
is at the heart of the idea of viral communi-
cation and propaganda. Calling something
viral is a rhetorical choice that is designed to
influence the way an audience understands
that thing. Again, we need to consider who is
choosing this metaphor and to what persua-
sive purpose? I will examine the marketing
roots of the concept of viral communication
in order to discuss the strong links between
marketing communication on the internet
and modern propaganda, and the ways in
which communication tools are ‘marketed’
156 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
(by which I mean rhetorically packaged) to
political actors.
Internet memes, seemingly the most
natively ‘web-based’ communication tac-
tic in the modern propaganda arsenal, are
intimately connected with the idea of viral
communication. However, the origins of the
meme concept in the final pages of Richard
Dawkins’ popular genetics classic, The
Selfish Gene (2016), originally published
in 1976, are often overlooked as is the sci-
ence of memetics that briefly flourished in
its wake in the late 1980s and 1990s. A rhe-
torical approach to the full spectrum of the
discourse around memes and memetics will
allow us to more critically consider the nature
of internet memes and their place in modern
propaganda.
RHETORIC AND PROPAGANDA
Our current attitudes towards rhetoric are
inescapably influenced by the ways in which
oratory and public persuasion have been
framed in our past and there is a deep ambiv-
alence towards persuasive speech in Western
societies that goes all the way back to Plato
and Aristotle. The accusations that Plato
makes against the Sophists’ focus on persua-
sive technique are almost identical in senti-
ment to the way we now tend to talk about
‘spin doctors’ and political marketers.
‘Rhetoric’ is the word we use for words that
are clearly trying too hard, that we can iden-
tify as manipulative, tricky, or mendacious.
‘Rhetoric’ is empty of real substance and is
simply trying to get us to agree. It is the sign
of an opportunistic ‘gun-for-hire’. It is not to
be trusted. Much of this suspicion originates
in Plato’s dirty propaganda war against the
influence of the Sophists on Athenian youth.
Indeed, the word ‘rhetoric’, from the Greek
rhetorike has been convincingly demon-
strated by Schiappa (1990) to have been
coined by Plato with the express purpose of
differentiating his philosophy from the sort
of relativistic language games that he accused
Sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias,
Antiphon, and Isocrates of pursuing. Very
broadly speaking, the Sophistic tradition,
particularly that carried on in Athens by
Isocrates (a famous student of Gorgias), was
a clear threat to Plato’s vision of a philoso-
phy which was concerned with leading young
citizens towards an appreciation of the
unchanging, universal truths to be used as a
basis for the creation and maintenance of a
just and virtuous republic. Plato needed to
devalue the power of the Sophists and so cre-
ated a term, rhetorike, with which to label the
Sophistic enterprise so that he was then able
to define and gloss this across his dialogues
in a manner which lead ‘inexorably to the
devaluation and the fall of rhetoric’ (Cassin,
2014, p. 80). Plato ‘discards, devalues, anni-
hilates, phantomizes’ (ibid., p. 79) the power
that Sophistic practice and performance had
given to logos, or speech, ultimately ‘taking
possession’ of it through a cunning (and
obviously rhetorical) strategy of ‘naming
and shaming’.
However, despite Plato’s immense influ-
ence on the development of Western intel-
lectual life, his vision of rhetoric did not
entirely carry the day. A facility in public
speech was, after all, highly advantageous
to any citizen who needed to pursue their
own interests in the law courts and politi-
cal assemblies of Athens and, later, Rome.
Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, adapted to the general
demand for education in the art of persuasive
speech in his writing of his study of rheto-
ric, but tried to make of it something more
(Platonically) laudable (Reames, 2012).
Plato’s rhetorike had de-fanged the enchant-
ing power of logos and then, in Aristotle’s
hands, we see it fully domesticated in its
transformation into a techne ruled by a focus
upon the internal logic of the matter in dis-
pute, ‘leaving us with the proof as the core
of rhetoric’ (de Romilly, 1975, p. 70). While
Aristotle does not deny the capacity of words
to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes, his
emphasis is upon rhetoric as a means to make
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
a true case even stronger, and he starts from
a position of ‘epistemological optimism’
(Wardy, 2005, p. 111), the assumption that
truth itself is always naturally more persua-
sive. The rhetor’s job, therefore, is to help
show that truth in the clearest, most effective
light through the construction of persuasive
argumentation.
Still, though, an unease remains. It is partic-
ularly palpable in Aristotle’s dealing with the
subject of rhetorical style, which covers the
use of figures of speech, rhythm, pattern-
ing, word choice, and so on. Such devices
were closely associated with Gorgias, one
of the most famous Sophists, and under-
line the deep psychic effect that the form
of words (rather than their substance or
the rational arguments that they constitute)
can have upon an audience (de Romilly,
1975). Aristotle does not really want to talk
about style in persuasive speechmaking
as it relies upon the ‘baseness of the audi-
ence’ (Aristotle 2004, p. 216). But he knows
that he needs to because rhetoric ‘has to do
with opinion’ (ibid.) and therefore should
cover those techniques which are necessary
and not just appropriate. He does his best,
though, to continue Plato’s campaign against
Sophistic persuasion by admonishing his
reader not to fall into the trap of imitating
the poetic excesses of Gorgias. Instead, the
rhetor should be clear and appropriate, and
never draw attention to the artfulness of their
speech. This last stricture is one that ech-
oes down through the history of rhetorica
docens (or rhetorical instruction) – the orator
must always avoid what Cicero calls lingua
suspecta (Orator, 145). One should never
use language or constructions which might
raise the suspicions of the audience that they
are the subject of rhetorical designs.
So, although rhetoric became the sign of
‘a good man speaking well’ (Quintillian,
Institutio Oratoria, XII, 1) and formed one
of the three pillars of the Medieval trivium,
it has always contained within it the seeds of
its own downfall. Rhetoric noticed is rheto-
ric failing. Logical argument, delivered in a
157
plain, decorous style is the mark of accept-
able public discourse, but when that logic
becomes shrouded in Gorgian metaphor,
patterns and stylings designed to enchant
an audience’s emotions then we risk draw-
ing attention to our efforts. We risk raising
up that old Platonic spectre of manipulative,
spell-binding logos.
Propaganda is rhetoric, of course. If we use
Taylor’s (2003) definition of the former as ‘a
deliberate attempt to persuade people, by any
available media, to think and then behave
in a manner desired by the source’ (p. 7)
then we are already in the same territory as
Aristotle’s canonical statement that rheto-
ric ‘is the power to observe the persuasive-
ness of which any particular matter admits’
(Aristotle 2004, p. 74). While rhetoric was
born in oratorical environments (ceremonial
speeches, law court arguments, and politi-
cal addresses) its principles and techniques
were easily adapted to the religious sermon,
the letter, the written philosophical argu-
ment, and countless other forms of persua-
sion. Indeed, given rhetoric’s importance in
the educational programmes of Medieval and
Renaissance schooling, it was only natural
‘that rhetoric provided the structure underly-
ing all [the] propaganda media’ (Loach, 2006,
p. 71) employed not only by the Jesuits and
the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide but
also the Protestant forces against which they
competed. Indeed, let us not forget that both
St. Augustine and Adam Smith at one point
taught rhetoric for a living! Right up until the
twentieth century, rhetoric provided the fun-
damental theory (rhetorica docens) and prac-
tice (rhetoric utens) for persuasion whether it
be within the pulpit, the law court, the royal
court, or the battlefield. As Machiavelli put
it in no uncertain terms, an army’s gener-
als must be trained orators ‘because without
knowing how to speak to the whole army,
[only] with difficulty can one do anything
good’ (2005, p. 98). Western propaganda,
therefore, ran on the engine of Classical rhet-
oric until the influence of psychological and
sociological research provided alternative
158 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
frameworks and vocabularies. Yet, even now,
it is hard to pinpoint areas in which the social
sciences have advanced our practical propa-
ganda arsenal beyond the vast storehouse of
techniques provided by the rhetorical tradi-
tion. If we simply cast our eyes down the
long list of logical fallacies that the study of
rhetorical argumentation has amassed over
the centuries, we find that the root techniques
of modern political marketing and propa-
ganda revolve around such tried-and-tested
appeals as those to authority, popularity, pity,
false dilemmas, composition, and division.
We still see such powerful rhetorical figures
as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, allitera-
tion, asyndeton, polysyndeton, and anaphora
at the heart of persuasive political communi-
cation. Even an adoption of the ‘plain talk-
ing’ style of the grass roots electorate has a
longstanding history as a deliberate rhetori-
cal strategy.
The scholarly method of rhetorical
criticism has flourished in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. While initially
focused upon a rather conservative applica-
tion of the Aristotelian rhetorical schema to
the analysis of historically significant pieces
of oratory (Black, 1965) it has over the past
60 years transformed itself into a highly var-
iegated collection of foci and methodologi-
cal approaches which broadly seek to analyse
‘any discourse, art form, performance, cul-
tural object, or event that – by symbolic
and/or material means – has the capacity to
move someone’ (Ott and Dickinson, 2013,
p. 2). So, we might think of rhetorical criti-
cism of propaganda as a critical explora-
tion of how the language, symbolism, and
materials employed in propaganda attempts
move the audiences that are exposed to
them, with the obvious caveat that what is
interpreted by the critic as propaganda is
itself subject to rhetorical criticism. Ott and
Dickinson (2013) gloss the word ‘move’ as
meaning ‘in addition to persuading, inspire,
entice, excite, and sway us’ (p. 2) and this
is a useful reminder that propaganda, like
all rhetorical discourse, does not just seek
to convince and persuade through what is
logical or even likely but just as frequently
seeks to move us physically (change our
behaviour, get us out on the streets, encour-
age us to spread the message) by moving us
first emotionally. A rhetorical criticism of
a propaganda campaign, therefore, might
seek to use elements of Classical rhetoric
such as the Aristotelian division between
proofs of ethos, logos, and pathos to look
at the balance between appeals to author-
ity, emotional trigger points, and more rea-
soned argumentation. It might look at the
ways in which enthymemes (or arguments
based upon premises accepted as probable
by the audience) are constructed to care-
fully resonate with existing audience biases.
The propaganda could also be investigated
for its use of root metaphors, those wonder-
fully compressed and powerful figures of
speech which have served as the engines for
countless ‘moving’ speeches and communi-
cation artefacts. We might equally explore
the range of fallacies that a campaign might
adopt in its core reasoning, uncovering the
logical flaws that nevertheless succeed in
seeming logical to particular audiences at
particular times. We might also look at the
way in which the propaganda constructs
its Other, and seeks to undermine alterna-
tive perspectives; as Potter (2005) argues,
rhetoric can ‘be treated as a feature of the
antagonistic relationship between versions;
how a description counters an alternative
description, and how it is organized, in
turn, to resist being countered’ (p. 108). A
researcher could also focus their investiga-
tion on the ways in which intertextuality and
genre referencing serves to entice an audi-
ence or construct an appealing narrative.
Or any combination of these and a myriad
of other perspectives. Always central to the
enterprise of rhetorical criticism, though, is
the urge to trace how an artefact, or network
of artefacts, might be designed (or serve) to
move a particular audience or set of audi-
ences. Let us now, then, perform a rhetorical
criticism of ‘viral propaganda’.
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
THE METAPHOR OF COMMUNICATIVE
CONTAGION
One of the most powerful of rhetorical
devices is the metaphor. Technically, a meta-
phor is the use of a word ‘from a lexical field
other than that of the subject matter at hand’
(Fahnestock, 2011, p. 105). In other words,
an ‘alien’ word is carried over to do descrip-
tive work in a place it would not usually be
found. Metaphors, precisely because they
‘need have no previous or easily categorized
link’ to the words they are being carried over
to, have the ability to create ‘new links,
allowing the rhetor to illuminate one term (or
concept) by features or senses borrowed
from another’ (ibid.). A metaphor can allow
us, therefore, to entirely change the way that
an audience conceives of something. It is a
remarkably efficient technique of communi-
cation in that it can bring a clear image and
its set of associations to the mind, vivifying
an idea in an attractive and memorable way.
Aristotle noted that ‘all conduct their conver-
sations in metaphors’ (Aristotle 2004, p. 219)
for the metaphor is a ubiquitous aspect of
language, not just something occasionally
used for persuasive or poetic decoration.
Lakoff and Johnson (2003) have famously
argued that ‘most of our ordinary conceptual
system is metaphorical in nature’ and that
therefore metaphors ‘structure how we per-
ceive, how we think and what we do’ (p. 4).
As Richards (1964, p. 94) succinctly put it,
‘thought is metaphoric’. Accordingly, there
is a long tradition of rhetorical criticism
based upon the analysis of metaphors in per-
suasive communication, often called ‘meta-
phorical criticism’ to delineate its focus
(Foss, 2003). One of the classic examples of
this approach applied to propaganda, and one
which has important ramifications for our
consideration of the viral communication in
propaganda, is Perry’s (1983) analysis of the
infestation metaphor in Hitler’s rhetoric.
Perry contends that ‘Hitler’s critique of the
Jew’s status as a cultural being, for example,
159
is not illustrated by the metaphor of parasit-
ism; it is constituted by this metaphor and the
figurative entailments it carries’ (p. 230).
Hitler does not provide a structured, articu-
lated, evidenced argument as to why his
audience should see the Jews as parasites.
Instead, his use of infestation metaphors to
describe the Jews is his entire ‘argument’. A
metaphor ‘can convey a whole body of
incipient but shared attitudes and values’ and
can provide a sort of ‘metaphoric logic’
which can ‘sustain and legitimate such a
body of attitudes’ (pp. 230–231). Noting
earlier work by Black (1970) and Sontag
(1978) on the use of cancer as a metaphor,
Perry states that ‘disease metaphors are the
products of mysteries; they become in turn
the producers of mystifications, insofar as
they play upon our natural horror of the
unknown in order to convey meanings which
are left unsaid’ (p. 231). He then demon-
strates the many ways in which Hitler’s dis-
course used metaphors which described the
Jews and the Bolsheviks as ‘disease-causing
agents’, parasites, or poisons which are
attacking the ‘national body’ of Germany.
Perry’s rhetorical analysis enables us to
appreciate the careful ‘metaphorical logic’ of
Hitler’s metaphors and how they work to
provide a picture of a malignant internal
force that has wilfully worked over time to
threaten the health of Germany. Importantly,
the use of the infestation metaphor also helps
to ‘remove the moral ambiguities from the
prospect of treating the Jews as enemies’
(p. 234) as disease-causing agents do not
need to be treated with any moral
consideration.
Perry’s (1983) study is exemplary in its lay-
ing bare the workings of metaphor in the ser-
vice of propaganda. However, it does force us
to wonder what type of ‘metaphorical logic’
might be operating when propaganda is itself
labelled viral? The phrase ‘viral propaganda’
brings a set of associations from the con-
text of disease, bodily invasion, and parasit-
ism (the part of the metaphor that Richards
[1964] termed the vehicle) to illuminate our
160 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
understanding of a particular type of propa-
ganda (the other element of the metaphor,
known as the tenor). Given the work of Perry
(1983), Black (1970), and Sontag (1978), as
rhetorical critics we would immediately sup-
pose that those who use this metaphor intend
to characterise this type of propaganda as
nefarious, mysterious, out of control, insidi-
ous, threatening – that it to say, all the sorts of
things that propaganda has itself used the ten-
ors of virality and parasitism to imply about
any particular target. So, ‘viral propaganda’,
might be thought to be a pejorative construc-
tion, perhaps designed to demarcate certain
propaganda outputs as particularly ‘virulent’
and therefore of more immediate cause for
concern. And here, of course, we also walk
straight into an old saw of propaganda studies –
namely, that propaganda is any statement that
comes from the Other, any ‘source that we do
not like’ (Schumpeter, 2003, p. 254n). In this
sense, the phrase ‘viral propaganda’ might be
a doubly pejorative rhetorical construction.
So, although I might engage in digital com-
munications, my enemy indulges in despic-
able viral propaganda. Yet, interestingly, this
is rarely the case. At the time of writing, a
search of Google Scholar for academic works
containing the phrase produces surprisingly
few results (around 40 hits). Out of these only
one (Ganor, 2015) uses the term ‘viral propa-
ganda’ exclusively to describe communica-
tion tactics employed by a clearly marked
Other, Islamic State (IS). Ganor (2015) notes
that ‘the success of its viral propaganda cam-
paign’ is one of the main elements that help
to ‘guarantee that IS will continue to present
a significant local and global security threat’
(p. 62). It is through the ‘skillful wielding’
(p. 62) (one notes the sword metaphor) of
viral propaganda that IS is able to ‘publicize
its terrorist acts’ (p. 56) and persuade Muslim
youth that it is ‘the real deal’ (p. 62). Ganor’s
use of the ‘viral propaganda’ metaphor is rhe-
torically part and parcel of the larger framing
of what he calls the ‘war between civilization
and barbarism’ (p. 63), which is ‘a war of val-
ues, a war for morality and ideology’ (ibid.).
More to the point, Ganor sees IS as a ‘prob-
lem within Islam’, a position which is echoed
(and so rhetorically strengthened) by his use
of the viral metaphor.
However, Ganor’s (2015) piece is unu-
sual in its, one might say, traditional use of
the viral metaphor. Far more common is an
apparently neutral, if not sometimes almost
celebratory, use of viral framing when
scholars talk about propaganda. This seems
counter-intuitive when considered within the
legacy of rhetorical criticism’s investigation
of infestation and disease metaphors, though
it does have a clear relationship to the ways in
which contagion metaphors have been used
in marketing communication discourse. As I
have demonstrated elsewhere (Miles, 2014),
it was marketing that first popularised the
idea of viral communication and that drove
the rhetorical transformation of the metaphor
into something desirable and useful. The first
instance of viral marketing was Hotmail’s
email service sign-up campaign (starting in
1996) where a short piece of text was auto-
matically attached to the end of every email
sent by a Hotmail subscriber informing
the recipient that they could also get a free
Hotmail account (Marsden, 2006). The text
acted in a similar way as a virus inside the
email, co-opting the trust that a message from
a known source could generate to make the
link to the Hotmail sign-up page seem secure
and attractive. A very similar strategy was
implemented by Apple in its marketing of
the iPhone many years later. At almost the
same time as Hotmail’s marketing campaign
began to be rolled out, Jeffrey Rayport (1996)
penned a gushing article for Fast Company
magazine in which he suggested that market-
ers should look to imitating ‘both biological
and computer viruses’ (p. 96). Interestingly,
Rayport urged marketers to ‘stop shying away
from the ominous sound of it and embrace the
enemy: viral marketing or v-marketing if the
term is too harsh’ (ibid.). At this early stage,
then, the viral metaphor was still unnerving
and uncomfortable, something that needed an
act of will or some terminological occultation
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
to make palatable. Rayport need not have
worried, though. As he indicated, ‘every
marketer’ was ‘desperately searching for
a new approach to marketing in the post-
mass-market economy’ (ibid.) and the pros-
pect of a marketing technique that could in
some sense take advantage of hard-to-reach
and hard-to-understand postmodern consum-
ers and infect them with a hidden message
that they would unwittingly, or even gladly,
spread across their communities was a hard
proposition to ignore. Because that was
exactly what viral marketing was – an attrac-
tive proposition that marketing gurus could
sell to desperate, unnerved marketers who,
in turn, could then sell it to their desperate,
unnerved clients. A high-profile example of
this was Seth Godin, one of the earliest mar-
keting gurus to embrace the potential of the
Internet, who published his Unleashing the
Ideavirus in 2000, in which he described how
an ideavirus can be designed by a marketer
so that it ‘moves and grows and infects every-
thing it touches’ (2000, p. 11). Godin’s book,
like countless other articles, blog posts, and
even scholarly papers in marketing journals
after it, offered a series of rules for harness-
ing the idea of the marketing virus. What
makes a marketing virus shareable? How do
you design it for maximum effectiveness?
How do you plant the virus in a community?
How do you identify the best ‘patient zero’
to initially infect? The metaphor of biologi-
cal infection was enthusiastically adopted in
a florescence of marketing communication
(of agencies and consultancies to prospective
clients), marketing scholarship, and journal-
ism (Miles, 2014). The metaphor of infec-
tion that is central to viral marketing very
quickly lost any sense of being ‘ominous’ or
‘harsh’ (in Rayport’s words). This is because
it offered marketers the comfort of control.
The marketing virus was, ultimately, sold
as something which was designed, targeted,
and remotely guided by the savvy marketing
team. Yes, it used the consumer as a host, but
then they were getting entertained by unu-
sual, free content – it was win-win!
161
What does this mean for the consumer?
While marketers might think the idea of
infecting communities of customers and
prospects is an exciting technique that puts
them back in the driving seat, how might
consumers feel about being targets of conta-
gious messages? Of course, one of the great
promises of the Internet was that it would
make content producers of us all (Hoffman
& Novak, 1996) and this was, indeed, one
of the sources of marketer nervousness that
viral marketing offered an antidote for. When
consumers can potentially communicate
across networks with the same speed and
reach as a brand, then the balance of power
shifts considerably away from institutional-
ised media and corporate voices. However,
it was, perhaps, precisely the fact that con-
sumers were empowered as content produc-
ers by the Internet that prevented any form of
negative grassroots reaction to the metaphors
and practice of viral marketing. Consumers
could see that viral marketing was something
that can work just as well for them as for any
brand. Indeed, it was user-generated content
that provided the Internet with its most pow-
erful examples of viral power (Guadagno
et  al., 2013; Shifman, 2012; Wiggins &
Bowers, 2015). ‘Going viral’ soon became
something that not just an ambitious brand
manager could dream of, but anyone with
a YouTube account. In this sense, the con-
cept of viral marketing slipped its leash. It
would be interesting, perhaps, to examine the
relationship between the speed with which
many publics forgot (or became inured to)
the fear and panic related to early coverage
of HIV/AIDS and the speed with which they
embraced the metaphor of online virality.
The semantic revision that the adoption of
the term represents is something that power-
fully demonstrates the alacrity with which
metaphorical associations, and their conse-
quent rhetorical uses, can change. As noted
previously, most scholarly work on propa-
ganda which uses the viral metaphor tends
to use it without reference to its negative
connotations of infection, infestation, and
162 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
pestilence. So, for example, Rodley’s (2016)
study of ‘viral propaganda in the 2014 Gaza-
Israel conflict’ looks at how ‘parties on both
sides crafted multimodal digital content that
sought to interpret, explain or recontextualise
the conflict, with the ultimate goal of securing
or bolstering support for their cause’ (para 6).
Rodley (2016) notes that this type of share-
able content is ‘widely used for marketing’
as well as for political communication, and
while initially describing its use in the Gaza-
Israel conflict as ‘viral propaganda’ argues
that it should more properly be ‘described as
viral agitprop, in the sense of creative content
intended to influence thoughts or behaviours
that may or may not be produced by a gov-
ernment or formal institution’ (ibid.). Here,
Rodley is working with scholarly under-
standings of propaganda which do not use
the term to mark Othered communication.
Yet, he is also using the term viral in what
seems to be a neutral way, ostensibly shorn
of its mysterious ‘metaphorical logic’ of dis-
ease. Instead, the specifically ‘viral’ content
of this propaganda is referred to variously as
‘novel’, ‘stylish’, and ‘high arousal’ (para
13), demonstrating ‘a gap between media
myth and reality’ (para 18), a source of
‘meta-mediation’ (para 19), as well as ‘win-
ning support from foreign audiences, reartic-
ulating national identity, boosting morale,
and – through the practice of meta-mediation –
neutralising enemy messaging’ (para 21).
Interestingly, Rodley contrasts viral agitprop
with the normal ‘practices of online creativ-
ity’ which produce ‘viral content’ that are
‘participatory and playful’ (para 25). So,
viral communication is framed here as nor-
mally harmless, whimsical, and joyful – it is
the context of war which makes it something
more sinister. Even then, the serious, sinister
side of viral agitprop is framed in a meta-
phor of mechanisation rather than organic
infestation or parasitism – Rodley writes of
how viral agitprop ‘systematises’ the culture
of playful sharing. In a curious reversal of
much journalistic discourse on the power of
social media, Rodley actually describes how
the military strategic use of viral agitprop is
an ‘abuse of Facebook’ (para. 28). The rami-
fications of virality as a metaphor for agit-
prop, then, are simply not examined. Rodley
(2016) assumes that virality signifies a good
thing because it is associated with playful,
participatory online content creation.
Evolving Rodley’s (2016) approach,
Sparkes-Vian (2019) argues that virality in
the sense of ‘propagation’ can, in fact, pro-
vide ‘a more logical overarching framework
for a comprehensive theory of propaganda’
(p. 1), one that defines it as ‘an evolving set
of techniques and mechanisms which facili-
tate the propagation of ideas and actions’
(ibid.) and that therefore can encompass both
propaganda and counter-propaganda. So,
propaganda does not have to be formally or
even informally organised. Rather, an appre-
ciation of the viral nature of modern political
communication allows us to realise that prop-
aganda, of whatever type, is always focused
on propagation. Again, the metaphor of viral-
ity is not examined, just taken for granted.
Now, it as this point that we must con-
sider a term that so far has remained firmly
ignored. And that is the word, ‘meme’. I
would argue that Sparkes-Vian (2019), and
many other scholarly investigators into the
area of viral propaganda, manages to avoid
much reflexive discussion of the nature of
communication virality because of this word
and what it can be made to signify. Sparkes-
Vian (2019) argues that memetics, or the sci-
ence of memes, ‘has considerable analytical
and methodological potential with respect
to scholarly work on propaganda’ (p. 1) and
goes on to adopt the ‘analytical “toolkit”’
of ‘qualitative memetics’ in order to ana-
lyse the success and failure of memes pro-
duced by the right-wing group Britain First
and its opponents online. A similar memetic
focus can be found in Wiggins’ (2016) inves-
tigation of online propaganda from both
sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and in
Wall and Mitew’s (2018) exploration of the
#DraftOurDaughters 4chan Hilary Clinton
attack campaign. In all of these studies, the
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
existence of memetics as a formal method-
ology is taken largely as read. Rhetorically,
‘memetics’ function as an ethos argument, or
a proof by authority. By taking on the trap-
pings of a science (explanatory diagrams,
technical and mathematical terminology) the
scholarly use of memetics to describe viral
propaganda affords it associations of clinical
inevitability and correctness. Wiggins (2016),
for example, talks of ‘memetic structures’
(p. 472) and ‘memetic directionality’ (p. 480),
while Sparkes-Vian (2019) talks of having to
‘disaggregate the memeplex into its constitu-
ent alleles’ and identifying the techniques
‘used to facilitate memetic replication’, as
well as ‘institutional memeplexes’ creating
‘distinct memetic environments in which
the selection pressure on specific memes is
altered by the ready acceptance of the basic
premises of the ideology’. Meanwhile, Wall
and Mitew (2018) talk of the ‘topological
nature of memetic warfare’ and its ‘proces-
sual aspects’ of ‘swarm networks’ such as
‘ideation, rapid prototyping, coordinating,
producing and spreading of content by the
users’. The metaphorical language here uses
a mixture of vehicles drawn from start-up
culture management-speak, computer net-
works, and what seems like evolutionary
biology. And while a swarm might well have
rather negative biological connotations, it is
not the mysterious infecting horror that we
can trace in the viral metaphor. Accordingly,
in the next section, I consider in some depth
the rhetorical/metaphorical nature of memet-
ics and the relationship between ‘memes’ and
propaganda.
MEMETICS AND PERSUASION
The meme is an invention of evolutionary
biologist, Richard Dawkins. In one of the
final chapters of his book The Selfish Gene
(2016), originally published in 1976,
Dawkins introduces the idea of the meme as
a unit of cultural replication. Just as genes
163
can be seen as using animals, plants, and
humans as ‘survival machines’ (p. 245) to aid
in their replication, so also memes use the
human brain in order to replicate themselves.
A meme is an idea, such as adding yeast to
bread to make it rise, or a pattern such as a
melody, or even a metaphor. It can be some-
thing as grandiose as a religion or something
as quotidian as the idea of a belt to hold your
trousers up. Memes, in Dawkins’ view, are the
building blocks of human culture. All memes
are in competition with another and ‘some
memes are more successful in the meme pool
than others’ (p. 251); they get imitated more
frequently and spread more quickly from
mind to mind. And that is all a meme is – a
replicator. It has no other urge or function or
‘reason for being’ other than to replicate.
Human cultures, then, become the collection
of (currently) successful memes. Dawkins
argues that as they are both simple competing
replicators, memes will share the same quali-
ties that genes need for success – ‘longevity,
fecundity, and copying-fidelity’ (ibid.).
Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene has been a
tremendously popular book. Indeed, a pub-
lic poll organised by the Royal Society in
2017 saw it voted the most influential sci-
ence book of all time (Armitstead, 2017).
The ‘meme’ meme, as it were, has demon-
strated an impressive fecundity and lon-
gevity. However, its copying-fidelity has
perhaps been less exemplary. Most users of
the Internet today recognise the word almost
immediately but do not associate it with
Dawkins or even the briefly nascent science
of memetics that formed around the idea and
attempted to bootstrap itself in the pages of
the online Journal of Memetics (the archives
of which can be found at http://cfpm.org/jom-
emit/). Instead, the word meme has come to
refer to a widely shared ‘image macro’, or
an image with superimposed text expressing
some comic sentiment, life advice, surreal
insight, or, increasingly, politically partisan
viewpoint. So, as Marwick and Lewis (2017)
note, ‘while virtually anything can be a
meme since it’s a unit of information, in
164 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
modern Internet parlance, a meme is a visual
trope that proliferates across Internet spaces
as it is replicated and altered by anonymous
users’ (p. 36). There has been a significant
amount of scholarship that has attempted to
explore the details and ramifications of the
memetic concept (Aunger 2003; Blackmore,
2003; Bradie, 2003; Burman, 2012; Calvin,
1997; Distin 2006; Gabora, 1997; Gatherer,
1998; Jantke, 2004; Jeffreys, 2000; Kilpinen,
2008; Lissack, 2004; Marsden, 1998; Rose,
1998; Shifman, 2013; Shifman & Thelwall,
2009; Zipes, 2008). However, this scholarly
literature has been largely divided on the
question of whether memes actually exist,
and if they do, how might they be most effec-
tively analysed, measured, and described.
The Journal of Memetics closed its doors in
2005. As the archive site puts it, ‘there was to
be a relaunch but after several years nothing
has happened’. The concept, in its original
expression, proved just too problematic to
get enough confident traction. As Shifman
(2013) puts it, it was ‘the subject of constant
academic debate, derision, and even outright
dismissal’ (p. 362). In the meantime, though,
the meme concept successfully mutated into
a new form.
As the Internet was transformed from a
largely academic research network into the
highly complex, variegated ocean of con-
tent creation, dissemination, and consump-
tion that it is now, the dynamics of sharing
became more and more central to its nature.
Whole layers of the web became organised
around encouraging and facilitating the rapid
sharing of URLs, videos, images, and audio,
as well as personal information, opinions,
and ‘status’. Microblogging services such
as Twitter, content sharing platforms like
YouTube, SoundCloud, Imgur, and The Pirate
Bay, as well as social networking sites such
as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have
all helped to shape an economy of attention
(Davenport & Beck, 2001; Wu, 2016) which
thrives upon the discovery, wide dispersal,
and imitation of attractive content. This was
fertile ground for the resuscitation of the
‘meme’ meme, an idea that had not proved
to have the right traits to survive in the caus-
tic environment of scholarship but which,
once mutated into a far simpler form, began
to flourish with incredible energy. Knobel
and Lankshear (2007) talk of the ‘popular
“appropriations” of “meme” as a word to
describe particularly “infectious” phenom-
ena’ (p. 199), in a decidedly unmemetic fram-
ing which seems to deny any agency to the
meme itself while at the same time underlin-
ing just how far away this use of memes is
from that understood by ‘serious students and
theorists of memes’ (ibid.). Of course, if the
central premise of memetics is true, then this
change in the meaning and use of ‘meme’ is
just an example of mutation and adaptation.
Scholars were inefficient hosts, poor ‘sur-
vival machines’ (to use Dawkins’ phrase),
whereas general netizens concerned with
sharing cat pictures and poking each other on
Facebook provided far more fertile ground.
As a consequence, the ‘meme concept has
enthusiastically been picked up by Internet
users’ (Shifman, 2013, p. 364) and become
‘a popular term for describing “catchy” and
widely propagated ideas or phenomenon’
(Knobel & Lankshear, 2007, p. 201).
So, most people who use the term ‘meme’
and, indeed, most people who create online
‘memes’ have little to no knowledge of the
term’s origins or its place in a scholarly
field known as ‘memetics’. In common web
parlance, then ‘meme’ has little connection
with anything other than entertaining share-
able content. From a rhetorical perspective,
its metaphorical power has been distinctly
curtailed – the associations with genetics,
survivability, selfish units of replication that
use humans as survival machines, the whole
panoply of Dawkins’ own extremely rich
metaphorical constructions, have all largely
disappeared. Indicative of this is the way
in which those who actually wish to pro-
duce negative rhetorical associations around
the idea of online memes need to introduce
other metaphors in order to do so. So, Rodley
(2016) talks about ‘when memes go to war’
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
(para. 25), and Wall and Mitew (2018) dis-
cuss ‘meme warfare’, as does Boyd (2002).
Olsen’s (2018) piece in Salon.com describes
memes as being ‘weaponized for political
propaganda’ and Neuman’s (2012) article
for NPR’s website speaks of political memes
being ‘fast, cheap and out of control’ (per-
sonifying them with a Dawkinian agency that
is chaotic in its inability to be managed). In a
weighty report published by the Institute for
the Future, on The Biology of Disinformation,
Rushkoff et al. (2018) state that ‘memes are
better understood as independent actors in
a competitive battle of ideas’ (p. 9) which
seems designed to make them sound like lone
wolf terrorists. Indeed, they explain that this
independence is why ‘teenagers in Russia
can launch effective memetics assaults on
Americans’ (ibid.). Rushkoff is himself a
long-time populariser of the ‘meme’ meme,
having published the influential Media Virus!
Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture (note
the exclamation point and the implication
of secret motivations) way back in 1996.
We can see here that commentators (of both
scholarly and more journalistic motivations)
need to extend the idea of the meme with
metaphors of battle and weapons in order
to make it alarming or attention-grabbing
within a discussion of propaganda or politi-
cal communication. Their audiences do not
associate the idea of the meme with anything
threatening and so they need to rhetorically
provide that threat through metaphors of war
in order to persuade people that image mac-
ros and YouTube videos can indeed have seri-
ous or harmful effects on a country’s political
existence.
The metaphor of communication as virus
has lost power in the same way that the origi-
nal metaphor of the meme (as introduced
by Dawkins) has. To describe something as
being like a virus is no longer pejorative.
The virus no longer shares the same associa-
tions of revulsion and fear that Hitler played
on with his heavy use of infestation meta-
phors. Modern communication technologies
have rehabilitated the virus. They have made
165
infection a pleasant thing, an entertaining
thing, something that friends do to friends.
Perhaps indicative of this is the fact that when
I search for the phrase ‘viral propaganda’
on Google in the United Kingdom, the first
seven entries all relate to a music public rela-
tions company called, Viral Propaganda – a
construction which hints at both an ironic
rehabilitation of the term ‘propaganda’ but
also clearly echoes the positive (if opportun-
istic) attitude towards infectious messaging
that marketing communication has incubated
since the 1990s.
Perhaps the most important consequence
of the metaphor of virality losing its nega-
tive associations is that it becomes something
that we (scholars, journalists, commentators,
and the general public) now find it difficult
to be alarmed by. Linnemann et  al. (2014)
have argued that the ‘zombie talk’ that has
spread across modern media in the form of
‘zombie apocalypse’ content has acted not
just as a fashionable entertainment genre but
also as ‘part of a larger ideological frame that
normalizes state violence and conceals the
fundamental inequalities of late capitalism’
(p. 507). In a similar way, the viral metaphor
that has been happily accepted by marketers,
consumers, politicians, lobbyists, and extrem-
ists alike normalises the exploitation of influ-
encers, audiences, and communities for the
dissemination of their targeted messages. If
it is a normal thing to do, it also becomes an
easy thing to dismiss. This is why, as we have
seen, those wishing to raise awareness of how
memes are being used to influence political
debates need to transform or re-frame the
terms of the metaphor by talking of memetic
warfare and the weaponisation of memes –
such alterations serve rhetorically to help
readers see viral communication in a differ-
ent way. Others have tried to solve this prob-
lem by going back to the biological details of
the viral metaphor and expanding them con-
siderably. Rushkoff et  al. (2018), for exam-
ple, resurrect some of the memetic science
approaches of the 1990s and early 2000s,
applying evolutionary biological terms and
166 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
concepts to try to discover ways to defend
against manipulative memes. They advance
strategies of early detection, immunisation
and containment that the left might use in
order to combat infectious disinformation
from the extreme right. Their approach, rhe-
torically, is an attempt to revivify the conta-
gion metaphor for communication, injecting
back some of the original unease, revulsion,
and urgency that was naturally associated
with infection in the public mind. It is also
indicative that Rushkoff et al. (2018) are talk-
ing from a position on the US left. At this
moment in time, it seems undeniable that the
US alt-right have demonstrated a great facil-
ity with ‘weaponised’ memes. Communities
around the boards 4chan/pol/ and 8chan/pol/,
in particular, have a keen awareness of how
to infect mainstream media with viral con-
tent that aids their cause and confounds their
enemies while doing it with an eye to enter-
tainment and ‘LULZ’ that comes directly
from the positive re-framing of viral commu-
nication that has occurred as the Internet has
made everyone a ‘marketer’.
METAPHORICAL MEMES
While discourses around memes and viral
communication are clearly grounded in met-
aphorical positionings, then, it is logical to
ask whether there is something inherently
metaphorical about the sorts of messages
that are successful in contagious political
communication?
As we have seen, for some researchers,
metaphor is ‘the very constitutive ground of
language’ (Jaynes, 1976, p. 48). McVeigh
(2016), indeed, memorably suggests that
thinking should be ‘considered a collection
of metaphors shaped by history’ (p. 22).
Metaphors help us understand the world, and
can be used to persuade us to see the world in
a different way, they are ‘not simply descrip-
tive, but transformative’ (p. 25) – ‘change
the dominant metaphors, and the mental
paradigm changes’ (p. 26). So, in this chap-
ter, we have been exploring the effect upon
our understanding of political communica-
tion and persuasion that the use of the viral,
or contagion, metaphor has. Yet, what of
the sorts of messages that become memes,
the types of content that are susceptible to the
exponential growth of the viral distribution
model? Do we find that political memes are
particularly metaphorical?
Certainly, researchers have found that mod-
ern mass-mediated political discourse makes
much use of metaphorical constructions.
Musolff (2004, 2016, 2017), for example,
has consistently explored the power of ana-
logical and metaphorical figures in European
political communication. In a recent study
(Musolff, 2017), he brings large-scale corpus
analysis techniques to bear upon an examina-
tion of the ‘discourse career’ (p. 98) of one
particular metaphor (that of the UK being at
the heart of Europe) across the EUROMETA
press text corpus running from 1989 to 2016.
The analysis uncovered the ‘range of types of
uses’ that the metaphor was put to and ‘shed
light on the pragmatic factors underlying the
resuscitation, ironical reversal and further
sarcastic exploitation of the metaphor’ (p. 98).
At the other end of the methodological spec-
trum, Kjeldsen’s (2000) detailed analysis of
how a visual representation of a bicycle hel-
met functions metaphorically in a single print
ad for the Danish SDP in the 1998 national
election is a tour-de-force of qualitative
exposition, plumbing the complexities of the
shifting terms of the metaphor and their reso-
nances for the Danish public.
There has also been some significant
research specifically targeting memetic or
viral political communication which has
underlined the importance of metaphor
in successful contagious messaging. So,
Huntington’s (2013, 2016) work has sought
to trace the visual rhetorical devices common
across political memes (particularly those
arising from alternative, grassroots politi-
cal protest) and has fixed in particular upon
metaphor, synecdoche, and intertextuality
 Rhetorical Methods and Metaphor in Viral Propaganda
as central figures. Her analysis of the visual
rhetoric behind Pepper Spray Cop memes
demonstrates just how much nuance a keen
sensitivity to the working of metaphor can
bring to an appreciation of apparently simple
visual communication tropes. Piata (2016)
has tracked the interplay between journey
metaphors and humour in her study of politi-
cal advertising and memes in the 2015 elec-
tion in Greece.
However, much of the extant research on
political viral communication makes little
reference to metaphorical content. So, for
example, Lee and Campbell’s (2016, see also
Campbell and Lee, 2016) study of what they
dub OPPs (‘online political posters’, which
are image macros employed in the service of
party political communication on platforms
such as Facebook) does investigate the the-
matic content of these messages but restricts
itself to easily quantified codes such as gen-
eral sentiment (negative/positive/other), vis-
ual presence of a party figure, policy focus
or image focus, and so on. Certainly, some of
the example OPPs that they provide do have
clear metaphorical content (such as the image
of then Labour leader, Ed Miliband, being in
the pocket of the SNP’s Alex Salmond) but an
exploration of figurative language is beyond
the interests of their study. In this sense,
Lee and Campbell reflect the more macro-
level perspective of the majority of political
communication researchers towards viral/
memetic messaging. This, of course, leaves
an important research gap that future scholar-
ship must seek to fill.
CONCLUSION
Virality is a metaphor for a form of content
dissemination. It is not, directly, a metaphor
for content. However, in order for a piece of
content to lend itself to being spread across a
population exponentially it must have certain
characteristics. These characteristics can
then be said to make it ‘go viral’. These are
167
‘rhetorical techniques deployed to improve
their replication’ (Sparkes-Vian, 2019). As
with all rhetorical techniques, there is no
easy recipe for their selection and combina-
tion. Rhetoric teaches the communicator an
appreciation of kairos, or the right moment,
and prepon, or ‘the non-rational, inexplicable
intuition of adequacy and propriety’ (Cahn,
1989, p. 128). These are exactly the qualities
that any creator of viral content needs in
order to determine what rhetorical tech-
niques (selection of metaphor, imagery, pat-
terns, type of proof, etc.) are best suited for a
particular audience at a particular time. These
are also the qualities that are difficult to pro-
vide easy guides for. They require an inti-
mate knowledge of the audience and their
social and political environment and an
acknowledgement of the fact that those
audiences and environments are dynamic,
constantly changing. ‘Computational propa-
ganda’, the ‘use of algorithms, automation,
and human curation to purposefully distrib-
ute misleading information over social media
networks’ (Woolley & Howard, 2017, p. 1)
can go some way in substituting for these
human qualities but for the most effective
messaging the human, rhetorical element
remains essential. The changing connota-
tions of the viral metaphor examined in this
chapter demonstrate the ways in which rhe-
torical power is always contingent upon
shifting audience understanding. However,
even dead or heavily transformed metaphors
still contain frames that influence the way we
think about the world (Lakoff & Johnson,
2003). There is some evidence, particularly
in the wake of the Brexit referendum and the
2016 US election, that the environment is
once again changing as various publics dis-
cover that they have been infected without
their knowledge, victims of micro-targeted
rhetorical payloads which take advantage of
data scraped from their web habits to ensure
effective kairos and prepon. Perhaps the idea
that virality and the meme are simply empow-
ering, entertaining features of the modern
web is becoming a lot more nuanced as we
168 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
rediscover the unbalancing force of conta-
gious political rhetoric and once more realise
the infectious power of words.
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Content Analysis and the
Examination of Digital
Propaganda on Social Media
Darren Lilleker and Paweł Surowiec
INTRODUCTION
This chapter explores the challenges and
opportunities of content analysis as a method
for researching digitalised forms of propa-
ganda, particularly in hybridised media envi-
ronments. Digital propaganda is one of the
manifestations of post-truth politics, and as
such, it is a product of the culture of social
interconnectivity as well as the hybridisation
of political news media. It, therefore, repre-
sents the zeitgeist in communication studies
and we problematise digital propaganda
through the prism of social change. In doing
so, we contextualise digital propaganda
within political communication research,
specifically studies employing content analy-
sis-based methodologies, keeping in mind
that this communicative practice adapts to,
adopts features of, and co-evolves along with
the media environment it occupies. First,
the chapter describes the content analysis
methodology and its application within
11
propaganda research. Second, we provide an
overview of the research questions content
analysis tends to be used to answer in digital
propaganda research. Third, we focus our
discussion on a critical examination of the
content analysis methodology, leading into a
discussion of new challenges surrounding the
emergence of computational propaganda.
Fourth, in the context of the shift towards
computational propaganda, the delivery of
personalised messages based on analysis of
user interests and behaviours, we consider
emerging trends in propaganda and what
contribution content analysis research can
make to understanding them. Fifth, we
account for innovation in content analysis
and the use of big data. Finally, we conclude
with a discussion that develops an under-
standing of propaganda uses in a fast-moving
and ever-evolving communication environ-
ment and the future potential of the content
analysis methodology as an exploratory and
explanatory tool.
172 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
CONTENT ANALYSIS AS A
METHODOLOGICAL TOOL
Krippendorff (2004, p. 18) defined content
analysis as ‘a research technique for making
replicable and valid inferences from texts (or
other meaningful matter) to the contexts of
their use’, emphasising the significance of
the context for the application of this method.
Content analysis has been applied in research
of a variety of forms of political communica-
tion on social media: from electoral cam-
paigning to digital diplomacy. Content
analysis proves itself as a fairly flexible
research method for studying documents and
communication artefacts, which might be
texts of various formats, pictures, audio, or
video. Social scientists have and continue to
use content analysis to examine patterns in
communication in a replicable and system-
atic manner. One of the key advantages of
using content analysis to analyse social phe-
nomena is its non-invasive nature. In contrast
to attempting to understand social experi-
ences through surveys or collecting survey
answers, content analysis explains the style
and strategic purpose of communication and
so allows inferences regarding the intended
effects of communication.
The process of content analysis research
involves the systematic reading or observation
of artefacts which are assigned labels (some-
times called codes) to indicate the presence of
characteristics germane to the research ques-
tions posed. Through the systematic labelling
of the content of texts, researchers can ana-
lyse patterns of content quantitatively using
statistical methods or use qualitative meth-
ods to analyse the meaning conveyed within
texts. Computers are increasingly used in
content analysis to automate the labelling (or
coding) of documents. Simple computational
techniques can provide descriptive data such
as word frequencies and document lengths.
Machine learning classifiers, such as nVivo,
can greatly increase the number of texts that
can be labelled, but the academic rigour and
validity of this exercise is a matter of debate.
The simplest and most objective form of con-
tent analysis considers unambiguous charac-
teristics of the text such as word frequencies;
the page area taken up by, for example, a spe-
cific newspaper column; or the duration of a
program, radio or television, or the amount of
a webpage or website. All these measures can
indicate what priority is given to a specific
topic. Such reasonably simple processes of
understanding communication by reducing it
to quantitatively coded classifications forms
the bedrock of much media research.
However, once research moves towards
more in-depth analysis of text, objectivity
gives way to more subjective inferences of
meaning being necessary. Analysis of sim-
ple word frequencies is limited because the
meaning of a word depends on the surround-
ing text as well as the context for communica-
tion. While research employing quantitative
content analysis transforms observations
of found categories into quantitative statis-
tical data, the qualitative content analysis
focuses more on developing inferences about
the intentionality of communication and its
implications. Qualitative content analysis
bears similarities with thematic analysis,
where content is coded firstly by overall topic
and then researchers seeks to understand the
lexicon employed around that topic to infer
the semantic meaning of words. This strand
of research is specifically designed to ana-
lyse the strategic objectives of the communi-
cator. Given that qualitative content analysis
in particular requires hand coding by teams
of researchers, internal validity checks are
necessary to assess consistency between cod-
ers (Weber, 1990, p. 12). Hence the devel-
opment of inter-coder reliability tests which
quantitatively calculate the extent of agree-
ment to provide confidence in the findings
(Krippendorff, 2004).
Since its development through studies
of wartime propaganda and alongside the
Hovland-Yale model (Hovland et al., 1953),
which underpins much of the work in the field
of political communication, content analysis
 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA 173

Table 11.1  Uses of content analysis in political communication research

Research question Focus Dimension Research data

Communication Source Who? Cited sources by organisation or demographics

sources and Detail of authorship
intentions Encoding Why? Rhetorical purpose (branding, persuasion, manipulation)
Analyse traits of author
Cultural aspects and temporal change
Communicative objectives
Communications Channel How? Analyse techniques of persuasion
processes Analyse style of communication (word use)
Message What? Describe trends in content creation
Relate content to differing sources
Compare communication to objective standards (public sphere
theory)
Recipient To whom? Identify intended audience by message style
Describe patterns of communication and opportunities for
interaction
Communication Decoding With what effect? Measure readability
effects Analyse the flow of argumentation
Assess cognitive responses to communications

Adapted from Holsti (1969) who in turn developed the uses category from Berelson (1952).

has played a key role in advancing under-
standing of contemporaneous communica-
tion as well as temporal developments within
and across nations. Table 11.1, developed
from work by Holsti (1969), shows the three
areas of research that have mainly employed
content analysis. Table 11.1 thus explains the
communication territory that content analy-
sis tends to dominate from which one can see
how quantitative and qualitative forms of the
methodology have equal weighting if differ-
ent application in the field.
CONTENT ANALYSIS IN THE STUDY
OF PROPAGANDA
Content analysis has a long genealogical
relationship with the study of political com-
munication and has roots specifically in the
study of propaganda. The first studies
employing the methodology were designed
to understand the design, implementation,
and potential effects of the use of propaganda
during international military conflicts, spe-
cifically the First World War. The suggestion
that propaganda had played a pivotal role in
shaping domestic and international public
opinion triggered a wave of research on this
practice by the US Federal Communications
Commission. The reports developed out of
this research not only offered insights into
building propaganda campaigns and under-
pinned the development of a model for
understanding political communication, they
also advocated quantification, so placing the
content analysis methodology as the founda-
tion for epistemic objectivity (Lasswell,
1927, 1949). Over subsequent decades, dif-
ferent strategies utilising and adapting con-
tent analysis have been developed to
accommodate the changing media land-
scapes, the evolving purposes for manipulat-
ing public opinion, as well as the political
settings in which propaganda is utilised. To
that end, content analysis remains relevant
for the study of computational propaganda.
Arguably, the bulk of the contemporary
research using content analysis in the field of
political communication has focused on elec-
tion campaigning (Lilleker & Jackson, 2013;
Štĕtka et  al., 2018). However, the meth-
odology has been also used in other, more
174 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
specialised areas and has contributed signifi-
cantly towards improving understanding of
the production and impact of political com-
munication as well as the quality and valid-
ity of content analysis research. While there
have been exponentially more studies that
have utilised content analysis in the fields of
media studies and political communication,
propaganda studies as its subfield provides
both sources of inspirations and reflection
for researchers. In this section, we offer an
overview of studies that explicitly focus on
the study of propaganda within digital media
environments to provide a sense of the appli-
cation of the methodology in this specific
area. All of the studies engage explicitly
with terminologies used in the analysis of
propaganda and focus on analyses of social
media platforms as spaces for official state
or other strategic propaganda practices. The
studies we use as exemplars are summarised
in Table 11.2, which provides an overview
of their research questions and hypotheses
which, alongside the below discussion, offers
insights into the areas of scholarly enquiry in
which content analysis is employed.
Before the rise of social media platforms,
the early studies of digital propaganda
focused on the relationship between blogging
and traditional print media. Esarey and Qiang
(2011), for example, analysing the relation-
ship between political blogging and political
change in China. Their quantitative content
analysis of the content of daily newspapers
and blogs featuring ‘hard news’ commentary
explored the levels of criticism, pluralism,
and propaganda in both types of media, and
found significant differences in the quality of
political communication. The evidence sug-
gests that new media empowered China’s
‘netizens’ and limited the state’s abilities to
set the public agenda and control political
debate. The data demonstrated a liberalisation
of political communication due to the lower-
ing of the cost of obtaining and exchanging
political news, which, in consequence, trig-
gered efforts by the state to maintain control
of political expression. With a discussion
embedded in regime change theory, address-
ing questions focusing on the pressure that
online sources – political blogs – exert on
state authorities, content analysis is employed
to offers insight into the way communication
in digital media environments can lead to
macro-level socio-political change.
Propaganda has long been associated
with military conflict, and hence studies
also explore how social media platforms
are used within these contexts. In a study of
visual propaganda on Twitter, Seo (2014)
explores the ways Israeli Defence Forces and
Hamas used themes and frames for propa-
ganda purposes. The research compares the
prominence of specific themes and frames, of
emotive phrasing across both actors’ Twitter
accounts, and the differences between images
posted by both actors. The study contributes
to propaganda analysis by providing a con-
ceptual and methodological framework for
studying images shared via social media. It
advances the scholarship on visual propa-
ganda and captures the strategic evolution of
military conflict communication by two une-
qually resourced political actors. The find-
ings show how differing thematic frames can
be utilised during conflicts offering relevance
for understanding conflict communication as
well as public diplomacy and strategic com-
munication strategies. The study also offers
a framework for the analysis of propaganda
use for cyber-warfare, which, similarly to
‘non-combat’ political contexts, is becoming
increasingly hybridised.
A similar study was conducted by Hyunjin
and Ebrahim (2016), who explored visual
propaganda, this time focusing on Facebook.
The research developed a comparative
framework for exploring the strategies of the
Syrian al-Assad regime and anti-government
coalition’s Facebook pages, as well as the dif-
ferences in their reception among Facebook
users. Despite similarities in design, this
study uses content analysis to identify differ-
ent themes (e.g. victory, threats to the enemy,
casualties), frames (overt versus covert) and
the responses to different forms of visual
Table 11.2  Overview of major content analysis research of propaganda on social media platforms
Study Research questions/hypothesis examples Sample and platform Period Measure Main findings

Esarey and Qiang, As pressure on the regime from online
2011 dissent grows, is the regime listening?
Are bloggers disgruntled citizens howling
in the wilderness?
Is authoritarian rule more stable by virtue
of allowing people to vent steam, as
it were?
Seo, 2014 RQ1: What are the prominent themes N=72 images tweeted by
of the images tweeted by the
Israel Defense Forces and Hamas’s
Alqassam Brigades?
RQ2: Are there statistically significant
differences between the images
from the two parties with regard to
prominent themes featured in those
images?
RQ3: What frames are prominent in the
images tweeted by the Israel Defense
Forces and Hamas’s Alqassam
Brigades?
RQ4: Are there statistically significant
differences between images from the
two parties with regard to frames
prominent in those images?
RQ5: What are the main human
characters featured in the images of
each party?
N=555 blog postings January 2006–
(alongside a sample of
nine papers).
14 November
the Israeli Defense Forces,
and 171 images posted
by Hamas’s Alqassam
Brigades during the
period.
To test for evidence of A comparison of blogs and newspapers
December information regime confirms the hypothesis that compared
2016. change. with the content of mainstream media,
blogs are much more likely to contain
opposing perspectives and criticism of
the state.
The reach of propaganda, although
considerable in newspapers, is much
weaker in blogs.
Ways in which images Resistance was the most popular theme in
2012–13 were used for the images posted by the Israel Defense
January propaganda. Forces, accounting for 29.2% of its 72
2013. images during the analysis period. It was
followed by unity (20.8%), threats from
enemy (19.4%), destruction (15.3%),
casualties of own civilians (9.7%),
humanity (4.2%), and casualties of own
soldiers (1.4%).
Casualties of civilians was the most
prominent theme in the images
tweeted by Hamas’s Alqassam Brigades,
accounting for 42.1% of the 171 images
from them.
CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA

RQ6: Are there statistically significant

differences between the images from
the two parties with regard to human
characters featured in those images?

(Continued)
175
Table 11.2  Overview of major content analysis research of propaganda on social media platforms (Continued)
Study Research questions/hypothesis examples
Theocharisa et al., To what extent did the researched
2015 movements use social media in a
way that contribute to the change of
political communication, mobilisation,
and organisation of social
movements?
Hyunjin and RQ1: How do images posted to the
Ebrahim, 2016 Syrian President’s Facebook page
differ from those posted to the Syrian
Coalition’s Facebook page in terms of
prominent themes?
RQ2: How do images posted to the
Syrian President’s Facebook page
differ from those posted to the Syrian
Coalition’s Facebook page in terms of
propaganda frames?
RQ3: How are different types of themes
and frames of Facebook images
associated with audience reactions to
those images?
Abrahms et al., Testing six hypotheses – example below:
2017 H1: Terrorist propaganda videos are
less likely to feature attacks against
civilians than the actual attack
patterns of the terrorist groups.
176
Sample and platform Period Measure Main findings
N=2,000 tweets from 2011 and 2012 Effects of social The results indicate that, although Twitter
accounts of each – two weeks networking sites was used significantly for political
movement. periods as use by exploring discussion and to communicate protest
per location. protest related information, calls for participation were
Twitter content during not predominant.
political campaigns Only a very small minority of tweets referred
in Spain, Greece, to protest organisation and coordination
and the United issues.
States.
N=333, Facebook images 1 April 2013–30 Role of visual The Syrian government used visual frames to
posted – 214 images on September propaganda in support its narrative that President Assad
the Syrian President’s 2014 the social media is a fearless leader protecting its people
page and 119 images on age by analysing and that life has continued normally
the Syrian Coalition page. themes, frames, and throughout Syria;
structural features. The Syrian opposition used various images to
solidify its narrative of the Assad regime’s
brutality and sufferings.
THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
N= 473 videos derived from 2001–2011 Targeting preferences Terrorist propaganda videos do not highlight
IntelCentre; social media of terrorist leaders. attacks that are representative of their
used as independent group’s actual targeting behaviour.
variable; platforms Propaganda videos are significantly more
unspecified. likely to showcase attacks that steer clear
of civilians compared with the actual
targeting choices of operatives.
Brandtzaeg et al., RQ1: How do journalists and regular
2018 users of social media perceive
online fact-checking and verification
services?
Faris et al., 2017 Research aim:
In this study, we analyse both
mainstream and social media
coverage of the 2016 US presidential N=900,000 URLs that were
election.
Statements supporting multi-sources
exploratory design (no research
questions per se):
We measure how often sources were
linked to by other online sources
and how often they were shared
on Facebook or Twitter. Through
these sharing patterns and analysis
of the content of the stories, we
identify both what was highly salient
according to these different measures
and the relationships among different
media, stories, and Twitter users.
Howard et al., What were citizens sharing on Twitter?
2017 How was junk news/propaganda
distributed across the country?
N=595 posts were mainly
gathered from online
discussion forums and
blogs (336), Facebook
(159), and Twitter (100).
N=4.5 m. tweets analysed
in conjunction with open
web sources.
shared in these tweets.
22,117,221 tweets
That contained hashtags
related to politics and
the election in the United
States.
October 2014– Perceptions of online Journalists displayed a quite nuanced
March 2015. fact-checking by perception of verify cation and fact-
journalists and checking services.
social media users.Social media users were more inclined to
take extreme positions
May 2015– The research measured Our data supports lines of research on
November how often sources polarisation in American politics that
2016. were linked by focus on the asymmetric patterns
other online between the left and the right, rather
sources and how than studies that see polarisation as a
often they were general historical phenomenon, driven by
shared on social technology or other mechanisms.
media.
1–11 November Levels of polarisation 32% of all the successfully catalogued
2016. in campaigning political content was polarising,
content. conspiracy driven, and of an
untrustworthy provenance.
Many of the swing states getting highly
concentrated doses of polarising content
were also among those with large
numbers of votes in the Electoral College.
CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA
(Continued)
177
Table 11.2  Overview of major content analysis research of propaganda on social media platforms (Continued)
178

Study Research questions/hypothesis examples Sample and platform Period Measure Main findings

King et al., 2017 Whether 50c party members differentially We first analysed the 43,757 February 2013– Use of propaganda for Finds that the government fabricates and
reported cheerleading posts back to 50c social media posts November strategic distraction posts about 448 million social media
the propaganda department, even that we harvested from 2014. comments a year.
though they posted about topics at the leaked archive from
the behest of the regime from other Zhanggong. These posts
categories as well. were made by numerous
authors on many different
social media sites,
including national-level
platforms run by private
sector firms such as Sina
Weibo and Baidu Tieba,
as well as government
forums at the national,
provincial, prefectural, and
county levels.
Chadwick et al., RQ1: What motivations for sharing news on Social media data 15–22 May To reveal affinities Sharing tabloid news on social media is a
2018 social media predict users’ democratically (N=1,525,748 tweets), 2017 between tabloid significant predictor of democratically
dysfunctional news sharing? website data (N=17,989 news and dysfunctional misinformation and
RQ2: What motivations for sharing web domains), and news misinformation disinformation.
news on social media predict article data (N=641 and disinformation
being challenged by others for articles). behaviours on
having engaged in democratically social media.
THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

dysfunctional news sharing?

RQ3: What relationship is there between
levels of agreement and disagreement
in users’ online networks and their
engagement in democratically
dysfunctional news sharing?
RQ4: What relationship is there between
levels of agreement and disagreement
in users’ online networks and their
being challenged for having engaged
in democratically dysfunctional news
sharing?
 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA
propaganda (e.g. shares, likes, comments).
The research further showcases the flexibility
of content analysis and the study is claimed
to represent ‘an important step toward devel-
oping solid methodological frameworks for
analysing social media-based visual propa-
ganda and persuasive messages’ (Hyunjin &
Ebrahim, 2016, p. 228).
Abrahms et al. (2017) apply content anal-
ysis to the dissemination of propaganda on
social media during yet another politically
violent context. Their study explores a sam-
ple of videos produced by the most active
terrorist groups and provides an analysis
of the targeting strategies of terrorist lead-
ers. Unlike the previously discussed studies,
their research is not based on an exploratory
design. In this project, the researchers devel-
oped and tested six hypotheses, focusing on
the targeting effects of propaganda videos
derived from IntelCentre’s database of terror-
ist propaganda videos. In the methodological
design, social media are treated as a depend-
ant variable and used as a predictor for under-
standing the patterns of claims made about
the execution of terrorist attacks. The ana-
lytical design focuses on the type of violence
represented in the videos, the characteristics
of the videos in terms of selectivity and other
features, as well as message characteristics
such as credit claiming patterns. The key
findings show that social media is one of the
important communication platforms for ter-
rorist leaders, and it is consistent with other
research on terrorist leaders showing that
they are selective about which of their actions
are publicised on social media and which are
kept private.
Theocharisa et  al. (2015) explore com-
munication within a more domestic political
conflict, examining the patterns of Twitter
campaigning from a comparative perspec-
tive, exploring the effects of social media
use on the changes to political communica-
tion for mobilisation and organisation by
social movements. By focusing on how three
social movements – Occupy, Indignados, and
Aganaktismenoi – the researchers examine
179
Twitter content during political campaigns
in Spain, Greece, and the United States. The
study uses a comparative design to explore
multi-dimensional changes to the ways in
which micro-blogging can shift the dynam-
ics of political campaigning by social move-
ments. While it does not explicitly engage
with propaganda terminologies, it showcases
that, in some contexts such as Greece, micro-
blogs are sites for sharing unofficial media
sources due to ‘distrust and extreme hostil-
ity towards the media, which were suspected
as serving solely the role of government-
sponsored propaganda’ (ibid., p. 216). The
researchers found this was a crucial feature
of the Greek protest movements, who called
for boycotting mainstream media networks,
which led to a reliance on content from
political blogs and alternative news sites. The
methodological contribution relates to the
application of multiple analytical procedures
applied to the content harvested from Twitter
including visualisations and social network
analysis (studying the degree of centrality
of a political actor within the network), con-
versational affordances, including a measure
of political attributes, and the construction
of indicators for understanding the use of
Twitter for political mobilisation, as well as
the aims, characteristics, and tactics of social
movements in their use of social media. The
comprehensive focus highlights the versatil-
ity of content analysis for studying commu-
nication strategies.
In contrast, and chiming with the emerging
research agenda on post-truth, Brandtzaeg
et al. (2018) explore the perceptions of fact-
checking as a preventative measure against
the propagandistic threats associated with
post-truth politics. Their study combines
content analysis with interviews to explore
‘the ways that journalists and social media
users perceive online fact-checking and veri-
fication services’. The researchers used qual-
itative content analysis (Ezzy, 2013) and used
the data as a guide for interviews with jour-
nalists and social media users, specifically
users of blogs, Facebook, and Twitter that
180 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
pertain to three fact-checking online verifica-
tion services: ‘FactCheck.org’, ‘Snopes’, and
‘StopFake’. The researchers conducted con-
tent analysis of 595 posts categorising these
according to the criteria of usefulness and
trustworthiness. Social media posts were also
coded in accordance with their sentiment:
positive or negative. While the study fol-
lows the established conventions of qualita-
tive content analysis, and its methodological
originality is limited, its application reveals
that ‘a comparison of journalists’ percep-
tions with those of social media users reveals
social media users are similarly ambivalent’
(Brandtzaeg et  al., 2018, p. 1), but journal-
ists reveal a more nuanced perspective with
regards to propaganda wars online.
The controversies surrounding fake news,
wide-scale usage of computational propa-
ganda, and external intervention into demo-
cratic governance in US domestic politics
have been discussed globally in relation to
the 2016 presidential election and the elec-
tion of Donald Trump. In a multi-source
study of mainstream and social media cov-
erage of the 2016 US presidential election,
Faris et al. (2017) explore the frequencies of
links to online sources and their sharing pat-
terns on Facebook or Twitter. In this book-
wide study, content analysis is used as part
of the methodology to study the role of the
networked public sphere in policy debates.
What they define as an ‘ecosystem approach’
builds on a methodology that tracks the role
of media sources in the public debate, in this
case, manually coding the content of stories
derived from open-web-sources and using
qualitative content analysis to understand
patterns in the text of the most frequently
occurring stories on Twitter. Through these
sharing patterns and analysis of the content of
the stories, the research identifies issues that
were highly salient according to these dif-
ferent measures and the relationships among
traditional media, stories, and social media
users. One of the key findings of this study is
that disinformation and propagandist content
is rooted in partisanship and, during the 2016
presidential election, was more prevalent
on social media. Despite design limitations,
particularly with regard to the procedural
mapping, the study is part of an emerg-
ing theme in literature which explores new
trends in political communication. Although
not framed through the propaganda analyti-
cal lens, Chadwick et  al. (2018) conducted
similar research to show how what they
call ‘democratically dysfunctional news’ is
produced, by whom, and how prevalently
this material is shared. Hence, such studies
show how content analysis can be utilised to
explore the comparative visibility of certain
ideas and arguments, and so helps research-
ers understand how these might inform pub-
lic opinion and influence election outcomes.
Howard et  al. (2017) is one of a num-
ber of studies that have come out of the
‘Computational Propaganda Project’. This
study also focuses on the 2016 US elections
and, by means of content analysis, focuses
mainly on the levels of polarisation on social
media by analysing the types of new items
shared by the users of Twitter and the scale of
sharing of computational propaganda content
in swing states. The study analysed 7,083,691
of 22,117,221 tweets initially harvested by
means of the public streaming API, all of
which were associated with hashtags linked
to the elections. The researchers worked with
the content as well as the type of links that
were shared by Twitter users, these were col-
lected in order to answer two research ques-
tions: what forms of content (form and source)
citizens shared on Twitter during the election,
and how was fake news/computational propa-
ganda distributed across the United States dur-
ing the election campaign? Using a mixture of
procedures, the research found that Twitter
users received more misinformation, and
polarising and conspiratorial content than pro-
fessionally produced news audiences; users
in some states shared more polarising politi-
cal news and information than users in other
states; levels of misinformation were higher in
swing states than in uncontested states, even
when the relative size of the user population
 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA
was considered. Such research offers impor-
tant insights into how misinformation and dis-
information gains visibility and may impact
public opinion during election contests.
Finally, and chiming with the emergent
fake news and computational propaganda
agenda, the study by King et al. (2017) exam-
ined both public social media posts and pri-
vate leaked online sources in order to explore
the use of propaganda for ‘strategic distrac-
tion’ by the Chinese government. The study
examines 50,000 party posts and explores the
sources and patterns of computational propa-
ganda to understand how they relate to the
boarder censorship policy of the authoritar-
ian Chinese regime. Methodologically, the
authors characterise the patterns in multi-
source data via their network and time series
structures. Through systematic analysis, the
researchers extrapolate the themes and tonal-
ity to infer the goals and broader strategies
behind Chinese government communication.
Written up in a style resembling a detective
investigation, the researchers show that the
Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid engag-
ing with critiques of the party and govern-
ment, and to avoid engaging on controversial
issues. Rather, the authors posit, the data
reveals the aim of this ‘massive secretive
operation is instead to distract the public and
change the subject, as most of these posts
involve cheerleading for China, the revolu-
tionary history of the Communist Party, or
other symbols of the regime’ (King et  al.,
2017, p. 484). Hence, we see here how con-
tent analysis can be utilised to infer motiva-
tions and objectives while also offering an
analysis of patterns of communication.
As a methodology aiding ways in which
researchers explain and understand prop-
aganda, contents analysis has evolved
(Chomsky & Herman, 1988), in particular,
it has been adapted to analyse data derived
from digital media environments. Content
analysis is also increasing complemented
by other methods as it has been recognised
that ‘the effects on perception of specific
topics may be studied by comparing media
181
representations (content analysis) with the
representations expressed by different types
of audiences in focus groups, interviews,
and questionnaires’ (Pedro, 2011, p. 1908).
Hence, in step with a research focus mov-
ing beyond the traditional ‘Who is propagat-
ing what, to whom, through which channel,
with what intention, and with what effect?’
(Khamis et al., 2015, p. 418), more nuanced
questions addressing the ‘what’ and ‘how’
questions, particularly with regards to the
frequencies of propagandistic messages, the
patterns of their circulation, and the interplay
between broadcast and social media have
been developed (see Chadwick, 2011). In
their updated version of a classical volume
on propaganda and persuasion, Jowett and
O’Donnell (2015, p. 395) state that ‘propa-
ganda agents can more easily mobilise the
public to amplify their messages if they
can identify appropriate channels and con-
tent. Moreover, they can identify and work
with social influencers to serve as “channels
of communication to broader audiences”
through social media platforms’. The content
analysis research agenda that explores propa-
ganda, and engages with the taxonomies of
this communicative practice, has shifted
focus towards those issues. This chapter con-
tinues the discussion to explore the extent that
the methodology is fully equipped to adapt to
this ever-changing media environment.
THE LIMITS OF CONTENT ANALYSIS
Despite its widespread use and proven adapt-
ability, since its inception, content analysis as
a research method has faced significant criti-
cism. The earliest and still seminal critiques
of this method were articulated by Kracauer
(1952) and George (1959). Kracauer’s work
was widely viewed as a critical reaction to
Berelson’s 1952 book, ‘Content analysis in
communication research’. He argued that the
quantitative orientation of this method
neglected the quality of texts and that it was
182 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
important to understand the context in which
the texts analysed emerge. According to
Kracauer (1952), it is not by quantifying and
capturing ‘patterns’ in texts that content
analysis can be epistemologically revealing,
but by mapping out the possibilities of inter-
pretation of ‘multiple connotations’. Here
Kracauer argues for greater understanding of
the way in which the same message can be
interpreted differently by different audience
members. As a critique of making inferences
from any piece of communication, Kracauer’s
argument stands.
George (1959) also focused his criticism
on the quantitative orientation of this method
and argued that content analysis serves best
as an impressionistic technique, of which
flexibility and hypothesis forming is its forte,
as opposed to hypothesis-testing. George’s
critique emphasises the emergence of broad
(dichotomous) coding schemes, rather than
more granular, multi-faceted categorisations.
By speaking about ‘specific discriminatory
categories’, George flags up the importance
of validity not reliability in content analytic
studies of propaganda. While, to an extent,
George’s critique is partiality answered by
Krippendorf’s measurement strategy for
inter-coder reliability, issues of objectivity
remain when any form of graduating scales
are added into a coding strategy; for example,
the extent of a positive or negative slant as
applied to studies of political advertising (see
Kaid & Johnston, 1991).
Critiques of content analysis have con-
tinued, frequently centring on whether the
methodology can be used to make valid meas-
urements and inferences about communica-
tion strategies and their effects. For example,
Mayring (2000, p. 6) argues content analysis
is ‘a superficial analysis without respecting
latent contents and contexts, working with
simplifying and distorting quantification’.
Such critiques have led to the development
of qualitative approaches to content analysis
(see, for example, Brandtzaeg et al., 2018).
While the critiques which build upon the
work of Kracauer and George remain valid
generally, innovations in communication
technology raise further questions as to the
power of content analysis as a methodol-
ogy. The tools which enable computational
propaganda have an impact on politics,
which develop alongside hybrid media sys-
tems, present new research challenges, as
well as opportunities for studies applying
content analysis to map trends in political
communication. With the advancements of
technologies which lead to the creation of
hybrid media systems and the growing role
of algorithms in the management of political
communication on social media, Klinger and
Svensson (2018, p. 4) question the changing
media logics of social media networks. They
argue that ‘it has been well established that
information in mass media is selected based
on news values, while the logics behind post-
ing on social media platforms are instead
guided by authors’ selection of information
that is of personal interest to them’. This
insight into the algorithmic logics underpin-
ning social media poses challenges to con-
tent analysis of social media content. While
researchers are able to view content in a lin-
ear manner, this may not be the experience of
users as their news feed becomes populated
by items their friends promote, or which fits
to predictions based on their previous behav-
iour. Similarly to infer that effects are reli-
ant on the number of times items are seen,
while recent work responds to these points
somewhat (see, for example, Chadwick et al,
2018), assumptions about popularity and
viewership remain problematic and relate
back to the arguments about the validity of
research where multiple interpretations and
communication contexts cannot reasonably
be taken into consideration. However, not-
withstanding the early critiques offered by
Kracauer (1952) and George (1959), and
subsequent studies that have questioned
content analysis as a method, it remains one
of the principal methods for the study of
propagandist content. The flexibility of the
method has led it to be employed to address
a plethora of important questions in the field
 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA
of political communication and it has been
recognised as responding effectively to chal-
lenges associated with researching the digital
media environment included sampling tech-
niques, reliability, issues concerning gate-
keepers, and hyperlinking. However, as one
critical article concludes, content analysis is
able to answer innovative research questions
such as ‘How will the decentralized and open
nature of the media influence the production
of messages such as news reporting? How
will message meanings and effects change in
an interactive, hyperlinked, and multimedia
environment?’ (Weare & Way-Ying, 2000,
p. 289). In the decades since this was written,
we have found content analysis techniques
have been developed and adapted for the
digital age, being used to review the content
of websites, weblogs, micro-blogs, and social
media, while recognising the limitations
when analysing the complex content which
populates these platforms.
NEW CHALLENGES FOR
CONTENT ANALYSIS IN DIGITAL
ENVIRONMENTS
While at present content analysis remains
highly relevant, emerging trends in the dis-
semination of propaganda present further
challenges for the application of this method
and the extent it remains a tool that can be
utilised for understanding these develop-
ments. In particular, questions can be raised
regarding the extent that the method can be
used to aid understanding of new digital phe-
nomena which are situated at the crossroads
of hybrid media systems and hybrid media
genres: fake news and digital propaganda.
The content that is produced – discussed
under the umbrella term of computational
propaganda – which is targeted at individuals
based on their preferences and demograph-
ics, are designed to conceal the sender and
can often be impossible to view unless you
are a member of the target population. These
183
therefore impede identification of who is
communicating, who is targeted, and with
what intended effect. Equally it is problem-
atic to assume motivations when claims are
made that political messages are created
purely to earn clickbait advertising revenue.
While studies developed from the afore-
mentioned ‘Computational Propaganda
Project’ lead the way in terms of theoretical
discussion and empirical insights, individual
studies of computational propaganda on
social media demonstrate some interesting
challenges and lessons for researchers using
this method. Studies seeking to analyse the
manipulative features of digitalised persua-
sion in which social media, political bots, and
the Internet of Things make up an incubating
milieu for new forms of propaganda can find
themselves limited when attempting to ascer-
tain sources, motivations, and impacts. While
Wooley and Howard (2016, p. 4886) set out
a definition for ‘computational propaganda’
as ‘the assemblage of social media platforms,
autonomous agents, and big data tasked with
the manipulation of public opinion’ studying
such developments in political communica-
tion remains challenging.
However, similar to past developments
which have pushed the evolution of propa-
ganda forward, military warfare became a
playground for the advancement of technolo-
gies and, contiguously, the application of these
forms of political communication as well as
contingent research agendas (Howard, 2015).
As the adaptation of computation propaganda
to political campaigning, electoral as well as
civic campaigning, is becoming more wide-
spread, and involves ‘autonomous agents,
equipped with big data about our behavior
collected from the Internet of things, work-
ing across social media platforms to engage
with citizens on political issues and advance
ideological projects’ (Wooley & Howard,
2016, p. 4886), understanding their patterns
and impacts is challenging particular as the
environment is ever-changing. Such devel-
opments also present challenges to long-
standing research agendas, for example,
184 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
computational propaganda involves software
programs that permit para-social interac-
tive experiences. While being ideologically
imbued, they are also interactive within the
context of a platform and so give the impres-
sion of telepresence. Yet, while they are con-
trolled by humans, these can be home state
actors, foreign state actors, hackers, activists,
or bots: such developments do not fit well
with the roots of content analysis research in
the Hovland-Yale (1953) research paradigm.
Similarly, there are challenges with under-
standing the role of the citizen as content
producer. With the rise of networked democ-
racy ‘equipped with social media, the citizens
no longer have to be passive consumers of
political party propaganda, government spin
or mass media news, but are instead actu-
ally enabled to challenge discourses, share
alternative perspectives and publish their
own opinions’ (Loader & Mercea, 2011,
p. 759). Studies that explore how the ordinary
user communicates about politics combine
aspects of content analysis with discourse
analysis (Lilleker & Bonacci, 2017; Zurutuza-
Munoz & Lilleker, 2018). However, studies
of this phenomenon are limited to citizen
inputs connected by hashtags, if on Twitter
or Instagram, or posted to specific pages on
Facebook, it is impossible to curate all posts
on a given topic. There are also limitations
as platforms adjust the extent that content
can be searched and archived by researchers.
Apart from these technological challenges,
there are further challenges with identifying
true citizen voices, those of activists and the
extent that political organisation employs
bots in order to astroturf platforms with self-
promoting or attack messages.
Aside from theorising and researching
social media as spaces in which network
affordances translate into democracy, social
media also poses challenges to democratic
governance and international relations, relat-
ing to their broader impact on politics. Bjola
(2017, p. 189) links propaganda with geopol-
itics arguing that ‘the weaponization of infor-
mation via digital propaganda has come to be
seen by some states as the optimal instrument
for correcting power asymmetries in their
global standing’. This argument shows the
significance and importance of digital and
computational propaganda, but also demon-
strates the scale of the issues for researchers
of propaganda on social media.
BIG DATA CONTENT ANALYSIS:
A METHODOLOGY EVOLVES
Big data, the use of large data sets, which
may be analysed computationally to reveal
patterns, trends, and associations, especially
relating to human behaviour and interactions,
is having an impact in all areas of human
interaction with digital media environments.
Big data provides the framework for compu-
tational propaganda in particular. While
communication is ahead of the curve in uti-
lising big data, as the Cambridge Analytica
revelations indicate, research struggles to an
extent to keep up. The reason being that
methodologies for disseminating information
do not need to be precise, they are about
reaching as many people susceptible to
manipulation as possible, whereas research
must be reliable, valid, and replicable.
However, as noted when discussing the work
of Chadwick et al. (2018), innovation in con-
tent analysis has adapted to the potential
offered by big data.
The digital tools available have led to
innovative ways of capturing data, in particu-
lar focusing on the interactive environment
where political organisations and citizens
routinely take part in the political communi-
cation process. A research strand has devel-
oped around mapping patterns of interactions
between nodes, or user accounts, and around
given topics (Lin et al., 2013; Bruns, 2018).
Recording citizen exposure to an interaction
with political communication is, in contrast,
measured through having people download
smartphone apps which monitor and track
behaviour (Eagle et al., 2008). These projects
 CONTENT ANALYSIS AND THE EXAMINATION OF DIGITAL PROPAGANDA
and many similar contribute to a broad
research agenda defined as:
How to capture and analyze hyperlinks, tags,
search engine results, archived websites, social
networking sites’ profiles, Wikipedia edits, and
other digital objects? How may one learn from how
online devices (e.g. engines and recommendation
systems) make use of the digital objects, and, cru-
cially, how may such uses be repurposed for social
and cultural research? (Rogers, 2013, p. 19)
Such studies offer an important complement
to studies that employ content analysis.
While there are limited studies employing
big data methodologies to questions relating
specifically to propaganda, it is easy to see
the relevance of these questions to any area of
communication enquiry. However, big data
research approaches, while offering the abil-
ity to tackle the scale of text which can be col-
lected from the digital environment, cannot
at present respond to the range of questions
which are raised through propaganda studies.
Big data approaches are by their very nature
reductionist. Through the process of ‘apply-
ing math to huge quantities of data in order
to infer probabilities’ (Mayer-Schönberger
& Cukier 2013, p. 11) there are dangers of
loss of context when dealing with the mes-
sage content questions at a minimum. More
broadly, making inferences that sharing con-
tent from a source denotes support can prove
unsafe (Zurutuza-Munoz & Lilleker, 2018).
However, as Jungherr argues, the analysis of
digital trace data allows not only broad pat-
terns of communication to be identified but
also interactions regarding events in real-
time. So, he continues, ‘one can see the num-
ber of people who comment about an event
over the period of its occurrence’ (Jungherr,
2015, p. 36). Building on this we can also
identify patterns of language use contingent
to an event, and, over time, map this data
using sentiment analysis. This research can
thus identify who is speaking, the keywords
employed, the sentiment inferred through
analysis of words used, and how different
topics and sentiments emerged over time.
185
Therefore, there is significant value in
computation research techniques which
take the basic rules of content analysis and
develop them to handle the data that is avail-
able from digital media environments. Using
such data to predict outcomes, for example,
an election, remains problematic and may
be attempting to do more than the data will
allow (for debates see Jungherr et al., 2012).
But big data research approaches are still in
their infancy. Studies have demonstrated that
such approaches can show to some extent
who is communicating, although bots remain
a problem for researchers (Ferrara et  al.,
2016), the patterns in their lexicon, the lev-
els of sharing or responses received, their
embeddedness within online networks, and
to some extent, can infer the strategy behind
the communication. However, it is safer to
infer the effects retrospectively which in turn
leads to problems of causality. For example,
Donald Trump may have gained exponential
publicity from his use of Twitter during the
US 2016 election contest, both through shares
and media reporting, but was this a factor of
his popularity or a factor which earned him
support (Wells et  al., 2016). Thus, we find
big data approaches offering the potential to
be able to address key issues in propaganda
studies within digital environments and yet
some of the early critiques relating to reli-
able, valid, and context relevant findings
remain pertinent.
CONCLUSION
Content analysis as a research method is inex-
tricably linked with the study of propaganda
since its development in the first half of the
twentieth century. Since those early studies by
Hovland and colleagues, content analysis has
been used widely to explore the key areas of
political communication: ‘who says?’,
‘what?’, ‘to whom?’ via ‘what medium?’ and
‘with what effect?’ The approach remains
relevant for many studies of propaganda
186 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
production and dissemination via digital
media environments, proving its adaptability
and relevance. Critiques of the method, how-
ever, equally remain relevant. Ensuring the
data is able to offer robust and reliable insights
into the social phenomena being studied is an
important question for any research project,
content analysis has faced these challenges
and procedures have been introduced to
remedy some issues (Krippendorf, 2004).
More major challenges will emerge when
dealing with the fast-moving, multi-authored,
heavily populated, and highly complex digital
media environments of the twenty-first cen-
tury. Computational propaganda, dissemi-
nated through automated bot accounts is
challenging to categorise, archive, understand,
and track. Big data approaches offer some
potential for dealing with these issues and
continue to evolve, but it is likely that research
will always lag behind the practice of propa-
gandists as researchers strive to develop tech-
niques that deliver the insights required of the
research community. Yet, as the scale and
complexity of the propaganda industry grows,
the analysis of message content remains of
crucial importance; hence the basics of con-
tent analysis as a method are likely to remain
dominant within the field of digital propa-
ganda research.
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Character Assassination as Modus
Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
Sergei A. Samoilenko and Margarita Karnysheva
INTRODUCTION
This chapter argues that character assassina-
tion (CA) was not simply a sanctioning
mechanism of the Soviet regime, but a struc-
tural property of Marxism-Leninism, the
official ideology of the USSR. The relation-
ship between Soviet propaganda and CA was
symbiotic as a result of that state doctrine,
which interpreted world events as continuous
class struggles. Hence, the role of propa-
ganda was not only to promote the official
ideology, but also to cultivate reflexive hos-
tile attitudes toward ideological rivals.
In the world of politics, all ideological
contestants strive to achieve power and sta-
tus by imposing their definitions of reality on
others and delegitimizing the views of their
opponents (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991; Thompson,
2000). Soviet propaganda succeeded in legiti-
mizing the political beliefs of Marx and
Lenin as the superior ideology. It created
an iconoclastic Soviet culture that had a pro-
found impact on other societies, as recent
12
studies of nostalgia for the Soviet past attest.1
Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, the Communist Party remains the sec-
ond largest party in the Russian Federation;
it also maintains its omnipotent rule in the
People’s Republic of China.
This chapter argues for a detailed inquiry
into the interplay between Soviet propaganda
and character assassination by providing
insight into the factors influencing state-run
media campaigns in contemporary Russia. A
review of Russian Marxism, particularly of
Lenin’s approach to propaganda, is essential
for elucidating this symbiotic relationship.
THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The Role of Character Assassination
in Propaganda Campaigns
Political power is achieved ‘through the mas-
tery of other people’ (Mann, 1986, p. 6) via
190 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
ideology: a set of ideas, normative beliefs,
and ethical ideals that represent a particular
view about reality and become ‘a persuasive
force from the power of collective participa-
tion’ (Ellul, 1973, p. 117). Since ideology is
based not on facts but on strong beliefs, it
often produces a ‘false consciousness’
(Engels, 1893/1968) that shapes or deter-
mines an individual’s perception of reality.
Hence, Lasswell and Kaplan (1950) refer to
ideology as ‘the political myth’ created
in order to ‘preserve the social structure’
(p. 117). Some scholars argue that an ideol-
ogy can be known only in contrast to a com-
peting set of beliefs and values (Žižek,
1995). Hence, one cannot become conscious
of another ideology unless there is a conflict
between ideological frameworks.
The promotion of ideology is achieved
through propaganda, which is the means of
communication by which competing groups
attempt to lead the public to accept a given
political or economic structure or to partici-
pate in a certain action. Ideology serves ‘as
a peg, a pretext’ (Ellul, 1973, p. 117) for prop-
aganda by providing it with themes and con-
tent. Importantly, a critical condition for the
development of propaganda is the prevalence
of powerful myths in society. These myths
are then reinforced or exaggerated to pro-
vide citizens with a clear opinion on multiple
issues that are outside their own experience.
Typically, state propaganda promotes learned
values and attitudes, instills proper reflexes,
and reinforces mass commitment to action.
Character assassination refers to a set of
strategies intended to discredit an individual
or group target in the eyes of various audi-
ences. Throughout history, it has been applied
as a tool of political competition, a method
of personal retaliation, or a means of norma-
tive sanctions (Davis, 1950; Icks & Shiraev,
2014). A character assassination event is a
public contest between an attacker and a target
over credibility and legitimacy. The attacker
applies a range of persuasive strategies to
convince public opinion that the target lacks
the required moral framework – and thus the
legitimacy – for an honorable distinction or
social status.
Character assassination frequently results
from differing perceptions of social reality or
clashing worldviews that often lead to ideo-
logical competition and protracted social con-
flict (Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997). According
to Rokeach (1973), the major ideologies of
the 20th century are best understood from
a two-dimensional perspective, which creates
the perception of a binary opposition. Each
ideological camp attempts to influence pub-
lic opinion of its legitimacy while calling into
question the reputation and good name of its
rivals, thereby undermining the rival’s sym-
bolic power to influence hearts and minds.
Importantly, character assassination is
closely related to the concepts of coercion and
violence, since it is a demonstrative means of
exercising power and enforcing compliance
in social structures. Many character assassi-
nation events defy easy explanation as indi-
vidual manifestations of aggression and can
only be understood in relation to group or
systemic conventions. Every state is a coer-
cive institution based on the use of legitimate
violence, which allows some people to rule
over others (Weber, 2004). Thus, character
assassination is legitimized by cultural prac-
tices that are built into the societal and cul-
tural values of a dominant nation, religion, or
ideology and manifested in its propaganda.
In this sense, character assassination is a type
of cultural violence, which Galtung (1990,
p. 291) describes as ‘any aspect of a culture
that can be used to legitimize violence in its
direct or structural form’. The use of charac-
ter assassination in propaganda campaigns
targeting ideological outgroups can result in
physical violence toward their members and
even lead to their extermination.
Character Assassination in Soviet
Propaganda
Soviet propaganda was based on the solid
foundation of Marxism-Leninism, which
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
divided humanity into two antagonistic social
classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The conflict between the two classes was
inevitable due to fundamental ontological dif-
ferences in their ideologies, as manifested in
social dualisms. According to Pearce and
Littlejohn (1997), social conflicts inevitably
arise when parties see other parties’ interests
and values as potentially interfering with the
realization of their own goals and ideas. Bell
(1965) notes that Vladimir Lenin, the political
leader of the Bolshevik party, used the term
ideology in the sense of ‘conflicting belief
systems’, or combat of ideas. Clearly, such
presupposition precludes alternative ideolo-
gies to appear in the same political environ-
ment. As suggested by Lenin (1902/1961),
‘there is no middle course (for mankind has
not created a “third” ideology)’.
The use of character assassination in Soviet
propaganda stems from the traditions of the
European Reformation and the 18th-century
Enlightenment (Burrows, 2019; Dykema,
2014). Soviet propaganda originated from
the ideological activities of the Bolshevik
faction of the Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party (RSDLP). In many ways, the
Bolsheviks followed in the footsteps of the
nihilists and the narodniki (middle-class
revolutionaries in 19th-century Russia who
believed in revolution through peasant upris-
ings). Early Russian revolutionaries, such as
the members of Narodnaya Volya, employed
radical measures from street agitation to ter-
rorist acts in order to attract the attention of the
masses (Ely, 2016; Plekhanov, 1883/1974).
Lenin openly deployed character attacks
against his ideological opponents – especially
the Mensheviks – in his writings, calling for
an ‘extermination struggle’ to which there
can be no limits (1907/1972, p. 300). He also
incited the proletariat and the peasantry to
ruthlessly do away with the monarchy and
the aristocracy. For example, in one pamphlet
he referred to the Bolsheviks as ‘the Jacobins
of contemporary Social-Democracy’, who
‘shall settle accounts with tsarism in the
Jacobin, or, if you like, in the plebeian way’
191
if the revolution gains a decisive victory
(Lenin, 1905/1977, p. 58).
In the late 1890s, the pamphlet On
Agitation by Kremer and Martov (1893/2008)
exerted a great influence on Russian Social-
Democrats. It called for mass agitation
among the workers on issues of their every-
day needs and demands. The twin strategies
of agitation and propaganda were introduced
by Gregory Plekhanov, a prominent Russian
theorist of Marxism. Plekhanov defined
propaganda as ‘the revolutionary explana-
tion of the present social system … to indi-
viduals or to broad masses’. He described
agitation as ‘the call upon the masses to
undertake definite, concrete actions, and the
promotion of the direct revolutionary inter-
vention of the proletariat in social life’ (as
cited in Lenin, 1902, p. 409).
A critical function of Soviet propaganda
was to combat ideological dissent and
counter subversion. Thus, state propaganda
became not only an ideological mouthpiece,
but also ‘in the long run a means for the erad-
ication of the last traces of bourgeois propa-
ganda dating from the old regime’ (Bucharin
& Preobraschensky, 1921). The Bolsheviks
labeled all ideological and political oppo-
nents ‘exploiters of the toilers’ and ‘enemies
of the people’. By contrast, the members of
the Bolshevik Party, which would become
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(CPSU), were presented as the vanguard of
the proletariat, selfless warriors who would
sacrifice their lives for the interests of the
working class.
Without propaganda, Marxism-Leninism
would have ‘lost its reality and became an
abstraction’ (Ellul, 1973, p. 201). The role
of Soviet propaganda was officially defined
as the expression of the essential world-
view of the working class and its natural
aims and interests. Its historical position
was determined as the social force leading
to the epoch of communism (Pravatorov,
1975). The presence of a strong myth created
favorable conditions for mass persuasion. To
legitimize their seizure of power in 1917, the
192 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Bolsheviks proclaimed their goal to be liber-
ating the Russian workers and peasants and
leading them into the Communist Eden. To
achieve this goal, the country was supposed
to pass through various stages of building
a democratic socialist state, which were to
culminate in World Revolution and the crea-
tion of a prosperous and classless communist
society. These fundamental beliefs became a
blueprint for social order in Soviet society.
SOVIET PROPAGANDA STRATEGIES
Propaganda strategies distinguish between
the purposes of agitation and integration.
Support for an official ideology is demon-
strated through the binary principle of inclu-
sion through a pledge of allegiance and
exclusion through an open rejection of com-
peting ideologies. The role of character
assassination is to provide clarification about
who counts as a good member of society and
who is a flawed person.
Character Assassination in
Agitation Campaigns
Agitation campaigns are typically used to
mobilize the masses for social change or
revolutionary purposes that seek to achieve
instant results or obtain short-term political
gains. According to Ellul (1973), they are
based on simple slogans, such as the call to
liberty among the oppressed, the promise of
bread to the hungry, or the promise of land to
peasants. A popular function of agitation is to
unleash mass hatred by attributing misfor-
tunes to another party. Character attacks on
ideological opponents prove effective when
they are able to persuade uneducated or unin-
formed audiences. The success of the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was ensured
through heightened agitation and pacifist
propaganda in the context of World War I.
Bolshevik propagandists endorsed mass
desertion in the army and fostered soldiers’
antagonism toward their commanding offic-
ers. Most Soviet agitation campaigns between
1917 and 1937 promoted the idea of class
struggle and attacked the foes of the Soviet
state.
After the October Revolution, agitprop
became a distinguished method of spreading
the political ideology of the newly constituted
proletarian government (Pipes, 1995). In
order to win the support of Russian peasants,
the Bolsheviks recruited and dispatched tens
of thousands of emissaries, including city
workers and demobilized soldiers, to remote
rural areas (Kenez, 1985). Agitprop trains
and riverboats carried activists and promo-
tional materials to isolated areas. These vol-
unteer agitators informed peasants about land
reform policies and provided assistance with
their implementation. Agitprop street theater
was noted for its use of archetypal characters
of perfect virtue and evil, as well as for its
ridicule of the Church and capitalists.
Under Joseph Stalin, from the 1929 ‘Great
Turn’ to his death in 1953, propaganda was
intentionally consolidated to produce con-
sistent and unified messages. During the first
Pyatiletka campaign – the five-year plan,
which was implemented between 1928 and
1932 – agitation campaigns aimed to inspire
solidarity among city workers and peasants,
thereby promoting in-group cohesion and
altruism. In addition, agitation campaigns
were intended to inspire the absolute maxi-
mum enthusiasm possible among the masses
in order to increase productivity.
By the late 1920s, Soviet propagandists
were actively using a ‘compare and contrast’
strategy, contrasting the advantages of the
socialist system with the disadvantages of liv-
ing in capitalist countries. This approach rein-
forced a bipolar view of the world as being
split into two camps: imperialistic aggres-
sors versus righteous communists and social-
ists. In the 1930s and 1940s, Stalin’s cult of
personality dominated every aspect of pub-
lic life. His statements were disseminated in
national, regional, and factory newspapers
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
and immediately adopted as direct guidelines.
Thus, if Stalin and All-Union Communist
Party or VKP(b) denounced someone as ‘an
enemy of the people’, this label was quickly
accepted as irrefutable truth. Character assas-
sination under Stalinism was realized by
means of well-planned smear campaigns in the
Soviet press that often led to public show trials
and the physical annihilation of the target.
In order to unite numerous foreign sympa-
thizers of Soviet Russia and promote commu-
nism worldwide, the Communist International
(Comintern) was founded in Moscow in 1919.
Comintern ran effective public relations cam-
paigns abroad, using all available channels
to reach out to international sympathizers,
including left-wing parties and intelligentsia.
Through this network, the Soviet leadership
conducted defamation campaigns targeting
the White (anti-Bolshevik) movement and the
governments of the Entente countries. Pro-
Soviet communist and trade union organiza-
tions abroad spread Soviet ideology, blaming
capitalist countries for Russia’s misfortunes:
‘The White Terror unleashed by the bourgeois
cannibals is indescribable’ (The Communist
International, 1919/1980).
In the 1930s, the Comintern network
helped spread propaganda aimed at discred-
iting Leon Trotsky and other political oppo-
nents. In the late 1930s, Trotsky’s attacks on
his victorious rival Joseph Stalin constituted a
dangerous threat to the international standing
of the USSR precisely because he attacked
Stalin’s policies as contradictory to Marxism-
Leninism (Trotsky, 1935). Similarly, in the
1970s and 1980s, the dissidents’ activities to
publicize awareness of human rights viola-
tions in the Soviet Union were perceived as
a serious threat because they tarnished the
state’s image as a socialist democracy.
Character Assassination in
Integration Campaigns
The Soviet state exerted control and leader-
ship not only through authoritarian
193
dominance, but also through hegemony
(Gramsci, 1971) – that is, by integrating sub-
ordinate classes into the dominant culture.
The mission of propaganda is to support soft
power by reinforcing the myths within a cul-
ture and providing citizens with a clear and
well-articulated opinion about national and
foreign issues. As suggested by Ellul (1973),
effective propaganda of integration requires
that the majority of citizens share a similar
culture and ideology, as well as having the
basic education necessary to be able to read
and discuss political information. Therefore,
‘propaganda forms culture and in a certain
sense is culture’ (p. 110), as a cultured
person is more susceptible to propaganda.
The cultural revolution declared by Lenin
in 1923 aimed to eliminate illiteracy so as
to more effectively propagate Marxism-
Leninism and atheism. Importantly, Lenin’s
vision of cultural revolution did not distin-
guish between the tasks of information and
propaganda. Lenin believed that political
propaganda was to serve two critical func-
tions: organize and educate the masses. For
example, he considered a newspaper ‘not
only a collective propagandist and a collec-
tive agitator’, but also ‘a collective organ-
izer’ (Lenin, 1902). The growing literacy
rate among Soviet citizens made it possible
to expose previously uneducated masses to
printed propaganda and thereby increase
their political engagement.
The Department for Agitation and
Propaganda was founded in the early 1920s
under the control of the CPSU’s Central
Committee. Its aim was to support Party ini-
tiatives through mass communication, politi-
cal education, and public outreach. In order
to maintain control over education, science,
and culture, the People’s Commissariat of
Enlightenment, led by Anatoly Lunacharsky,
was established in 1917 as a national center
of political education. In December 1918, a
system of free school education was intro-
duced. The humanities became subordinated
to propaganda tasks, and school syllabi were
designed on the basis of Marxism-Leninism.
194 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Anti-religious propaganda entered aca-
demia in the late 1950s, when the course
Fundamentals of Scientific Atheism was
added to higher education curricula. Religion
was perceived as an ideological competitor
of Marxism-Leninism, one that interfered
with the latter’s goal of building a proletarian
society.
Youth organizations, such as the Young
Pioneers and the Komsomol, played an impor-
tant role in the promotion of dominant norms
and values. These organizations helped to
build so-called ‘class-consciousness’, which
Mao later described as a way to ‘destroy the
individualist and petit-bourgeois spirit while
assimilating the individual in a collective of
thought’ (cited in Ellul, 1973). In addition,
organizational membership was supposed
to strengthen individuals’ group identity and
facilitate total belief in ideological doctrine.
Naturally, this would justify any decisions
or actions in the name of a cause, including
the harassment of class enemies. From child-
hood, an individual was integrated into the
Marxist-Leninist network of organizations,
such as Pioneer or Komsomol groups, which
were free of adverse ideological influences.
The state policy of cultural revolution pro-
vided propaganda with new ideas, including
some that were applied to character assassi-
nation campaigns. Russian Marxist philoso-
pher Alexander Bogdanov (1924) argued that
culture and art always reflect the interests
of a certain class. Therefore, it was neces-
sary to destroy ‘old bourgeois culture’ and
replace it with the ‘pure proletarian culture’
of the future. Hence, the Soviet propagan-
dists immediately labeled alternative cultures
‘archaic’ (feudal-bai,2 feudal-lamaistic3),
‘bourgeois’, or ‘decadent’ and persecuted
their key representatives and followers.
Practically, Bogdanov’s ideas of the ter-
mination of non-proletarian culture were
embodied in the formation of Proletkult,
a federation of local cultural societies and
avant-garde artists (Gorbunov, 1972; Mally,
1990). The role of Proletkult was to carry to
the masses an ideological and progressive
culture that would raise the authority of the
new Bolshevik government among the leftist
intelligentsia abroad. The Soviet government
funded the publication of Marxist-Leninist
classics and ideologically sound literature in
large quantities. These books promoted the
avant-garde role of the working class and
mythologized the biographies of party and
state leaders. Art was considered just another
propaganda tool. State subsidiaries primarily
supported artists and sculptors who worked
in the genre of socialist realism. Another crit-
ical function of Proletkult was the obstruc-
tion of non-proletarian art and artists who did
not share the views of the Soviet ideology.
For example, a smear campaign against Boris
Pasternak, a Nobel Prize winner,4 was organ-
ized by the main CPSU ideologist, Mikhail
Suslov, through the Union of Soviet Writers.5
This Proletkult organization was also instru-
mental during a harassment campaign against
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of The
Gulag Archipelago.
The goals of agitation and integration
frequently overlap. Specifically, hatred of a
common enemy is the most accessible and
comprehensive means of unifying follow-
ers of a particular ideology (Hoffer, 1951).
The rally round the flag effect is frequently
exploited by political leaders in times of
uncertainty and turmoil to distract from
economic or policy issues and increase sup-
port for the government. Political crises can
be conveniently promoted by state propa-
ganda to increase the approval ratings of
political leaders (Mueller, 1970; Tir, 2010).
Specifically, the symbolic sphere can be
organized through censorship policies and by
replacing inconvenient narratives with spir-
itual bonding and group-think.
During the purges of the late 1930s, char-
acter assassination of Stalin’s political oppo-
nents was vigorously supported by a great
number of enthusiasts. Collective letters writ-
ten by groups of intellectuals, workers, and
collective farmers demanded that ‘traitors’ and
‘enemies of the people’ be punished (Pravda,
1937). The denunciation and anonymous
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
reports became a sign of loyalty to the state
under Stalin. According to Kimerling (2017),
anonymous complaints and accusations ful-
filled several functions. First, they simulated
the democratic right of the Soviet people
to influence political life according to the
socialist vision of democracy by the people.
Second, the complaints of the working people
provided the perfect pretext for repressions,
a justification that was often used in political
campaigns. In the same vein, in 1973, a news-
paper smear campaign against physicist and
human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov was
supported by well-known scientists, mem-
bers of the cultural elite, and labor collectives
across the country (Pravda, 1973).
CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
TARGETS
The motives for character assassination (CA)
vary. Many attacks are launched ‘to win politi-
cal battles, discredit unwelcome news, or
settle personal scores’ (Icks & Shiraev, 2014,
p. 3). However, a character attack on an indi-
vidual may be an intermediate phase of a
strategic plan targeting an opposition move-
ment and a competing ideology.
From the remnants of the czarist regime,
the Bolsheviks inherited an economically
devastated country in the throes of war.
World War I and the subsequent Russian
Civil War spread famine and public discon-
tent with the new government. During the
Civil War (1918–1921), Soviet propaganda
became an extremely important tool for mass
persuasion. Rooted in socialist ideology and
mixed with various character assassination
methods, political propaganda contributed
significantly to the Bolsheviks’ victory. The
key targets at that time included the White
Movement, anarchists, socialist-revolution-
aries, the Mensheviks, and foreign nations
participating in the Allied intervention.
At a time when both the Whites (monar-
chists and anti-Bolsheviks) and the Reds
195
(the Bolsheviks) were plundering the civil-
ian population, organizing pogroms, and
using mass terror tactics, the task of Soviet
propaganda was to shift the blame for any
wrongdoing to the Reds’ opponents while
playing down their own crimes. For example,
Leon Trotsky, then People’s Commissar of
Military and Naval Affairs and commander
of the Red Army, often blamed the regime of
petty-bourgeois compromisers for all trou-
bles that had occurred since the Revolution.6
After the Civil War, the Bolsheviks con-
tinued to position themselves as the sole
defenders of proletarian interests, declaring
all ideological rivals to be enemies of the
people. Collective character assassination
against social groups began with the decree
of January 1918 that separated Church from
state and school from Church, which was
accompanied by anti-religious propaganda
and atheistic education. State-run CA cam-
paigns targeted many social groups, includ-
ing the nobility, landowners, priests, the
intelligentsia, rich peasants, and any other
group categorized as a ‘class enemy’ of the
Soviet state.
After Lenin’s death in 1924, character
assassination continued to be a popular tool
of political competition and was frequently
used in power struggles among the members
of the Soviet elite and of the Comintern in the
1920s and 1930s. In 1927, Leon Trotsky was
defeated by Joseph Stalin and his supporters
and expelled from the party and the Soviet
Union. Using Trotsky’s authority in interna-
tional proletarian and socialist circles, the
Trotskyites launched their own anti-Stalinist
propaganda campaign to undermine the cred-
ibility of the Soviet Union as the world’s first
socialist state. In exile, Trotsky created the
anti-Soviet Fourth International and began
an aggressive propaganda campaign against
Stalin. In return, Soviet counter-propaganda
accused Trotsky and his supporters of col-
laborating with fascist Germany and Japan.
Throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s,
the Communist Party and the state appara-
tus were shaped by an endless intra-party
196 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
struggle for internal purity and concerns
about commitment to the party line. Stalin’s
Great Purge was an attempt to rid the party
of any oppositionists who might even poten-
tially become Communist leaders or popular
figures in a context of growing public discon-
tent with state policies (Blackstock, 1969).
Following Stalin’s death, there was a brief
period known as The Khrushchev Thaw from
1953 to the 1960s. During this time, the gov-
ernment ceased mass repressions and rolled
back censorship. The 20th Congress of the
Communist Party in 1956 denounced the cult
of Stalin, liberalized some domestic poli-
cies, and granted amnesty to many victims
of the previous purges. Consequently, the
techniques of state domination changed and
the scale of physical violence shrank signifi-
cantly. Despite democratization reforms, the
state’s official rhetoric remained the same.
The Soviet government continued to sup-
press ideological dissent and run smear cam-
paigns against its opponents.
The goal of propaganda was to ensure unity
between the state and citizens through so-
called self-criticism. This practice expanded
under Khrushchev in the 1960s as an effec-
tive means of controlling the bureaucracy and
channeling society’s indignation and aggres-
sive tendencies (Pravda, 1962). The news-
papers published hundreds of letters from
readers denouncing the shortcomings and
faults of functionaries and their institutions.
During this campaign, many civil servants,
clerks, and small managers became scape-
goats, while the Communist Party always
remained above reproach.
In the 1960s, Soviet propagandists used
character assassination to ensure ideological
conformity. Since any resistance to dominant
positions would disrupt the reproduction of
the social system, the state applied repressive
measures and disciplinary sanctions against
any dissent. Hence, the selective repressions
of the 1960s and 1970s used character assas-
sination to prevent the spread of oppositional
activism by sending a signal to the general
public that disloyalty was reprehensible and
punishable (Egorova & Egorova, 2019).
The Stalinist mass purges were replaced by
elaborate smear campaigns against famous
dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov and
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
After World War II, the world was split by
the ideological, economic, and geopolitical
rivalry between NATO and the countries of
the Warsaw Pact. The NATO countries con-
tinued to support many anti-communist and
subversive organizations abroad. Character
assassination also served the function of coun-
ter-propaganda by responding to adversarial
persuasion or disinformation. Soviet counter-
intelligence used smear campaigns against the
members of the National Alliance of Russian
Solidarists (NTS), who were involved in covert
operations against the Soviet Union (Bannov,
1977). This organization sponsored Radio Free
Russia and the publishing house Posev, which
specialized in anti-Soviet and other samizdat
literature smuggled outside the USSR.
Soviet propaganda defined the Cold War
as an economic and ideological confronta-
tion between capitalist and socialist modes
of production. The competition between the
USSR and the United States continued in
new ideological markets all over the world.
For example, in Latin America, the Soviet
Union targeted local intellectuals to replace
the dogma of the Church with Marxism
(Miller, 1989). Soviet Cold War propaganda
also sought to alter the positive image of
the United States, an erstwhile ally during
World War II.7 The strategy and targets for
anti-American propaganda were outlined
in the same Marxist-Leninist language the
Bolshevik leaders used to castigate their class
enemies, including ‘the stranglers of freedom
and independence of peoples’ and ‘a coun-
try of national and racial discrimination’.
Soviet propagandists frequently applied their
favorite ‘compare and contrast’ technique,
juxtaposing the advantages of developed
socialism with unemployment, racism, and
neocolonialism in capitalist countries.
Disinformation was a crucial tactic in the
Soviet political warfare of active measures,
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
which included overt and covert techniques
for influencing events in foreign countries.
Notorious examples included a fake embassy
report about US plans to overthrow the gov-
ernment in Ghana and rumors that the United
States was responsible for the seizure of the
Grand Mosque of Mecca (Cull et  al., 2017;
U.S. Department of State, 1981). Soviet
black propaganda also spread rumors that
the AIDS virus was manufactured by the US
government and first tested on gay prison
inmates (Boghardt, 2009). In addition, char-
acter assassination served the purpose of
counter-propaganda, or responding to adver-
sarial persuasion.
The Role of the Media
Character assassination became an integral
tool of mass persuasion in Soviet propaganda
campaigns conducted via state-controlled
media. In the Soviet Union, the mass media
served as channels of state propaganda and
deployed all possible resources to obliterate
the target.
In pre-revolutionary Russia, propaganda
was disseminated through verbal agitation
and the distribution of printed materials.
Russian socialists held good orators who
could win the attention of the audience in
high regard. Lenin (1902/1961) distinguished
between the tasks of the propagandist and of
the agitator. He noted that the propagandist,
whose primary medium is print, must explain
the causes of social inequities and present too
many ideas: ‘so many, indeed, that they will
be understood as an integral whole only by a
(comparatively) few persons’. Meanwhile, the
agitator, who operates by means of the spoken
word, emphasizes the emotional aspect of the
matter: he takes ‘as an illustration a fact that
is most glaring and most widely known to
his audience’ and strives ‘to rouse discontent
and indignation among the masses against
this crying injustice, leaving a more complete
explanation of this contradiction to the propa-
gandist’ (p. 409). Agitators organized rallies,
197
meetings, and task groups, which became
training grounds for future propaganda and
character assassination campaigns.
After the October Revolution, the
Bolsheviks created a highly effective cen-
sorship mechanism that stifled voices in the
alternative press. In 1919, Lenin drafted a
resolution on closing the Menshevik news-
paper Vsegda Vpered on the grounds that it
was a ‘counter-revolutionary’ outlet of the
Mensheviks, ‘who have lined up with the
propertied classes, i.e., the landowners and
capitalists’ or display ‘spineless vacillation,
bringing them to serve [the White admiral]
Kolchak’.8 Pravda emerged as the leading
newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official
media outlet of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party.
As early as 1918, the Bolshevik press
initiated a defamation campaign against
socialist-revolutionaries (SRs). After an
assassination attempt against two Bolshevik
leaders, the Bolshevik newspapers called for
physical violence against their ideological
adversaries (Pavlov, 1999). The newspapers
Pravda and Izvestiya cooperated with the
secret services so closely that their publi-
cations often served as the main source of
incriminating evidence. The publication
of statements and public addresses made
by top Soviet officials often preceded and
shaped official charges. This was the case
in December 1919, when a large group of
SR Maximalists was arrested after several
publications in the press.9
Despite the importance of printed propa-
ganda, its impact on the masses was lim-
ited due to widespread illiteracy among the
general population. During the years of the
October Revolution and the Civil War, post-
ers and leaflets designed by avant-garde
artists therefore played a critical role. As
suggested by Ellul (1973, p. 111), the pro-
liferation of shared stereotypes in a culture
makes it easier for individuals ‘to form
public opinion and become susceptible to
the manipulation of stereotyped symbols’.
Soviet propaganda actively borrowed plots
198 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and images from the Bible and Orthodox
Christian iconography that were familiar to
the general public (Volkov, 2008). Biblical
passages like ‘He who shall not work, nei-
ther shall he eat’ were commonly used to
promote a new way of life and the ideas of
collectivism. Thus, in demonizing the SRs, in
1918, Pravda published an article titled ‘To
the Cains of Revolution’ (as cited in Pavlov,
1999). The images of enemies emulated the
lubok-style painting embedded religious
themes and traditional folklore. For example,
one poster depicted Trotsky as a mounted
archangel piercing the hydra of world impe-
rialism with his pike.10
Soviet posters painted Soviet enemies in
grotesque and repulsive images, frequently
having animalistic but still identifiable
characteristics. Enemies of the people were
depicted as ravens and dogs; capitalists were
presented either as hydras or fat men wearing
top hats and tuxedos and smoking big cigars
(Bonnell, 1997). In the late 1920s and 1930s,
many posters contrasted deviant White émi-
grés with young and healthy Soviet citizens.
At the same time, visual propaganda pro-
moted the numerous achievements of Soviet
Russia, including new machinery, mass
education, and cultural entertainment of the
proletariat, as an attractive alternative to the
religion and capitalism of Imperial Russia.
Soviet propaganda was seamlessly embed-
ded in symbolic acts of everyday interaction
among people, often reflecting established
cultural conventions. Through art and agit-
prop, ridicule and character attacks on class
enemies were incorporated into popular cul-
ture. Soviet propagandists applied aesthetics
of Russian traditional folk art to denigrate
political adversaries. For example, Soviet
writers mocked White Army generals and
other enemies of the Soviet state by writing
new lyrics to humorous folk songs (chas-
tushkas). Many chastushkas were laden with
vulgarities to ridicule commonly perceived
enemies.
The ideologemes created during wartime
by Lenin and Trotsky, such as ‘class enemy’
and ‘mercenary of foreign imperialism’,
seeped into everyday language along with
other popular metaphors and propaganda
clichés (Volkova, 2013). Thus, mockery’s
appropriation of the word ‘bourgeois’ in pub-
lic discourse translated it into ‘class enemy’
in the minds of the general public. People
commonly applied this term to propertied
families or anyone who wore a starched col-
lar, tie, or decent suit instead of a worker’s
blouse (Kolonitskii, 1994). Specifically,  it
became a term of abuse, used for name-
calling, identification of class difference, or
the justification of illegal violence.
In 1919, the Council of People’s
Commissars nationalized theaters and the
cinema industry, which was supposed to
become ‘the most important of all the arts’,
according to Lenin (as cited in Boltyansky,
1925, p. 19). In the early 1920s, Soviet cin-
ema actively promoted the theme of class
struggle and the image of enemies in propa-
ganda movies, including The Strike (1925)
by Sergei Eisenstein; History of the Civil
War (1922) by Dziga Vetrov; and Mother
(1926) by Vsevolod Pudovkin. These stories
portrayed the martyrdom of the Red heroes
killed by White and imperialist villains.
Many Soviet propaganda films became world
classics. For example, Battleship Potemkin,
released in 1925, has often been cited as one
of the finest propaganda films ever made
and is considered among the greatest films
of all time. A long list of postwar anti-reli-
gious films, such as Leaded Sky over Borsk,
directed by Vasili Ordynsky in 1961, discred-
ited religious organizations and holders of
religious beliefs.
SOVIET PROPAGANDA AND
VIOLENCE
The scale and intensity of a character assas-
sination event is determined by the amount of
resources the attacker and the target have at
their respective disposals. Clearly, dominant
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
power structures, such as totalitarian states,
have absolute control over resources, as well
as symbolic power to destroy their targets
psychologically and erase their names from
public memory. The symbolic means of char-
acter assassination are frequently coupled
with various forms of psychological violence
or ‘violence that works on the soul’ (Galtung,
1969), including intimidation, brainwashing,
indoctrination, degrading, and so on.
As early as 1920, Leon Trotsky, the found-
ing father of Soviet propaganda, affirmed
that the survival of socialism in Russia was
inextricably linked to the proletarian dictator-
ship’s capacity to use strategies of repression
and intimidation.11 The Bolshevik monopoly
on political power and moral positioning was
also clearly expressed by Lenin during the
11th Congress of the Russian Communist
Party in 1922. In his speech, he articulated
that the New Economic Policy had to be
accompanied by a political offensive against
political opponents and harsh measures
against Bolshevik dissidents (Pirani, 2008).
As noted previously, many social groups
were subject to indirect and direct violence,
repressions, and executions for nothing more
than class differences. For example, the
intelligentsia came under attack because it
negatively influenced workers with its bour-
geois ideology. According to Gelman (2018),
intimidation strategies became institutional-
ized in the later Soviet Union as the politics
of fear, a particular vision of informal gov-
ernance and sanctions used by the state to
ensure political control and social order.
An important feature of Soviet propaganda
was its interplay with physical and psycho-
logical violence, which became possible due
to the state monopoly on power and means
of coercion. From the 1920s onward, pub-
lic show trials were a distinctive feature of
character assassination in Soviet propaganda
campaigns; they were also a trademark of
Stalin’s politics during the Great Terror.
Klicperová-Baker (2019) defines show trials
as staged spectacles that conveniently com-
bine both pre-propaganda and prosecution.
199
During a public trial, victims are forced to
discredit their own characters through widely
publicized public confessions before an offi-
cial verdict. In other words, the actual trial
is preceded by a defamation campaign in the
media. The trial of the members of Kolchak’s
Omsk government in May 1920 became the
first in a long series of defamation campaigns
in the form of judicial pseudo-investigations
and court hearings (‘Verkhovnyy Pravitel’
Rossii’, 2005). In 1922, a fierce smear
campaign in the newspapers preceded the
Moscow show trial of the SRs (Morozov,
2005). Other well-known show trials of the
1920s included the lawsuits against par-
ticipants in the peasant rebellion in Tambov
region and the Kronstadt rebellion of sailors
and soldiers (Avrich, 1970; Singleton, 1966).
During the Great Purges, prearranged
acts of self-incrimination became a critical
element of public show trials. The show tri-
als of the 1930s were held nationwide and
included voluntary confession and unani-
mous approval of the final judgment. In
addition to the sentence, the defendants were
also forced to testify against their friends,
colleagues, and relatives. The testimonies
and false accusations were used as inculpa-
tory evidence. Among defendants in these
show trials were former Bolshevik party
leaders, top military commanders, states-
men, and top secret police officials charged
with treason and espionage (Pravda, 1938;
Vestnik, 1936). The Tukhachevsky case was
a famous military tribunal of Red Marshall
Mikhail Tukhachevsky and a group of Red
Army generals (Blackstock, 1969). These
show trials allowed the Soviet leadership to
eliminate popular public figures and poten-
tial political rivals. Frequently, character
assassination was continued post-mortem
through memory erasing techniques, which
were intended to obliterate ‘traitors’ from
public memory (King, 1997). The names
of the victims and any references to their
accomplishments were deleted from books;
their images were removed from group
photographs.
200 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
In the 1960s and 1970s, the state contin-
ued to suppress any ideological dissent and
conduct defamation campaigns against its
opponents. It applied a range of oppressive
instruments of informal coercion, which
did not necessarily entail direct violence,
but rather informal power, such as selec-
tive use of the law, manipulative use of state
institutions (courts, hospitals), and invasion
of personal privacy (Ledeneva, 2018). For
example, those involved in the production
and dissemination of samizdat – that is, the
production and circulation of printed materi-
als outside official publishing houses – faced
severe repression ranging from incarceration
to exile to confinement in psychiatric wards
(Forsyth, 2018; Makarov, 2018). The Soviet
state mixed character assassination tactics
with various means of psychological pres-
sure on dissenters and nonconformists to
ensure compliance and to prevent the spread
of oppositional activism. The role of smear
campaigns, similar to the above-mentioned
attacks on Boris Pasternak, was to send a sig-
nal to the general public that disloyalty was
reprehensible and punishable.
The political abuse of psychiatry became a
systemic feature of the Soviet regime under
Yuri Andropov, KGB (Committee for State
Security) Chairman from 1967 to 1982, who
considered the dissident movement a perfidi-
ous creation of Western intelligence agencies
designed to undermine the Soviet state (van
Voren, 2018). Dissidents were often stigma-
tized as unstable and mentally ill and forced
to accept compulsory treatment in psychiatric
clinics (Bloch & Reddaway, 1977). Notably,
Soviet psychiatry considered religious adults
with higher education to be suffering from psy-
chotic disorders that caused abnormal think-
ing and perceptions (Derwinski & Schifter,
1986). Needless to say, dissidents were dis-
missed from their jobs and were denied the
opportunity to find new ones.12 In the 1970s,
the pressure on dissidents only escalated and
continued until Mikhail Gorbachev’s early
glasnost policy reforms in 1986–1987.
CONCLUSION
Propaganda and character assassination are
two mechanisms of state domination that
demonstrate enhanced compatibility and
seamless convergence in societies with asym-
metric power distribution. This chapter views
this symbiotic interdependence as a struc-
tural property of a dominant ideology with
unlimited access to authoritative resources.
In the context of the Soviet Union, char-
acter assassination was highly compatible
with Marxism-Leninism’s interpretation of
the world as a forum for clashes between
contrasting views of ideological and moral
order. Lenin’s idea of ‘extermination strug-
gle’ defined the state’s course for action for
several decades. In this respect, the role of
propaganda was not only to create the neces-
sary cultural base, but also to cultivate condi-
tioned reflexes and hostile imagination toward
anyone who was portrayed as a fundamental
threat to cherished values and beliefs.
Propaganda allowed the effects of char-
acter assassination to reach large audi-
ences through state-controlled mass media.
However, character assassination was not
only instrumental in top-down persuasion,
but also in grassroots propaganda dissemi-
nation. Propaganda primed the general pub-
lic by prompting sticky frames and labels
that spread horizontally between ordinary
people through individual networks. Labels
that mocked the notion of ‘bourgeois’
identity promoted the rise of sociocultural
conflict and negative identification of class
differences.
Soviet propaganda incorporated character
assassination into agitation and integration
campaigns. This was intended to remind Soviet
citizens about the accepted value system and
establish standards for evaluating themselves
and the actions of others. Character assas-
sination helped the Soviet state ensure con-
formity and gain compliance by discrediting
voices and muting dissent. It also served as
a form of counter-propaganda by responding
 Character Assassination as Modus Operandi of Soviet Propaganda
to adversarial persuasion or disinformation.
Further research should specifically address
anti-Soviet character assassination campaigns
in the Western and immigrant press and
their impact on the choice of Soviet counter-­
propaganda strategies.
Today’s Russia is not a typical authoritarian
regime, as there are still some spaces where
civic actors can exercise their autonomy. The
regime demonstrates low levels of repression
compared to the Soviet era, yet politics of
fear are still present as an instrument of dom-
ination and informal governance (Ledeneva,
2013, 2018). During Putin’s third presidential
term (2012–2018), for instance, the state used
an increasingly broad legal framework to
preserve state control and social order. State
measures were applied primarily in the form
of individual sanctions on participants in pro-
test or independent activism.
Character assassination, too, remains a
powerful institutional mechanism of informal
governance. For example, spreading rumors
about opposition leaders is not necessarily
a violation of formal rules but an informal
strategy intended to prevent individual actors
from acting in a manner that may affect the
interests of a political system. In fact, the
entire state media system can be used for
either random character attacks or long-term
smear campaigns. Various forms of kom-
promat, or strategically used compromising
materials, are commonly employed against
the non-systemic opinion leaders in Russia
today (Mesquita, 2018).
The hybrid approach to propaganda and
character assassination in the Soviet Union
provides useful insights into contemporary
Russian propaganda. Further comprehen-
sive inquiry is needed to assess the degree
to which the traditions of Soviet propaganda
determine strategic and tactical govern-
ance decisions in contemporary Russia. In
addition, future studies should specifically
address the relationship between the rise of
a new political propaganda and the declining
quality of the public sphere.
201
Notes
1  Pew Research Center (2017, June 29). In Rus-
sia, nostalgia for Soviet Union and positive feel-
ings about Stalin. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/
wdBE5g.
2  Rich landowner in Central Asia.
3  Buddhist priest in Inner Asia.
4  See Sem’ krugov travli Borisa Pasternaka [Boris
Pasternak: Seven circles of harassment]. Retrieved
from https://arzamas.academy/materials/389.
5  It was founded in 1921 as VAPP (All-Russian
Association of Proletarian Writers) and belonged
to Proletkult.
6  See Trotsky (1923, p. 26) for examples.
7  Plan meropriyatiya po usileniyu antiamerikans-
koy propagandy na blizhaysheye vremya [Activ-
ity plan to increase anti-American propaganda].
(1949). Retrieved from www.alexanderyakovlev.
org/fond/issues-doc/69577.
8  See Lenin (1919/1972).
9  See Morozov (2005).
10  Poster of Leon Trotsky slaying the counter-revo-
lutionary dragon. Retrieved from www.marxists.
org/archive/trotsky/photo/t1918a.htm.
11  See Trotsky (1920).
12  For details see Dissidentskoe dvizhenie v rasska-
zakh uchastnikov [The dissident movement in the
stories of its participants]. Retrieved from https://
arzamas.academy/materials/1209.
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Verso.

Assessing Propaganda
Effectiveness in North Korea: A
Limited Access Case Study
E f e S e v i n , K a d i r J u n A y h a n , W o n Yo n g J a n g ,
INTRODUCTION
The Korean Peninsula has been an area of
interest for propaganda scholars. Given the
almost mystified portrayal of the Democratic
People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
and its relatively closed-off status, scholars
have produced a significant volume of stud-
ies analyzing the country’s propaganda
toward its citizens (Byman & Lind, 2010)
and its portrayal of the Republic of Korea
(South Korea) (Gabroussenko, 2011), as well
as of the Western world (Oh & Hassig,
2010). In this chapter, our objective is to use
the experience in the Peninsula from a meth-
odological perspective to advance our under-
standing of propaganda assessment. More
specifically, we present a case study of how
South Korean practitioners assess their
campaigns.
The South Korean experience is notewor-
thy and has the potential to contribute to
propaganda studies based on the context in
which it is taking place. Primarily, the fact
13
and Hyelim Lee
that North Korea is inaccessible through mass
media or digital communication platforms
encourages the propagandists to take more
creative solutions. From leaflets carried by
balloons across the borders and loudspeak-
ers targeting the North, we observe projects
that present non-mainstream approaches to
reach an audience. This figurative commu-
nication distance between the audiences and
practitioners requires a similarly creative
approach to assessment. Practitioners cannot
rely on tried-and-true methods, such as pub-
lic opinion polls, to assess the effectiveness
of their campaigns. Our study is, thus, led by
an overarching question: How do practition-
ers assess their impact in environments with
limited access?
We present a case study of the South
Korean propaganda experience toward the
North. We build the case narrative on docu-
ment analysis, interviews with key practition-
ers, and an impressionistic survey carried out
among the defectors from North Korea. We
limit our study to non-state actors in South
206 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Korea that actively engage in propaganda
attempts in, or rather, toward North Korea.
While the government had been the main
propagandist toward North Korea until the
first inter-Korean summit in 2000, state-led
propaganda activities came to a halt, except
for a brief and lighter continuation in 2010s.
Viewing these activities effective and neces-
sary, North Korean defector entrepreneurs
entered the propaganda scene to fill the vac-
uum created by the government’s exit. Our
study selected these non-state activists who
have engaged in propaganda activities toward
North Korea for more than a decade.
The rest of the chapter is structured in six
parts. First, we present a summary of exist-
ing studies in propaganda assessment with
a specific focus on cases including rela-
tively closed regimes such as Cuba and Iran.
Second, we introduce the historical context
in which North-South relations as well as
propaganda projects have been executed.
Third, we discuss our case study methodol-
ogy. Fourth, we share the reconstructed case
narrative in the following section. Fifth, we
discuss our findings from a theoretical per-
spective. Sixth, we conclude the chapter by
sharing the implications of our study.
BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE
REVIEW
Effectiveness of Propaganda
A broad definition of propaganda, as pro-
vided by Harold D. Lasswell (1927, p. 627)
in his seminal work The Theory of Political
Propaganda, equates the term to all tech-
niques that manage the ‘collective attitudes
by the manipulation of significant symbols’.
More nuanced definitions add methods and
objectives, positioning propaganda as delib-
erate and systematic attempts that have the
objective to ‘achieve a response that further
the desired intent of the propagandist’ (Jowett
& O’Donnell, 2006, p. 181). As both
definitions highlight, there has always been
an interest in capturing the impacts and out-
comes of propaganda effects. The earlier
days of propaganda studies, shortly after
World War I, were dominated by rhetorical
approaches (Sproule, 1987). Scholars focused
on analyzing the use of language and persua-
sive elements in messages (Billig, 1988).
Contemporary studies have evolved toward
communication research, including statistical
and experimental research (Sproule, 1987).
This particular move brought together a more
quantitative approach to the assessment com-
ponent (Watson, 2012) where studies incor-
porated assessment of outcomes. There is an
expectation, both in the practice and study of
propaganda, that the projects will yield
observable and measurable changes (Parry-
Giles, 1994).
The dissemination of propaganda mes-
sages has the potential to change the way
issues are framed in mass media. Framing
theory argues that communicators strive to
make certain aspects of issues more salient in
public discussions to achieve their intended
consequences (Entman, 1993). For instance,
during the Iraq War of 2003, the Bush admin-
istration framed the operation as self-defense
(Hiebert, 2003), with the expectation that a
self-defense use of armed forces would have
been more acceptable than a war of aggres-
sion for the international community. More
often than not, the issues at hand can be
presented through multiple frames. While
explaining the recent developments in China,
two American newspapers – The New York
Times and The Wall Street Journal – use dif-
ferent frames. Both newspapers acknowl-
edge China’s economic power and political
problems, yet the former frames China as a
potential, albeit problematic, economic part-
ner with the latter seeing China as a politi-
cal threat (Golan & Lukito, 2015, p. 13). It is
expected that propagandists push frames that
are more conducive to their policy goals. In
the case of North Korea’s own news cover-
age of nuclear program, the issue is framed
as one of relations with South Korea and the
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 207
US (Rich, 2014), highlighting its national
security aspect. The effectiveness of propa-
ganda can be seen in its capacity to influ-
ence frames, in this case the success of North
Korean propaganda in affecting the news
coverage in the country (Jang, 2013).
Another related and relevant impact of
propaganda is observed in agenda-setting
studies. In addition to the way issues are
framed, propagandists can aim to influ-
ence which issues are covered, thus setting
the agenda for media coverage and public
discussions (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). A
recent study observed such an outcome of
election propaganda in which the coverage
of Indian general elections in 2014 predomi-
nantly highlighted one candidate, therefore,
increased his popularity among the electorate
(Baumann et al., 2018). When photographer
David Guttenfelder was allowed to take pho-
tos inside North Korea, he posted 490 images
from the country to his personal account out
of which only 26% framed the country as a
totalitarian regime (Holiday et al., 2017). Yet,
when additional news outlets relayed his pho-
tos, some chose to increase this frequency up
to over 50%, encouraging their readers to dis-
cuss the regime’s characteristics and not its
culture, history, or daily life (Holiday et al.,
2017). A successful propaganda attempt can
also influence what issues are discussed in
media and in public.
The increasing adoption of social media
usage, such was the case in Guttenfelder’s pho-
tos, became an important variable in agenda-
setting and framing studies. Individuals no
longer needed to rely on media or opinion
leaders in order to get their news. Rather, their
social networks took over this particular func-
tion (Benkler, 2006; Castells, 2009). Studies
on social media enable practitioners and schol-
ars not only examine the content but also map
out the relationships among people (Boynton
& Richardson, 2016). A Twitter hashtag,
#SaveDonbassPeople, brought the human
rights violations in Eastern Ukraine to the
public agenda (Makhortykh & Lyebyedyev,
2015). The hashtag was also instrumental in
creating a community of users who were inter-
ested in the issue (Makhortykh & Lyebyedyev,
2015). A successful propaganda attempt, thus,
can have a dual purpose as it can synchro-
nously create a community and influence the
views of the masses.
Eventually, the manipulation of people’s
minds is the benchmark for success in propa-
ganda activity (Gabroussenko, 2011, p. 52).
The ultimate objective of a propagandist is
to incite desirable behavior through commu-
nication. It is, therefore, possible to assess
a propaganda campaign either through its
influence on the outcomes or the processes.
The existing studies outline how aspects can
be described and assessed. For the processes,
studies need to demonstrate the changes in
framing, agenda-setting, or networks. For the
outcomes, the link between communication
and change among target audiences needs to
be unpacked. The next section assesses the
feasibility of these methods in limited access
cases.
Limited Access and Propaganda
In the case of North Korea, however, there is
virtually no access to any of such data points.
Media platforms, including social media,
cannot be used to monitor changes in public
discourse. Observing behavior or attitude
change among North Koreans is similarly
challenging. We use these characteristics to
construct a subset of propaganda cases.
Labeling as limited access cases, we intro-
duce instances in which there is little to no
opportunity to gather data on the aforemen-
tioned propaganda change processes and
outcomes. Our understanding of limited
access is a relatively pragmatic one (cf.
Koch, 2013, and the accompanying special
issue). We accept the conditions of the situa-
tion, and investigate their impacts rather than
their causes. In other words, we solely focus
on how limited access to North Korea
changes the propaganda practice. Albeit the
focus of this study, North Korea is not the
208 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
first case to present such a challenge to prac-
titioners and scholars. In this section, we
present the insights drawn from studies cov-
ering two of such cases: Cuba and Iran.
Cuba has been an important topic in
American foreign policy and a frequent target
of American propaganda attempts especially
within the Cold War context. Yet, as a report
commissioned by the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID)
summarizes, gathering data from the country
was challenging (Roberts et al., 1999, p. 10):
Traditional methodologies for gauging public opin-
ion are unavailable to researchers who wish to
study the attitudes and behavior of the people of
Cuba. First of all, there is limited access to Cuba.
Any polling organization would have to have gov-
ernment approval and would be closely moni-
tored. A second problem is that, for all practical
purposes, there are no Cuban tourists who travel
abroad […] And while phone service to Cuba has
vastly improved in the past few years, normal tel-
ephone sampling would be highly suspect inas-
much as Cubans would likely be distrustful of
strangers calling and asking questions about life
on the island.
The practitioners had limited access to Cuban
society which barred them from carrying out
random sampling methods. In 1998, the
United States Information Agency imple-
mented non-random sampling methods. They
carried out a field research in Havana and
asked individuals applying for American visas
whether they have seen the TV Marti’s – a
station operated by the United States to dis-
seminate messages in Cuba – broadcast
(Elliston, 1999, p. 11). This non-random
­sampling procedure yielded biased results as
the respondents did not represent the Cuban
population. Even though the practitioners
acknowledged the shortcomings of their
methodology in their reports, they also argued
that it was virtually impossible to conduct any
random sampling in closed societies such as
Cuba (Elliston, 1999, pp. 266–267).
Consequently, non-random sampling stud-
ies were used to assess the changes in Cuban
public opinion. One popular data gathering
method was to rely on Cuban travelers for
focus groups and interviews (Elliston, 1999,
p. 296). Another frequently consulted popu-
lation was Cuban emigres. USAID (Roberts
et  al., 1999) conducted interviews at ports
of entries and reached out to recent emi-
gres to assess the effectiveness of American
messages.
In addition to reaching parts of the popula-
tions, practitioners devised additional auxil-
iary methods to argue for the effectiveness of
their communication attempts. Radio Swan –
a station ran by American intelligence officers
to broadcast anti-Castro propaganda – pre-
sents an intriguing attempt. The station was
publicly denounced by Fidel Castro during
his United Nations General Assembly address
that took place only months after the station
started its operations (Elliston, 1999, p. 9).
The broadcast was deemed to be effective as
it attracted the attention of high-level politi-
cians. Similarly, digital propaganda attempts
present internet blocking (Kalathil & Boas,
2001) as a measure of success, arguing that a
censorship would be deemed necessary only
if the message was conceived to be poten-
tially effective. Last but not least, technical
characteristics of transmissions were also
used in assessing broadcasting-based propa-
ganda (Elliston, 1999, p. 236).
Iran stands out as another contemporary
case that has received American propaganda
messages and limited the practitioners’ access
across decades. Throughout their practice,
Americans relied a variety of tools to assess
their effectiveness. Not unlike the Cuban case
for instance, censorship was seen as a plau-
sible assessment method. Voice of America’s
programing toward the country was regularly
jammed by the Soviets during the Cold War
(Hixson, 1998). It is argued that the jamming
practice was used to suggest ‘Russian fears
that the broadcasts were working’ (Kisatsky,
1999, p. 177).
Although it was not possible to poll any
segments of the Iranian population, there
were alternative areas to gauge audience reac-
tion. Tabulation of radio receivers was used
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 209
to assess audience outreach (Hixson, 1998).
Listener mails were also seen as feedback
mechanisms about the effectiveness of US
propaganda (Hixson, 1998; Kisatsky, 1999).
Even though these mechanisms were useful
to evaluate whether messages reached their
target audiences, they did not provide any
insights on whether the audiences accepted
the messages or not (Kisatsky, 1999). In the
case of propaganda attempts surrounding the
1953 coup d’état in the country, practition-
ers followed a more ambitious approach and
assessed the effectiveness of their messages
in terms of behavioral changes (Roberts,
2012). Voting records in August 1953 elec-
tions, changes in local radio coverage to more
closely align with American foreign policy
choices, and overall support to the coup by
Iranians were introduced as partial evidences
for propaganda success (Roberts, 2012).
Across both cases, we observe our initial
conjecture that limited access requires unique
and creative assessment tools at play. From
auxiliary variables to non-random sampling,
practitioners craft new devices that best fit the
characteristics of the limited access context.
The next section describes the context in the
Korean peninsula by providing an account
of post-war development and propaganda
attempts of South Korea and North Korea.
INTER-KOREAN RELATIONS AND
PROPAGANDA
It is virtually impossible to give an account
of modern Korean history without an appeal
to propaganda as it has been a constant fact
of life in both sides of the demilitarized zone
(DMZ).
Following the end of World War II, the
Korean Peninsula was freed from Japanese
occupation. However, Koreans were not able
to create one new independent state, which
was divided into two zones at the 38th paral-
lel, splitting the peninsula roughly in half. The
United States and the Soviet Union occupied
respectively the southern and northern parts
and finally established different types of gov-
ernments, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK), in 1948. Both Koreas claimed the
entire peninsula as their land in their respec-
tive constitutions, not recognizing the other
as a legitimate actor.
North Korea started the Korean War in
1950 in an attempt to unify the two Koreas
under communist leadership. Particularly
during the Korean War (1950–1953), propa-
ganda was an important component of the
warfare (Kim & Haley, 2017). Traditionally,
it is argued that psychological warfare plays
a more important role in wars between same
ethnicities compared with inter-ethnic wars
(Hwang, 1995; Kim, 2008). Considering
that there was almost no difference in terms
of ethnicity, religion, culture, and language
between the two Koreas, the competition for
support of the Koreans meant earning legiti-
macy through ideas. Both the American-led
UN forces on behalf of South Korea and
North Korea utilized propaganda materials to
get the upper hand in the psychological war-
fare. The United States was already experi-
enced with psychological warfare because of
its war against the Nazis in the World War II.
The United States and UN focused more on
short-term goals to win the mind and hearts
of the Korean public on both sides of the bor-
der mainly via leaflets, while North Korea’s
focus was on long-term goals to win support
for the communist ideology mainly via news-
papers and radio (Hwang, 1995; Kim 2008).
During the Korean War, the number of leaf-
lets by the US army is estimated to be around
2.5 billion (Chung, 2004, p. 95–96).
Starting with the end of the Korean War
in 1953, the North and South found them-
selves in need to not only to create a sense of
community among its citizens through politi-
cal communication but also to depict the
other party in a less favorable light – either
to each other or to the foreign audiences.
Moreover, the Armistice Agreement of the
Korean War was signed in 1953 without the
210 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
participation of the South Korean govern-
ment. A truce in the Korean War without a
peace treaty had made the Korean Peninsula
a potential war zone and had intensified ten-
sions between the two sides through compe-
tition for security and propaganda. From the
foundation of both countries until the end of
Cold War, the two Koreas have shown exis-
tential antagonism (Armstrong, 2005) being
threatened by the existence of one another.
Propaganda vis-a-vis the public across the
38th parallel played an important role since
the first day of division. In the following sec-
tions, we present a succinct historical over-
view of the region, focusing on the impacts
of social, political, economic, and cultural
developments on propaganda.
North Korea Since 1953
Since 1953, North Korea has pursued limited
interaction with international society and
primarily occupies the world agenda through
its nuclear program. The country sought
political stability and economic development
through communist one-party dictatorship
with the help of Russia and China shortly
after the end of the war. It has been reflected
as a country with a ‘ruinous brand of cen-
trally controlled socialism’ (Oh & Hassig,
2010, p. 90).
The North Korean political agenda, includ-
ing its dominant ideology, is determined by
the individual leader, rather than a discus-
sion among the governing party (Jang et al.,
2015, p. 43). Juche, self-reliance, was an idea
brought by Kim Il-Sung (Park, 2002). With
the introduction of this ideology into the
constitution, the country pushed a new type
of desirable citizen (Byman & Lind, 2010,
p. 52). Espousing self-reliance, the ideology
is observable across all segments and func-
tions of society to the extent that it is likened
to a religious belief rather than a political idea
(Park, 2002). Songun – or military first – was
similarly introduced by Kim Jong-Il (Suh,
2002). The North Korean administration has
been keen on disseminating this particular
idea so that the country can ‘protect itself
from its capitalist enemies’ (Byman & Lind,
2010, p. 52). Even during the Six-Party talks
regarding its nuclear arsenal, North Korea
always appealed to the idea of being inde-
pendent ‘from any kind of western power or
ideas’ (Jang, 2013, p. 199).
The dominant ideologies are promoted
through state-controlled media outlets to the
citizens, establishing a stronger image of its
leader and government (Jang et  al., 2015,
p. 48). These media outlets would, more often
than not, portray the United States, and other
foreign powers including Japan as the aggres-
sive actors causing disturbance in the region
(Jang et al., 2015, p. 49). South Korea occupies
an important theme in North Korean propa-
ganda toward its citizens. Up until 1980s, the
South was depicted as an economically back-
ward country (Gabroussenko, 2011). Since
then, the depictions have changed, prob-
ably based on the economic development of
the South, into a conservatism theme which
shows South Korea ‘through the images of
ugly devastation and misery, which dehuman-
izing colonial modernization had allegedly
brought to land’ (Gabroussenko, 2011, p. 41).
South Korean governments are depicted as
puppets of the American imperialists.
Moreover, as North Korea’s economy was
in better shape than South Korea until the
mid-1970s (Ku, 2018), it started and had been
more active in its cross-border propaganda
after the war, aiming at a North-led Korean
unification (Joo, 2016). With the end of Cold
War and being surpassed by South Korea in
terms of the economy, North Korean propa-
ganda has taken a more defensive posture by
trying to dominate and block South Korean
loudspeaker broadcasts and targeting its
own public rather than South Koreans (Joo,
2016). North Korean propaganda leaflets are
seen in South Korean cities from time to time
criticizing South Korean governments (par-
ticularly conservative ones) as puppets of the
United States and showing North Korea as a
benign supporter of unification (Byun, 2018;
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 211
News1, 2017; Park, 2016). However, given
South Korea’s ease of access to information
freely and the South’s apparent superiority
to the North in terms of economy, freedoms,
and social life, North Korea’s propaganda
leaflets appearing in South Korea are not
effective (Park, 2016).
South Korea Since 1953
To the south of the DMZ, there was also a
need to build a nation and disseminate a
new national idea among citizens (Hong,
2011, p. 986). As part of the American anti-
communism strategy during the Cold War,
the South Korean government under President
Syngman Rhee enacted the National Security
Act to prevent anti-national activities and the
spread of communism. Through American
aid, South Korea began to integrate into the
capitalist system (Bizhan, 2018). Prior to
the Korean War in 1950, there was a wide
range of guerrilla activities on the 38th paral-
lel (Halliday, 1973).
After the end of the war, the construction
of a modern nation in South Korea must be
understood in its own history and traditions
and in its special relationship with the neigh-
boring powers. Under the Cold War regime,
South Korea has moved quickly from an
underdeveloped authoritarian country to
the current developed democratic state and
achieved this in a compact manner. South
Korea was placed at the forefront of the anti-
communism expansion, in which South Korea
has promoted a national identity and rapidly
achieved national development and economic
growth through American military and eco-
nomic aid and state-led economic policies.
After South Korea developed more rapidly
and surpassed North Korea in almost every
aspect, including GDP per capita, exports,
technology, conventional military strength,
diplomatic ties, and exchanges with foreign
countries since the mid-1970s, South Korea
became more confident in its position vis-à-
vis North Korea (Ayhan & Jang, 2019). The
end of the Cold War, on top of this newly
emerged confidence, brought change to inter-
Korean relations.
The Roh Tae-Woo government normal-
ized its relations with socialist regimes
which have traditionally been allies of North
Korea – an era known in South Korean for-
eign affairs as ‘Northern Policy’. The Roh
Tae-Woo government legalized government-
sanctioned or approved exchanges between
South and North Korea following its 7-7
Declaration. Particularly, since the progres-
sive Kim Dae-Jung’s Sunshine Policy, South
Korea welcomed and encouraged other coun-
tries’ diplomatic recognition of North Korea.
While South Korean government propaganda
toward North Korea was seen as an essen-
tial part of its warfare strategy when the two
countries were very close in terms of devel-
opment, with the widening gap as the South
Korean economy took off, South Korea
needed less propaganda to show its excel-
lence to the people of North. The two Koreas
agreed to halt propaganda against each other
following engagement policies of progres-
sive South Korean governments. In 2004, all
loudspeaker broadcasting at the border was
halted, only to be briefly restarted in 2015.
The Panmunjom Declaration which was
signed during the third inter-Korean summit,
under newly elected progressive Moon Jae-In
in South Korea, called for ending propaganda
activities across the border once again.
In summary, Korean relations have always
had a strong propaganda component which
was partially influenced by the relative social,
economic, cultural, and political achieve-
ments of the countries. It can be argued that
South Korea performed relatively better in
the system battle against North Korea in the
1970s and ended the long-sustained military
dictatorship through political participation by
citizens in the late 1980s. The next section
provides details on how we gathered data to
describe the propaganda projects of non-state
actors in South Korea and reconstructed the
case narratives within the particular back-
ground discussed here.
212 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
METHODOLOGY
In order to present an inclusive picture of the
South Korean practice, we structured our
research as a case study. Based on the theo-
retical and historical context shared in the
preceding sections, we introduce a narrative
of how practitioners assess their work. We
employ an ‘interpretive case study’ approach
to explore alternative ways of linking an
established theory and evidence based on
specific historical cases (Lijphart, 1971,
p. 692). Our aim is, ultimately, to uncover
‘patterns of invariance and constant associa-
tion’ that are common to relatively small sets
of cases (Ragin, 1987, p. 51). Thus, we
simply explain why a specific historical event
occurred rather than pursuing empirical gen-
eralization in any way through our research.
The politically charged nature of our study
and limited access issues require a relatively
flexible access to the practitioners. In line with
our case study methodology, we followed a
convenience sampling approach (Gerring
& Christenson, 2017). The propaganda pro-
jects, practitioners, and survey participants
are selected due to their availability, interest
in the project, and their reputation as practi-
tioners (Koerber & McMichael, 2008). These
data sources are used to construct a case nar-
rative that shows the relationship between
assumed causes and observed effects. In
our case, our focus is on how limited access
pushes the practitioners to devise novel meth-
ods to assess their propaganda projects.
For our interviews, we planned to conduct
five interviews with prominent activists who
engage in propaganda activities vis-a-vis
North Korea. The concept of ‘prominent activ-
ist’ does not have a set definition. For the pur-
poses of our study, we sought information rich
cases. Therefore, we selected the interviewees
on the scale and frequency of their activities
and the media exposure that they received.
The interviews took place from May 25 to
June 15, 2018 in Korean. Two interviews, with
Lee Min-Bok, the head of Campaign for North
Korean In Direct Way, and Jung Gwang-Il,1
the head of No Chain, were conducted face-
to-face and recorded following their consent.
We conducted the interviews in public settings
near the workplaces of the interviewees. The
interviews took around 90 minutes. The third
interviewee agreed only to an unrecorded
phone interview which lasted 40 minutes.
The latter also did not give his consent to his
name being used. Therefore, he is referred to
as Interviewee X here. All three interviews
were semi-structured. All three activists that
we have interviewed are defectors from North
Korea who have settled in South Korea. The
fourth and fifth interviews were dropped due
to repeated scheduling conflicts. The research
team saw these conflicts as an expression of
hesitation to join the project given the sensi-
tive nature of their practices. Therefore, we
did not aggressively pursue these particular
contacts. Instead, we sought opportunities to
increase the number of interviewees through
snowballing sampling. Yet, all three interview-
ees agreed that there were not others that were
as active as the five individuals we contacted
because of the high costs and risks associated
with these propaganda activities. Therefore,
we posit that despite the relatively small num-
ber of interviews, the accounts of these three
practitioners portray a near-complete picture
of the practice.
In addition to the interviews, we analyzed
the propaganda materials of these three activ-
ists for emerging themes. Through an induc-
tive approach, we looked for main ideas and
repeating messages across the documents
(Bowen, 2009). Lee Min-Bok gave us his
missionary and non-missionary leaflets. He
further provided two texts suggesting why he
began sending the balloons and best practices
for making North Koreans believe the con-
tents of the leaflets. Interviewee X provided
us with 31 photos of his leaflet samples, con-
tents of USBs, and technical details of his
balloon-sending operations. Jung Gwang-Il
on the other hand showed us the contents
of SD cards during the interview rather than
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 213
giving them to us suggesting that the contents
change frequently.
Finally, in order to triangulate the data
with an alter-perception in addition to the
ego-perception of the activists (Arts, 2001),
we surveyed North Korean defectors in South
Korea asking them about their perception of
the effectiveness of the propaganda activities.
Since a public opinion poll in North Korea
is not feasible, the North Korean defectors
in South Korea are the next best sample to
provide us with this alter-perception. North
Korean defectors, although a biased sample,
are often used as the most, and sometimes
only, available sample to study public opin-
ion in North Korea (Jeong, 2005; Kim, 2012;
Kwon, 2007, 2009; O’Carroll, 2014). We
contacted 20 defector-related organizations
or gatekeeper individuals to fill out and/or
share our survey with other defectors. Due
to the sensitivity of the topic and relative
difficulty of finding defector respondents,
we were able to get only 13 responses. All
questions, except for demographic ones, used
five-point Likert scale responses and inquired
about the factors that motivated them to leave
North Korea and their insights regarding the
effectiveness of South Korean propaganda
activities. Although far from being complete,
our data gathering procedures are consistent
with studies and practices in limited cases as
discussed earlier in the chapter.
The objective of our analysis is to present
a coherent narrative of how South Korean
propagandists assess the effectiveness of
their campaigns. Our analysis primarily
relied on the accounts gathered through
interviews. The first two recorded inter-
views were transcribed. Together with the
interview notes from Interviewee X, two of
the authors carried an inductive analysis of
the text and identified recurring themes and
prominent arguments. The propaganda mate-
rials were used to assess the accuracy of the
arguments made by the practitioners and to
further detail the themes identified by the
authors. Last, information gathered through
the defector survey was used to triangulate
the sources used to reconstruct the case
narratives.
FINDINGS: THE STORIES OF SOUTH
KOREAN PRACTITIONERS
Who are the South Korean practitioners?
Before moving forward with what they do,
we inquired about the ‘who’ aspect of their
narrative, asking our interviewees to discuss
their understanding of activism and activist.
The main goal of the activists in South Korea
engaging in propaganda activities in North
Korea was to expose people to lives outside
North Korea and to provide them with alter-
native facts. Even though interviewees pre-
sented this particular intermediate goal first,
they also mentioned their ultimate goals as to
make individuals defect from the country in
the short-run and to destabilize the Kim
regime in North Korea in the long-run. Jung
Gwang-Il asserted that there were 700,000
North Korean soldiers near the border with
South Korea and if they were to be exposed to
leaflets, USBs and broadcasting coming from
the South, it could mean the toppling of the
regime in the North. Furthermore, he sug-
gested that after being exposed to the infor-
mation coming from outside, the North
Korean youth could ask for change in their
country. Interviewee X also sent pamphlets to
North Korea encouraging North Koreans to
protest against their government. On the other
hand, Lee Min-Bok’s goals were more mod-
erate asking North Koreans to change their
lives by leaving the country like he did more
than two decades ago. This particular claim
was supported by the propaganda materials.
Looking at the messages conveyed in
these propaganda materials, we observed
four main themes: daily life, politics, popular
culture, and religion. Interviewee X argued
for the importance of portraying the daily
life and opportunities in South Korea. In a
214 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
similar vein, Jung Gwang-Il produced vid-
eos of foreigners, third-party neutrals who
have been to both South and North Korea,
comparing the two Koreas’ streets, lifestyles,
and farms. They also sent videos of ordinary
lives of Europeans and Americans to North
Korea, which showcased their reality rather
than staged contents. In a two-page docu-
ment where he explains ‘the ways to make
North Koreans believe the contents of leaf-
lets’, Lee Min-Bok argues that propaganda
activities must begin with the familiar to
eliminate the mistrust; then, one must seize
the opportunity to make them ask questions
about what they already know (Lee, n.d.).
He encourages North Koreans to talk to the
Chinese about South Korea. ‘You call China
(Jungguk) heaven (cheonguk), right’ asks the
leaflet, adding ‘then why do the Chinese go
to South Korea to work or to get married’
(Lee, n.d.b)? It continues to ask if the South
is living poorly and the North is living more
prosperously, how did these ‘beggars’ open
a tourist resort in Kumgang Mountain and
an industrial complex in Kaesong where
more than 50,000 North Koreans work
(Lee, n.d)? The leaflets suggest the reader
that one should go to China to check these
facts through radio, the internet, and tel-
evision, asking by the way, why you cannot
use radio, the internet, and television in the
so-called ‘strong and prosperous country’
(Lee, n.d).
All interviewees discuss political events
and politics to challenge the North Korean
narratives of events in order to make North
Korean citizens question their government.
Lee Min-Bok’s leaflets raise questions about
the Korean War regarding whether it was really
started by the South as the North Korea’s offi-
cial narrative suggests. Interviewee X chal-
lenges the Kim Il-Sung’s family tree through
his news-article-like alternative facts. Jung
Gwang-Il’s content includes ‘facts’ about
why Kim Jung-Nam, the late half-brother
of Kim Jong-Un, was killed. The latter also
sends news related to inter-Korean relations,
including a North Korean concert in Seoul,
which is not shown to the ordinary North
Koreans. The most important reason for pro-
viding North Koreans with these ‘facts’ is
defector-activists’ rightful conviction that
information in North Korea is very much con-
trolled by the government and ordinary North
Koreans do not have access to these alter-
native facts. Lee Min-Bok suggests that the
reason why North Korean leaflet propaganda
toward South Korea cannot be as effective
as vice versa is that South Korea is an open
society where people can access any kind of
information they want while this is not the
case for North Koreans (Park, 2016).
The third theme that emerged from the
interviews and the propaganda contents is
popular culture. Popular culture products,
particularly South Korean and American
films, TV shows, and music, are one way to
expose and attract them to the outside world.
Jung Gwang-Il and Interviewee X send SD
cards and USBs to the North with such pop-
ular culture contents. Jung Gwang-Il pre-
fers American films and dramas rather than
Korean ones, since the latter might also give
North Koreans a negative image of the life
in the South. The video contents also include
entertainment shows in South Korea and
rather less Westernized pop music videos
from the South. Interviewee X prefers South
Korean shows and music. What is common
to both is the belief that the good quality pro-
duction of these pop culture products and the
lifestyles that they showcase would be attrac-
tive to ordinary North Koreans, indeed more
attractive than the political contents which
might even backfire simply because of being
labeled as propaganda as implied by both
interviewees. In other words, apparent politi-
cal neutrality of the pop culture contents is
seen as effective for the expected outcome,
which is making North Koreans question
their lives in North Korea and potentially
oppose the government or defect from the
country.
Another interesting finding in our inter-
views is that both Jung and Interviewee X also
send South Korean goods, including snacks,
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 215
rice, ramen, and even socks along with the
SD cards and USBs to allure relatively poorer
North Koreans to the contents of the propa-
ganda materials. In the media interviews,
practitioners talk about how one-dollar bills
and small amounts of rice can supplement a
North Korean individual’s life (Ham, 2018a,
2018b). These material incentives are seen by
practitioners as a way to allure North Koreans
to magnify the influence of their propaganda.
According to Jung, the underlying assump-
tion is that for North Koreans to stand up
against their regime, first, their stomachs
must be full which the rice and dollar bills
are for; and second, they must know what is
going on in the world which the USBs and
leaflets are for (Ham, 2018a).
The last theme that emerged from the
interviews was the role of Christianity
through these propaganda activities targeting
the North. Lee Min-Bok sends two kinds of
leaflets, one is more political and personal in
its contents, and the other purely missionary.
Jung Gwang-Il sends the Bible in e-book and
audio-book formats. Interviewee X, on the
other hand, claimed that his activities did not
have connection with any religious groups.
However, it should be noted that the pack-
ages he sends carry stickers that say ‘God
loves you’. The media coverage of defector-
activists’ propaganda toward North Korea also
clearly show the active presence and support
of conservative churches in sending balloons
and pets toward North Korea (Ham, 2018a).
The defectors shared similar views about
the content of materials. One question
asked the respondents what had an influ-
ence in their decision to defect. The answer
with highest weight was ‘I expected to live
in a country with better economic life’, fol-
lowed by ‘economic difficulties in North
Korea’. When asked a hypothetical ques-
tion of what would increase the likelihood
of North Koreans’ defection, ‘experienc-
ing extreme hunger and poverty’ was the
most heavily weighted answer, followed by
‘exposure to South Korean popular culture’.
In other words, defectors also argued that
South Korean popular culture products com-
ing through the North Korean border were
influential while leaflets coming from South
Korea were not. Defectors and practitioners
agree that a more neutral exposure to popular
culture is an effective way to convince North
Koreans to turn against the regime, while
smuggling through the border is an effective
way to do it.
Smuggling the USBs – or other material –
into North Korea required the creativity of
practitioners who devised unique methods to
disseminate their content as well as to argue
for the effectiveness of their delivery. Lee
Min-Bok and Interviewee X rely on hot air
balloons whereas Jung Gwang-Il employs
plastic bottles released to the sea to cross the
border. While the former two rely on calcula-
tions of the wind, the latter used calculations
of the tide to find the best launch times. The
practitioners argued that around 30% of bot-
tles reach North Korea based on their study
of tides and water flows (Kwon, 2018). Parts
of the bottles that did not reach their targets
were found in the open sea, and endanger-
ing lives of animals such as sea turtles (Kim,
2018). In a separate media interview, Jung
Gwang-Il also revealed that he uses GPS
tracking devices to observe where his mate-
rial reach (Mok, 2017). This particular point
proved to be a substantial point of contention
among the practitioners. Given the high costs
associated with propaganda activities, these
non-governmental groups rely on donations
to continue their works. For donors, the chan-
nel – or how the messages and materials were
sent to North Korea – seemed to be the ulti-
mate deciding factor in the effectiveness of
propaganda. Therefore, the group that man-
aged to provide a coherent and compelling
account of how their material reached the
audiences in the North became more likely
to receive donations. It should be noted that
our interview protocol did not probe about
the technical details of the delivery methods.
However, the practitioners voluntarily pro-
vided detailed information across the board.
Their willingness can be used to argue for the
216 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
relative importance of their technical acumen
in their work.
The propaganda materials are not directed
at a specific audience. When South Korean
activists let their balloons fly – or their bot-
tles swim –, their only expectation is to reach
a North Korean. Although Jung Gwang-Il, as
stated earlier in this paper, positioned the sol-
diers near the border as a plausible audience,
his statements were more about the distance
limitations of his methods, rather than a stra-
tegic audience choice. Yet, mistrust between
the two societies is a constant obstacle. In an
attempt to build trust with the readers of the
propaganda leaflets, Lee Min-Bok gives all
his contact information and his background,
particularly the fact that he too is a North
Korean. Interviewee X, on the other hand,
discussed a cascading activation model. He
argued that talking to neutrals – such as ethnic
Koreans living in China or Central Asia – was
his objective. He personally was not convinced
by a propaganda material he saw. For him, the
turning point was his exposure to a Koryoin –
a name given to Koreans who have been in
Soviet Union and CIS countries for almost a
century – while serving in the military.
Jung Gwang-Il also said in the inter-
view that smuggling of South Korean and
American popular culture products into the
black market in which individuals voluntarily
acquire them were more effective to expose
North Koreans to the outside world in an
exponential way.
Yet, how do the practitioners know the
effectiveness of their methods? How can
they make sure, for instance, the material on
a USB drive is read let alone changes some-
one opinion? The snippets we shared in the
paragraphs above are predominantly based
on the experiences of practitioners – either
what they have gone through personally
or what they heard from the defectors. The
arguments are not necessarily based on a sys-
tematic assessment. None of the practitioners
included in our study has carried out such a
project. Yet, it is not due to the lack of knowl-
edge. As argued above, the practitioners often
find themselves in need of arguing for the
effectiveness of their methods. However, not
unlike the experiences in Cuba and Iran, their
access to data is limited.
The vast majority of activists involved in
propaganda vis-à-vis North Korea are North
Korean defectors. Therefore, these prac-
titioners’ confidence in their propaganda
methods comes from being insiders, know-
ing the North Korean society, its regime,
political climate, and the needs of its people.
They want to create ‘second public opinion’
(Chang & Jeong, 2015, p. 135), a private dis-
course as opposed to the government’s offi-
cial discourse. Various studies suggest that
due to the changes in North Korean society,
such alternative discourse is more preva-
lent as the majority of North Koreans have
access to banned foreign goods and informa-
tion which has a great impact on their lives
(CSIS, 2017; Chang & Jeong, 2015; Jeong
et  al., 2015). However, some studies show
that North Koreans prefer interpersonal com-
munication via their personal networks than
mediated communication in their access
to information coming from outside North
Korea (Kwon, 2007, 2009). Natural word-of-
mouth within the country is found to be more
preferable than forced exposure to materials
(Kwon, 2007, 2009). These findings are in
line with Jung Gwang-Il’s idea of introduc-
ing popular culture and other videos into the
black market, which then can find its way
into the private discourses of North Koreans,
helping form a second public opinion.
Both Lee Min-Bok and Jung Gwang-Il
suggested that they utilize censorship and
reactions as a success criterion. The fact that
the North Korean administration is irritated
by the propaganda activities coming from
the South was the best indicator of these
activities’ effectiveness. They believe that the
administration is aware of – and disturbed
by – their activities as during inter-Korean
meetings and agreements, including the most
recent Panmunjom Declaration of 2018, one
of the first issues being raised was stopping
propaganda activities. Practitioners posit
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 217
that if the North Korean regime is assertively
asking them to stop, their methods must be
influential enough to attract the officials’
attention. Lee Min-Bok says he received
many death threats from the North, and is
currently being protected by six rotating
South Korean police officers, a fact that we
also witnessed during our interview. Jung
Gwang-Il drew a similar conclusion about his
impact. As smuggling materials through the
Chinese border became more expensive, he
turned to using drones which would fly to the
North where a contact was waiting for them.
Chinese authorities raided their hideout and
confiscated their material in 2016, following
a tip from the North Koreans whose interest
shows that the drone propaganda campaign
was successful.
An additional arena was defectors. Both
Lee and Jung also suggested that the North
Korean defector interviews show that many
defectors chose to leave their country after
being exposed to either propaganda leaflets
or foreign pop culture products. This was
another measure for their activities’ effec-
tiveness. Interviewee X, on the other hand,
suggested that he could not know the effec-
tiveness of his activities and did not comment
further on the assessment aspect.
LESSONS FROM THE KOREAN
PENINSULA
Our study of South Korean propaganda has
confirmed our assumption that the estab-
lished frameworks to study propaganda fall
short of providing guidance given the limited
access. Unsurprisingly, there are overlaps
between previous limited access cases. Yet,
two aspects of the case make the Korean
experience unique. First, a complexity stems
from the relationship between the two
nations. In both the Cuba and Iran cases, the
US stood as an outsider. Yet, with South
Korea and North Korea, there is a shared his-
tory and culture among other traits. Second,
the contemporary nature of the case changes
certain tools and platforms. The experience
of the practitioners was illustrative in identi-
fying what can and cannot be used for assess-
ment. In this section, we re-evaluate the case
narratives.
The South Korean experience includes
assessment on three levels. Although the
literature discussed the impacts of propa-
ganda on outcomes and processes, the lim-
ited access requires tweaks. We argue that the
practitioners cannot look directly at the pro-
cesses but rather consider two aspects of their
messages to argue for their effectiveness: the
content of their messages and the technical
characteristics of the platform they are using.
The outcomes, on the other hand, can only
be indirect.
The first level focuses on the practition-
ers’ capacity to produce messages and their
credibility. The data within this perspective is
gathered by engaging with the practitioners.
Yet, two issues our study faced demonstrate
important points to consider. First, funding
sources have the potential to influence the
capacity to produce messages as well as their
content. In our case, the role of religion raised
an important concern about message formation.
We have observed that the religious overtones
attracted the attention of religious organiza-
tions and increased the donations made to the
activists. Given the fact that the practitioner
suggested that there were not many activ-
ists who do propaganda activities vis-a-vis
the North chiefly because of the high costs
associated with these activities, a funding
source might change the content. Besides
religious donations, Lee Min-Bok suggested
there were activists launching balloons to get
more media attention and more donations in
turn. Jung Gwang-Il claimed that some activ-
ists would come to his activities to have their
pictures taken to suggest that they were also
prominent activists, in turn to get donations
themselves. Second, the credibility of the
propagandists cannot be seen as devoid of
context. The mistrust between the South and
the North presented a challenge to establish
218 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
credibility for the practitioners. Interviewee
X argued that all of these propaganda activi-
ties could be ineffective due to the difficult
of establishing credibility. Therefore, the first
level of assessment needs to be supported
by data source triangulation through con-
textual/background information and propa-
ganda material in addition to engaging with
practitioners.
The second level looks at the technical
capabilities of the platform. A precursor to
successful behavioral change is message dis-
semination. A propaganda attempt cannot
be successful if the target audiences are not
exposed to the messages. Therefore, a propa-
gandist can use their reach as a measure. In
balloon propaganda, Lee Min-Bok takes
pride in his engineering capacity arguing
that his balloons, for which he holds a couple
of patents, are the only ones that can reach
regions beyond the border. Jeong Gwang-Il
sends out bottles based on his calculations
of tides – which come only twice a month.
Interviewee X integrated timers to his bal-
loons to assess delivery. Assessment at this
level should include data compatible with the
channels used, such as wind patterns for bal-
loons and tide patterns for floating bottles.
The third and last level includes indirect
outcomes. As it is virtually impossible to
assess the direct outcomes or changes in the
audience behavior in limited access cases, the
practitioners found auxiliary success variables.
However, the lack of random sampling requires
the practitioners to corroborate data from dif-
ferent resources. The mismatch we witnessed
between the findings of our interviews and
impressionistic survey better explains the need
for corroboration. Jung Gwang-Il decided to
use American popular culture items instead
of Korean dramas based on an assumption
that the former would be more effective. The
respondents to our surveys argued that South
Korean dramas were seen as more effective
by defectors. Yet, it is not possible to gen-
eralize the results of our survey or Jung’s
assumptions. A more accurate way to assess
the effectiveness of content is to include both
types of data, as well as additional accounts
of defectors and practitioners, and proxy vari-
ables for success. In our study, we found that
practitioners use the viewpoint of the other to
argue for such effects. As a successful propa-
ganda attempt should make it impossible or at
least difficult for the receiving part to achieve
its own objectives, any reaction coming from
the North Korean government is seen as
success – ranging from death threats to raids.
CONCLUSION
This chapter presented how South Korean
practitioners assess the effectiveness of their
campaigns to North Korea – an environment
to which they have limited access. Our
modest objective was to devise a framework
that could encompass the creativity of practi-
tioners. We used the practices of non-govern-
mental actors originating in South Korea and
directed at North Korea given the prominent
role of propaganda in the history of the
Peninsula and the relatively isolated situation
of North Korea.
Our study, despite its contributions, is not
without its limitations. First and foremost, we
realized that a study of contemporary propa-
ganda practices is a sensitive endeavor. With
its political nature and imaginative delivery
methods, it is a challenging task to solicit
uncut responses from any of the participants.
Second, not all our invited participants –
practitioners and defectors in our survey
alike – was excited about our study. Therefore,
our findings are clouded by a self-selection
bias. However, we believe such volunteer
behavior – or lack thereof – is an obstacle
likely to be faced by other researchers and
practitioners. Yet, it still should be acknowl-
edged as a limitation. Third, our data
tri­
angulation lacked an important source –
information coming from the audience. We
could not use any data points from North
 Assessing Propaganda Effectiveness in North Korea: A Limited Access Case Study 219
Korea to corroborate our findings. The very
reason that started the research project, limited
access, remains as a limitation. Consequently,
we present our findings as one way to study
propaganda, rather than the only or even the
most effective way. Our model simply pre-
sents an unprecedented way of thinking.
We shared our findings as a three-level
assessment framework: content, platform,
indirect outcomes. The framework has impli-
cations both for the study of propaganda and
practitioners. From the perspective of propa-
ganda studies, the relative importance of
this chapter is based on its articulation that
encourages matching the creativity of prac-
titioners. In other words, our framework lays
out a way to study propaganda campaigns in
which traditional theories and models cannot
be used due to access issues. For practition-
ers, the case presented might provide novel
approaches to message delivery and assess-
ment. Similarly, the model can be used to
design, execute, and assess campaigns.
The model is likely to benefit from future
studies that integrate additional cases with
limited control of media platforms. In North
Korea, government control over media comes
close to a complete blackout. In limited con-
trol cases where a government does not neces-
sarily block all media platforms but controls
the content, it might be easier to gather audi-
ence perception data and improve the model.
Moreover, the history of North–South rela-
tions creates an intriguing dynamic between
the two societies based on a tale of shared
history and mutual mistrust. Therefore, the
model can be improved by studies focus-
ing on cases in which practitioner and target
countries have different prior relations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was partially supported by the
2018 Korea Foundation Support for Policy-
Oriented Research Programme.
Note
1  Despite the sensitive nature of their work, most
North Korean defector-activists appear on South
Korean and foreign media using their real names.
In our interviews with three activists, two sug-
gested that we use their real names. Since these
are elite interviews which are also supplemented
with their other interviews in the media, we use
Lee Min-Bok and Jung Kwang-Il’s real names. On
the other hand, the third interviewee asked to be
anonymous, hence referred to as Interviewee X
here.
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Towards the Measurement of
Islamist Propaganda Effectiveness:
A Marketing Perspective
Paul Baines and Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
INTRODUCTION
UK Security Services are conducting around
500 active investigations with around 3,000
people under direct surveillance and the ter-
rorist threat is increasing (Farmer, 2017). By
the year ending September 2016, a total of
401 people had been convicted since 9/11 of
terrorism related offences in Great Britain
(excluding Northern Ireland) (Home Office,
2017). In the US in 2017, in evidence pro-
vided to the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Brian Jenkins of RAND
Corporation outlined how, by his calculation,
there had been 80 plots since 9/11 in the US
‘motivated by Jihadist ideology’ (Jenkins,
2017). More recently, Sayfullo Saipov, who
killed eight New Yorkers in a spree killing
incident using a pickup truck on October 31,
2017, was apparently inspired to commit
mass murder after watching hours of Daesh
snuff videos on his smartphone, according to
a federal prosecutor (Whitehouse, 2017). We
may hypothesize that Internet-delivered
14
propaganda plays some role in the terrorist’s
radicalization, and if not in their radicaliza-
tion, in their call for others to follow what
they have, or would have, done. Nevertheless,
internet-based propaganda is not ipso facto
sufficiently persuasive to generate terrorist
recruits (Neumann, 2008). This paper
explores what effect propaganda might have,
and how Western security services might
move towards a system of measuring the
effectiveness of Islamist terrorist propa-
ganda,1 based on insights from marketing.
With Sunni Islamist terrorist groups (espe-
cially Daesh, Al-Qaeda, and its regional vari-
ants), one is dealing with a cult whose chief
form of proselytization is via cyberspace
propaganda (including social media), prolif-
erated by what Daesh call the ‘media mujahi-
din’. Here, we define propaganda – using
Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell’s inter-
pretation – as ‘the deliberate, systematic
attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate
cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a
response that furthers the desired intent of
224 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the propagandist’ (Jowett and O’Donnell,
2012). But, cyberspace propaganda is not
merely another instrument of influence, it is
the essence of these organizations (Dearden,
2017a), particularly as they lose territory as
Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan and Daesh has
in Iraq and Syria. The role of propaganda is
multifaceted: to recruit new fighters to serve
in theaters of war, to inspire homegrown
attacks, to provide terrorist attack know-how
(i.e. by acting as ‘virtual training camps’), to
recruit funders, to recruit fighters’ wives (a
Daesh variant), to terrorize local populations,
and to sap the will of, and goad, Western
governments. Every time a new terrorist
attack occurs in a Western country, Daesh
claim responsibility; although frequently
these attacks are more inspired by jihadist
ideology than being centrally directed and
claims of responsibility may be dubious
(Ochab, 2017).
A key question arises: How influential is
propaganda in encouraging terrorist activity?
A recent UN study suggests propaganda acts
to reinforce, rather than create, a sense of
grievance (Dearden, 2017b).2 Nevertheless,
Daesh – the deadliest terrorist group of 2016
according to the University of Maryland’s
Global Terrorism Database (Tracy, 2017) –
managed to attract a total of over 40,000 for-
eign fighters and there is no formal expla-
nation as to why some countries supplied
so many, and others so few. Indonesia, for
example, is 90% Muslim with a population of
around 261 million, and yet it supplied only
around 400 foreign fighters compared with
the UK, which supplied around 850.3 We
postulate that propaganda played an impor-
tant role here, although we also acknowledge
that much propaganda was developed in
English as opposed to Bahasa Indonesia. An
important reason why Daesh’s propaganda
was initially so successful is because it had
gained command of a huge swathe of Syria
and Iraq with millions of people under its
yoke. To cement its advantage, Daesh resur-
rected the ‘caliphate’ and an ‘Islamic State’.
The fantasy of a new beginning was simply
irresistible to many, and was made more so
by propaganda depicting an ideal state for
wives and fighters alike.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
SPACE
Several factors impinge on the problem of
measuring terrorist propaganda effective-
ness. These include barriers to measuring
effectiveness, deciding on measures of effec-
tiveness, determining which methodologies
to use to research the measurement of effec-
tiveness of terrorist propaganda, understand-
ing how fear appeals work (the dominant
persuasive mechanism in terrorist messag-
ing), understanding the effect of terrorist
leaders, understanding the terrorist group’s
center of gravity,4 and determining how all of
these factors impact on the stages of terrorist
recruitment (which we call the recruitment
funnel).
We consider each of these areas in brief
below (see Figure 14.1 for a rich picture rep-
resentation of the problem space).
Barriers
Four key elements create difficulties in the
measurement of propaganda effectiveness.
The first of these is the difficulty that rests in
defining propaganda. Part of the problem of
measuring terrorist propaganda effectiveness
relates to what we mean by ‘effectiveness’.
Whilst military practitioners distinguish
between measures of performance and meas-
ures of effectiveness, commercial practitioners
tend to evaluate their advertising campaigns
more holistically on the basis of (in decreasing
importance): sales uplift, impressions (i.e.
how many times an ad is viewed), reach and
frequency (the number of people exposed
to the message and the number of times
each person receives the message), social
media engagement (e.g. Twitter retweets),5
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS

Figure 14.1  A rich picture of the terrorist propaganda effectiveness measurement space
225
226 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
click-through rates on websites, conversions
(undertakes a desired action), responses in
customer surveys, viewability (i.e. only ads
that are seen by viewers), brand awareness
measures, bounce rates (i.e. the proportion of
viewers who leave a website after entering
without viewing other pages on the site), cost
per click (CPC, i.e. the cost per online ad
viewed), increased footfall (either to a web-
site or to a retail outlet), brand uplift (e.g.
measuring initial awareness to final conver-
sion: on YouTube this might be via views,
watch time, shares, and comments), net pro-
moter score measurement (i.e. how likely
people are to refer others to a company), and
attribution modeling (i.e. measuring the
impact of communication activity on turno-
ver, profit, customer retention, and volume
sales) (Econsultancy/ResearchNow, 2017).
Another barrier to measuring propaganda
effectiveness lies in the cognitive clutter – a
fog – that exists in the propaganda battles-
pace. Ellul, the great French propaganda the-
orist, is ambivalent about propaganda’s actual
effectiveness (Ellul, 1965). He explains the
conflictual process problem, where there
are many propagandas struggling against
each other for supremacy. The task there-
fore becomes one of how to disaggregate
the effect of one from the other. The ques-
tion arises as to how we determine whether
or not it was the Jihadi clip seen on YouTube,
a contact from a foreign fighter via Telegram,
or the copies of Dabiq or Inspire read on
the dark web, or some combination of all of
these that exerted the most persuasive effect.
Propaganda can be both formal (i.e. cen-
trally directed) and informal (disseminated
through word-of-mouth online or offline by
adherents). Ellul disparages the notion that
propaganda manifests its impact in ‘clear,
conscious opinions’, directly contradict-
ing the idea that the propagandee responds
according to the will of the propagandist’s
slogans – the now discredited and so-called
‘hypodermic needle model’6 favored by
Harold Lasswell (Lasswell, 1927). One
concern is visibility. All propaganda today,
not just social marketing/advertising, has to
­penetrate a barrier of cognitive clutter, the
sheer amount of messages with which people
are bombarded on a daily basis. Moreover, an
essential problem in assessing the effective-
ness of all social messaging, and propaganda
particularly, is the distinction between tone
and message: a text gives a message, but it
also connotes tone, and the control of tone
is often elusive. This can give messages an
unintended reading. Tone is created by the
paralanguage, the non-linguistic forms of
meaning such as color, print style, and spac-
ing. Hence, symbolization in messaging has a
controlled but also a non-controlled element.
Meaning is negotiated in the semiotic process
and what is encoded is not necessarily what is
decoded7. We turn to the process of measuring
propaganda effectiveness next.
Methodologies for Measuring
Propaganda Effectiveness
There have been a number of approaches
designed for use in evaluating the effective-
ness of propaganda. One common process
used in US and NATO military doctrine is the
SCAME method (Department of the Army,
2008), which requires analysis of the
following:
• Source – Who is the communicator and what
credibility and influence, if any, do they have?
• Content – What is the nature of this and what
are its key lines of persuasion? Are messages
overt or covert?
• Audience – Are different messages aimed at dif-
ferent audience segments? If so, which ones and
with which messages?
• Media – What channels are the communicators
using, what are their special features, and to
what types of audience do these media generally
appeal?
• Effects – Are these message of performance (e.g.
number of people reached, frequency of com-
munication?) or are these messages of effect
(e.g. foreign fighters generated). Are these effects
advertent or inadvertent?
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
This method is useful in evaluating specific
propaganda materials or campaigns and in
providing a holistic qualitative overview of
that messaging. To probe a potential causal
link between propaganda and radicalization,
one approach would be to conduct systematic
content analysis of terrorism offenders’
media usage online, together with the same
systematic content analysis of non-offender’s
message usage online (the control) in a case-
control study. Such an approach is frequently
used in epidemiology to identify risk factors
which cause a disease.
Social media content analysis (Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, etc.) can also be used to
evaluate terrorist group effectiveness. It is
particularly helpful in identifying:
• How messages, including rumors, disseminate
through social networks. For example, analysis of
Twitter during the 2011 London riots helped the
(London) Metropolitan Police Service to under-
stand public reaction to the riots (Procter, 2017).
• Which social media users influence the most
followers.
• The sentiment displayed in the messages.
• Where users are located (if location tags are
turned on) and collecting users’ posts via geo-
fencing techniques.
• With tweet analysis, we can discover message
origins, scale of distribution, targets for distribu-
tion, and crucially, message content, looking at
what kinds of messages succeed and what kinds
fail, including the language of the message, how
vivid is it, how violent is it, as well as the nature
of the content itself – is it purely abusive, does it
exhort to action, what message appeals does it
contain (e.g. humor, fear, guilt, religious)?
• Non-public social media data for specific
respondents by ‘catfishing’ (i.e. setting up fake
accounts to lure adversaries to connect).8
Depth interviews can be used to evaluate the
effectiveness of terrorist communications by
undertaking interviews with the following
groups:
• Offenders – Liebling and Straub talk about how
in interviews with terrorism offenders, examples
of prisoner radicalization tended to be indirect
227
(i.e. something that happened to somebody else)
(Liebling and Straub, 2012). Interviews conducted
with former jihadists might help to determine the
role that propaganda played in energizing latent
sympathy into violent action. There could also be
a specialist study of incarcerated jihadists and
their personal narratives, specifically with the
intent of surfacing the role of online propaganda
in their radicalization or a study of jihadists
returned from Syria and Iraq who have not faced
imprisonment or who have been rehabilitated.
• General population – when a topic is particularly
sensitive, or when focus groups are not effective
(perhaps because one person such as a village
elder dominates conversation), depth interviews
are preferred. Respondents could be asked about
a range of issues individually to gauge, for
example, their use of media, their sympathies for
terrorism causes, and so on.
• Mullahs – interviews with Mullahs or other com-
munity leaders could provide insight into the
theological arguments that terrorist groups are
using and their effectiveness.
Focus groups can be used to:
• Test the wording, imagery, sound to be used in
the messaging in counter-terrorism communica-
tion campaigns.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of adversary propa-
ganda campaigns by showing adversary messag-
ing to selected target audience segments.9
Netnographic methods can also be used to
evaluate terrorist propaganda. The method
was originally developed by marketing aca-
demic, Robert Kozinets,10 to monitor and
research online communities. In relation to
evaluating terrorist propaganda, netnography
might be used to survey terrorist chatrooms
and other online spaces, particularly in the
dark web. Weimann argues that the dark web
is being used to spread propaganda as well as
raise funds, organize attacks, purchase explo-
sive and firearms, and other activities
(Weimann, 2016). Content analysis of
member discussions could highlight particu-
lar themes of discussion, particularly influen-
tial sources, as well as intended attack plans
and the modus operandi that terrorist groups
228 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
intend to inspire in their adherents, including
‘lone wolf’ attackers. Finally, another useful
method for evaluating propaganda is semi-
otic analysis. This approach adopts an out-
side-in perspective by evaluating how the
communication fits within the cultural milieu
in which it is operating.11 This method has
previously been used to analyze al-Qaeda
propaganda by evaluating the aural, linguis-
tic, and visual signs contained within the
communication (Baines and O’Shaughnessy,
2014). Another methodological possibility is
to track how Islamist propaganda videos are
disseminated through the various channels in
which they travel over time. Of particular
relevance would be to analyze how they are
posted and shared (retweeted on Twitter,
uploaded and shared on YouTube, on their
own channel on Telegram, etc.), including in
what countries, and by quantifying the
responses to them and categorizing them
based on any expressions of interest in being
recruited. Some thought would need to be
given to the ethical implications of such a
study.
Measures of Effectiveness
In the measurement of effectiveness, it is
necessary to identify specific measures.
These could be many and various but princi-
pal amongst these measures might be the
following:
• The number of foreign fighters (and members
of the organization more generally): added
measures include the speed of recruitment, the
absolute number, and the number recruited as
a percentage of the population or a relevant
sub-population.
• Proxy measures might include the quality of the
recruits (e.g. the nature of their skills) and the
number of Islamist-inspired attacks and where
those attacks have taken place (e.g. US, Europe,
elsewhere).
• Propaganda of the deed measures might include
whether an attack and its replay through propa-
ganda is generating polarization in society (as
measured in opinion polls), the public response
to the attack and any security deployment
(measures might include social media content
analysis, press commentary, opinion polls), and
the symbolism of the target (i.e. the extent to
which it indicates a ‘virtuoso’ performance,
which projects the terrorist group’s ubiquity or
ability to hit anywhere, measured on a subjec-
tive basis).
• Sympathy for the cause: measured in terms of
whether or not this is active, latent, or non-
committal (which we regard as a form of sym-
pathy in itself) and determined via opinion polls
(see Vignette 1). One aim of terrorist propaganda
aimed at the West is not merely to solidify
the basis of Muslim support or gain recruits,
it is also to undermine the Western assertion
of military power by attacking the West’s soft
underbelly, liberal and leftist opinion, persuad-
ing them that military aggression is futile, and
thereby strengthening opposition to Western
government actions (military or otherwise). For
some idea of how to evaluate sympathy for the
cause, see Vignette 14.1.
Vignette 14.1: Sympathy for
the Cause
In a YouTube video on Aaj Tak Live – a
mainstream Indian Hindi TV news channel –
entitled ‘Vishesh: Hafiz Saeed, mastermind
of 26/11 terror attack’, the news report effec-
tively functions as propaganda. It was
uploaded on July 6, 2014, but by November
3, 2017, it had received over 114,000 views,
receiving 172 likes, 72 dislikes, and had
attracted 126 comments, many of which
expressed support for the terrorist and to
which names and photographs were attached,
making these supporters readily identifiable.
Supportive comments included: ‘fuck indain
(sic) men dogs’, ‘hafiz saeed is a freedom
fighter of azad kashmir from bloody indi-
ans’, ‘Good job saeed’, ‘Hafiz saeed is the
hero of Pakistan & shame on Indian army’,
and many more. TV news reports like these,
though not in themselves propaganda, do the
work of the propagandist. The comments
section of this news report demonstrates a
significant number of people supported the
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
terrorist and were prepared to make this sup-
port public. The high viewing figures tell us
something about the attention-getting capa-
bility of news reports. Mainstream media
serves a purpose in terrorist arousal. Thus,
the press itself becomes a channel of propa-
ganda, albeit unwittingly. Radicalization can
thereby happen without the intervention of
orthodox propaganda processes (e.g. via
closed internet chatrooms as per al-Qaeda of
yesteryear or on the dark web or in peer-to-
peer channels in the modern environment).
Mass media is an important propaganda
channel which reaches everybody. Thus, we
propose that the analysis of readers’ com-
ments in response to reports of terrorist activ-
ity in media would be a useful activity in
detecting sympathy for a cause. Such media
analysis should be in countries with a signifi-
cant level of pre-existing radicalization (e.g.
Pakistan, Yemen). Furthermore, this approach
allows the identification of people who are
either already radicalized or in danger of
being radicalized.
External Message Processing
Stimuli
(1st and 2nd Appraisals)
Message Perceived
Components Efficacy
(Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy Response efficacy)
Response efficacy
Susceptibility PERCEIVED THREAT
Severity (Susceptibility
Severity)
No threat perceived (No response)
Individual Differences
Figure 14.2  The Extended Parallel Response Model
Source: Witte (1992).
229
Fear Appeal Use
Fear-elicitation is the principal motivation
for much propaganda activity; that is, terror-
ists seek to strike terror into their enemies.
Daesh took a step beyond al-Qaeda’s
approach in their pursuit of the doctrine of
the management of savagery, namely the
extreme use of violence to subjugate the
enemy and the filming of that violence for
propaganda purposes. This considered strat-
egy was designed to ensure the region
selected for its use, namely Iraq and later
Syria, would fall into chaos and in the power
vacuum ruins, a Caliphate could rise phoe-
nix-like from the ashes.12 Key questions
include does it really work and do target
audience segments resist the fear appeal?
To illustrate how the fear appeal oper-
ates, we apply the Extended Parallel Process
Model (EPPM) – see Figure 14.2. This
model was used because previous fear appeal
models over-emphasised rational versus
emotional thinking in fear appeal scenarios
Outcomes Process
Protection Message Danger
Motivation Acceptance Control
Feedback loop
Fear
Fear Control
Defensive Message
Motivation Rejection
230 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
(Witte, 1992). The model suggests that when
we receive a fear appeal message, it contains
four properties: i) the severity of the threat,
ii) a statement about the susceptibility of the
subject to the threat, and a proposed course of
action to respond to the threat which implies
a degree of iii) response efficacy and iv) sub-
ject (self-) efficacy. The source’s fear appeal
message assumes that subjects receiving the
message can avoid the threat outlined by
following what the communicator suggests
(response efficacy) and that the communica-
tor believes the subject is able to affect that
course of action (self-efficacy). However,
just because someone says something does
not mean we believe it. So, once the subject
receives the source’s message, they evaluate
for themselves what the severity of the mes-
sage is, how susceptible they are to the threat,
how efficient the response suggested is, and
whether they are able to undertake the sug-
gested course of action. If they perceive a
threat to be low, they act no further on the
message as it is not perceived to be persua-
sive. If the perceived threat and the perceived
efficacy of the message are rated highly, sub-
jects seek to control the danger by adopting
the message instructions. Here, whilst fear
is important and feeds back into evaluations
of perceived threat and perceived efficacy,
it does not moderate the rational responses
to either protection motivation (i.e. accept-
ance of the message instructions) or defen-
sive motivation (i.e. fear control, by denial,
avoidance or mastery of the message). Where
subjects have low self-efficacy, therefore
consider themselves incapable of following
the advocated course of action, or feel that
the threat is unavoidable, they reduce their
fear via a defensive motivation to reject the
message. This process might also occur via
psychological reactance.13 Where there are
high levels of perceived threat but subjects
have low levels of perceived efficacy, this
can lead to subjects adopting the opposite
course of action to that advocated in the mes-
sage (Witte, 2017). The EPPM distinguishes
between adaptive (message acceptance) and
maladaptive (message rejection) responses.
This model is useful because it can be used
to measure the effectiveness of terrorist fear
appeals by evaluating how target audiences
respond to the messages based on perceived
efficacy and perceived threat levels (see also
Chapter 21).
Recent research on the topic of fear appeal
use suggests that there is a positive linear rela-
tionship between fear intensity (how fearful
the message makes the subject) and persua-
siveness (LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997). A meta-
analytic study of fear appeal research (Witte
and Allen, 2000) confirms that the greater the
intensity of the fear appeal, the more attitude,
intention, and behavior is directed towards
that advocated in the message. However,
compliance with the message does depend
on the importance of the issue advocated,
whether or not the message indicates a route
to reduce fear, and whether or not subjects
believe themselves able to behaviorally com-
ply with the messages. Other individual dif-
ferences also impact on the efficacy of the
message. For example, teenagers are less
susceptible to fear appeal messages (LaTour
and Rotfeld, 2000), women more susceptible
(Samu and Bhatnagar, 2008), and those with
less self-esteem more persuadable (Higbee,
1969), amongst other traits. To see how the
model can be applied, see Vignette 14.2.
Vignette 14.2: Terrorist Group
Use of the Fear Appeal
In 2016, Boko Haram, based in north-east
Nigeria, returned to using ‘cash loans’ to
recruit members to spy on security forces for
them. The cash loan tactic follows previous
Boko Haram approaches such as attacks on
schools and the kidnapping of girls. How do
‘cash loans’ work as a recruiting tactic? In
psychology, reciprocity is a powerful mech-
anism (Cialdini, 2007). Most of us can relate
to the idea that if we receive something from
someone, we feel a need to ‘return the favor’
and are likely to do so. But, in this case,
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
there is also an added dimension. Refusing a
cash loan from Boko Haram is likely to
result in death. So, the group is using the
‘fear appeal’. Fear appeal is the practice
where an offer is made and the only alterna-
tive to accepting it is serious danger, akin to
the Italian mafia making ‘an offer you can’t
refuse’. The way to avoid the threat of death
and potentially even long-term abuse against
the victim’s family, is to accept the loan.
This is adaptive behavior to mitigate the
threat, or, danger control. Rejection of the
offer requires fear control. By offering ‘cash
loans’, Boko Haram can also play on being
an alternative to government and ‘looking
after’ their members, something they partic-
ularly focus on in their messaging. In another
example of fear appeal use, Daesh used an
atrocity video, the ‘Clanging of the Swords
IV’ (a feature length film produced by al-
Furqan media), depicting the mass murder
of Daesh enemies using the production
values of video games such as Grand Theft
Auto and the Police Camera Action! series.
They also encouraged thousands of their fol-
lowers to install an app ‘The Dawn of Glad
Tidings’ allowing Daesh to disseminate
messages to others in their network (includ-
ing ‘Swords IV’, other gory images, and
news of Daesh’s military successes to swamp
social media). All this messaging went viral
and damaged Iraq army morale before Daesh
assaulted Mosul with only 800 soldiers,
ranged against two divisions of Iraqi army
personnel (about 30,000 soldiers). Despite
their overwhelming numbers, the demoral-
ized Iraqi army turned and fled. Saturation
levels of tweeting do give the impression of
a massive movement: that is to say with tens
of thousands of tweets being created and
passed along, Daesh project an image of a
vast organization with an army of followers.
Propaganda thus helped Daesh overturn
overwhelming odds (Kingsley, 2017). They
went on to take a further three cities (includ-
ing Deir el Zour and Tikrit) in fairly short
order immediately afterwards (Chulov,
Hawramy and Ackerman, 2014).
231
The Leadership Effect
The credibility of the message source also
impacts on message effectiveness, in particu-
lar whether a propaganda spokesperson is
seen as credible, expert, and trustworthy
(Hovland, Janis and Kelley, 1953). Al-Qaeda
videos were notable for proclamations from
the likes of influential and sometimes charis-
matic spokespersons, who acted as chief ideo-
logues (and ultimately as brand custodians),
such as Bin Laden, Zawahiri and American-
born, Adam Gadahn. Anwar al-Awlaki, also
an American, for al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP) and, more recently, Ahmad
Abousamra, a Syrian-American, who played a
leading role in Daesh’s propaganda operation
and edited its magazines, Dabiq and later
Rumiyah (Cruickshank, 2017). After 2014,
Daesh represented a real threat to al-Qaeda, in
the sense of attracting its would-be recruits
and famously the two organizations split as
al-Zawahiri castigated Daesh over its propa-
ganda strategy as recently as January 2017
over ‘exceeding the limits of extremism’
(Dearden, 2017c). But, not all Daesh output is
about violence and its glorification. Much of it
attempts to project its credibility as a territo-
rial government. This has distinguished Daesh
from al-Qaeda which was only ever a guerilla
group. Daesh has innovated the process of
message dissemination by stressing multi-
channel platform use including Twitter,
Facebook, peer-to-peer applications like
Telegram and Surespot, content-sharing sites
like JustPaste.it, and by decentralizing its
media operations (Koerner, 2017). A demon-
stration of the importance of leadership on
recruitment was displayed by al-Nusra
Front’s (an al-Qaeda-affiliate), Abdallah
al-Muhaysini, who launched a campaign to
recruit 3,000 child soldiers to fight in Syria
(Anon., 2017). The campaign, dubbed ‘Go
Forth!’ was supported by highway billboards
and posters, social media, and cash payments
of between US$100 and US$150. An anti-
recruitment campaign ‘Children not soldiers’
documented at least 500 child soldiers had
232 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
been recruited by ‘Go Forth!’ within the first
month (Ali and Schuster, 2016). Leadership
can therefore serve as a persuasive recruiting
tool, serving to increase the number of follow-
ers (see Vignette 14.3).
Vignette 14.3: The Allure of Sally
Jones
One exemplar of leadership was the British
jihadist, Sally-Anne Jones (also known as
Umm Hussein al-Britaniyah and Sakinah
Hussein), who served to increase the recruit-
ment of Western women to Daesh. Dubbed a
‘white widow’, she was the wife of jihadist
hacker, Junaid Hussain (killed in a drone
strike in 2015) and leader of the ‘Anwar
Al-Awlaki’ battalion, an all-female wing
training European female recruits
(‘muhajirat’) in weapons-handling and sui-
cide mission attack planning. She is thought
to have recruited dozens of women to Daesh
before her social media accounts were shut
down. Jones had used her Twitter account to
release incendiary statements defending the
group’s beheadings and threatening to under-
take these herself (Hughes, 2016). At one
point, she tweeted the address of US Navy
Seal, Robert O’Neill (the man who fired the
fatal shot at Bin Laden), exhorting Daesh and
al-Qaeda supporters to kill him (Lawler,
2015). Jones was purportedly killed in a US
drone strike in June 2017.
The Center of Gravity
An important concept in military strategy is the
Clausewitzian notion of center of gravity, a
critical capability which underpins a military
organization’s modus operandi and operational
effectiveness. Islamist terrorist groups operate
on the basis that the West’s center of gravity is
mainstream media. Consequently, Al-Qaeda
has made crude efforts to influence elections in
the past. In a propaganda video, Bin Laden
threatened ‘prompt and severe actions’ against
Spain for participating in the War in Iraq in
2003 and the Madrid bombings occurred in
March three days before the Spanish general
election. The incumbent government’s rush to
erroneously blame ETA, a Spanish terrorist
group, the poor state of the economy, and
perhaps the failure to stop the terrorist attack all
led to the surprise election of the Socialist
Party. The Socialist Party promptly pulled its
1,300 Spanish troops out of Iraq. Other
examples of al-Qaeda attempts to influence
elections include threats made in propaganda
videos prior to elections in the US in 2004,
Pakistan in 2007, and Germany in 2008.
Al-Qaeda’s standard line of argument within
these videos was to argue that Western troops
were aggressors illegally operating in Muslim
lands and that if they did not leave, then
Muslims had a duty, outlined in warped
theological versions of the Hadith and using
passages from the Qur’an, to kill Western
citizens. It is highly unlikely that al-Qaeda ever
thought they could influence Western elections;
rather, it is more likely that they sought to spoil
elections (a symbolic target) and maximize the
publicity generated at a time of heightened
media fervor. More recently, it is not
inconceivable that the Daesh attack on Paris in
April 2017 was an attempt to influence the
French Presidential in favor of Le Pen, to create
an uprising amongst France’s substantial
Muslim population by encouraging ‘lone wolf’
attacks, and to gain media attention. Such
media attention enables self-radicalization
amongst adherents who do not have links to
Islamist terrorist groups directly. One
consequence of Islamist targeting of main­
stream media is that Western television
channels and newspapers (and their online
versions) have inadvertently become channels
of terrorist propaganda even if they are not
recognized as such. The specific contribution of
mainstream media has been to showcase and
hyperventilate terrorist events, whether these be
attacks in the West or atrocities in the Middle
East. To bring together marketing, propaganda,
and the measurement of effectiveness, we
consider how Islamist propaganda might be
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
used at different stages of terrorist recruitment
(using an adapted version of the ‘marketing
funnel’ (Singh, 2017)). We consider this topic
next.
DISCUSSION: MEASURING
PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS VIA
THE RECRUITMENT FUNNEL
Propaganda plays a different role at different
points in the terrorist recruitment process. We
can see the process of recruitment moving
from paying attention to the message after
being exposed to it, it persuading or influenc-
ing someone, that leading to engagement with
the new (Islamist) cause, and this leading onto
action for/conversion to the Islamist cause.
Propaganda plays an important role in leading
the would-be recruit towards a more restricted
set of ideological views, by appealing to
Figure 14.3  Stages of terrorist recruitment with associated social media metrics
233
people’s existing prejudices (hence they dis-
play motivated reasoning to believe the mes-
sages they see/hear), which engenders an ever-
narrowing Weltanschauung towards ever more
extreme views/attitudes. This in turn leads to
alienation and a sense of victimhood, and onto
extreme action. This process is represented by
the funnel element in Figure 14.3. In our
model, which we focus around online propa-
ganda – because that is the dominant form of
Islamist propaganda – we also identify how
the effectiveness of terrorist propaganda might
be measured for each recruitment stage, using
appropriate social media metrics. The model
is discussed in more detail below.
Attention/Exposure
Measuring attention-getting is the easiest
metric to acquire. This is often really all the
advertising industry understands about making
234 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
an impact, particularly when measuring the
effectiveness of offline marketing. Viewings
of jihadist media such as Dabiq, the Daesh
magazine and analysis of the extent of Twitter
dissemination of Daesh and al-Qaeda messag-
ing would be examples here. Exposure can
also be measured by the number of followers/
fan/subscribers to different platforms hosting
jihadi content and ‘brand mentions’ (such as
when an adherent discusses Daesh in a tweet
or in a blog post for example). Videos that go
viral particularly demonstrate effectiveness in
gaining exposure. Consider the Joseph Kony
film (Warman, 2012) which had generated
around 102 million views by November 2017
and made the Ugandan warlord notorious but
had no impact on the campaign to bring him
to justice.
Persuasion/Influence
Daesh engage in a very personal approach to
persuasion, a kind of bespoke tailoring,
where they approach potential recruits online
on a one-to-one basis in an attempt to seduce
them to join, giving them instructions about
what to do, how to reach Daesh held areas or
alternatively how to plan attacks on their own
in their home country. A huge amount of
resource is devoted to this task. Metrics asso-
ciated with this stage of recruitment might
include ‘share of voice’ – a quantitative
measure which would be particularly useful
in determining how attractive different ter-
rorist groups are to different adherents, in a
similar way as a consumer might decide
amongst which supermarket brands to shop
at. Sentiment analysis (positive/negative/
neutral) of the content of terrorist group
adherent’s social media feeds also indicates
the extent to which they have been persuaded
or influenced by a particular brand.
Influencer’s reports, such as Radian 6 or
Klout, analyze what is being said by who.
These platforms are useful in helping to iden-
tify influentials. This second stage is likely
the most important of all, representing the
stage at which countermeasures should be
most focused.
Engagement
This stage of recruitment is the stage in which
the would-be jihadist starts to actively seek
out terrorist group content and to share that
content with others. Sharing is nevertheless a
crude measure because one might share an
item because you want others to see it rather
than because you find it persuasive or agree
with it. In the case of Daesh, some people
might share jihadi content because they find it
so appalling. Useful metrics include clicks-
through on suggested social media links,
retweets and shares of jihadi content, @replies
on Twitter, wall posts on jihadi blog forums,
and both positive and negative comments
ascertained through sentiment analysis.
Importantly, tracking the sentiment of a par-
ticular user’s postings can give an insight into
any one individual’s radicalization process,
and deradicalization (depending on the senti-
ment of the content).
Action/Conversion
The final stage is recruitment, where people
actively join the organization, to fight for it
either in the homeland or by going abroad, or
at least to work for it in some kind of service
capacity such as fundraising. At this stage,
the process of socialization is likely to be
direct personal solicitation from a terrorist
organization itself. One cannot overestimate
the importance of secret channels of com-
munication with individual targets (e.g. via
Telegram or via ‘meets’ in the dark web).
Indeed, one could compare it with the impor-
tance of personal selling in modern and clas-
sical marketing. The initiative to ‘hook up’
may come from either the would-be recruit
or the recruiter, but the signs that someone is
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
ripe for recruiting may be evident from the
content of their social media postings.
However, law enforcement authorities do
need to move quickly because the exchange
may disappear in a cloak of invisibility,
as the transaction transfers to specialist peer-
to-peer media like Telegram. A definitive
understanding of how terrorists progress
through this stage should come from examin-
ing the computer systems of convicted,
killed, or repenting terrorists. Our suspicion
is that in general such devices would contain
evidence of extensive exposure to terrorist
propaganda, which if mapped over time,
might yield interesting patterns of radicaliza-
tion. Other metrics which indicate a would-
be terrorist is moving towards the action/
conversion stage include content downloads,
online donations, know-how video views,
and webinar or online jihadi training events.
For example, anonymous has reportedly
launched an online camp in the dark web to
train hacktivists in the battle against Daesh
(Halkon, 2016).
POLICY IMPLICATIONS: REDUCING
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TERRORIST
PROPAGANDA
Whilst much counter-terrorism effort should
aim to focus on shutting down centrally
directed efforts, new approaches must also be
found to identify and isolate adherents who
disseminate such hateful propaganda
messages. Software developed by Crisp,
based in the UK, currently exists to
automatically detect terrorist material within
minutes of it being posted including material
posted on the dark web (Gibbons, 2017).
Some thought should be given as to how such
software might also be fine-tuned not just to
identify jihadist content but to track users
who engage with it through their recruitment
journeys. Another approach to countering the
235
effectiveness of Islamist propaganda might
be to deliberately subvert it. Such an approach
was revealed by Chechnyan Police’s E-Unit
when a group of young Chechen girls
contacted Daesh asking for money to travel
to Syria but cut off all ties when they received
the funds (Sanghani, 2015). The center of
gravity of the Daesh propaganda model is its
crowd-sourced model of consumerist-
producer acting as ‘media mujahedin’. This
element is both a strength and a weakness.
Law enforcement authorities should target
their resources to targeting and prosecuting
the worst offenders (i.e. the ‘influentials’)
disseminating hateful messages. The power
of the crowd should also be harnessed in
flagging terrorist propaganda content for
take-down. This might involve developing an
online version of the ‘if you see something,
say something’ (suspicious activity reporting)
campaign in a partnership between the social
media service providers and law enforcement
authorities.
Propaganda aimed at would-be recruits
purports to be a ‘special truth’. It makes
the subject feel special, either because they
are receiving the message, or because of
the nature of what they are being incited
to do. Countering its effectiveness can be
achieved by reducing the credibility of the
message. Such an approach might involve
discrediting both the message itself and/
or the messengers. This very approach
was used effectively by the Information
Operations Task Force in Iraq against al-
Qaeda in Iraq and al-Zirqawi by using a dis-
gust appeal to create an emotional wedge
between al-Zirqawi and the general popula-
tion (Segell, 2009). Reducing the effective-
ness of propaganda aimed at the general
public in particularly affected countries
would likely require countering adversary
use of fear appeal. This requires a robust
system, including a public reassurance
campaign, to be put in place both to counter
public fear and the associated danger that
stokes that fear.
236 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
CONCLUSION
This chapter has deliberately focused only
on the application of mainstream marketing
effectiveness measurement, as opposed to
political and/or social marketing effective-
ness methodologies given time and space
restrictions, despite the merit of applying
both these marketing sub-domains to
improving our understanding of the meas-
urement of terrorist propaganda effective-
ness. We recommend that further research
be undertaken into their applicability to
measuring propaganda effectiveness. It is
particularly important to conduct research
into tracking how would-be and existing
recruits make their journeys through the
recruitment funnel from attention/exposure
all the way through to action/conversion.
Such an analysis could help reveal vulnera-
bilities in the effectiveness of adversary
propaganda use, and potential step-off
points, in the radicalization process. We
highlight the multifaceted nature of the
problem space of effectiveness measure-
ment, including the consideration of barriers
to measurement, identifying suitable effec-
tiveness measures, identifying appropriate
measurement methodologies, recognizing
the centrality of fear appeal use in propa-
ganda, evaluating terrorist leadership effects
(and identifying ‘influentials’) in message
effectiveness, identifying the center of grav-
ity in terrorist group propaganda usage, and
in understanding how to measure the effec-
tiveness of terrorist group efforts to move
people through the recruitment funnel from
attentiveness to jihadi propaganda through
persuasion/influence to engagement to
action/conversion. We provide a number of
social media metrics to help evaluate terror-
ist propaganda use at each stage of the
recruitment process. The paper makes a
contribution to developing our understand-
ing of how marketing concepts can be used
to aid the measurement of Islamist terrorist
propaganda effectiveness.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF FUNDING
This research was conducted under US
Government sponsorship. This paper does
not necessarily reflect the opinions or poli-
cies of its research sponsors.
Notes
1  For an overview of the messaging themes/
aims used by the key Islamist terror-
ist groups considered in this paper, see
Table 14.1.
2  Dearden, Lizzie. ‘Isis: UN study finds foreign
fighters in Syria “lack basic understanding
of Islam”’. The Independent, August 4,
2017. Accessed October 9, 2017. www.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/
isis-islammic-state-foreign-fighters-syria-
recruits-lack-basic-understanding-of-islam-
radicalisation-a7877706.html. A research
study focusing on al-Qaeda in 2013 found
a similar result, see: Lyons, D.K. ‘Analyz-
ing the effectiveness of Al Qaeda’s online
influence operations by means of propa-
ganda theory’. Master of Science Thesis, El
Paso, TX: The University of Texas at El Paso,
2013. Accessed November 3, 2017. https://
academics.utep.edu/Portals/4302/
Student%20research/Theses/Analyzing
%20the%20Effectiveness%20of%20
Al%20Qaeda%20s%20Online%20Influence
%20Operations%20(Lyons).pdf.
3  On the number of Daesh’s Indonesian foreign
fighters, see: Jawaid, Arsia. ‘Indonesia and
the Islamic State threat’. The Diplomat,
March 15, 2017. Accessed October 11,
2017. https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/
indonesia-and-the-islamic-state-threat/.
On the total number of Daesh’s foreign
and British fighters, see: Wintour, Patrick.
‘Islamic State fighters returning to UK “pose
huge challenge”’. The Guardian, March 9,
2017. Accessed October 11, 2017. www.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/09/
islamic-state-fighters-returning-to-uk-pose-
huge-challenge.
4  Center of Gravity is defined as ‘the source
of power that creates a force or a critical
 TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS
capability that allows an entity to act or
accomplish a task or purpose’. See: Eik-
meier, Dale C. ‘Center of gravity analysis’.
Military Review 84, no. 4 (2004): 2–5 (p. 2).
5  One method used to analyze the effec-
tiveness of UK politicians’ tweets was to
analyze what factors were fundamental to
whether or not they were retweeted. The
same process could be used to evaluate
when terrorists’ tweets are retweeted. See:
Walker, Lorna, Paul R. Baines, Radu Dimi-
triu, and Emma K. Macdonald. ‘Anteced-
ents of retweeting in a (political) marketing
context’. Psychology & Marketing 34, no. 3
(2017): 275–293.
6  The hypodermic needle (stimulus-response)
model suggests that people uncritically
accept the precepts of a propagandist mes-
sage and act upon them.
7  For a detailed paper and methodological
approach on how terrorist propaganda can
be analyzed using semiotic and propaganda
analysis, see: Baines, Paul R., and Nicholas
J. O’Shaughnessy. ‘Al-Qaeda messaging
evolution and positioning, 1998–2008:
Propaganda analysis revisited’. Public Rela-
tions Inquiry 3, no. 2 (2014): 163–191.
8  We indicate that this approach is possible
but given the ethical implications do not
necessarily advocate it.
9  For an example of the use of focus groups
to test adversary propaganda effective-
ness, see: Baines, Paul R., Nicholas J.
O’Shaughnessy, Kevin Moloney, Barry Rich-
ards, Sara Butler, and Mark Gill. ‘The dark
side of political marketing: Islamist propa-
ganda, Reversal Theory and British Mus-
lims’. European Journal of Marketing 44,
no. 3/4 (2010): 478–495.
10  Kozinets developed the methodology to assess
the behavior of Star Trek fans online. See: Kozi-
nets, Robert V. ‘Utopian enterprise: Articulating
the meanings of Star Trek’s culture of con-
sumption’. Journal of Consumer Research 28,
no. 1 (2001): 67–88.
11  For a full outline of what semiotics is, see:
Lawes, R. (2002). ‘Demystifying semiotics:
Some key questions answered’. Interna-
tional Journal of Market Research, 44(3),
251–264.
12  For an excellent discussion of Daesh doc-
trine and the ‘management of savagery’,
237
see: Weiss, Michael, and Hassan Hassan.
Isis: Inside the Army of Terror. New York:
Regan Arts, 2015.
13  This is where a person feels that their
behavior is being constrained and so are
motivated to follow a different, sometimes
opposite, course of action, see Brehm
(1966).
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Appendix 14.1  Aims, narratives, lines of persuasion and dissemination used by four main Islamist terrorist groups
Analysis Items Al-Qaeda (and its subsidiaries) Daesh Boko Haram (Daesh West African Al Shabab (Al-Qaeda affiliate
Province since 2015) in Somalia since 2012)

Key aim To recruit and radicalize using a

•  To recruit and radicalize, especially foreign
•  To mock the west, Nigerian
•  To recruit and radicalize,
• 
franchised model in different fighters. officials, and opposition Muslims. including foreign fighters.
regions of the world.
Narratives Global conspiracy against Islam.
•  To dissuade enemy from fighting.
•  Nigerian elite/institutions fail to
•  Islam under threat from
• 
The iniquity of its enemies.
•  To goad foreign nations into attacking Daesh.
•  address poverty and disadvantage. the West.
Fight Jihad to save faith from
•  Moral conflict.
•  Illegitimacy of Nigeria and its
•  Amplification of its own
• 
extinction. A Caliphate now exists.
•  leadership. importance in Somalia and
Daesh’s victory is inevitable.
•  The state is a Western construct
•  internationally.
Those who stand against Daesh will find no
•  best replaced by an Islamic state Messages of success.
• 
mercy and their fate will be grim. under Sharia law.
Threats to Nigerian economic
• 
interest and media.
Lines of Excitement/danger to lure bored/
•  Happy fighters mixing with locals, children.
•  In the context of northern Nigeria,
•  Use culturally relevant
• 
persuasion unemployed youth. Via Islamic imagery, music, quotes.
•  this resonates with Boko Haram’s communications.
Authority of significant spokespersons.
•  Uses modern computer game formats (e.g.
•  members and supporters in that the YouTube posts depict
• 
Speed of response to unpredictable
•  Grand Theft Auto and Battlefield). Western or Western-style education of intense combat training
events. Exciting (slow motion, night-time footage).
•  a Nigerian elite and institutions of the regime.
Dramaturgy, the suicide bomber
•  Nigerian state have failed to address YouTube videos include
• 
Graphic violence on the enemy.
• 
narrative, of pious Islamic warrior, poverty and disadvantage for young interviews with foreign
Happiness/peaceful death in combat.
• 
melds theatre and ritual, intermixing people, particularly young men. fighters discussing why they
Islamic justification for violence and duty to
• 
life and death. Images of captured weapons and
•  decided to join the group,
violent struggle (jihad).
‘Vox populi’ method where ordinary
•  equipment meant to illustrate the to glorify the experience.
Emphasizes swiftness and victory.
• 
Palestinians in the street express their capability and enduring power Videos show fighters
• 
The resources available to Daesh.
•  of Boko Haram, relative to the
rage – set against other voices – rapping about jihad in
That Daesh fights with passion and for a good
•  Nigerian armed forces and police.
notes of calm authority – the rational Somalia amidst images of
center of an irrational world.
cause but the enemy’s is not and so they will lose. •  Quick to provide footage or images combat, dead bodies, and
Discusses possibility of death, emphasizing afterlife.
•  of successful attacks/aftermath, cheering children.
Emancipation of death as an ideal
• 
TOWARDS THE MEASUREMENT OF ISLAMIST PROPAGANDA EFFECTIVENESS

In murdering hostages, blame is placed on

•  and rationale for actions. Rap videos exploit gabei
• 
for the Muslim.
foreign nations’ leaders. poetry tradition unique to
Opportunities to celebrate fantasy.
• 
Media targeted to segmented audiences.
•  Somalia.
Piety.
• 
Produced in Arabic, with a translation service Respond rapidly to events
• 
A binary universe: luxury/austerity:
•  to English, English and also languages found in or tweets live.
241

good/evil: Muslim/infidel: paradise/ Pakistan and India. ‘Softer’ videos for Western
hell – ‘sorts’ a complex world. eyes, where the execution takes place off camera.
(Continued)
 242

Appendix 14.1  Aims, narratives, lines of persuasion and dissemination used by four main Islamist terrorist groups (Continued)
Analysis Items Al-Qaeda (and its subsidiaries) Daesh Boko Haram (Daesh West African Al Shabab (Al-Qaeda affiliate
Province since 2015) in Somalia since 2012)

Propaganda Self-referential online propaganda,

•  Media distribution media through fronts,
•  Release of video, with leader
•   Via:
dissemination video of events and statements. such as Al Furqan Media and Al Hayat Media speaking direct to camera. Al Khataib media
• 
Efficacy established through first-
•  Center. First-hand video.
•  production group.
hand imagery and timely reporting ‘Official’ releases on Twitter, Facebook and
•  Via social media e.g. Facebook,
•  Via YouTube, Twitter.
• 
and response. YouTube. Twitter. Live interviews and
• 
Glossy online magazine (AQAP:
•  Regional press offices (‘Wilayat’).
•  Supporters generate and
•  relationship with journalists.
‘Inspire’). Fighters’ tweets.
•  redistribute material. Soundbites and catchy
• 
Messages picked up, echoed and passed on by
•  phrases – to suit traditional
‘media mujahidin’. media.
Glossy online magazine (‘Dabiq’), videos, and
•  Live tweeting as attacks are
• 
‘documentaries’. in progress.

Source: Adapted from Jones et al., 2015, 353–355.

THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
 PART III
Tools and Techniques in
Counter-Propaganda Research
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Propaganda and Disinformation:
How a Historical Perspective Aids
Critical Response Development
INTRODUCTION
Both propaganda and disinformation have
been employed as tools of statecraft for cen-
turies in the service of causes worthy and
unworthy. In an age of instant global media
and 24-hour news, it is important for both
policymakers and the general public to try to
understand what they both mean and how
they intersect. This chapter begins by consid-
ering the difficulties of reaching definitions
that are both workable and acceptable, when
so many of the concepts involved rely on
subjective judgement. It will then go on to
explore some examples of the use of the
terms propaganda and disinformation in a
historical context, to try and discover where
the dividing line between them may lie – if it
exists at all – and whether those examples
can offer helpful points on how to develop an
effective critical response.
15
Gill Bennett
PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION AND
SUBJECTIVITY
It is counter-productive to spend too much
time considering the definition of terms, a
discussion impossible to conclude satisfacto-
rily. Grammatical definitions cannot address
the main problem, which is that the concepts
involved are subjective. Not everyone has the
same idea of truth or falsehood, justice,
morality or the public interest; all concepts
that are innate to both propaganda and disin-
formation. Those who disseminate either
propaganda or disinformation, even if they
know that it is based on falsehood, may con-
sider their actions are rooted in superior
judgement, essential to the maintenance of
political authority or justified by the benefi-
cial outcome they hope to achieve. In certain
situations, involving armed conflict or threats
to national security, democratic governments
246 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
may bend or suspend the normal ‘rules’ of
accuracy and transparency. Non-state actors,
such as campaigning organisations or those
with a strong ideological or religious impera-
tive, may feel justified in using both propa-
ganda and disinformation in order to reinforce
their arguments. All this muddies the narrow
straits between propaganda and disinforma-
tion, and makes it necessary to pay some
attention to their meaning.
Deriving from the Latin verb propagare,
meaning to spread, or enlarge, the gerundive
form of the verb, propaganda, carries a pur-
posive meaning: in the present context, there-
fore, it means information that needs to be,
should be or is intended to be disseminated.
From this comes the understanding that prop-
aganda is intended not just to inform, but to
persuade. It may be intended, for example, to
communicate important information to the
population, to persuade them to act in their
own, or the state’s best interests, or to warn of
an impending crisis. In wartime, these com-
munications may be stirringly patriotic (Your
country needs you!’ ‘Dig for Victory!’),
while in peacetime, campaigns may be aimed
at improving public health or road safety
(‘Stop, Look and Listen!’), or to influence
voters in favour of a political party during
an election or referendum campaign (‘Vote
Leave!’). There is, however, no clue within
the word propaganda itself as to whether the
information to be disseminated is factual
or inaccurate (whether by design or error),
so clearly one function of propaganda may
be, in some circumstances, to spread false
information.1 Jay Black, in an article on
the semantics and ethics of propaganda,
wrote that ‘how we define the slippery enter-
prise determines whether we perceive propa-
ganda to be ethical or unethical’.2 Perception,
however, is subjective.
In the modern period and in certain con-
texts, for example in the military and social
sciences, propaganda has typically been
divided into categories, black (false infor-
mation from a false source), white (accu-
rate information from a correctly identified
source) and, sometimes, grey (somewhere in
between, with both source and information
of uncertain provenance).3 This categorisa-
tion is useful in theoretical discussion, but
less so when considering historical exam-
ples, since those involved in creating and dis-
seminating propaganda tended to have their
own terminology or apply such distinctions
only to opponents, rather than to themselves.
This is particularly true, for example, when
a state or government department initiates a
propaganda campaign in direct response to
a hostile campaign mounted by an opposing
state; in such a case, disguising a source or
fabricating information might be regarded
as a legitimate part of the campaign, clas-
sified ‘white’ because its target is ‘black’.
This complicates still further the distinction
between propaganda and disinformation.
Dictionary definitions generally agree that
disinformation is false information communi-
cated with the intention to deceive: it may have
a basis in fact, but its purpose is to mislead the
recipient. This is said to distinguish it from
misinformation which may be false, but not
intentionally misleading; though when picking
misinformation as ‘word of the year’ for 2018,
Dictonary.com defined misinformation as
‘false information that is spread, regardless of
whether there is intent to mislead’, and insisted
that the difference between dis- and mis- infor-
mation ‘comes down to intent’.4 In other words,
disinformation sets out to do harm, misinfor-
mation may not. But any assessment of intent
is inevitably subjective; whether information
is considered to be false, or distributed with
harmful intent, depends on the viewpoint of the
recipient. The fact that in the digital age large
amounts of information are generated and dis-
tributed automatically complicates the distinc-
tion, since it may not be clear whether it is the
content, the apparent source, or the context that
has been manipulated. Despite the increasing
volume of comment and analysis of disinfor-
mation and related concepts such as fake news
or post-truth, a search for objective definitions
seems, therefore, unhelpfully distracting. In
this situation, the classification of ‘Information
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
Disorder’ put forward in a 2017 Council of
Europe report to cover all bases, seems useful.5
(Although ‘Information Warfare’ captures the
aggressive aspects, its military connotations
make its use problematic.6)
In times ancient and modern, rulers and
governments have exploited ‘information
disorder’ both to deceive opponents and to
influence their own citizens, and to promote
their own agenda. It is not hard to think of
both historical and more modern examples
where both authoritarian and democratic
regimes, as well as non-state actors, have
justified such tactics for the same reasons.
But though there has evolved a perception of
propaganda as generally ‘true’ and disinfor-
mation ‘false’, the distinction between them
is bedevilled by subjective judgement. For
example, a propaganda campaign to encour-
age people to vaccinate their children against
dangerous diseases may seem like promoting
the public good, but in some societies, it is
regarded with intense suspicion as spreading
false information to mask malicious intent
on the part of those promoting the campaign.
Many people may consider that some histori-
cal examples of propaganda are obviously
‘wrong’ – such as Nazi propaganda spread-
ing the idea of a global Jewish conspiracy,
encouraging a prejudice fuelled by fake texts
such as the so-called ‘Protocols of the Elders
of Zion’7 – but take a more ambivalent view
of the dissemination of exaggerated material
in order to persuade people to vote in favour
of a political party, or a course of action,
that those in authority genuinely believe
to be beneficial. Where is the dividing line
between a government’s right to persuade
and the public’s right to free choice?8 When
is propaganda the useful spreading of infor-
mation or the dangerous distortion of facts,
that is, disinformation?
Such questions can never be answered
conclusively, because the distinction clearly
depends on the intent of the source of the
information as well as its content. While there
may be general agreement that the deliberate
use of false information is pernicious, it can
247
be very difficult to distinguish between the
accidental dissemination of untruths and a
calculated strategy of deceit. This is particu-
larly true in the digital age, where a theory,
ideology or piece of information, true or
false, can be sent around the world in sec-
onds by means of the internet. Candidates in
elections all around the world promote posi-
tive information and pledges about their own
intentions and policies, while criticising those
of their opponents; and while the outright use
of falsehood may spark outrage, our percep-
tion about the accuracy of this information
is clouded by our own convictions. The end
result may be a widespread belief that no-one
and nothing can be trusted, and that ‘truth’
is a subjective concept, masking the distinc-
tion between propaganda and disinformation
even further and undermining public trust in
authority, as well as encouraging the devel-
opment of conspiracy theories.9
The Greeks Had A Word For It
Despite some recent attempts to link the
origin of the use of the term to the Russian
word dezinformatsiya, adopted by Soviet
intelligence organisations during the Cold
War to denote an operational device intended
to give the enemy a false picture of events,
and influence his decision-making,10 disin-
formation is a far more ancient concept.
Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian
War written in the 5th century BCE, wrote
about the deliberate manipulation of informa-
tion in order to influence decision-making,
and the corruption of public discourse to an
extent that ‘a man with good advice to give
has to tell lies if he expects to be believed’. At
a time when rhetoric, the art of speaking or
writing in order to persuade or influence
people, was regarded as an essential skill for
public figures, the way in which information
was imparted was a key element in demo-
cratic discourse. Thucydides makes it clear
that some of the most persuasive arguments
in favour of an Athenian decision to mount a
248 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
risky military expedition, or to put down a
rebellion, were at best dubious and some-
times completely false.11
In The Republic, Plato has Socrates argue
that rulers are entitled, and sometimes have
a duty to disseminate false information – the
‘noble lie’ – in order to promote the well-
being of citizens and the stability of the state;
in the ‘right hands’, a lie can be useful against
enemies and a way of diverting friends from
‘madness or folly’.12 With the development
of international maritime trade, increase in
immigration and the decline or religion and
magic, 5th century BCE Athenian oligarchs
felt their authority and the stability of society
threatened, and felt the need to disseminate a
narrative – if necessary a noble lie – to coun-
ter a breakdown in the old patterns of trust
and deference.13 The argument seems strik-
ingly contemporary, and it is not hard to map
these classical references onto present day
concerns and political discourse. And even
if the term ‘propaganda’ was not used in its
modern sense in classical times, that is clearly
what Thucydides, Plato and other contem-
porary writers are talking about in some of
their discussions of rhetoric, persuasion and
manipulation of information. Going back to
these classical texts is not merely a way of
confirming that there is nothing new about
propaganda or disinformation. Thucydides’
discussion of the relationship between rheto-
ric and historical truth14 is directly relevant
when considering the relationship between
fact-based evidence and comment on social
media, as shown in evidence presented to the
House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media
Sport Committee during its investigation into
Disinformation and Fake News.15
Evolving Concepts of Propaganda
and Disinformation
In the context of the current discussion of
propaganda and disinformation, it is impor-
tant to be wary of the narrative that propa-
ganda is a long-established method of
disseminating information intended to per-
suade, while disinformation, intended to
deceive, is a more recent strategy, employed
by opponents rather than allies. In propa-
ganda, the argument runs, material dissemi-
nated may be exaggerated or distorted, but its
purpose is essentially benign, and it may be a
legitimate tool of public diplomacy or com-
mercial strategy. Disinformation, as its name
suggests, involves falsehood, and digital
media enable its dissemination on a global
scale and at very high speed. While the sub-
jective element means it is difficult to draw a
definitive line drawn between propaganda and
disinformation, history can, nevertheless, help
to shed some light on the question and per-
haps carry the debate further. What follows
will consider some past attempts to define the
relationship between propaganda and disin-
formation, including some more detailed
examples that demonstrate its complexities.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the
word propaganda was used principally to
denote the spreading or promotion of religious
doctrine to the faithful (or faithless), before
acquiring the broader military and political
connotations in common use today. The evolv-
ing interpretation of the term had its roots in a
number of developments during the 19th and
early 20th centuries. First, the combination of
greater levels of public literacy through the
broadening of compulsory primary education
and the increasingly widespread availability
of printed information (newspapers with for-
eign correspondents, as well as books and
pamphlets), and later, the early use of wireless
technology, made it easier for governments,
political parties or even commercial interests,
to get their message out to the general public.
The second catalyst was global conflict.
Weaponising Information:
The First World War
The First World War (1914–1918) saw the
first organised use of mass propaganda by
governments on both sides of the conflict, as
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
well as technological developments, such as
wireless telegraph services, and the use of
aircraft to drop printed material over enemy
territory, that made dissemination easier.
Each side wanted to convince their own
populace and the wider world of the right-
eousness of their own cause, to promote
recruitment and boost the morale of their
own military forces. This might seem to fall
squarely into the realm of propaganda, but
each side also wished to paint its enemies in
the blackest possible light, to demoralise and
confuse them, to deter potential allies and to
persuade their opponents, if possible, into
taking decisions based on false information
about the course of the conflict. This involved
making use of information that was at best
exaggerated, and often known to be untrue,
in order to achieve these objectives. Some of
those in charge, like Charles Masterman who
headed the British War Propaganda Bureau
(Wellington House), refused to spread some
of the more lurid stories, such as a rumour
about Germans cutting the hands off a
Belgian baby: ‘Find me the name of the hos-
pital where the baby is and get me a signed
statement from the doctor and I’ll listen’.16
But he also arranged for Wellington House to
distribute millions of books, pamphlets and
speeches in support of the British war effort,
using commercial publishers so that the
material could not be linked back to the gov-
ernment; an early use of ‘unattributable
material’ that was to become a staple tech-
nique of propagandists.17
A related development during the war was
the use of propaganda and disinformation as
a valuable tool for the purposes of espionage
and counter-espionage. Of course, spying was
not invented during the First World War, but
the conflict produced an exponential growth in
the secret intelligence capabilities and organi-
sations of the warring states. This was true in
France, Germany and Russia, for example,
and in the United States after its entry into
the war in 1917 (though the United States had
a temporary fit of revulsion against ungen-
tlemanly conduct in the post-war period18).
249
In Britain, the Secret Service Bureau cre-
ated in 1909 under the shadow of impending
war with Germany had divided a year later
into two agencies concerned with domestic
(MI5) and foreign intelligence (the Secret
Intelligence Service, SIS, originally called
MI1(c)). In addition, between 1914 and 1918,
the Admiralty and War Office both devel-
oped significant signals intelligence capabil-
ity in intercepting and deciphering enemy
wireless communications. Although during
the war, the efforts of these secret bodies
were under military direction, each devel-
oped an independent capability that was
to form the basis of their post-war activi-
ties (the Admiralty and War Office Signals
Intelligence [SIGINT] sections combining
to form the Government Code and Cypher
School [GC&CS], precursor of Government
Communications Headquarters, GCHQ).19
All these secret intelligence organisations
found that the manipulation of information
was a valuable means of encouraging allies
and undermining opponents, as well as gath-
ering useful intelligence from material dis-
seminated by the enemy. Propaganda could
be used to inculcate a spirit of vigilance and
patriotism in the population at home, or to
disseminate overseas disinformation giving
a false picture of the progress of the war.
The spy fever and public paranoia encour-
aged in the years immediately preceding the
war in Britain by writers like William Le
Queux, who wrote over 150 novels about
international intrigue and Britain’s vulner-
ability to European invasion, including The
Invasion of 1910 and Spies of the Kaiser, or
by Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands, or
John Buchan’s tales of foreign perfidy foiled
by patriotic Britons, proved valuable to MI5
in sensitising the general public to the need
for vigilance and security, even if the number
of German spies unmasked turned out to be
very small.20
For SIS, intelligence reports received from
agents overseas, as well as material contained
in enemy communications intercepted by the
Admiralty or War Office, could provide useful
250 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
information on what the population in enemy
countries believed, feared or were ignorant
of, were important – alongside intelligence
on military matters. They could also use their
agents overseas to plant information intended
to mislead the enemy. Rapid technological
developments during the First World War
encouraged the use of information warfare by
all intelligence-gathering organisations, civil
or military. Although the agencies suffered
drastic cuts in manpower and resources at the
end of the First World War (an example of the
illusory concept of a ‘peace dividend’ that was
repeated after 1945 and again after 1991), the
use of information, true or false – propaganda
or disinformation – had found a permanent
place in the secret intelligence toolkit.
The Interwar Period
During the period 1918 to 1939, the meaning
of propaganda and disinformation evolved
still further. Further expansion of education,
literacy and mass communications, together
with the growth of the advertising industry,
meant that more and more people were
exposed to commercial propaganda. This
could be more subtle, even subliminal, but
persistent and inexorable: claims that certain
foods were good for you, washing powders
that washed whiter, cigarettes that made you
feel relaxed and sophisticated; exaggerated
claims, rather than being deceitful. At the
same time, there was an element of public
revulsion against government and military
propaganda in Britain and France, and in
other countries devastated by the earlier con-
flict, when it became clear that much of the
information disseminated by the government
during the First World War was untrue, while
the real of horror of the conflict had been
concealed. In Germany, resentment grew as
the military, outraged by what they regarded
as an unjustified surrender in 1918, mounted
a propaganda campaign based on the idea
that the German armies had not been defeated
but had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the
civilian population, and undermined by
British propaganda and Bolshevik ‘poison’.21
This provided a fertile breeding ground for
National Socialism. On both sides, bitterness
and loss were compounded by economic fac-
tors, exacerbated by the depression of the
early 1930s, resentments that were to lead to
a second global conflict.
From a 21st century standpoint, the use of
information, and the means of its dissemi-
nation during the 20 years between the two
20th century world wars may seem outdated
and irrelevant, overtaken by political evolu-
tion and technological revolution. Yet it is
an example from this period, the Zinoviev
Letter episode of 1924,that is instructive.
Despite occurring nearly a century ago, this
episode (like Thucydides and Plato) contains
elements that are strikingly relevant to con-
temporary circumstances.
The Zinoviev Letter: A Classic Case
of Disinformation22
The Zinoviev Letter was ostensibly addressed
in September 1924 by Grigori Zinoviev, the
head of the Bolshevik propaganda organisa-
tion, the Third Communist International or
Comintern, to the Central Committee of the
British Communist Party. It exhorted them to
greater revolutionary effort, and to lobby the
British government – the first ever Labour
government that had taken office in January
1924, headed by Ramsay MacDonald – to
push through Parliament Anglo-Russian trea-
ties that would guarantee a much-needed
loan for the Soviet regime. Almost certainly
a forgery, the Letter reached London through
secret intelligence channels, arriving just as
the Labour government had resigned over a
vote of no confidence; it was leaked to the
right-wing press and it was used to discredit
the Labour party in the general election cam-
paign by emphasising Labour’s supposed
close connection with the communists and
spreading the idea that the British govern-
ment had been in thrall to Moscow.
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
Though the result of the October 1924 elec-
tion, a Conservative victory, was not affected
decisively by the Zinoviev Letter (Labour
actually polled one million more votes than
in the election that had put them in power),
its use during the campaign had a profound
effect, not least because of the suspicions and
uncertainties it engendered. Zinoviev denied
writing it and the British Communists receiv-
ing it, and though neither seemed a trustwor-
thy source and official investigations by both
Labour and Conservative cabinets authenti-
cated it initially, forgery was soon suspected,
with possible authors including both ‘Red’
and ‘White’ (non-Bolshevik) Russians,
Polish and German intelligence organisa-
tions, the Conservative Party, the British
Foreign Office and all parts of the security
and intelligence establishment. Depending
on the viewpoint of the observer, there-
fore, motives for the Letter included: trying
to disrupt the political process in Britain; to
discredit the right-wing ‘Establishment’; to
damage the Labour Party; to promote Soviet
propaganda objectives; or to undermine the
credibility of the Soviet regime and expose
its subversive tactics. Since it proved impos-
sible to be sure whether the Zinoviev Letter
was genuine or false, by whom it was forged,
leaked or manipulated, it was impossible to
know who devised or mounted the campaign,
for what purpose and with whose help. The
Soviet regime itself put forward a number
of competing narratives, keeping the story
alive. Even if genuine (and it is not impossi-
ble that it was forged in Moscow, to discredit
Zinoviev in an inter-Bolshevik power strug-
gle), the way that the Letter was used in order
to influence the British electorate against the
Labour Party during a general election cam-
paign qualifies as a disinformation campaign.
No original was ever found and authorship
has never been determined conclusively,
ensuring that this particular political conspir-
acy has retained a potent resonance in British
politics ever since.
The wider context of the Zinoviev Letter
affair is equally relevant to the relationship
251
between propaganda and disinformation,
and to the contemporary understanding of it.
It was entirely in keeping with the strategy
and tactics of Zinoviev and his Russian col-
leagues to send such a letter. The Bolshevik
regime established after the revolution of
October 1917 regarded propaganda as a
principal and legitimate tool of statecraft,
not surprisingly since its aim was to incite
world revolution, as well as reinforcing the
success of the communist ideal to an inter-
nal audience, the peoples of the USSR. The
distinction between truth and falsehood was
not material, since the ends – the destabi-
lising of capitalism and the security of the
Soviet state – were regarded as justifying the
means.23 Britain and its Empire, particularly
countries like Afghanistan and India border-
ing on the Soviet Union, were prime targets
of such propaganda, disseminated through
espionage and subversion, forged documents
and planted articles as well as more overt
channels. Some material was factual, some
distorted and some completely false, and the
secrecy of the Soviet regime made it very
difficult to discern the difference. In addi-
tion to material propagated from Moscow,
the Bolsheviks used a wide range of organi-
sations and interest groups throughout the
world to spread their message, infiltrating
anti-Bolshevik groups in order to spread dis-
information in their ranks as well. Despite
the lack of modern technology, they achieved
global reach through a sophisticated network
of agents and agencies motivated by ideol-
ogy, greed and a predilection for subterfuge:
the example of Vladimir Orlov, who had
worked for both Tsarist and Bolshevik intel-
ligence and in the 1920s ran a forgery bureau
in Berlin supplying documents, genuine and
manufactured, to anyone who would pay, is
a case in point (he was even thought to have
been one of the forgers responsible for the
Procotols of the Elders of Zion).24
It is hard to counter effectively those who
use propaganda and disinformation inter-
changeably as a tool of statecraft without
regard as to how they are perceived externally,
252 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
particularly if the object is disruption and
undermining of public confidence rather than
a specific target. Even with the availability
of sophisticated technological tools that can
identify deliberate disinformation and trace
its source, proving its impact on an event or
outcome is much more difficult: detecting
foreign interference in an election process
through a disinformation campaign is easier
than proving such interference influenced the
result. This is as true nearly a century later
as it was in 1924, as shown by the ongoing
investigations into possible Russian interfer-
ence in the US 2016 Presidential Election.25
The Bolsheviks made no secret of their
desire to foment revolution and overthrow
capitalism, adopting a standard response if
challenged: denial, while accusing the chal-
lenger of spreading disinformation. Again,
this remains a classic strategy of disinforma-
tion purveyors, with the added advantage of
convincing a domestic audience of what their
government wishes them to believe.
Yet the very scale and aggression of
Bolshevik propaganda meant that it could
be useful to those responsible for mounting
a response. During the period from 1917
until the mid-1930s (when the Nazi threat
became more urgent), the primary focus of
British and other Western European intelli-
gence organisations was the Bolshevik tar-
get. All kept extensive records on Bolshevik
propaganda activities throughout the world,
which helped to inform counter-intelligence
operations against Russian subversion and
espionage, to improve understanding of
Soviet intentions, organisations and policy,
and as a helpful guide to the depth and accu-
racy of the information collected by Moscow
about Western intentions, organisations and
policy. Knowing what the Bolsheviks did
not know could be very helpful: although
when Soviet documents appeared to reveal
a woeful level of ignorance, those evaluating
them had to take into account that they might
have been concocted in the knowledge that
they would fall into the hands of those they
were targeting; another means of propagating
disinformation.26 Although methodology,
technical means of collecting intelligence
and sophisticated counter-intelligence tech-
niques have developed a great deal since the
Bolshevik period, these fundamental princi-
ples can still inform a response to disinfor-
mation campaigns mounted by states intent
on disruption and subversion. The wide-
spread availability of open source evidence
of disinformation and propaganda activities
by a range of states, together with the intelli-
gence collected by covert means, can inform
contemporary responses to hostile campaigns
in just the same way.
Uses of Propaganda and
Disinformation in the Second
World War
The difficulties faced by governments, offi-
cials and the general public of distinguishing
between factual and misleading material –
propaganda and disinformation, if the dis-
tinction is maintained – were sharpened
during the Second World War, when informa-
tion warfare became even more pervasive
and sophisticated. British authorities, includ-
ing the Ministry of Information and the
Political Warfare Executive (PWE),27 drew a
distinction between what was called ‘White’
and ‘Black’ propaganda28 in preparing their
response to the aggressive and information
warfare mounted by enemy opponents, par-
ticularly Nazi Germany under the Minister of
Propaganda, Josef Goebbels. For PWE,
white propaganda was understood to have a
factual base, albeit slanted in favour of those
disseminating it. It was often spread through
the press, broadcasting (with the help of the
BBC) and film, and included using BBC
broadcasts to publicise (positive) news of
Allied achievements and promote the war
effort.29 It also promoted information cam-
paigns to persuade the general populace to
conserve food, grow vegetables and work
more productively in factories; propaganda
films, such as the 1942 film Night Shift
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
encouraging women to work in industry and
describing their ‘curls showing under their
caps’ as they worked ‘energetically’, fell into
this category.30 White propaganda included
factual material intended for overseas con-
sumption, to spread war news, keep alive the
spirit of resistance and counter propaganda
put out by the enemy.
What PWE termed ‘black’ propaganda, on
the other hand, was disinformation, though
the term was not often used. Essentially cov-
ert, created and disseminated clandestinely,
sometimes in collaboration with the secret
intelligence organisations, it might involve
forgery, or the use of radio broadcasts to
undermine enemy morale or to encourage
subversion and sabotage. It also included
the false material – chickenfeed, in intel-
ligence parlance – fed by to the enemy by
deception, by agents overseas or by double
agents such as those ‘turned’ by MI5 in the
Double Cross system.31 In PWE, journalist
Sefton Delmer and his colleagues mounted
a hair-raising series of operations designed
to demoralise Germany and her allies, sow
rumours, deceive the population and pro-
mote anti-Nazi activity throughout occupied
Europe. This included broadcasting pornog-
raphy as a way of attracting German radio
audiences, and spreading a rumour that the
British government had imported 200 man-
eating sharks from Australia for release in the
English Channel to eat Germans whose boats
had been sunk (the latter surely qualifying as
a piece of disinformation).
In wartime, many norms of governmental
and public conduct are suspended or disre-
garded; and after the conflict is over, those
on the winning side are usually willing to
accept, or even celebrate the successful use
of tactics, including deception, disinforma-
tion, sabotage and subversion, that would
not be regarded as acceptable in peacetime.
Indeed, the enduring popularity of documen-
taries and films about the Second World War
might itself be seen as a form of propaganda,
in the sense of perpetuating the positive per-
ception of such tactics. Even if their portrayal
253
takes liberties with the facts, it is accepted as
dramatic licence, rather than disinformation.
Overall, the distinction articulated during the
Second World War reflected general agree-
ment that ‘white’ propaganda was essentially
truthful, and ‘black’ false, that is, disinforma-
tion, although various shades of grey might
be found in between. That understanding,
however, also depends on subjective judge-
ment. For those on the losing side, or who
felt the post-war settlement neglected or
damaged their national interests, propaganda
might be used to rationalise defeat, to create a
more positive or hopeful version of events, or
to perpetuate resentment. As with the peace
settlements at the end of the First World
War, the way in which the 1939–1945 con-
flict ended, and its consequent impact on the
political or economic situation of victors and
vanquished alike, had an enduring impact.
In this context, propaganda could form the
basis for the construction or manipulation of
a national narrative.
The Role of Information in the
Cold War
During the 40 years from the immediate
post-war period until the collapse of the
Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact between 1989
and 1991, governments on both sides of the
East-West conflict commonly called the Cold
War used both overt and covert information
warfare in order to undermine the security of
the other, as well as to convince their own
citizens of the justice of their cause. At one
level, the conflict was ideologically driven,
rooted in communism and capitalism, pro-
viding a basis for East and West to promote
the moral superiority and success (military,
political and social) of their respective sys-
tems. Each side used propaganda to project
an image of themselves that would deter
defectors and demoralise opponents, as well
as reassuring their citizens of the rightness of
their cause. In the case of the Eastern bloc,
this meant restricting severely the ability of
254 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
citizens to travel overseas, to avoid exposure
to Western prosperity and compare their own
position unfavourably. In the West, this
meant continuing suspicion and opposition
to extreme left-wing politics, particularly in
the United States. The resulting distortion
meant each side had an imperfect under-
standing of the true position of the other’s
strength and weaknesses, despite intensive
intelligence-gathering activities.
Three examples from the so-called Cold
War period offer an illustration of how dif-
ficult it is to disentangle the meaning of
propaganda from that of disinformation, and
how the subjective judgement of intent com-
plicates the task. The first, and most detailed
is an example from the early post-war years,
the creation of the British Foreign Office’s
Information Research Department (IRD) in
1948; the second concerns the information
aspects of the British campaign against insur-
gency in Indonesia in the 1960s; the third
draws on an analysis by a former CIA ana-
lyst on the importance of achieving ‘strategic
surprise’.
For the first two years after the Second
World War, the British government under
Clement Attlee that took office after Labour’s
victory in the General Election of July 1945
pursued a policy of cautious and defen-
sive cooperation with the Soviet Union, a
key member of the victorious wartime ‘Big
Three’. Military alliance with the West dur-
ing the war had not moderated the Soviet
ideological stance, and difficult negotiations
over peace-making soon confirmed that the
Russians were not just going to be tough and
aggressive interlocutors, but were mounting
a propaganda campaign throughout Europe,
in the Middle East, in Asia and indeed glob-
ally, to counter what they regarded as a tri-
umphalist Western narrative and American
economic imperialism. Since the campaign
tactics included subversion and espionage,
as well as encouraging colonial insurgen-
cies and supporting local communist parties,
the distinction between disinformation and
propaganda was blurred. According to the
Soviet narrative, if Allied victory had, as the
Americans said, made the world safe for lib-
eral democracy, why should it not also make
the world safe for state socialism? And if
the Americans could ‘interfere’ in European
states through the European Recovery
Programme, or Marshall Plan, launched
by the United States to help its Western
European allies in 1947,32 why should there
not be a similar grouping in the East, domi-
nated by the Soviet Union? By the autumn of
1947, it was clear that Stalin’s plans for exert-
ing political control on the states bordering
the USSR and their immediate neighbours
posed a threat to Western interests, not just in
Europe but globally, that required a response.
For the Soviet Union, 30 years’ experience
of Bolshevik propaganda, disseminated on
a global scale as described earlier, provided
the perfect basis for a renewed campaign of
information warfare; it was almost a seam-
less transition. The campaign was formal-
ised in October 1947 at a conference held in
Poland, when nine communist states declared
ideological warfare against the ‘imperial-
ism’ of the US and UK, and announced the
establishment of an Information Bureau (the
Cominform) to coordinate activities and
information. This declaration, in the view
of the Foreign Office’s Russia Committee,
marked the end of the ‘Popular Front’ phase –
exerting influence through cooperation with
communist parties in other countries – and the
opening of a new phase that might be called
‘Communism versus the Rest’, designed to
undermine other countries’ socialist or social
democratic parties in favour of communists.33
By contrast, the British government’s infor-
mation warfare capability had been diffused
and diluted at the end of the war. With the
winding up of the Ministry of Information in
March 1946, its responsibilities had devolved
to the Foreign, Colonial and Commonwealth
Relations Offices, the Board of Trade and the
newly created Central Office of Information.
Within the Foreign Office itself, a number
of different departments, including a News
Department and an Information Policy
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
Department, pursued parallel and sometimes
conflicting campaigns, working through
overseas missions and putting out overlap-
ping publications. But none of these efforts
was targeted specifically at countering com-
munist propaganda until the creation of the
Information Research Department in 1948.
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin did not give
his agreement for a targeted strategy until the
end of 1947, even though a number of diplo-
mats and officials, particularly those with long
experience of dealing with Russia, had long
argued in favour of a more aggressive policy.34
Bevin, though firmly anti-Communist,
understood Stalin’s determination to keep his
place at the top table, to establish Russia as a
superpower on equal footing with the United
States, to gain recognition for the enormous
human and material sacrifice that Russia
had made in pursuit of Allied victory, and
to secure as much reparation as possible to
restore the Soviet economy. He also under-
stood the resentment felt in Russia against
what was regarded as American arrogance,
if not imperialism: indeed, a large section of
Bevin’s own party shared that view, though
he and Attlee understood the vital importance
of solidarity with the United States. In long
and draining negotiations on the post-war set-
tlement, Bevin had tried to pursue a fair, but
robust policy in response to Russian intransi-
gence, but by the end of 1947, the breakdown
of yet another Council of Foreign Ministers
meeting, combined with evidence that Soviet
propaganda was damaging Western credibil-
ity in key areas such as the Middle East,35
finally persuaded Bevin to approve plans
for a response. It is the strategy underly-
ing these plans, far more nuanced than the
standard anti-Communist line pursued by the
Americans, that is interesting in the context
of information warfare. For at this stage, the
war was to be one of words, not weapons.
In a memorandum presented to the Cabinet
in January 1948, entitled ‘Future Foreign
Publicity’, Bevin argued that to counter the
threat to Western civilisation from Soviet Russia
and the Communist bloc, it was necessary to
255
mobilise ‘spiritual forces’, as well as political
and material ones. He carefully drew a distinc-
tion between Britain and Europe on the one
hand, and the United States on the other:
It is for us, as Europeans and as a Social Democratic
Government, and not the Americans, to give the
lead in spiritual, moral and political sphere to all
the democratic elements in Western Europe which
are anti-Communist and, at the same time, genu-
inely progressive and reformist, believing in free-
dom, planning and social justice – what one might
call the ‘Third Force’.
Hitherto, he said, Soviet propaganda had
dominated the public space, while Britain had
attempted to be non-provocative. Now it was
time to go on to the offensive, but in order
for the message to reach the broad mass of
workers and peasants across the globe, rather
than scaring people by stressing Communist
aggression and the level of danger posed by
the Soviet bloc, British strategy should be to
relax international tension. Despite the close-
ness of the Anglo-American relationship
(especially in matters of security and intel­
ligence), Bevin deliberately emphasised the
differences between Europe and the United
States in their approach to the Eastern bloc,
positioning Britain as a bridge between the
two.36 ‘What we have to offer in contrast to
totalitarian Communism and laissez-faire
capitalism’, Bevin wrote, ‘are the vital and
progressive ideas of British Social Democracy
and Western European civilisation’. It was a
classic propaganda strategy, designed to per-
suade a mass audience of the advantages of
freedom and social democracy, as opposed to
communism imposed by an authoritarian state.
Cabinet approval of the strategy set the
wheels in motion for the creation of the new FO
Information Research Department, tasked with
countering communist propaganda. Its mis-
sion was to disseminate factual information –
White propaganda, to use the wartime
term – to counter what was regarded as dis-
information – Black propaganda – being put
out by the Soviet Union and other communist
countries. But if regarded from the viewpoint
of the Eastern bloc, these categorisations
256 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
would naturally be reversed. Both sides con-
tinued this information warfare until the end
of the Cold War (though IRD was wound up
in 1977 by Foreign Secretary David Owen,
who disapproved of its secretive nature).
Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, with
the virtual removal of the ideological element
from the modern concept of information war-
fare, commentary on IRD’s work has been
generally critical, based on its secrecy, the use
of prominent writers and publishers to ‘front’
its product, the semi-detached relationship it
maintained with the rest of the Foreign Office
and its ties with the intelligence establishment.
There is almost a presumption that while dis-
information was only to be expected from
the Communist bloc, the Western counterpart
should (sticking to the colour metaphor) have
been whiter than white. Instead, the percep-
tion remains that IRD propaganda was ‘never
white and rarely black, but spanned a range
of greys’.37 In recent years, a considerable
amount of IRD documentation has been trans-
ferred to The National Archives, enabling a
more balanced view to be taken of its activi-
ties, but the full story of IRD has yet to be
told. But it is the context of the department’s
creation, and an understanding of the subjec-
tive element in assessing its work, that sheds
light on the complexities of the debate, and of
the role of subjective judgement – of discern-
ing intent – in defining what is propaganda,
and what disinformation.
During the Cold War, these problems of defi-
nition preoccupied a number of analysts, as well
as those directly involved in adversarial infor-
mation activities, as the following two short
examples illustrate. Sir Robert Thompson, who
wrote a seminal work, Defeating Communist
Insurgency, based on his experience as a
British commander fighting insurgencies in
Malaya and Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s,
had some useful observations on what he
called ‘information work’, vital to the success-
ful implementation of a strategy that has been
quoted ever since for its emphasis on winning
‘hearts and minds’. Though Thompson said
firmly that ‘the function of information is to
inform, that of propaganda to persuade’, his
description of information work seems identi-
cal to propaganda. It was, he said, counter-pro-
ductive to engage in polemical battles with the
opposition, since this inevitably gives publicity
to enemy argument. Information work might
be directed at the enemy, to reduce the will to
fight and encourage surrender; or it might be
directed at the local population, to rally support
for the government.
Thompson advocated the use of understate-
ment and factual information as far as possi-
ble, since in order to persuade, you have to
be believed, and the ‘most precious asset of
the government is its credit in the eyes of the
people’. Above all, ‘Propaganda must not be
allowed to grow into an object for its own
sake: gilding the lily is worse than superflu-
ous, it is actually harmful, for truth made to
sound too glowing is no longer believed’.
Nevertheless, he admitted the need to tai-
lor information to specific audiences, and to
work closely with the intelligence authorities
in disseminating it and ensuring it achieved
the desired effect. This seems to be straying
well over the line into disinformation, so it is
perhaps just as well that Thompson notes that
it is not the detail, but the impression left on
the hearer’s or reader’s mind that is important:
the tone of the information, true or false, must,
he insisted, be confident and authoritative.38
Another practitioner who attempted in
retirement to define the elements of propa-
ganda and disinformation was Cynthia
Grabo, a former CIA analyst who pub-
lished an important work in 2004 called
Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic
Warning. Grabo is very clear on the meaning
of propaganda: ‘all information put forth by
any means under national control or direc-
tion, which is designed to win over or influ-
ence the intended audience’. According to
her, if based on fact, propaganda constitutes
public diplomacy; but if based on falsehood,
should be labelled as disinformation.39 This
distinction seems too simplistic: as has been
seen, some propaganda may be based, per-
haps unintentionally, on falsehood, while a
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
disinformation campaign may have a solid
basis in fact, albeit distorted. It also begs the
question of how she considered that truth and
falsehood can be evaluated (even with the
analytic resources of the CIA available) and
raises the issue of subjective judgement once
more.
Grabo does not answer this, but does have
useful advice on the risks of ignoring infor-
mation on the grounds that it may be ‘mere
propaganda’. Rather, it might be a valuable
indication of intention, reflecting what is
important to a country’s leadership. She illus-
trates this with an example from the Vietnam
war. In 1965–1966, when the government of
North Vietnam issued public appeals for mass
enlistment in the armed forces, urging people
to work longer hours, and women to take up
jobs that freed men from military service, the
US intelligence community dismissed these
statements as propaganda, refusing to believe
that North Vietnam was really planning to
send more troops to the South. Instead, they
accepted the official line that there were no
North Vietnamese forces in the South. But
in this case, it was the public statements that
were accurate, not the official line, which
was a piece of disinformation.
How History Can Help to Develop
A Critical Response to Information
Twentieth century examples of propaganda
and disinformation, and the difficulty of dis-
tinguishing them, may seem outdated or even
archaic in the digital age. But they contain
certain valuable pointers on to how to deal
with modern information warfare. They can
also inform a discussion about how people
can best protect themselves from being vic-
tims of disinformation, or at least increase
awareness so that they can detect it. Much of
the discourse in the early 21st century about
both propaganda and disinformation is based
on the recognition that instant communica-
tions, the 24-hour news cycle and pervasive
social media platforms (not to mention cyber
257
operations) make it very difficult to distin-
guish between them or to control their influ-
ence. Governments, organisations and major
corporations are increasingly exercised about
the impact of the availability of constant,
uncontrolled information on their institutions
and operations, their citizens, clients or con-
sumers. Some are concerned by reports of
the detrimental effects of negative informa-
tion on public health, the potential for
encouraging extremist views or the damage
to democratic processes. Others are alarmed
by the availability of information that might
undermine their authority, encourage dissi-
dence and threaten the official monopoly on
the ‘truth’. But on all sides, there is a ten-
dency to regard this as a peculiarly modern
problem. The speed of technological devel-
opment has masked the fact that these issues
have troubled people since ancient times, and
that looking at the past can inform the
approach to the problems of the present day.
With the historical context in mind, the
first question to consider is whether, if it
has always been so difficult to distinguish
between propaganda and disinformation,
and that difficulty is now increased greatly
by the speed of modern communications, the
distinction really matters at all. In the digital
age, everyone, individuals, businesses, organ-
isations and governments, is bombarded
constantly with information, factual, acciden-
tally or deliberately misleading, or manufac-
tured. Instead of expending effort on trying
to decide whether information is ‘white’
propaganda or ‘black’ disinformation, a more
fruitful approach might be to regard it all as
‘information work’, as Sir Robert Thompson
formulated it half a century ago when his
means of dissemination were erratic radio
communications, despatch riders and people
delivering messages by hand.
It is also useful to ask what we can learn
from the way that those who deal profes-
sionally in information, in the intelligence or
military context, tackle these issues. It may
appear that technological advance and differ-
ences in global context render the experience
258 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and knowledge gained through 20th century
warfare experience obsolete. In fact, the ways
in which intelligence organisations have
adapted, and continue to adapt, in a digi-
tal environment owe much to developments
during both world wars, and during the Cold
War. The tests applied by professional ana-
lysts to pieces of intelligence: interrogation of
sources, fact checking, the need to avoid mir-
ror imaging (assuming that others think and
behave like you) and confirmation bias (a ten-
dency to accept information that accords with
what you already believe); and the impor-
tance of separating separate capability from
intent (in the military context, capability plus
intent=threat, a formula useful for disinfor-
mation too). This provides a sound basis for a
critical response to disinformation. And such
techniques can be adapted for use by anyone,
not just those dealing with propaganda and
disinformation on the front line.
The most important lesson is that everyone
should be aware and accept that, willingly or
not, they are exposed to disinformation, and
that not everything they see, hear or read is
going to be based on fact. In parallel runs the
realisation that the understanding of truth and
falsehood is not universal: a basic concept, of
course, but worth emphasising nevertheless.
All information should be assessed critically
even if – especially if – the material fits in
with what the recipient already believes or
‘knows’. Everyone, young or old, can benefit
from learning to adopt a critical approach to
information. There are some recent positive
developments: for example, the BBC has
developed a game, iReporter, in which young
people take on the role of a journalist and
are challenged to make decisions on which
sources, claims, pictures and social media
comments should be trusted40; Facebook is
hosting a game, devised by NATO’s Strategic
Communications Centre of Excellence, to
teach people how to spot disinformation.41
But much more could, and should, be done to
increase public awareness and to enable the
development of a critical approach to infor-
mation of all kinds.
CONCLUSION
Elements in this critical approach to propa-
ganda and disinformation, informed by his-
tory, might include:
• Thinking about and investigating the source of
the information.
• Checking the content independently.
• Asking who might have an interest in putting
forward a certain view on the subject.
• Rejecting the assumption that the person or
organisation expressing a particular view will
share your values or world view. This test should
be applied to information even when received
from trusted contacts, if the original source is not
obvious, and to all information acquired through
search engines.
• Being aware that even if it is impossible to be cer-
tain whether information is accurate, distorted or
intentionally false, its timing may be significant:
sometimes information can be released in order
to deflect attention from what is actually hap-
pening elsewhere. The motive for this distraction
technique may be benign, to avoid panic or pre-
pare the public for unpleasant news; but it may
also be to project uncertainty and damage the
credibility of an opponent. It may be impossible
to detect this while it is happening: the important
thing is to be aware that it can happen.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive
list. It is clearly impossible to expect everyone
to adopt a rigorous approach to everything
they read, see or hear. But accepting a level of
risk is itself part of the educative process. It
will always be impossible to weed out deliber-
ate disinformation completely, however much
governments may hope to tackle the problem
by regulation (a strategy that brings its own
risks, of limiting freedom of speech and
expression). But if everyone accepts that not
all information can be accurate, that a range of
different views have validity and that propa-
ganda and disinformation are not just two
sides of the coin but may be the same thing,
depending on the identity and viewpoint of the
source, it would be an important first step.
Thucydides and Plato understood that: it is
even more vital to do so in the digital age.
 PROPAGANDA AND DISINFORMATION
Notes
1  For a useful if dated review of the meanings of
propaganda see Fellows, Erwin G. (1959), ‘“Pro-
paganda”: History of a Word’, American Speech,
Vol. 34, No. 3, pp.182–189. There is, of course, a
biological meaning of propagation, not relevant
to the current discussion.
2  Black, Jay (2001), ‘Semantics and Ethics of
Propaganda’, Journal of Mass Ethics, 16(2&3),
pp. 121–137.
3  Among the rich literature on this issue see Jowett,
G.S. and O’Donnell, V. (2015), Propaganda and
Persuasion (Los Angeles, CA: Sage).
4  www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-year/
5  Wardle, Claire and Derakhshan, Hossein (2017),
Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplin-
ary Framework for Research and Policymaking
(Strasbourg: Council of Europe, October, https://
rm.coe.int/information-disorder-report-november-
2017/1680764666)
6  See, for example, Gery, William R., Lee, SeYoung
and Ninas, Jacob (2017), ‘Information Warfare in
an Information Age’, Joint Force Quarterly, 85,
April, pp. 22–29.
7  Andrew, Christopher (2018), The Secret World:
A History of Intelligence (London: Penguin Ran-
dom House), pp. 436–437. On German attitudes
towards the Jews see Kershaw, Ian (2008), Hit-
ler, The Germans and the Final Solution (London:
Yale University Press), pp. 211–216.
8  For a discussion of this issue, see Sproule, J.
Michael (1997), Propaganda and Democracy:
The American Experience of Media and Mass
Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
9  An interesting discussion on this point can be
found in Davis, Evan (2017), Post-Truth: Why We
Have Reached Peak Bullshit, And What We Can
Do About It (London: Little Brown), pp. 165–168
and pp. 180–184.
10  See Mitrokhin, Vasily, ed (2002) KGB Lexicon: The
Soviet Intelligence Officer’s Handbook (London:
Frank Cass & Co Ltd), p. 193.
11  Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
(1972 edn), (London: Penguin, trans. Rex War-
ner): see in particular Book Three, discussions on
how to deal with the Mytilene Revolt, and Book
Six, on the Athenian expedition against Sicily,
based on a report that was ‘encouraging, but
untrue’ (p. 414). I am grateful to Professor Neville
Morley for pointing me to these examples.
12  Plato, The Republic (Everyman’s Library edn,1992),
Book III, p. 389, p. 414.
13  Popper, K.R. (1945, reprinted 1986), The Open
Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1, Plato (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 176–177.
259
14  Morley, Neville (2014), Thucydides and the Idea
of History (London: IB Tauris), Chapter 4.
15  For evidence presented to the Committee in
2017, particularly that of Professor Neville Mor-
ley of Exeter University, see www.parliament.uk/
business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-
select/digital-culture-media-and-sport-committee/
inquiries/parliament-2017/fake-news-17-19/
16  Masterman, Lucy (1939), C.F.G. Masterman: A
Biography (London: Nicholson and Watson Ltd),
quoted in Downing, Taylor (2014), Secret War-
riors: Key Scientists, Code-Breakers and Propa-
gandists of the Great War (London: Little Brown),
pp. 282–283.
17  Downing, Secret Warriors, pp. 271–282.
18  Andrew, The Secret World, pp. 588–589.
19  On the origins of British intelligence organisations
and their development during the First World
War and early post-war period see Andrew,
Christopher (2009), The Defence of the Realm:
The Authorised History of MI5 (London: Pen-
guin), Section A; Jeffery, Keith (2010), MI6: The
History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909–
1949 (London: Bloomsbury), Part One; on the
early history of GC&CS (now GCHQ) see www.
gchq.gov.uk/features/story-signals-intelligence-
1914-2014
20  For a compendium edition of Le Queux’s books
(2017) see 15 Dystopian Novels and Espionage
Thrillers (Musaicum Books, Kindle edn); Buchan,
John (2010), The Complete Richard Hannay Sto-
ries (London: Wordsworth Editions); Childers,
Erskine (1903) Riddle of the Sands: A Record of
Secret Service (London: Smith, Elder & Co.).
21  Steiner, Zara (2005), The Lights that Failed: Euro-
pean International History 1919–1933 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press), pp. 62–70.
22  Bennett, Gill (2018), The Zinoviev Letter of 1924:
The Conspiracy that Never Dies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press) gives a full review of this case.
23  Smith, Stephen A. (2014), ‘Towards a Global His-
tory of Communism’ in Smith. Stephen A. (ed),
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Commu-
nism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 1–39;
Carley, Michael Jabara (2014) Silent Conflict: A
hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations
(Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield), Chapters 3
and 4.
24  On Orlov, see Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter,
pp. 38–39 and pp. 239–242; also Bennett, Gill
(2006), Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond
Morton and the World of Intelligence (London:
Routledge), pp. 53–54, pp. 75–76.
25  The subtitle of the new book by Kathleen Hall
Jamieson (2018), ‘What we Don’t Can’t and Do
Know’ indicates the ongoing uncertainty, despite
her confident title Cyber War: How Russian
260 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
26  Both MI5 and GCHQ have released a good deal
of material from the pre-war and wartime period
that demonstrates and range of the British secu-
rity and intelligence response to Soviet propa-
ganda and disinformation: for this material see
classes KV/2, 3, 4 and HW 3, 7, 12, 43, 53 at
The National Archives (TNA). SIS archives are not
released, but for an account of their anti-Bolshevik
activities written with privileged access see Ben-
nett, Churchill’s Man of Mystery, Chapters 3-4.
27  The novelist David Garnett, who worked within
the Political Warfare Executive during the Second
World, drafted an official history of the organisa-
tion some time after 1945. It was published in
2002 as The Secret History of PWE: The Political
Warfare Executive 1939–45 (London: St Ermin’s
Press).
28  For the definitions of white and black propaganda
in a Second World War context see Foot, M.R.D.
(1995), ‘Subversive warfare’, in the Oxford Com-
panion to the Second World War (Oxford Univer-
sity Press), 1084–1090.
29  ‘How the BBC’s truth offensive beat Hitler’s pro-
paganda machine’, The Guardian, 15 April 2017:
www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/bbc-
truth-offensive-beat-hitler-propaganda-machine
30  Edgerton, David (2011), Britain’s War Machine
(London: Allen Lane), 205–207.
31  On the ‘Double Cross’ system, whereby a large
number of German spies were recruited as
double agents, see Andrew, The Defence of the
Realm, Section C; also Macintyre, Ben (2012),
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies
(London: Bloomsbury).
32  The British Ambassador in Moscow reported that
the Marshall Plan led the Kremlin to decide that
‘the primary objective must be to resist the expan-
sion of American influence in Europe’: Moscow
telegram of 8 November 1947, printed in Docu-
ments on British Policy Overseas (DBPO), Series I,
Vol. XI (London: Routledge, 2017), No. 192.
Detailed documentation on British policy towards
the Soviet Union, the Marshall Plan and West-
ern security policy can be found in Volumes X
and XI.
33  Note by Russia Committee, 7 November 1947,
printed in DBPO, Series I, Vol. XI, No. 167.
34  See FCO Historians, IRD: Origins and Estab-
lishment of the Foreign Office Information
Research Department 1946–48 (FCO History Note
No. 9, 1995, https://issuu.com/fcohistorians/docs/
historynote9
35  Vaughan, James R. (2005), The Failure of Ameri-
can and British Propaganda in the Arab Middle
East, 1945–47 (London: Palgrave).
36  Memorandum by Ernest Bevin for the Cabinet,
‘Future Foreign Publicity’, 4 January 1948, printed
in DBPO, Series I, Vol. X, No. 8.
37  Lashmar, Paul and Oliver, James (1998), Britain’s
Secret Propaganda War 1948–1977 (Stroud: Sut-
ton Publishing), Introduction.
38  Thompson, Sir Robert (1966), Defeating Com-
munist Insurgency (London: Chatto & Windus),
Chapter 8.
39  Grabo, Cynthia (2004), Anticipating Surprise:
Analysis for Strategic Warning (University Press of
America), 90-92.
40  www.bbc.co.uk/news/school-report-43391188
41  https://apps.facebook.com/login/?next=https
%3A%2F%2Fapps.facebook.com%2Fthenewshero

Atrocities, Investigations and
Propaganda: Lessons from
World War I
INTRODUCTION
Whether executing captives en masse,
beheading western hostages or burning alive
a Jordanian Air Force pilot, the organisation
known as Islamic State or Daesh has become
infamous for their use of the propaganda of
the deed. The idea of the propaganda of the
deed has its roots in the late nineteenth-
century actions by anarchists against western
states. These were violent acts of terror
deployed against the state with the intent of
encouraging those states to respond with an
excessive and disproportionate use of force
such that they lost legitimacy in the eyes of
their public (Bolt, 2012 p. 1). As the twenti-
eth century progressed, the ubiquity of the
media intensified to such an extent that the
approach moved to a focus on committing
outrages that captured media attention to
highlight the cause of terrorist organisations,
reaching a new point with the attack on the
World Trade Centre in 2001 that was played
16
Ewan Lawson
out live on 24-hour news channels. What
Daesh understood and utilised some ten
years later was that the information age and
digitally enabled social media meant that it
could spread its message faster and more
widely than ever before. Thus, as it launched
attacks on the cities of northern and western
Iraq in 2014, it was able to portray itself as a
ruthless military organisation evoking suffi-
cient fear that Iraqi security forces simply
melted away.
However, the focus of this chapter is not
on the use of the propaganda of the deed as
such, but rather how those on the receiving
end of atrocities use this for their own propa-
ganda purposes and the associated risks.
Indeed, those very same images from 9/11
were used by the United States to generate
political support for a coalition to confront
the attackers of Al Qaeda and consequent
invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, as
well as counter-terrorism operations across
the globe. It might be argued that Bin Laden
262 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
was ultimately successful in a way that his
anarchist forebears would have appreci-
ated in causing the United States to lash out
and over-extend itself, but this chapter will
instead consider the specific implication that
the use of atrocity propaganda can undermine
both the impact of the incidents and the use
to which they are put. In particular, it will
be argued that the careless use of evidence,
that could potentially be later used for legal
purposes, undermines the utility of that evi-
dence. Further, such use if the evidence can
be contested can contribute to the arguments
of the ‘anti-propagandists’; those who con-
sider any effort to influence people in the
context of conflict as worse in some cases
than the act of killing.
The chapter will examine the case of
atrocity propaganda in World War I (WW1).
German actions in Belgium and France, par-
ticularly in the first 12 months of the war,
were the focus of investigations initially
aimed at identifying the perpetrators and the
offences, but which later became the mate-
rial for propaganda efforts targeted at audi-
ences both at home and abroad (Horne and
Kramer, 2001, p. 4). In the post-war period,
these British propaganda activities became
the focus for criticism by pacifists and those
who saw wartime propaganda as an evil in
itself. The debates still resonate amongst his-
torians today and point to some important
considerations for contemporary considera-
tion of communications strategies linked to
atrocities.
The chapter will first outline the context
of the early part of the Great War, the nature
of German atrocities, how evidence was col-
lected and for what purposes. It will then
consider how this evidence, and also that
published by the other allied nations, was
used for propaganda purposes focusing par-
ticularly on the domestic audience and efforts
to encourage the United States to enter the
war. It will then highlight the post-war anti-
propaganda narrative before considering the
implications for contemporary communica-
tions strategies.
ATROCITIES AND THEIR
INVESTIGATION
The iconic imagery of WW1 is the mud,
death and destruction of trench warfare as
portrayed in Blackadder on television and
Oh What a Lovely War on the stage and at the
cinema. The dominance of these images does
not leave much space for consideration of the
impact of the war on civilians and yet much
of the propaganda imagery produced by the
allies was based on the brutality of the
German military and showed civilians, par-
ticularly women and children, as victims.
This apparent contradiction reflects the
importance of the impact of the opening
months of the war, and in particular, the
German invasion of Belgium on how the war
was subsequently perceived and exploited for
propaganda purposes as compared to later
narratives which focused on trench warfare.
German military planning was based on
the need to defeat France quickly to allow
the focus to be switched to fighting Russia
in the east. The experience of France’s rapid
collapse in the Franco-Prussian War of
1870–1871 contributed to a German opera-
tional design that sought to overwhelm the
French army from the north, and hence to
encircle Paris leading to French capitula-
tion. Named after its author, this was the
Schlieffen Plan, and a key element of it was
the need to move German forces through
neutral Belgium. Belgium’s neutrality and
independence had been guaranteed by the
1839 Treaty of London, which was signed
by Britain, Austria, France, the German
Confederation, Russia and the Netherlands,
and thus Schlieffen’s Plan inherently necessi-
tated a German breach of international treaty
law. Whilst it is not the place of this chapter
to analyse the complexities of international
law at the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury, it is important to note that one of the
key debates amongst statesmen and lawyers
was the extent to which ‘military necessity’
could and should override the provisions of
international agreements (Hull, 2014, p. 27).
 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I
Thus, in August 1914, Germany attacked
Belgium with around a million men, calling on
the Belgians not to resist as they were not the
enemy, and the German army was only seek-
ing transit (Horne and Kramer, 2001, p. 13).
This was accompanied by a warning of harsh
reprisals for acts of sabotage, in part because
this was a German Army that had been scarred
by its experience of being attacked by civilian
francs-tireurs in the Franco-Prussian conflict
in the 1870s. As early as the 5th of August
1914, the first punishment executions of civil-
ians took place and by 8th August there were
reports of some 850 civilians being killed
and 1,300 buildings burnt down. The Belgian
government immediately established a com-
mission of enquiry and ordered that its citi-
zens should not resist unless part of organised
military formations (ibid., p. 19). However, the
atrocities continued with allegations of hos-
tage taking, the use of human shields, pillage
and increasingly offences of sexual violence
against women and the deliberate murder
of children. These last atrocities against the
family were going to be significant in the
subsequent development of propaganda nar-
ratives, but by the time the conflict froze into
the stalemate of trench warfare, 6,427 civil-
ians had been deliberately killed, the town of
Louvain had been razed to the ground includ-
ing its medieval library, the cathedral of Reims
had been shelled and Antwerp bombed by a
Zeppelin cementing an image of Germany as
ruthless and brutal (Hull, 2014, p.53). This was
an image that would be reinforced throughout
the war through German decisions to use poi-
son gas and conduct unrestricted submarine
warfare, but it was those early atrocities that
framed the conflict and much of the contem-
porary propaganda imagery.
As early as September 1914, the British
Home Secretary and Attorney General, at
the instigation of the Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith, had signed a minute calling for an
investigation of the ‘accusations of inhumanity
and outrage brought against German soldiers’
(HO 45). However, it was not until December
of that year that a Royal warrant was issued
263
establishing a Committee under the leadership
of Lord Bryce to examine alleged German out-
rages. Bryce appeared to be a choice designed
to limit the potential for criticism of partiality
on behalf of the Committee. Educated at the
Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, he had
also studies at the University of Heidelberg and
expressed his admiration for German scholar-
ship and German Kultur. Indeed, before the
war, he had been a sceptic about the commit-
ment to France implicit in the Entente Cordiale
and a supporter of the British Neutrality
Committee (Wilson, 1979, p. 370). It is also
notable that he had been a highly respected
Ambassador in Washington DC which would
only add to the credibility of his findings in
the United States, a potential target for British
propaganda, although there is no evidence that
this was a key factor in his appointment.
When it was finally published in May 1915
in some 20 languages, the Bryce Report (also
known as the Blue Book) was unremitting
in its condemnation of the German army. Its
conclusion stated that:
It is proved:
(i) That there were in many parts of Belgium delib-
erate and systematically organised massacres
of the civil population, accompanied by many
isolated murders and other outrages.
(ii) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent
civilians, both men and women, were murdered
in large numbers, women violated, and children
murdered.
(iii) That looting, house burning, and the wanton
destruction of property were ordered and counte-
nanced by the officers of the German Army, that
elaborate provision had been made for systematic
incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and
that the burnings and destruction were frequent
where no military necessity could be alleged, being
indeed part of a system of general terrorisation.
(iv) That the rules and usages of war were frequently
broken, particularly by the using of civilians,
including women and children, as a shield for
advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree
by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the
frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White
Flag (HO 45).
264 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Perhaps more powerful than these general
accusations were the graphic descriptions of
incidents that made up the bulk of the report,
and in particular those that described the
mutilation and sexual abuse of women and
children. These descriptions were supported
by annexes of evidence made up of excerpts
from individual depositions from Belgian
civilians and soldiers now refugees in Britain,
as well as from British soldiers and also
some evidence collected from the diaries of
German prisoners of war and their dead.
In the introduction to his report, Bryce
placed great emphasis on the way in which
the evidence had been collected and analysed,
emphasising the efforts that had been made
to ensure that the process was as scrupulous
as possible. It noted that the Committee had
reviewed some 1,200 depositions nearly all of
which had been collected under the supervi-
sion of the Director of Public Prosecutions
and had been taken by individuals with ‘legal
knowledge and experience’ (ibid.). Whilst the
statements had not been taken under oath, the
Committee had sought to critically engage
with the material and to exclude any that
caused concern as to its veracity. However,
they also considered the extent to which state-
ments corroborated each other, particularly
where those statements had been collected by
different people at different times and places.
Ultimately, the Committee sought to ‘test the
evidence severely’, and stated that ‘so far as
conditions permit, we have followed prin-
ciples which are recognised in the Courts of
England, British Overseas Dominions and the
United States’ (ibid.). Whilst it is not clear
that in 1915 there was any expectation that the
material would eventually be used for prose-
cutions in some form of war crimes tribunal, it
is of note that the Committee felt it was impor-
tant to meet a British legal standard. However,
this also makes it clear that the potential of the
Report in influencing public opinion in the
United States had already been identified.
However, despite these reassurances there
have been challenges to the credibility of
the Bryce Report. In the Report, the com-
mittee had noted that the identity of the wit-
nesses had been deliberately obscured to
protect from German reprisals those family
members still living in occupied Belgium.
However, readers were reassured that the
original signed depositions had been retained
by the Home Office, where they would be
available ‘in case of need, for reference after
the conclusion of the war’ (ibid.). Bryce
sought to have the original depositions made
available in the immediate aftermath of the
Report bring published, but unfortunately at
some point after the war they disappeared
(Wilson, 1979, p. 379). The disappearance
contributed to the case made by those who
later sought to discredit the role of atroc-
ity propaganda. Further, an examination of
Lord Bryce’s correspondence highlights that
some of the committee members raised con-
cerns about the nature of the evidence as it
had been collected and supplied to them. Sir
Frederick Pollock described ‘mere hysteri-
cal fiction or delusion’, whilst Sir Kenelm
Digby highlighted that the Committee
was being asked to comment on evidence
that it had not been involved in collecting
(Wilson, 1979 p. 374). This was a point rein-
forced by Harold Cox, who suggested that
the Committee ought to be able to directly
examine some of the witnesses and noted
that in the case of the diaries of German
soldiers, they had only been provided with
translations and never the original source
material (ibid., p. 375). Despite this, the
final Report was ultimately supported by
the entire Committee which suggests that
whilst there might have been debates about
the precise legal standard of the evidence,
overall, they were convinced of the nature
and extent of German atrocities. However,
whilst the members recognised that their
role was to ‘inform’ the public both at home
and abroad, it was the part the Report was
to play as a tool for ‘influence’ in British
propaganda that contributed most to its
chequered history.
 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I
THE ‘RAPE’ OF BELGIUM
Much has been written both scholarly and
otherwise about the role of propaganda in
the Great War and even an episode of the
previously mentioned BBC comedy series
Blackadder had as its focus the production of
propaganda. It is not clear where the specific
label of atrocity propaganda comes from,
but as early as 1928, the pacifist and anti-
propagandist Arthur Ponsonby was referring
to the importance of ‘atrocity stories’ in
Britain’s propaganda campaign (1928, p. 128).
Building on the legacy of Ponsonby, there
have been suggestions by academics that
Britain operated a ‘vast machinery for the
production and distribution of propaganda’
albeit recognising that this included govern-
ment, the press and even charities (Green,
2014, p. 310 and Gullace, 1997, p. 715). In
particular, there has been a focus on the
strength of the anti-German feeling and the
demonisation of Germans prevalent in
the Northcliffe Press, and particularly the
Daily Mail (Neander and Marlin, 2010, p. 67).
In reality, unlike some of its counterparts in
the conflict, Britain did not have an estab-
lished propaganda organisation at the out-
break of the War. However, the government
clearly understood the importance of control-
ling the flow of information, cutting the transat-
lantic communications cable between Germany
and the United States as soon as war was
declared (Taylor, 2003, p. 177). Thus, as well as
establishing a blockade of maritime trade into
Germany, Britain also sought to control how
the story of the war was delivered out of Europe
as well. This control enabled a positive narra-
tive of Britain’s role to cross the Atlantic and
thus initially ensure continuity of trade as well
as ultimately contributing to bringing the
United States into the war on the side of the
Allies. So, what were the purposes of Britain’s
use of atrocity propaganda in this context?
One analysis produced at the start of the
World War II suggested that there were six
key functions: encouraging soldiers to enlist,
265
enabling fighting spirit, contributing to war
loans, influencing neutrals, justifying the
rejection of peace proposals and imposition
of severe peace terms, and to justify breaches
of international law, this indicating a broad
range of target audiences and emotions to be
accessed (Read, 1941 cited in Smith, 1942,
p. 127). Recognising the importance of win-
ning the battle of the narrative, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer David Lloyd George
was tasked with establishing a propaganda
organisation. He chose a fellow Liberal,
Charles Masterman MP, to establish the War
Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House in
London. This was a secret organisation which
sought to disguise the source of much of the
material about German atrocities, particu-
larly that which made its way to the United
States. The approach adopted was low key
and selective, seeking to persuade rather than
exhort the British government’s case and uti-
lising networks of sympathetic and influential
Americans (Taylor, 2003, p. 177). Further, the
control of cable communications allowed the
news flows into US media outlets to be care-
fully selected and censored at the direction of
the Foreign Office with this latter being part
of the reason for the secrecy (ibid., p. 178). By
June 1915, less than a year after its inception,
Masterman estimated that some two and a
half million copies of books, official publica-
tions, pamphlets and speeches in 17 different
languages had been circulated by Wellington
House (Gullace, 1997, p. 717). This included
the evidence of atrocities described in the
Bryce Report, extracts of which had been
published in newspapers across the United
States alongside similar material from pub-
lications released by the French government
and the Belgian government in exile.
It should be remembered that in the sum-
mer of 1914, the case for Britain to go to
war with Germany remained controversial
at home. The invasion of Belgium in light of
Britain’s commitments to its neutrality in the
London Treaty of 1839 gave the moral and
legal impetus needed, when the reasons for
266 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
getting involved had been less clear when
the cause appeared to be a dispute between
Serbia and Austria-Hungary. It was reported
in August 1914 that the German Chancellor
had referred to the London Treaty as a ‘scrap
of paper’, and this apparent disregard for
international law became a key theme of
the rhetoric deployed by British politicians
against Germany even before the focus on
atrocities (Hull, 2014, p. 41). Lloyd George
told an audience that ‘the man who declines
to discharge his duty because his creditor is
too poor to enforce it is a blackguard’ and
Professor J H Morgan (who had contributed
to the Bryce Committee as Britain’s inves-
tigator into German atrocities in France)
warned against ‘this terrible perversion, this
prostitution of words until … they have lost
their meaning’ (Gullace, 1997, p. 722 and
Morgan, 1916, p. 53). Indeed, this became a
theme used by the Parliamentary Recruiting
Committee in a poster describing ‘The Scrap
of Paper: Prussia’s Perfidy – Britain’s Bond’
(Imperial War Museum Poster 11370).
However, framing the argument in the
arcane language of international law did not
make engaging the public particularly easy,
whereas German atrocities were something
that everyone could understand.
Thus, the narrative for supporting the war
shifted from a primarily legalistic emphasis
to one that was more humanist and empa-
thetic, particularly as stories from both the
Belgian authorities and refugees arriving in
the UK started to be reported in the press.
Whilst sympathy can be a significant motiva-
tion for a public response, it is also important
to consider the role of moral indignation that
brought the legal and the humanitarian narra-
tives together. It has been argued that scholars
have tended to elevate benevolent moral emo-
tions such as sympathy above those of a more
rancorous nature (Woods, 2015, p. 654). The
atrocities that would be documented in the
Bryce Report became a significant focus for
the British propaganda effort, albeit remain-
ing entwined with the legal basis for war: vio-
lation of the Treaty of London. In particular,
the assault on families by German soldiers
was emphasised (Gullace, 1997, p. 735).
From women being raped, mutilated and
murdered to children having their hands cut
off and killed in front of their families, there
was a steady release of atrocity stories. The
Hague Conventions, that were the effective
laws of war for conflict on land, had sought
to broaden the protection of civilians but had
remained relatively quiet on issues of sexual
violence and the abuse of children, referring
only to ‘family honour’ briefly in Article 46.
However, the sexualisation of the justification
for war proceeded with a developing confla-
tion between the violation of Belgian neu-
trality with the violation of its citizens thus
creating the narrative framework of the ‘rape
of Belgium’ (ibid., p. 735). This was accom-
panied by the portrayal of the Germans as a
bestial ‘other’, reflecting the demonisation of
the enemy that is so commonplace in wartime
propaganda (Imperial War Museum Poster
6066 and Green, 2014, p. 319). This narrative
appeared to resonate with audiences both at
home and abroad.
Whilst the effectiveness of propaganda in
influencing attitudes remains contested, the
pervasiveness of atrocity propaganda would
seem to have contributed both to motivating
the home front and encouraging the United
States to enter the war in 1917. In the lat-
ter case, there is evidence from posters that
sought to raise war bonds in the Philippines
(under US jurisdiction) and with US domes-
tic recruitment (Imperial War Museum
Poster 17281 and Imperial War Museum
Poster 0243). Even where the imagery ref-
erences the unrestricted submarine warfare
that did so much to convince President
Wilson to join the allies, the resonance of
the focus on innocent women and children
is maintained (Imperial War Museum Poster
3284). This admittedly limited selection
of examples does, however, highlight the
pervasiveness of this narrative long after
the initial stages of the war and the events
described in the Bryce Report, which indi-
cates the extent of its influence on framing
 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I
opinion. However, it is this very success
that provided the impetus for the post-war
anti-propagandists.
ATROCITIES AND THE
ANTI-PROPAGANDISTS
As has been noted previously, the Bryce
Report, and other allied publications describ-
ing German atrocities in addition to their
propaganda function, contributed to a devel-
oping political and public debate as to whether
these atrocities represented crimes and should
be dealt with as such through some form of
international tribunal. As early as the summer
of 1916, British Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith stated that ‘such crimes shall not …
go unpunished’ and ‘when the time arrives
[we] are determined to bring to justice the
criminals’ (cited in Willis, 1982, p. 31).
Asquith’s statement to Parliament came in the
aftermath of the execution by Germany of a
British merchant ship captain, Arthur Fryatt,
who was accused of ramming a German
U-boat and sinking it. At around the same
time in mid-1916, in an echo of the reports
from Belgium in 1914, German forces forci-
bly deported tens of thousands of men, women
and children from occupied cities in France,
with stories of families torn apart, young girls
raped and mothers forced into prostitution
(ibid, p. 32). The issue of potential interna-
tional prosecution of the Kaiser, his advisers
and individual Germans1 for what would later
be called war crimes continued to be dis-
cussed throughout the war amongst the Allies.
Perspectives varied as the war and its conduct
ebbed and flowed, but these discussions set
the foundation for the formation of the
Commission on the Responsibility of the
Authors of the War and on Enforcement of
Penalties as a key element of the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919 (FO 608/245).
It was the outcome of the work of this
Committee that was enshrined in Articles
227–230 of the final Treaty of Versailles.
267
These sought to prosecute and punish the
Kaiser and other Germans for the initiation
and conduct of the war and were to become
part of the controversy that continues to sur-
round the Treaty and its role in creating the
conditions for the war to follow less than two
decades later. However, in the separate report
issued by the Commission, there is an exten-
sive Annex that details the specific crimes
with which the Central Powers are charged
and includes cases that are ‘not exhaustive
or complete but rather a number of typical
examples’ including from the Belgian equiv-
alent of the Bryce Report highlighting once
again how material ostensibly collected for
judicial processes was subsequently used as
propaganda (FO 608/245).
However, a faltering war crimes process,
undermined by the inability of the Allies
to extradite the Kaiser from exile in the
Netherlands, culminated in a few low-profile
trials in Leipzig in the early 1920s. At the
same time, in the Allied states themselves,
there was a growing argument attacking the
war guilt clauses in the Versailles Treaty, pri-
marily based on the view that the war itself
was the crime, and therefore all of the partici-
pants carried a share of the blame. This was
accompanied by an increasing relativisation
of German wartime atrocities through three
comparative frameworks. First, it was argued
that whilst the atrocities were terrible in
themselves, they were as nothing compared
with the industrial scale of death in trench
warfare with nine million dead overall.
Second, as stories of Allied soldiers killing
prisoners became public, there was a growing
idea of a moral equivalence between all com-
batants in their conduct of the conflict. Last,
there was a growing narrative that German
atrocities were nothing more than the product
of British propaganda (Horne and Kramer,
2001, p. 367).
In France, Georges Demartial, a civil serv-
ant and pacifist, published a study of ‘the
mobilisation of wartime consciousness’ in
1922 which rejected what he believed was a
manufactured war culture and its associated
268 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
demonisation of Germany. Further, he sug-
gested that the use of atrocity propaganda,
despite the moral equivalence of Allied
actions, was designed to induce the people
to go to war when they would otherwise not
have done so (ibid., p. 368). In Britain, it was
the work of Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in
Wartime, that had the most significant impact.
As a publication in English, it had a substan-
tial impact in the United States as well, and
indeed it contributed significantly to the idea
that British propagandists were devious liars
and cynical manipulators becoming an ortho-
doxy (Gregory, 2008, p. 40). Arthur Ponsonby
(1871–1946) was a diplomat, politician,
writer and committed pacifist. He was a
founder member of the Union for Democratic
Control (UDC) which was founded in the
early days of the War and which included
Ramsay MacDonald, Bertrand Russell and
Clement Attlee amongst its members. It was
formed as ‘an organisation created to secure
the control over their Foreign Policy by the
British People, and for the promotion of
international understanding’ (Higson, 1984,
p. 60). This pacifism influenced Ponsonby
in his views on propaganda in general, and
atrocity propaganda in particular. From the
outset of his work, propaganda is a term used
interchangeably with falsehood and lies, with
its use by a government being to ‘deceive
its own people, attract neutrals and to mis-
lead the enemy’ (Ponsonby, 1928, p. 13).
The book is built around efforts to dismantle
some of the main propaganda stories of the
War including the German Corpse Factory,
the Crucified Canadian and the Mutilated
Nurse.2 Whilst many of the chapters are about
stories that could be included under the head-
ing of atrocity propaganda, Ponsonby deliv-
ers an entire chapter labelled as ‘Atrocity
Stories’ (ibid, pp. 128–134). He recognises
the significance of the Bryce Report, but dis-
misses the Chairman himself as having been
only selected in order to influence opinion in
the United States. He then challenges a few
of the specific atrocity stories, for example
highlighting how the Mayor of Sempst had
given a statement refuting an allegation that a
Belgian family had suffered rape, mutilation
and murder at the hands of German soldiers
in that town. This is typical of Ponsonby’s
work, in that individual stories are appar-
ently debunked with a criticism of how the
stories were originally collected or created.
However, Ponsonby himself does not appear
to hold himself to his own standards. For
example, that statement apparently given
by the Mayor of Sempst was taken in April
1915 when the town was occupied by the
Germans. This was clearly not a particularly
propitious environment for giving statements
critical of the occupiers. Further, Ponsonby’s
source was not the statement itself but rather
an anonymous pamphlet. Despite these criti-
cisms, academics in the inter-war period
began to engage with the concept of atroc-
ity propaganda and in 1938, Read outlined an
analytical framework which considered the
origin of the material, how it was circulated
and the intended use (1938, p. 230).
More recently, some historians have begun
to engage critically with Falsehoods in
Wartime, noting that it contains itself some
contentious interpretations and downright
invention (Gregory, 2008, p. 41). For exam-
ple, Gregory analyses Ponsonby’s suggestion
that the German Corpse Factory Story had
been created by a British Army brigadier,
who had admitted such in 1925. He high-
lights not only the weaknesses in Ponsonby’s
use of press sources (referring to stories in
publications without reference to dates and
which have subsequently not been possible to
locate) but also that the idea was mentioned
in a poem by Siegfried Sassoon even before it
had hit the press. From this and other sources,
he suggests that the idea of corpses being
rendered was as much a popular folktale or
urban myth, rather than a piece of propa-
ganda carefully constructed by the manipu-
lators of Wellington House (ibid, p. 42).
However, whilst there is a growing literature
that highlights the shortcomings in the work
of Ponsonby and other anti-propagandists,
their impact remains significant.
 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I
In one of the key phrases of Falsehood
in Wartime, Ponsonby states: ‘the injection
of the poison of hatred into men’s minds
by means of falsehood is a greater evil in
war-time than the actual loss of life. The
defilement of the human soul is worse than
the destruction of the human body’ (1928,
p. 18). This passionate and strident statement
entered the public consciousness at a time at
the end of the 1920s when there was a sig-
nificant revision of perspectives on the out-
come of the war. The Amritsar massacre in
1919 had caused some degree of retrospec-
tion on Britain’s own legacy of atrocities in
war. More broadly, the situation developing
in Europe suggested that the hard line taken
against Germany in the Paris Peace Process
was contributing to instability and lastly, the
popular memory of the war was increasingly
focused on the experiences of trench warfare.
This last took the form in part of a recognition
that whilst the press had been quick to talk up
the extent of German atrocities, they had been
more positive about the conduct and experi-
ence of war at the front (Horne and Kramer,
2001, p. 371). Thus, Ponsonby’s apparent
identification of widespread manipulation of
a gullible population by a Government led
conspiracy was received by a broadly sympa-
thetic audience.
ATROCITIES, ANTI-PROPAGANDA
AND THE CONTEMPORARY LEGACY
Perhaps the greatest impact of the anti-prop-
aganda movement arising out of WW1 and
exemplified by Ponsonby was the way that
propaganda continues to be a synonym for
lies (Robertson, 2014, p. 248). The online
version of the Oxford English Dictionary
defines it as: ‘Information, especially of a
biased or misleading nature, used to promote
a political cause or point of view’. NATO’s
book of definitions AAP-6 reflects this tone
with: ‘[Propaganda is] Information, espe-
cially of a biased or misleading nature, used
269
to promote a political cause or point of view’
(NATO 2017, p. 91).3 This negative image
has been such that the western democracies
in particular have struggled with the use of
information in conflict. At a very basic level,
this has been reflected in the efforts to find
an appropriately neutral terminology in both
the military and civilian domains, from psy-
chological operations through information
warfare to strategic communications. This
terminological dysfunctionality has contrib-
uted to further challenges in organisation and
resourcing that has been notable in the efforts
to counter the messaging of both non-state
actors like Al Qaeda and Islamic State as
well as states including Russia and China.
Whether as individual states, informal coali-
tions such as that to counter Islamic State, or
as alliances and multi-national organisations
such as NATO and the EU, it has proved dif-
ficult to build the structures and processes to
counter the propaganda of that range of
adversaries. The debate about the US State
Department’s campaign ‘Welcome to ISIS
Land’, which used graphic images to chal-
lenge Islamic State propaganda, but which
was taken offline for embracing the very
approaches of the adversary, exemplifies the
lack of conceptual clarity.
The discomfort moves beyond the nega-
tivity associated with the labels to an under-
lying moral concern, arising in part from
Ponsonby’s assertion that falsehoods were
worse than killing. Indeed, this has been
reflected in military operational targeting
procedures that enable the use of force being
arguably less controversial than those author-
ising the use of information. Put bluntly, it
can be argued that it has become easier to kill
someone than to give them a leaflet. Whilst
this is a gross over-simplification, it reflects
a frustration that the legacy of the WW1
anti-propagandists has limited the utility of
a vital cognitive tool. Discomfort has moved
to distrust with evidence of the use of ‘spin’,
‘dodgy dossiers’ and ‘fake news’.
Lastly, as has been argued by academics
including Robertson (2014), Gregory (2008)
270 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and Horne and Kramer (2001) the dominance
of the narrative of the anti-propagandists has
impacted upon the ability to genuinely under-
stand the interaction between messages and
the population during WW1. It says some-
thing of the power of that narrative that the
idea of an all-powerful British propaganda
organisation from 1914 and its overwhelming
influence on populations both at home and
abroad is taken by so many academics as a
given when considering that conflict. In par-
ticular, it fails to recognise the extent to which
the relationship between the government, the
press and the public was much more of a con-
versation. Particularly in the early years of the
war, the British public was genuinely shocked
by events such as the sinking of the Lusitania,
the shelling of small ports on the east coast
of England and Zeppelin attacks such that
it had no problem recognising the atrocities
that had taken place in Belgium as part of a
recurring pattern by the German military.
This understanding of the historical context
of atrocity propaganda and the environment
in which it is viewed and understood has
been largely neglected by scholars, and study
would contribute to both a better understand-
ing of WW1 propaganda and to developing
better approaches to the use of information in
the contemporary period.
CONCLUSION
History has much to teach contemporary
policy makers and practitioners, although it
is important to recognise that it rarely mirrors
but rather resonates and hence provides
ideas, lessons and frameworks through which
to address the challenges of today. The exam-
ple of atrocity propaganda during WW1
provides significant insights as to how to
approach a number of the issues of commu-
nication but it is arguably even more impor-
tant to recognise the way that it has framed
current thinking about information in con-
flict, particularly in the western democracies.
This is a legacy that can only be addressed by
further consideration of that case study,
including a more nuanced understanding of
the social context in which governments
sought to utilise atrocities as a source for
propaganda. At the heart of this is a con-
tinuing debate about the extent to which
any process of communication can be simply
about informing an audience without any
expectation of influencing them.
The case study also highlights a potential
tension between the requirement to collect
evidence for potential use in legal processes
and information for use as propaganda.
Whilst the Versailles Treaty is often labelled
as a failure with regards to war crimes pros-
ecutions, the discussions in the Paris Peace
Process created a foundation which contrib-
uted significantly to the development of inter-
national humanitarian law. The report of the
Commission on Responsibilities discussed in
this chapter listed a range of war crimes which
for the first time in an international agreement
included sexual violence, and specifically rape
and enforced prostitution. This list became
the baseline for the International Military
Tribunals in Nuremburg and Tokyo at the end
of the World War II, and this was of course
built at least in part on the work of Bryce and
his allied colleagues. In using the material
gathered and assessed by the Commission as
both potential evidence and as a source for
propaganda led to a blurring that subsequently
allowed the anti-propagandists to undermine
its role for the former as much as the latter.
Lastly, given the negative legacy of the
anti-propagandists for today’s efforts at com-
munication in conflict, it remains impor-
tant to build on the work of those such as
Robertson (2014) and Gregory (2008) in
critically engaging with those works as much
as the material which they criticise. Through
a combination of a better understanding
of the original atrocity propaganda, as well
as the work of the anti-propagandists, there
is the clear potential to reach a better under-
standing of the possibilities and practicalities
for today.
 Atrocities, Investigations and Propaganda: Lessons from World War I
Notes
1  It is recognised that the broader process consid-
ered allegations against all of the Central Powers
but the focus here is on the relationship between
Britain and Germany.
2  Each of these stories are described in detail else-
where but it was suggested that German corpses
from the front were being rendered down for
glycerine, that a Canadian soldier had been cruci-
fied by German troops during the battle for Ypres
in 1915 and that a Scottish nurse working in Bel-
gium had been mutilated by having her breasts
cut off, again by a German soldier.
3  It is of note that as recently as 2011 this was not
the NATO definition which was at that time iden-
tical to that of psychological operations. It was
changed to reflect that propaganda is something
that adversaries do rather than NATO.
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Primary Sources
Imperial War Museum:
WW1 Poster Collection PST 11370, PST 6066,
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Library of Congress:
Treaty of Peace with Germany (Treaty of Versailles)
www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/
m-ust000002-0043.pdf accessed 1 July 2018
UK National Archive:
HO 45 – Bryce Committee Materials
FO 608/245 – Materials from the Commission
on the Responsibility of the Authors of the
War and on Enforcement of Penalties
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Bolt, Neville (2012), The Violent Image (Hurst:
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Gregory, Adrian (2008), The Last Great War:
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bridge University Press: Cambridge).
Gullace, Nicoletta F. (1997), ‘Sexual Violence
and Family Honour: British Propaganda and
International Law during the First World
War’, The American Historical Review,
Vol. 102 No. 3, pp. 714–747.
271
Higson, N. (1984), ‘The Union of Democratic
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Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (Yale
University Press: New Haven).
Hull, Isabel V. (2014), A Scrap of Paper: Break-
ing and Making International Law During the
Great War (Cornell University Press: Ithaca).
Morgan, J. H. (1916), German Atrocities: An
Official Investigation, (E. P. Dutton and Com-
pany: New York) – Accessed via Project
Gutenburg.
NATO (2017), NATO AAP-6 Edition 2017:
NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions
(English and French), February 2018.
Neander J. and Marlin R. (2010), ‘Media and
Propaganda: The Northcliffe Press and the
Corpse Factory Story of World War 1’, Global
Media Journal – Canadian Edition, Vol. 3
No. 2, pp. 67–82.
Ponsonby, Arthur (1928), Falsehood in War-
time (Dutton & Co: New York) – Reprinted as
a Kissinger Legacy Reprint.
Read, James M. (1938) ‘Atrocity Propaganda
and the Irish Rebellion’, The Public Opinion
Quarterly, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 229–244.
Robertson, Emily (2014), ‘Propaganda and
‘Manufactured Hatred’: A Reappraisal of the
Ethics of First World War British and Austral-
ian Atrocity Propaganda’, Public Relations
Inquiry, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 245–266.
Smith, Charles W. (1942), ‘Reviewed Work:
Atrocity Propaganda 1914–1919 by James
Morgan Read’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 4
No. 1, pp. 126–129.
Taylor, Phillip M. (2003), Munitions of the
Mind: A History of Propaganda from the
Ancient World to the Present Day (Manches-
ter University Press: Manchester).
Willis, James F. (1982). Prologue to Nuremburg:
The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War
Criminals of the First World War (Green-
wood: Westport).
Wilson T. (1979), ‘Lord Bryce’s Investigation
into Alleged German Atrocities in Belgium,
1914–15’, Journal of Contemporary History,
Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 369–383.
Woods Michael. E. (2015), ‘A Theory of
Moral Outrage: Indignation and Eighteenth-
Century British Abolitionism’, Slavery and
Abolition, Vol. 36 No. 4, pp. 662–683.

Countering Hamas and
Hezbollah Propaganda
INTRODUCTION
This chapter outlines the basic principles of
Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s propaganda efforts
in assisting their battle against Israel, and the
feeble attempts Israel is making in order to
counter its opponent’s measures. This battle
has far wider implications than solely among
the Middle Eastern regions where they take
place, as both organizations are merely
branches of a global radical Islamic network
reaching the Western world as well.
Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood
organization, which was founded by Hassan
al-Banna in 1928 in Egypt. Al-Banna’s purpose
was to implement Islam as a political move-
ment, replacing the secular regimes in the Arab
world. Its word was carried to the Gaza Strip,
which was controlled by Egypt, crowded with
Arab refugees who mostly fled the battle zones
of southern British Mandate Palestine after
the Egyptian army’s failed attempt to take over
the newly founded Israel in 1948.
17
Ron Schleifer
The secular regime in Egypt, headed by
Nasser, kept tight control over religious
Islamic activists until Egypt lost control over
Gaza in the Six Day War of 1967; it then
became much easier for proponents of Islam
to advance their activities. In the early 1980s,
Israel was preoccupied with the secularist
PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),
which openly declared its wish to obliterate
the ‘Zionist entity’. Only in 1988 did the
Muslim Brotherhood decide to come out in
the open with a coherent ideology mixing
Palestinian belief with Islam. The territory of
Israel had once been under Islam, and there-
fore became a sacred ground (waqf); it is
therefore the religious duty of all Palestinian
Arabs to restore it to Islamic hands.
In the ever-shifting balance of power in
the Middle East, the Gulf states – primar-
ily Qatar, who supported Hamas in the past,
and in recent years, Iran – who took over as
Hamas’ main supporter. Saudi Arabia, which
found itself surrounded by Shiites from Iran
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
and Yemen, moved to having the semi-clan-
destine support of Israel.
A distance of 280 miles (450 km) to Israel’s
northern border, southern Lebanon, hosts the
local branch of Iran’s Hezbollah (‘Party of
God’). The organization was founded after
Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran
in 1979, and became the international tool to
advance Iranian interests, primarily spread-
ing the Shiite version of Islam throughout the
Arab world and planting the seeds of Shiism
elsewhere. The mountainous area of Lebanon
had been for a millennium a retreat for per-
secuted religious minorities, and the Shiites
were no exception. The large Shiite population
in Lebanon received religious indoctrination
since the 1950s through clerics sent from Iran.
The late 1970s saw the military organi-
zation of the Shiites protect their interests,
like any other minority in Lebanon, after the
civil war of 1976. The Israeli military and
their Lebanese-allied Maronite Christians
operation, which intended to uproot the PLO
from southern Lebanon, deteriorated into a
protracted war in 1982 and gave rise to the
Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.
There are many parallels between Hamas’s
and Hezbollah’s modus operandi. Both owe
their rise to fame to their battles with Israel,
and both hide their global aspirations, their
affiliation with Iran, and their use of revo-
lutionary warfare doctrine. The revolution-
ary doctrine formulated by General Giap of
North Vietnam comprises of terrorism, guer-
rilla warfare, and psychological warfare.
This chapter will focus on the latter. Our
time span is from the Second Lebanon War
(2006) to the present (2019), where the Gaza
Conflict has been in the global media almost
daily for the past ten months. Keeping it at
the top of the list of global news as a means
to politically pressure Israel is quite relevant
to the Western world while confronting the
challenge of radical Islam. Based on the prin-
ciples of revolutionary warfare, in particu-
lar, psychological operations (PSYOP), this
chapter will present the details of how such
an operation works.
273
PRINCIPLES OF PSYOP
The West has grappled with war propaganda
for over a century. Propaganda is a compli-
cated subject to deal with, primarily since the
Second World War, and connotes a dictatorial
tool that liberal democracy should distance
themselves from. However, there are no such
qualms in the Arab world. The authoritarian
regimes rely heavily on propaganda in order
to maintain control besides physical meas-
ures, and its population perceives it as an
inseparable part of political reality. In addi-
tion, rhetoric has a very important role in
Arab culture; it includes exaggerations,
hidden meanings that stem from the rich
Arabic language and history. A very thick
veil of political correctness hinders the West
from seeing through the cultural barriers of
the machination of the Arab way of thought;
this originates from the goodwill of well-
meaning Westerners not to offend ‘the other’
and less well-meaning Islamic elements that
worked hard to blur Islamic intentions
regarding the West (see Kramer 2002).1
Since their reorganization in 1968,
Palestinian political groups realized that the
continuation of Arab propaganda of three dec-
ades was of no use and turned to the West to
seek assistance. The famous speech of Yasser
Arafat at the UN in 1974, where he held an
olive branch while wearing a gun holster on
his side, was an indication to that switch, con-
sidering that the PLO used global-scale terror
just two years previously in Munich.
Using the basic formula of communication
termed by Harold Lasswell nearly a century
ago (Lasswell 1948), there are three basic tar-
get audiences to whom the PSYOP message
is directed in wartime: (i) home, (ii) enemy,
and (iii) neutrals. For the home audience,
the need is to persuade in order to continue
the sacrifice until victory. To the enemy, the
messages entail promises of defeat, argu-
ments that war is futile, proof of inferiority,
and a bleak future. To the neutrals, the mes-
sages are directed at smearing the enemy,
through demonization, justifying selves, and
274 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
generally attempting to prevent support to
the enemy. In this chapter, we will discuss
the audience of the enemy, which is closely
interlinked with the neutrals.
The delivery of messages also proves dif-
ficult in wartime, since the enemy is over
the border and knows that messages sent
are designed for manipulation and to work
against his interest. Yet, the past century pro-
vided many creative solutions to this problem,
by methods such as falsifying the true source
of the message (euphemistically called ‘black
propaganda’), taking over the enemy’s broad-
cast channels, making the message relevant
to the enemy’s wellbeing, and many more.
The emergence of the global digital age has
introduced a variety of methods of communi-
cating with the enemy, giving the doctrine of
PSYOP an unprecedented boost.
PSYOP IN THE MIDDLE EAST
The history of modern use of PSYOP in the
region dates back to the Second World War.2
The Italian fascist regime promoted its poli-
cies in the Middle East through Radio Bari,
which aired programs in 17 regional dialects
of Arabic (MacDonald 1977). The German
Ministry of Propaganda headed by Dr Joseph
Goebbels had a large Arabic section, assisted
by Haj Amin al-Husseini (Herf 2010). The
British were also fighting for the hearts and
minds of Arabs in the region, using radio and
leaflets, knowing all the while that their pres-
ence in Egypt was conditional to winning the
Second World War. After the Egyptian and
Syrian failure to take over Israel in 1948 in a
coordinated attack, former Nazi propaganda
operators were hired both by Egypt and Syria
to launch a propaganda war against Israel
(Wegner 2007). The sediment of such anti-
Semitic imagery remains in Arab stereotypes
of Jews to this day.
Following the Six Day War, the Palestinians
reorganized under Arafat’s Fatah movement,
the largest faction of the umbrella organization
known as the PLO. Fatah activists realized
that old infiltration tactics into Israel were not
sufficient for a significant political change
and looked for a substitute. They saw the suc-
cess of the FLN (National Liberation Front)
in Algiers and that of the Cuban revolution,
and primarily to that of the North Vietnamese
over the United States; Moscow sent Cuban
trainers to Lebanon to train the PLO (Shultz
1988, 111). The latter was most significant
because in real time, Fatah activists were able
to see how a small national movement could
cause a global superpower to lose its political
will, despite enormous investments in mate-
rial and manpower.
What the Americans called PSYOP
became of special interest. As mentioned
previously, it was coupled with terrorism
and guerrilla warfare, but these were now
coordinated differently to maximize effect.
The PLO switched to global-scale terrorism,
expulsion from its Lebanese base in 1982,
and an Intifada, and a covert dialogue with
the United States moved to open politics,
resulting in the Oslo Accords of 1994.
HAMAS
All the while, Islamic organizations kept a
gradual build-up of their use of PSYOP. The
process in Arabic is called daawa, which
loosely translates as spreading the faith by
preaching; in practice, it is more like the
process of enabling full conscription to a
movement. With foreign assistance, mosques
were erected in the Gaza Strip and in the
West Bank, as were religious schools, social
welfare allocations, football clubs, and
summer camps. Hamas, which was headed
by blind disabled Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
kept quiet on the public arena while con-
scripting disillusioned Palestinians weary of
secular corrupt PLO activists, who, as often
happens with revolutionary movements, had
a taste of the good life that comes with suc-
cess (Uzrad 2005).
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
Hamas appeared in the open shortly
after the outbreak of the First Intifada in
December 1987. For fear of becoming obso-
lete and irrelevant, it joined forces with its
rival, the PLO. The PLO paid lip service by
giving the so-called spontaneous outbreak
of the Palestinians a religious flavour; the
leaflets that instructed and encouraged the
Palestinians were adorned with religious
phraseology. Hamas set out to copy the PLO
in terms of PSYOP, coupled with terror and
guerrilla operations, such as kidnapping and
killing Israeli soldiers, which the PLO had
abstained from in order to give the Intifada a
nonviolent image.
Hamas began by publicizing a charter
just like the PLO did in 1965 and 1968 (see
Israeli 1990). It relied heavily on the Quran
and Islamic traditions, ignoring the positive
sections on the Jews (‘people of the book’)
and emphasizing the negative parts (‘sons of
apes and pigs’). It set up a network of news-
papers, magazines, and media relations with
Israel and the foreign press corps just like
their secular rivals had done since the mid-
1970s. Hamas soon had another rival who
thought it was becoming soft on the ultimate
goal: the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Yet despite internal strife, assassinations,
and struggle for local hearts and minds, all
three organizations joined forces in order to
convince the Israeli government and public
that Israel’s presence in the Gaza Strip was
futile.
The strategy was ancient. The Romans
called it divide et impera (divide and rule)
and in PSYOP jargon it is called ‘driving a
wedge’. The purpose is to split enemy soci-
ety and set each faction against each other.
The results were astonishing. In October
2000, Arafat launched the Second Intifada,
replete with suicide bombers and violence,
unlike the first Intifada 12 years earlier.
The PLO had to show that it was a match to
Hamas and developed its own suicide units.
Many of the recruits came from official
Palestinian Authority orphanages (Sabag
2018).
275
In 1994, following the Oslo Accords,
Israel withdrew from Gaza City, then gradu-
ally from parts of the Gaza Strip, and finally,
in 2005, evacuated by force 10,000 Israeli
settlers who were encouraged by the former
government three decades earlier to settle
there in order to increase Israeli security. For
the duration of the ‘disengagement’, as it was
called, all Palestinian factions kept still in
order not to give opponents of the evacuation
any political ammunition.
When the evacuation was complete, Hamas
struck again; in June 2006, it abducted
an Israeli soldier and started a brilliant
campaign that wrecked Israeli society for
five years. IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was held
in captivity, and whenever Hamas thought
the Israeli public interest had died down, it
stirred the Israeli debate with another sign
of life from the abducted soldier. Five years
later, Hamas felt (according to the guer-
rilla rule) that it should not push Israel too
much and returned the abducted soldier in
exchange for 1,100 convicted Palestinian
terrorists.
PRINCIPLES OF GUERRILLA WARFARE
A fundamental rule of the guerrilla is what
the US Army field manual on battlefield
deception calls ‘the law of small numbers’
(Department of the Army 1988). The guer-
rilla, due to its inferiority in resources, has to
walk a tightrope; on one hand, it harasses the
state, yet on the other, it is very careful not to
overdo it, for fear of reprisal by the govern-
ment. Thus, Hamas started shooting mortar
shells at uninhabited areas in southern Israel
at long intervals, then shortened the time
between each shooting, then increased the
payload using homemade rockets (Qassam,
named after Islamic rebel Abdul Azziz al
Qassam, who fought the British Mandate
authorities in mid-1930s Palestine).3 Finally,
it launched heavy rockets at Israeli towns
and communities in southern Israel. Hamas
276 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
knows it has to be careful not to cross the line
in order not to provoke a large-scale Israeli
attack.
‘Whatever You Do, You’ll Fail’
Another guerrilla principle designed to
despair the enemy is the principle of effective
measures. The guerrilla shows that whatever
means the government will undertake, it is
bound to fail. If Israel tried to bribe the
Palestinians through improving conditions,
the PLO made sure – occasionally using
brute force – not to take part.4 When Israel
used nonlethal means, wooden batons, to
quell mass demonstrations, the Palestinians
created an effective campaign highlighting
Israeli brutality. When the IDF used tear gas,
the Palestinians responded with a campaign
whose sarcastic theme was the irony of Jews
using ‘gas’. Palestinians realized that rub-
bing an onion on one’s face when a tear gas
grenade is launched undermines the majority
of its effects.5
During Hamas’s 2018 Million Man March,
it used the old PLO stratagem of nonviolent
action (NVA), combining Gandhian non-
violent strategies with arson and guerrilla
operations. One million Palestinians threat-
ened to cross the Gaza fence and walk to
their ancestral homes in Jaffa and Lod. Israel
positioned snipers to prevent Hamas opera-
tives from cutting the fence. The march was
stopped, but Hamas announced that in the
next attempt, the marchers will use thou-
sands of mirrors to undermine Israeli snipers.
Hamas also showed photographs taken from
Hamas operative cameras that were installed
on their guns.
Hamas dragged the IDF into a cat-and-
mouse attrition process; it set tent encamp-
ments next to the border, providing a human
shield against IDF attempts at securing the
border. When that failed, Hamas gathered car
tires in large quantities and set them on fire,
creating a smoke screen. Israel retorted with
large water cannons and blowers taken from
oil refineries. The purpose of this cat-and-
mouse game was to wear out the IDF, boost
Palestinian morale, and return the world’s
attention to the Palestinian issue – an age-old
Palestinian goal.
Overloading the Enemy System
One of the main principles of a revolution-
ary movement is what Maurice Tugwell
(1981) called the switch from ‘asset to lia-
bility’. It is designed to persuade the enemy
that the cost of his position is going to over-
ride the reward. The costs can be financial,
political, or social. The Palestinians have
been using this principal since the mid-
1970s; they had a smear campaign against
Israel during a period longer than the Cold
War. The rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, on
the street, or on campus is but one result of
this campaign. The terror and guerrilla cam-
paigns forced Israel to invest vast sums in
anti-missile campaigns. The Israeli media
noted that while an Iron Dome missile costs
$50,000 to $100,000, a Qassam (also known
as a Katyusha) rocket costs merely a fraction
of this sum.
The same applies to the tunnel warfare
copied from Vietnam. The tunnels dug by
the Palestinians are seldom used, but the idea
that the Gaza Strip has a subterranean tun-
nel network causes the IDF great concerns.
In March 2018, the Palestinians cleverly
revived the date of the once effective Israeli-
Arab protest ‘Land Day’ of the 1970s, which
fell on the Jewish holiday of Passover. By
sounding war drums, the IDF annulled leave
for tens of thousands of soldiers and officers,
causing wide-scale bitterness among them
and their families.
The diplomatic and the public image bat-
tleground were activated as well, bearing
achievements for the Palestinians, such as
a positive image in the international media
and with international organizations. The
International Criminal Court in The Hague
announced its intention to investigate
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
whether Israel performed war crimes, and the
UN issued a favourable statement. The sub-
ject fell perfectly under the old module of the
persecuted versus the pursuer, the nonviolent
versus the aggressive, of the past successful
decades since the First Intifada.
Demonization
The major theme underlying most of Hamas’s
messages is demonization. Mastered by
the British during the First World War, the
Germans in the Second World War, and the
Communists in the Cold War, Hamas has
brought its use against Israel to new heights.
One could argue against the invented ele-
ments of previous campaigns of German or
Bolshevik cruelty or of Jewish cleanliness,
but when Hamas brings Muslim religious
quotes about Jews being descendants of apes
and pigs, it is impossible to argue since they
are based on religion.
This message is directed towards home,
enemy, and neutral audiences alike. To the
home audience – Gazans, Palestinians in
general, and the Arab world – the purpose
is to dehumanize Israelis, and Jews in gen-
eral, who are perceived as supporting them.
Hatred rallies against an enemy and makes
it easier to kill that enemy. To the Israelis,
the purpose is to frighten, to show them
there will be no compromise: ‘See how
primitive our hatred is’. To the neutrals, the
purpose is a mixture of both. It is as if they
are saying, ‘We are primitive and therefore
ruthless. If you withdraw your support of
the Jews, you’ll have a (temporary) respite,
and possibly enhance dormant anti-Semi-
tism, where medieval Christian anti-Semi-
tism used the image of Jews feeding from a
sow as well’.
Hamas Inside Israel
As part of the overall strategy to subdue
Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood joined hands
277
with Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the
Northern Faction. Salah, a born-again
Muslim, is an Arab-Israeli who heads a
growing Islamic organization within Israel.
He is generally careful with his statements,
yet his sermons and calls for redeeming ‘the
sacred land on which Israel is built’ keeps
him in and out of Israeli prisons. Salah’s
headquarters in central Israel provide a con-
stant reminder to the Israeli public that the
conflict is insoluble, unlike the promises of
the secular PLO of old. The Northern
Faction (complementing the southern Israel
Muslim Bedouins) organizes demonstra-
tions, has an active media centre, and culti-
vates political connections with various
bodies, primarily Israeli Arabs and interna-
tional Islamic and pro-Arab bodies.6 It treads
the thin line of not harming Israeli security,7
while publicly decrying the injustice caused
to Palestinians, all the while continuing the
process of preaching and teaching radical
Islam to Israeli Arabs – especially the young
generation.
HEZBOLLAH
Like all other factions in the Middle East,
Hezbollah hastened to found an information
branch from the first stage of its inception.
The network included newspapers, maga-
zines, and radio and television stations, most
famously the TV station Al-Manar (The
Beacon), which attracted even Israelis when
it cleverly exploited their anxiety over the
wellbeing of their soldiers in the security
zone in Lebanon in 2006 (Schleifer 2009).
Years later, the Iranian involvement in
Hezbollah became clear when the FBI uncov-
ered networks that transferred funds of con-
traband and drug deals. A legal battle ensued
when Israel complained that Al-Manar had
become a global cable television broadcast-
ing service in the US and in EU countries
(Commonwealth of Australia 2010; Conway
2008; Weiser 2008).
278 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Messages
Hezbollah had a very simple message at first:
‘Leave Lebanon’. It was short, comprehensi-
ble, and sensible. It was along the line of
messages from an ‘asset to liability’ shift,
namely to exact a price for the lives of Israeli
soldiers and worked in an unclear relation-
ship with the Israeli Four Mothers organiza-
tion.8 The latter gathered momentum in Israel
by pushing the government to leave from the
security zone back to Israel.
Israel attempted to exploit the historical
rift between the Maronite Christians and the
Shiites in South Lebanon and formed the
South Lebanese Army (SLA), but Hezbollah
penetrated the SLA through assassinations
and threats, first aimed at intelligence units
and later towards operational forces. The
SLA deteriorated in efficiency and had to
rely on Israeli support.
Hezbollah gave a few interviews to the
international media, branding itself as ‘free-
dom fighters’ who have no other claim but
throwing Israel back over the border. This
goal was achieved in May 2000, when over-
night the IDF withdrew from Lebanon swiftly,
leaving behind military equipment and thou-
sands of its former supporters. The message
of Hezbollah shifted immediately afterward.
It was coined in a speech given by leader,
Hassan Nasrallah, on May 26, 2000, compar-
ing Israel’s social strength to that of a spider’s
web. The idea in essence delineates the old
revolutionary message ‘You have more guns,
but we have more willpower to sacrifice’.
After a while, the organization started the
next phase, ‘Freedom of Jerusalem’, which
went in line with the Iranians commemorating
Jerusalem Day, one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s
strategies to bridge the gap between Sunnis
and Shiites. From then on, until 2006, the
strategy has involved a gradual increase of
armed hostilities against Israel.
Then Nasrallah made the mistake of miscal-
culation, attacking an IDF patrol on the Israeli
side and abducting two soldiers. The abduc-
tion deteriorated quickly into a full-scale war,
dubbed the ‘Second Lebanon War’. Central
Israeli cities were bombed with medium-
range missiles, and Israel retaliated by flat-
tening the Dakhia quarter in Beirut, which
housed Hezbollah’s headquarters. Nasrallah
had over-yanked the chain of the enemy, a
mistake he fully acknowledged (Smith 2006).
‘We Are Always Victorious’
Shortly after the war ended in October 2006,
Lebanese Shiite children were taken to a
hastily erected ‘victory museum’ housed in a
large tent, displaying a damaged Israeli
armoured vehicle and light firearms. The
idea was to establish a victory consciousness
among the Lebanese Shiites and their sup-
porters; after all, Israel retreated, the Israeli
prime minister was demoted, and Nasrallah
remained in power. The same process
occurred in Egypt after the Yom Kippur War
(1973), where three weeks after the Egyptian
and Syrian surprise attack, Israel defeated the
Egyptian army and was within close range to
Cairo. Yet the Egyptians developed a cam-
paign outlining the Egyptian ‘victory’, and
the crown jewel was the enormous October
1973 victory museum in Cairo.
Deterrence
Hezbollah leaked information about its mis-
siles’ ability to cover all of Israel. Israeli
sources estimated Hezbollah’s arsenal included
100,000 rockets of various size and carriage
capacity (Kenner 2018). Though no missile
was shot at Israel by Hezbollah since the 2006
war, the idea that Hezbollah had such a capac-
ity was a scratch on the Israeli collective psy-
chological cortex. In the ensuing conflict in its
southern border, Israeli officials admitted that
the IDF was instructed to contain the conflict,
for the real issue was the threat from the north,
namely Hezbollah’s missile arsenal. This was
a clear indication that Hezbollah’s deterrent
messages were working.
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
‘You Will Fail’
In a master stroke of amplification of their
war message, Nasrallah announced in a pre-
recorded message during the 2006 war, that
an Israeli vessel would soon be hit. Indeed, a
land-to-sea Iranian missile was shot at an
Israeli navy vessel, killing three. Though the
damage was controlled, it gave the organiza-
tion great prestige. It showed once again that
the enemy may have superior war machines,
as if Hamas is saying: ‘But we are the cun-
ning ones – under all circumstances’. When
Israel tried to silence Hezbollah’s mouth-
piece, namely the Al-Manar TV station, by
bombing from the air, Hezbollah switched to
an alternative relay station and continued
broadcasting. The content of the messages
was less relevant than the principle ‘Despite
your might, you cannot silence us’, which
projected the overall message of ‘whatever
you will do, you will fail’.
ISRAELI PSYOP
Israel has a very dubious record regarding
deploying PSYOP in its war doctrine. When
asked about hasbara (Israel’s synonym
for counterpropaganda), Prime Minister
Menachem Begin quipped, ‘We have no need
for Goebbelses’ (Jews Sans Frontieres 2010).
This reflects the Israeli attitude towards pro-
motion of its image, especially in wartime.
A small PSYOP unit called LOM (acro-
nym for Lochamat Modi’in [Intelligence
Warfare]) worked within the operations secu-
rity branch of Aman (the IDF’s intelligence
branch). LOM was disbanded in 2004, only
to be hastily reassembled in 2006 and had to
improvise – in the best of Israeli military tra-
dition – four months later, when it was called
upon to perform in the Second Lebanon War
(Shadmi & Ravid 2005).
Israel’s predicament vis-á-vis Hamas
originates primarily from the indecision sur-
rounding the future of the Gaza Strip. The
279
Palestinians have conducted an effective
revolutionary warfare campaign (i.e. terror,
guerrilla, PSYOP) and managed to make
Israel withdraw first from Gaza City, then
from the entire Gaza Strip, only to find that a
fence is no obstacle to tunnels and missiles.
Israel is reluctant (save for a few thousand
evacuated settlers) to return to the Gaza Strip
for fear of a renewed counter-campaign,
taking into consideration the state of hun-
dreds of thousands of youth radicalized by
the Hamas and Islamic Jihad educational
systems. This state of indecision prevents
Israel from formulating the military goal that
PSYOP is called upon to support. This state
of affairs places the IDF in a permanently
passive state.
Meanwhile, Israel is losing its sovereignty
in the south to an arson attack torching thou-
sands of acres of forest and cultivated fields.
There is no indication, at least as identifiable
in open source intelligence – in Israel that the
IDF has a plan for ‘the day after’, once the
Gaza Strip is taken and Hamas is overthrown.
It signifies a lack of will to govern the strip.
Dissemination
In the past, Israel relied on two main chan-
nels for dissemination: its government’s Kol
Israel Arabic Service and paper leaflets.
Until the 1980s, the Voice of Israel had wide
listenership among Arab audiences in the
Middle East, but deteriorated quickly once
environmentalist protests banned installing
antennae in the centre of Israel, thereby curb-
ing reception as far as the Gaza Strip a mere
50 miles away. Lack of government invest-
ment in the Arabic service, coupled with the
gradual retirement of the veteran Jewish
broadcasters born in Arab countries, led to
low moral and political accusations with
their Israeli-Arab replacements, which led
the deterioration further.
Since the War of Independence in 1948, in
times of armed conflict, the IDF used paper
leaflets scattered from airplanes and continue
280 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
to do so to this day. The limitations of the
paper leaflets are quite obvious: messages are
limited to one page, distribution is dependent
on weather conditions and on the coopera-
tion with the air force, to mention but a few.
However, leaflets are an effective tool when
it comes to directing desired behaviour, such
as the evacuation of an area before a ground
operation, or to announce cease-fires and
times or the location of human aid.
During the great Hamas campaign of the
Mavi Marmara flotilla in 2010, a young
officer initiated a YouTube channel of clips
coming (extremely late) from the IDF. This
was the beginning of a small IDF operation in
the social media sphere. Nowadays, the IDF
delivers messages through Twitter, Facebook,
and its own website. It deploys an Arabic-
speaking officer to communicate directly
with Arab audiences; however, this activity is
still in its embryonic stages.
Israeli Counter-PSYOP Messages
A review of Israeli PSYOP messages reveals
that nearly all Israeli messages have been
reactive or apologetic. As mentioned previ-
ously, since its inception, the IDF had a
minuscule PSYOP component that was kept
very low in the army’s pecking order. To this
day, despite declarations to the contrary, the
IDF prefers kinetics to persuasion. Therefore,
a lack of resources has led to small-scale
activities, and the army’s policy of short time
spans between commission has caused a lack
of organizational memory. Along with a tra-
dition of secrecy on PSYOP operations, this
leaves any new PSYOP officer to begin
operations from scratch.
Obstacles
Israeli messages are crippled by two more
elements: a lack of cultural understanding
and the religious obstacle. In the 1940s and
1950s, Israeli intelligence had the advantage
of comprising officers who grew up in Arab
countries, with a close cultural understanding
of the Arab world. The younger generation of
analysts acquire their knowledge of Arabic
and Arab culture from academia, which for
decades has been hindered by political cor-
rectness and focuses on the admittedly rich
culture of the Arab world rather than the
deadly aspirations of radical Islam.
The most serious obstacle is the religious
barrier. From its inception, Israel has been
based on socialist Zionism, which overtook
the Zionist movement since the beginning
of the twentieth century. Zionism to a large
extent perceived itself as a rebellion against
the older Jewish community and excluded
religion from its operational code. Therefore,
when the Palestinians regrouped in 1968, they
spoke in secular terms such as, ‘We aspire for
a secular democratic independent Palestinian
state’. It fitted well with the Israeli political,
security, and intelligentsia leaders to seek
a political rational territorial solution that
would lower the Palestinian pressure while
safeguarding Israeli interests.
This all changed when Hamas and
Hezbollah came to the fore. The messages
they presented were essentially religious, stat-
ing that Israeli leadership, secular by nature,
is ill-equipped to deal with it. The Israeli
message and general modus operandi seek
the rational interest, the Western-style short
time span, and honouring of signed agree-
ments. They cannot fathom that the Islamic
tradition is authoritative by nature and, based
on Islamic principles, seeks to implement
‘God’s will’ on the world; it can therefore
wait centuries if needed, and a signed agree-
ment is as Mohammad had shown, but a tem-
porary means to an end.
Hamas and Hezbollah are opting for the
long-range goal, that is, the vanquishing of
Israel with no interim stages or step-by-step
strategies. The backbone of their message is
‘prepare to die’ or at best acquire the status
of tax-paying dhimmis. In terms of appeal-
ing to the neutrals, Hamas and Hezbollah
use the fundamental theme of demonization,
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
according to which Israel is the incarnation
of Satanism. It kills mercilessly women and
children, all it desires is to expand, it controls
via the Jewish lobby and the international
banking system of the US government and
the international media.
‘Driving A Wedge’
Despite all the above-mentioned constraints,
Israeli PSYOP managed to succeed in some
cases. Their main practice has been the
wedge-driving principle. As both Hezbollah
and Hamas operate within a polarized society
to the verge of taking to arms, Israel appealed
to Lebanon that Hezbollah is a foreign agent
operating for the benefit of Iran; as such it
would not hesitate to burn Lebanon to the
ground. The purpose was to set the Lebanese
Christian and Sunni population against
Hezbollah, which diverts much effort to posi-
tion itself as a Lebanese patriot.
The same applies to Hamas. Since the
Palestinian society comprises of tribes,
clans, and minorities, which were politically
divided between PLO and Hamas supporters,
Israel was able to appeal to PLO supporters in
Gaza, raise concerns over Hamas, and tighten
its grip over the Gaza population, which in
turn raised the Gazan dissatisfaction level.
Thus, Israel aired clips taken from unmanned
aerial vehicles that showed Hamas stealing
humanitarian aid for its members and cement
meant for home reconstruction being used for
tunnels.
An oft-used ploy that is designed to drive
a wedge is the message that provides contact
details for those Lebanese or Gazans who
wish to save their lives and report to the IDF
that their homes were turned into weapon
caches by Hezbollah or Hamas. Israel prom-
ises it will give ample warning before it
bombs the location in order to give the fam-
ily a chance to flee in time. There is no data
about how many calls were made, but there
are reports of successful efforts to hack into
those websites. In the Gaza War of 2009,
281
reports were saying that Hamas confiscated
cell phones from Fatah activists for fear that
they would contact Israel and give over vital
information (Hass 2009).
The overall survey of Israeli propaganda
vis-à-vis Hamas is reflexive; most Israeli
efforts are conducted to negate Hamas’s mes-
sages, mainly allegations of using excessive
force against noncombatants. The IDF’s mili-
tary police is tasked with the investigation,
which naturally takes a long time. By the time
conclusions are published, Hamas produces
numerous other stories. In general, the occa-
sional Israeli discoveries of Hamas’s breach
of agreements, by smuggling war materials
into Gaza, hardly reaches international media.
This is due partly to the nondramatic factual
manner in which this information is presented
to the international media (as in the capture
of the weapon-loaded ship Karine A) or the
Palestinian meta-story that Israel is to blame
for the closure regarding the Gaza Strip.
COMPARING PROPAGANDA
METHODS
It is clear that the Islamic movements rely on
propaganda, while Israel focuses on kinetics.
However, the IDF has been taking measures
to use propaganda to some extent, especially
during particularly violent periods (Schleifer
2016, 149–164). The overriding theme of
Hamas and Hezbollah is essentially reli-
gious, that since they are followers of the
‘true faith’ (regardless of their enmity as
Sunnis and Shiites), they are certain of their
godly victory. This idea is embedded in most
of their PSYOP themes and strategies, such
as Israel’s due failure, imminent victory, or
demonization.9
In sharp contrast, Israel totally ignores the
religious aspect of warfare and focuses on a
pragmatic, rational approach: cease resist-
ance and keep the calm for our mutual benefit.
This is presumably because the leading ethos
in the Israeli social elite is fundamentally
282 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
secular. Israel stresses its hi-tech achieve-
ments, its Western culture, and its location
in the Middle East as a ‘villa in the jun-
gle’, according to former Defense Minister
Ehud Barak. The use of the Jewish religion
is highly polemic. No better example is the
uproar caused by infantry Givati Brigade
commander Colonel Ofer Winter, who is reli-
gious, quoting verses from the bible in a letter
to his troops before entering the battle over
Gaza in 2014. There is a tremendous mis-
understanding on behalf of the IDF as to the
potential of religion as a propaganda theme
against two enemies whose prime declared
motivation is religious.
Recent Advances
In the latest phase of the conflict, in summer
2018, beginning with Hamas’s alleged non-
violent March of the Million, some small
advances in the distribution channels have
been made. Social media is slightly more in
use by senior Israeli officials. Thus declared
the Ministry of Defense that the Israeli
‘code red’ warning that is used in cases of
Hamas rockets landing in Israel can colour
the Gaza Strip as well. General Kamil Abu
Rokon, head of the Israeli government’s
COGAT (Coordination of Government
Activities in the Territories), which is in
charge of contact with Palestinians, tweeted
that Hamas does not see the interests of the
Gazan population but rather the Iranian.
Obfuscating the Israeli message, the IDF
chief of staff was leaked as saying that his
moral standards prevented him ordering the
IDF to shoot at youths who were using
helium balloons to set Israeli southern fields
ablaze (Sadan 2018).
In the north, the IDF organized a small-
scale media event by exposing some of
Hezbollah’s attack tunnels reaching into (or
under) Israel. These tunnels were designed to
move hundreds of operatives and their equip-
ment in a short time in order to take over
territory and proclaim a temporary victory
until Israel summoned a counterattack. In an
Islamic context, such a victory has a far higher
propaganda value than holding territory. The
tunnels are a superb craftsmanship of work,
as the terrain is rocky, unlike the sandy tex-
ture in Gaza. The discovery of the tunnels was
a serious blow to Iran’s strategy in the region.
Yet in terms of propaganda, the IDF failed to
exploit the episode into a propaganda victory
and the story died within a few days.
CONCLUSION
Looking at the PSYOP aspect of the Arab-
Israeli Conflict from a decade-long perspec-
tive reveals the old adage of ‘nothing new
under the sun’. The Israelis have the upper
hand in manpower, material, and technology;
the Palestinians respond with propaganda
along with a gradual increase of violence, yet
are careful not to over-yank the chain, pre-
venting Israel from having to use its kinetic
military capability. This study highlights the
importance of PSYOP as a politico-military
tool to withstand against a stronger military
force.
As mentioned previously, the lessons from
Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s rivalries with Israel
have further-reaching consequences beyond
just the Middle East. Both Sunni and Shiite
radicals have worldwide aspirations. They
maintain a global network of both material
and ideological support (Leuprecht et  al.
2015). Their methods of propaganda use are
therefore of great significance, particularly
the religious aspect. If propaganda is to be
used throughout the Western world in coun-
tering radical Islam, it is worthwhile studying
the Israeli case.
As in the past five decades, the Palestinians
have always demonstrated a high level of
originality, ingenuity, and organizational
flexibility in deploying PSYOP against
Israel. This brought them a de facto state,
split Israeli society, and embittered Israel’s
existential routine. Hezbollah has done the
 Countering Hamas and Hezbollah Propaganda
same and caused Israel to withdraw from
Lebanon, endanger its northern flank, and
limited Israel’s options of political and mili-
tary manoeuvres.
To Israel’s detriment, the changes in
Syria over the past decade have brought the
Iranians into a closer involvement against
Israel. Nasrallah’s oft-repeated messages
regarding Hezbollah’s bombing capabilities
deter Israel from operating against the organ-
ization, as the worst-case scenario may be
a coordinated attack against Israel from the
south, the north, the east, and, as indictments
show, also from the centre by Arab-Israelis
(Lewis & Fisher-Ilan 2010).
Hezbollah’s novelties in the north have
been to erect a long line of watchtowers along
the Israeli–Lebanese border and man it with
operatives openly filming and taking notes.
These watchtowers are so close to the border
that a battle of shouts and obscenities often
takes place in order to upset the Israeli sol-
diers.10 Needless to say, Hezbollah covered
the watchtowers with signs in English saying
these structures are used by the NGO Green
Without Borders for environmental purposes
(Tazpit Press Service 2017).
In the south, Hamas keeps yanking the
Israeli chain by torching Israeli fields and
forests via primitive yet inventive methods.
This has been going on for eight months and
is having far more serious consequences than
just in the south due to the copycat effect
taking its toll in other regions of the coun-
try. The theme of the government’s immi-
nent failure has endured for a long time, and
Israeli government sources keep leaking to
the Israeli public that in light of the tension
in the north, the best solution is the policy of
containment.
In the second half of the twentieth century,
Communist regimes exploited Western guilt
by initiating incidents where its civilians
were purposely injured, like North Vietnam’s
setting the homes of the weapon industry
workers next to the factories, knowing they
would be bombed by the United States Air
Force. Afterwards, the North Vietnamese
283
government would invite celebrities, such
as Jane Fonda, to be publicly shocked by the
consequences. The PLO shelled Israel from
hospitals and schools in South Lebanon in
the late 1970s, and after Israeli artillery shot
back at the ‘source of fire’, the PLO invited
the Western media to protest against Israeli
brutality. Hamas followed suit and placed
its rocket launchers in UNRWA schools and
civilian locations to invoke the same results.
Israel tried protesting and provided evidence
to that effect, but results were minuscule. It
was either due to the fact that an investigation
takes time or to the successful control over
the foreign media in the Gaza Strip, as they
were forced to rely on local stringers – who
are, incidentally, Hamas operators.
On the other side of the equation is Israel,
with its ambiguous attitude towards PSYOP.
In one particular case, Hamas operatives cap-
tured a hawk and fitted it with a harness car-
rying an incendiary charge. The hawk was
photographed trapped on a tree on the Israeli
side of the border. The photo was a golden
nugget in terms of PSYOP, but nothing was
done with it by the Israeli PSYOP unit or the
IDF spokesman. On a much larger scale, the
IDF failed to use the images of the scorched
areas, flora and fauna, to invoke international
anger at Hamas.
All in all, Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s mili-
tary failures can be attributed to their spon-
sor, Iran, which opts for a head-on collision
with Israel towards a decisive quick victory.
This strategy stands in stark contrast to the
previous PLO policy of the ‘stage doctrine’,
which stresses step-by-step progress towards
eliminating Israel. In this case, apparently
PSYOP has no strategic influence over Israel
and causes it to rely on its kinetic power
while absorbing small-scale blows to its
image along the way.
A possible explanation to this situation is
the anomaly pointed out by countless surveys
on the happiness index, which shows that
Israelis are most satisfied with their lives; they
feel that their army is among the strongest on
a global scale, and that the Israeli economy is
284 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
booming, while its past arch-rivals are preoc-
cupied in a struggle of survival.
Notes
1  The popularity of Columbia University professor
Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism unintention-
ally contributed much to this blur.
2  It can be argued that the Balfour Declaration in
1917, stating the British government’s support
for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was a British
PSYOP move in order to curb Jewish support of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
3  During the 2014 operation against Hamas in
Gaza, Hamas demonstrated its missile abilities by
reaching central Israel. The greatest question is
whether Hamas has US-made mobile Stinger mis-
siles, which were given to Afghan forces in the
1980s to down Soviet jets.
4  Such improvements included sewage projects in
Gaza and building projects in refugee camps in
the West Bank, which the Palestinians did not
make use of. However, during the First Intifada
(1988–1990), Palestinians used Israeli medical
facilities even during declarations of disengage-
ment from Israel. Senior Palestinian operatives are
treated in Israeli hospitals regardless of extremist
statements on their part against the country.
5  In the age of international shopping via Amazon
and Ali Express, gas masks are becoming a com-
mon sight. This forced Israel to start developing
other nonlethal methods of warfare.
6  During the Second Lebanon War (2006), the
organization provided assistance to Arab villages
in northern Israel that were hit by Hezbollah mis-
siles. According to Arab tradition, the villagers are
now indebted to the helpers.
7  Some of its supporters were prosecuted for join-
ing Al-Qaeda and spying for Hezbollah.
8  The extent of coordination between Hezbollah
and Four Mothers is unclear. Activists are unwill-
ing to be interviewed and a correspondence sent
from the Ministry of Justice, in charge of the tax-
free associations, flatly says that the reports on
contributed funds is unavailable and the archives
of the organization were stolen.
9  The description of Jews as Nazis is mentioned in
Hamas’s charter, as well as by ninth-century com-
mentator Muhammad al-Bukhari, that before
‘the Day of Judgment’, trees and rocks will call to
come and kill the Jews hiding behind them (Yale
Law School 1988).
10  When a unit of Druze soldiers, whose language
and culture is Arabic, was holding that section of
the border, the officers had to make huge efforts
to keep the calm.
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Defending against Russian
Propaganda
Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews
INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses Russian propaganda,
explains why it might work, and explores
options available for Western countries to
protect themselves from manipulation through
propaganda. In previous research, we charac-
terized the Russian approach to propaganda
as a ‘firehose of falsehood’, capturing its
volume, frequency, and lack of commitment
to objective reality (Paul & Matthews 2016).
The discussion here begins with a description
of the nature and character of Russian propa-
ganda, Russia’s various techniques, their
goals, and several examples of specific propa-
ganda efforts as reported by news sources and
other observers. This discussion should pro-
vide you, the reader, with a better understand-
ing of the scope and scale of Russia’s efforts.
Why is this firehose of falsehood effec-
tive? We then turn to experimental results
from psychology and social psychology that
match characteristics of Russian propaganda
with human psychological vulnerabilities
18
and limitations. This research reveals that
falsehood-based attempts to manipulate peo-
ple through propaganda are far more likely to
be successful than we might realize or prefer.
What might we do about it? The chapter
concludes with a review of various proposals
and suggestions for defending against propa-
ganda. We evaluate each of these against evi-
dence and practical considerations.
THE CHARACTER OF RUSSIAN
PROPAGANDA
In many ways, the current Russian approach
to propaganda builds on Soviet Cold War-era
techniques with an emphasis on obfuscation
and getting targets to act in the interests of
the propagandist without realizing that they
have done so (Oliker 2015). The Soviets
would routinely employ ‘active measures’, a
term that encompassed disinformation, for-
gery, and subversion (Averin 2018). However,
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
these old models are much better suited to
the contemporary global information envi-
ronment than they were to the level of com-
munications technology available during the
Cold War. Russia has taken advantage of the
technology and media available in the con-
temporary context in ways that would have
been inconceivable during the Cold War.
While most Western observers focus on
Russia’s use of propaganda outside Russia’s
own borders, other countries are not the pri-
mary targets. Russia uses propaganda to
mobilize internal opposition in other coun-
tries, but also to mobilize Russia’s own public
(Andriukaitis 2018). Thus, Russia produces
as much, if not more, propaganda aimed at its
own domestic audiences. Much of this inter-
nal propaganda seeks to divide Russia from
the rest of the world and create the percep-
tion that Russia is being besieged on all sides
by enemies. This makes it easier for Russian
leaders to invoke support for aggressive
action in the name of defending the moth-
erland and to silence domestic resistance as
being unpatriotic (Snyder 2018). The focus
of this chapter, however, is on Russian inter-
national propaganda. Our primary concern is
finding ways to protect others from Russia,
not Russians from their own government.
SOURCES AND TYPES OF RUSSIAN
PROPAGANDA
Russian propaganda includes text, video,
audio, and still imagery propagated via tele-
vision broadcasting, satellite television, tra-
ditional radio, and the Internet and social
media. The producers and disseminators
include a substantial force of paid internet
‘trolls’ who manage dozens of false online
personas and amplify Russian propaganda
themes through online chat rooms, discus-
sion forums, and comments sections on news
and other websites (Chen 2015, Pomerantsev
& Weiss 2014). These various media and
modes are discussed below.
287
Television is a staple for Russian propa-
ganda, both traditional broadcast TV and sat-
ellite or cable dissemination, echoed online
through station websites and video sharing
platforms such as YouTube. RT (formerly
Russia Today) is one of Russia’s primary mul-
timedia news providers. With a budget of more
than US$300 million per year, it broadcasts in
English, French, German, Spanish, Russian,
and several Eastern European languages. The
channel is particularly popular online, where
it claims more than a billion page views. If
true, that would make it the most-watched
news source on the Internet (Pomerantsev &
Weiss 2014). RT and Sputnik (another self-
styled ‘news’ station) project a mixture of
actual journalism, infotainment (feel good
and human-interest stories), and lightly spun
anti-Western stories that highlight shortcom-
ings and perceived hypocrisies in the West,
such as corruption, abuse of power, or infra-
structure failures (Lucas & Nimmo 2015).
While some RT content is good journalism
and some is spun to be selectively critical of
the West, some is unambiguously designed to
mislead or obfuscate. Consider, for example,
the period immediately following the 2014
shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
over Crimea: RT broadcasted more than six
different possible explanations for the shoot-
down (some plausible, some less so; Snyder
2018), with manufactured evidence support-
ing more than one, but never presenting the
actual explanation (a Russian-made missile
fired by pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists;
Thomas 2015).
Russian international broadcasting also
includes Russian-language broadcasting in
Eastern European countries with signifi-
cant Russian-speaking populations. Russia
has bought available TV and radio stations
throughout this region over the past decade,
so it can easily control content and format.
Russian programming has high-production
values and is generally entertaining, so it
is preferred to genuinely local Russian-
language programming, which is ‘dry and
unattractive’ (Lucas & Nimmo 2015:7).
288 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Viewers tune in to see flashy and entertaining
shows; they then stay tuned for ‘news’ that
is sometimes heavily laced with propaganda
and spin.
The internet is a heavy focus for Russian
propaganda. In addition to online echoes of
Russian international broadcasting, the inter-
net is infested with Russian trolls (fraudulent
online accounts operated by humans) and
bots (accounts operated by automated pro-
cesses; Averin 2018). Volchek and Sindelar
(2015) report that ‘thousands of fake
accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal,
and vKontakte’ are maintained by Russian
propagandists. The 2018 indictment of the
Russian ‘Internet Research Agency’ (a cen-
tralized structure for organizing, paying, and
tasking trolls) by the US District Court for
the District of Columbia revealed several fea-
tures of the efforts of this infamous Russian
‘troll factory’, including:
• Employing hundreds of individuals to manage
fake personas, with an annual budget of millions
of US dollars;
• Attracting US audiences using false personas and
posing as Americans;
• Disparaging political candidates prior to the
2016 US election, buying political advertisements
(again posing as Americans), staging political
rallies, pretending to be American grassroots
organizations;
• Promoting allegations of vote fraud through
personas and groups on social media, as well as
through ad buys.
It is worth noting that the Internet Research
Agency is not the only source of Russian
trolls, just one that has been exposed and
documented (and criminally indicted). It is
entirely possible that Russia maintains other
such troll factories, as well as relying on enti-
ties less directly tied to the state, such as
trolls paid and coordinated by criminal oli-
garchs or collectives of patriotic hackers.
Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked
up and rebroadcast by legitimate news
outlets; more frequently, innocent social
media users repeat the themes, messages,
or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s
many dissemination channels (Lucas &
Nimmo 2015). For example, German news
sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation
about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014
(Lelich 2014), and Russian disinformation
about European Union plans to deny visas
to young Ukrainian men was repeated with
such frequency in Ukrainian media that the
Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to post
a rebuttal (Goble 2015).
As evidenced by the above descriptions,
Russian propaganda has relied on manufac-
tured evidence. This fabricated information
is often photographic. Some of these images
are easily exposed as fake due to poor photo
editing, such as discrepancies of scale, or
the availability of the original (pre-altered)
image (Davis 2014). Russian propagandists
have been caught hiring actors to portray vic-
tims of manufactured atrocities or crimes for
news reports (as was the case when Viktoria
Schmidt pretended to have been attacked by
Syrian refugees in Germany for Russian’s
Zvezda TV network) and faking on-scene
news reporting (as shown in a leaked video
in which ‘reporter’ Maria Katasonova is
revealed to be in a darkened room with
recorded explosion sounds playing in the
background rather than on a battlefield in
Donetsk when a light is switched on during
the recording; Smith 2015).
In addition to manufacturing information,
Russian propagandists often manufacture
sources. Russian news channels such as RT
and Sputnik, as well as other forms of media,
misquote credible sources or claim a more
credible source as the origin of a selected
falsehood (Miller 2013). Similarly, several
scholars and journalists, including Edward
Lucas, Luke Harding, and Don Jensen, have
reported that books that they did not write –
and containing views clearly contrary to their
own – had been published in Russian under
their names (Lucas 2015).
Using these different modes and media,
general Russian tactics have been described
as efforts to perpetrate the ‘four Ds’: dismiss
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
the critic, distort the facts, distract from
the issue, and dismay the audience (Lucas
& Nimmo 2015:5). Thus, Russia is not just
spreading false stories, but trying to sow con-
fusion about or distract from truths shared
by other sources. Examples include the deni-
als of the presence of ‘little green men’ in
Crimea in 2014, or the aforementioned inter-
pretations offered for the MH-17 shootdown
(Thomas 2015).
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF RUSSIAN
PROPAGANDA
Various scholars and observers have imputed
a range of goals, objectives, and motives to
Russia in its use of propaganda. All are plau-
sible, and none are mutually exclusive. For
example, Brooking and Singer (2016) note
two broad objectives for Russian propa-
ganda: to overwhelm Russia’s adversaries
with misinformation, challenging the very
basis of their reality; and to mobilize and
maintain the support of their own citizens.
Lucas and Nimmo (2015) note that Russian
propaganda is often less about winning fac-
tual arguments and more about spreading
confusion. Matthew Armstrong (2014) has
described this as a ‘war on information’,
seeking to destroy trust in and credibility of
all sources of information. Overall, this nihil-
istic goal of weakening credibility in general
and sowing chaos and discord in the West is
a common theme in goals imputed to Russia:
‘Sometimes, the goal is simply to stack
tinder, throw matches, and see what happens’
(Brooking & Singer 2016:22). This is con-
sistent with Freedom House (2017) reporting
on Russian efforts to use propaganda to
influence elections in at least 18 countries in
2016 and 2017.
Beyond these broad goals, McGeehan
(2018) asserts that Russia seeks to achieve
its political and military objectives without
escalating to military confrontation. One
path to undercutting resistance to Russian
289
aims is to manipulate foreign opinion to be
sympathetic toward Russian objectives, since
in Western democracies, the people are the
ultimate decision-makers.
Russian propaganda can also seek narrow,
specific goals. For example, in 2016, a small
protest outside Incirlik Air Base in Turkey
was portrayed as a much larger demonstra-
tion as part of a campaign to try to undermine
US-Turkish relations (Brooking & Singer
2016).
A NOTE ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
Just how effective has Russian propaganda
been? That is difficult to quantify. Measuring
the success of an influence effort requires
clearly articulated goals and measurement
both before and after the campaign, among
other things (Paul et al. 2015). This is difficult
because our understanding of Russian goals is
partially speculative, and even where we have
high confidence in their general goals, we
lack specificity about their intended targets;
we also lack clear baselines against which to
measure change. Research on the effective-
ness of Russia’s efforts to date is possible, but
it is difficult and little has been done in this
regard. Such measurement should be a prior-
ity going forward (Applebaum et al. 2018).
Peisakhin and Rozenas (2018) have used
Russian-language television broadcast foot-
prints to form a natural experiment to study the
influence of Russian propaganda on Ukrainian
voters. They found that Russian propaganda
was most effective on those who were already
favorably disposed toward Russia while hav-
ing no or negative effects on anti-Russia
Ukrainians. Further, they found that Russian
propaganda contributed to increasing political
polarization in Ukraine, a concerning finding
if it proves to generalize to other countries sub-
jected to Russian propaganda. While we do not
have good general assessments of the effec-
tiveness of Russian propaganda, we can put it
290 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
between a left and right bounds: Russian prop-
aganda is more effective than we in the West
would prefer that it be, and is less effective
than they (the Russians) would like. Further
research can only help narrow that bounds.
THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE RUSSIAN FIREHOSE OF
FALSEHOOD PROPAGANDA MODEL
Based on our observations of Russia’s propa-
ganda efforts, we have identified four central
characteristics of their approach. First, Russian
propaganda is high volume and multi-channel.
As noted, Russia uses numerous modes, and
has multiple channels (in the broadest possible
conception of channels) in each mode. Russia
does not just have one international broadcast-
ing arm, but several (and more that are
Russian funded but not clearly attributed). The
trolls of the internet research agency each
managed dozens of false personas.
Second, Russian propaganda is rapid,
continuous, and repetitive. Contemporary
Russian propaganda is continuous and very
responsive to events. Due to their willingness
to perpetuate falsehoods, Russian propagan-
dists do not need to wait to check facts or
verify claims; they just disseminate an inter-
pretation of emergent events that appears to
best favor their themes and objectives. This
allows them to be remarkably responsive and
nimble, often broadcasting the first ‘news’ of
events (and, with similar frequency, the first
news of non-events, or things that have not
actually happened). They will also repeat and
recycle disinformation. The January 14, 2016,
edition of Weekly Disinformation Review
reported the reemergence of several previ-
ously debunked Russian propaganda stories,
including that Polish President Andrzej Duda
was insisting that Ukraine return former
Polish territory, that Islamic State fighters
were joining pro-Ukrainian forces, and that
there was a Western-backed coup in Kiev,
Ukraine’s capital (Disinformation 2016).
Third, Russian propaganda makes no com-
mitment to objective reality. Contemporary
Russian propaganda makes little or no com-
mitment to the truth. This is not to say that
all of it is false. Quite the contrary: It often
contains a significant fraction of the truth but
is spun as a selective truth. Sometimes, how-
ever, events reported in Russian propaganda
are wholly manufactured, as described above.
Wardle (2017) notes seven different types of
disinformation, and the Russians employ them
all: satire or parody, false connection (when the
images or headlines do not match the content),
misleading content, false context (genuine
content but out of context), imposter content
(impersonating a genuine source), manipu-
lated content (genuine information or imagery
that is then changed), and fabricated content.
Fourth, and finally, Russian propaganda
makes no commitment to consistency.
Different Russian media do not necessarily
broadcast the exact same themes or mes-
sages. Different channels do not necessar-
ily broadcast the same account of contested
events. Different channels or representatives
show no fear of ‘changing their tune’. If one
falsehood or misrepresentation is exposed
or is not well received, the propagandists
will discard it and move on to a new (though
not necessarily more plausible) explana-
tion (Snyder 2018). Lack of commitment
to consistency extends to the statements of
Russian President Vladimir Putin. For exam-
ple, he first denied that the ‘little green men’
in Crimea were Russian soldiers but later
admitted that they were. Similarly, he at first
denied any desire to see Crimea join Russia,
but then he admitted that that had been his
plan all along (Pifer 2015).
FINDINGS FROM PSYCHOLOGY:
WHY RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
MIGHT WORK
Russia propaganda’s lack of commitment to
objective reality or to consistency flies in the
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
face of the conventional wisdom on govern-
ment persuasion, wisdom that holds credi-
bility as paramount and infers credibility is
lost through untruths or inconsistencies (US
Department of Defense 2008; Paul 2011;
Muñoz 2012). How can Russia’s approach to
propaganda be inconsistent and often untrue
but still persuasive? We turned to the relevant
literature in psychology and social psychol-
ogy to find out. In what follows, we review
psychological findings relevant to each of the
four distinctive characteristics of the Russian
‘firehose of falsehood’ propaganda model.
HOW DO VOLUME AND DIVERSITY
OF SOURCES CONTRIBUTE TO
PERSUASIVENESS?
Russian propaganda involves dissemination
of a high volume of messages across multiple
sources, and decades of psychological
research provides insights into the persuasive
efficacy of this tactic. For example, experi-
mental research has demonstrated the per-
suasive advantage of multiple arguments
presented by multiple sources over other
conditions in which a single argument was
presented by multiple sources and in which
multiple arguments were presented by one
source (Harkins & Petty 1981). More recent
research addressing the influence of cross
media campaigns on consumer perceptions
has also shown that presentation of informa-
tion across more than one media type (e.g.,
television and the Internet) has a stronger
effect on perceptions, attitudes, and inten-
tions than presentation through one media
type (Lim et al. 2015).
HOW DO RAPIDITY AND REPETITION
CONTRIBUTE TO PERSUASIVENESS?
Rapid dissemination of fabricated informa-
tion provides Russian propaganda with a first
291
mover advantage, thereby providing an early
opportunity to frame how and whether people
process subsequent information. Various
studies have shown the competitive advan-
tage that first movers can achieve, such as
consumer preferences for first-in market
brands over later brands (Kerin et al. 1992),
preferences for options presented first during
a serial order presentation (Hung et al. 2017),
and a primacy processing effect where indi-
vidual judgements favor messages presented
first (Haugtvedt & Wegener 1994).
Although people tend to accept that first
impressions matter, it is easy to underesti-
mate the power of the first mover advantage.
Some of that power comes from how humans
store information. Our memories are not card
catalogs in which we store individual facts in
isolation. We store information in stories, in
an integrated model of intertwined and inter-
related bits of information that collectively
frame our understanding of the world and
support our worldview (Narvaez 1998; San
Roque et al. 2012). When we receive a new
factoid (something presented as fact, whether
it is true or not) and we accept it, we do not
simple store it in a cognitive card catalog.
Rather, we integrate it into our understand-
ing of the world. Therefore, when someone
or something subsequently calls that factoid
into question, we do not remove a single
cognitive data card that holds that factoid.
Instead, removing a factoid is a challenge to
our existing story, and it is easier to continue
to embrace a false impression than to change
our understanding (Swire & Ecker 2018).
In addition to rapidity of dissemination,
Russian propaganda’s use of repetition can
also have powerful effects on attitudes and
perceptions, such as by increasing familiar-
ity with a message. Research suggests that
stimuli or messages that match with one’s
memories (e.g., are recognizable) are more
positively evaluated than those that do not
(Montoya et  al. 2017). Through some rep-
etition of messages, people can come to
perceive the information to which they are
repeatedly exposed as accurate and justified.
292 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
HOW DOES A LACK OF COMMITMENT
TO OBJECTIVE REALITY CONTRIBUTE
TO PERSUASIVENESS?
Russian propaganda’s frequent use of false-
hoods, or lack of commitment to objective
reality, has the potential to be particularly
persuasive. For example, research suggests
that the more misinformation that people are
presented with, the more difficulty they have
in identifying misleading information (i.e., in
differentiating true and false information;
Pena et  al. 2017). In addition, pathbreaking
research by Vosoughi et al. (2018) examined
the spread of verified true and verified false
news stories from more than ten years of
Twitter data. They found that false stories
spread farther, faster, and deeper than true
stories, with those effects being even more
pronounced for false political news than for
other categories. Their work confirms the old
aphorism that lies are half-way around the
world before the truth has its boots on.
However, one should also consider when and
why lies can be persuasive.
Generally, sources and messages perceived
as more credible are more persuasive than
those seen as less credible (Pornpitakpan
2004), and ingroup members are perceived as
more credible than individuals who belong to
another group (Clark & Maas 1988). De Dreu
(2013) shows how humans are ‘parochial
altruists’, willing to bear costs on behalf of
groups to which they feel they belong and to
fight, resist, or derogate rival outgroups. This
creates considerable vulnerability to being
persuaded by false messages that are propa-
gated by members of a group or appear to have
been propagated by members of that group.
Group membership is one of many heu-
ristics, or cognitive shortcuts, that people us
to evaluate credibility. People use credibility
heuristics in attempts to quickly determine
source and message credibility. However, use
of these heuristics can contribute to errors in
credibility evaluations. As evidenced by their
tactic of pretending to belong to another’s
ingroup (either by claiming membership or
by manifesting characteristics consistent
with ingroup membership), Russian propa-
gandists attempt to use these heuristics to
their advantage.
The endorsement heuristic is an addi-
tional manipulatable cognitive shortcut used
in the online environment, such that people
are more likely to believe sources and mes-
sages when others have done so (Metzger &
Flanigan 2013). Russian propagandists can
influence this heuristic by spreading and sup-
porting one another’s accounts, comments,
and sites.
Another heavily used heuristic is the
self-confirmation heuristic, or a bias toward
placing greater weight on individuals and
messages that support pre-existing beliefs
(Metzger & Flanagin 2013). Whether a piece
of information or news is consistent with
our worldview is one of the first things
we consider when evaluating its credibility
and truthfulness (Lewandowsky et al. 2012).
People search for and favor information con-
sistent with their beliefs, also known as con-
firmation bias, and they subject information
inconsistent with their pre-existing beliefs to
greater scrutiny, known as disconfirmation
bias (Marsh & Yang 2018). Our natural ten-
dency toward confirmation bias is served in
the contemporary information environment
by ‘filter bubbles’ driven by our own choices
about television programs and websites, and
reinforced by algorithm-driven advertise-
ments and search results (Pariser 2011).
As evidenced by the limitations of heu-
ristics, the potential persuasive efficacy of
Russian propaganda might be bolstered due
to human difficulties in differentiating truths
from falsehoods. Demonstrating this diffi-
culty, previous research found that participants
relied on information from clearly fictional
stories when subsequently responding to gen-
eral knowledge questions, suggesting that
people integrate incorrect information from
untrue descriptions with their own understand-
ing of the world (Marsh et al. 2003). Various
additional studies have also demonstrated
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
the impact that rumors, political misinforma-
tion, and misleading media claims can have
on individual beliefs (see Lewandowsky et al.
2012). Despite this difficulty in differentiation
fact from fiction, people tend to overestimate
their own ability to identify misleading infor-
mation (Pena et al. 2017).
HOW DOES INCONSISTENCY AFFECT
PERSUASIVENESS?
The fourth characteristic of Russian propa-
ganda, its lack of consistency, runs counter to
traditional wisdom regarding persuasion.
Indeed, inconsistent messaging can hinder per-
suasion, such that message recipients tend to
more carefully scrutinize inconsistent mes-
sages from a single source (Ziegler et al. 2004).
At times, however, recipients may overlook
inconsistencies. For example, when a source
appears to have modified their messaging after
greater consideration of different perspectives,
recipient attitudinal confidence can increase
(Rucker et al. 2008). Even if a source changes
accounts, recipients are likely to evaluate the
new message without overweighting the prior,
‘mistaken’, account, when the new message is
sufficiently strong and the source is believed to
be credible (Reich & Tormala 2013).
DEFENDING AGAINST PROPAGANDA
Thus far, Russia’s disinformation campaign
has been met with limited effective resistance
(Lucas & Nimmo 2015). What can Western
governments, citizens, and companies do
to protect themselves against Russian
propaganda?
EDUCATION
One of the most frequently proposed avenues
to addressing the existence and potential
293
influence of Russian propaganda and false-
hoods is the promotion of media literacy.
Media literacy education encourages people
to use critical thinking when making deci-
sions informed by media messages (Hobbs &
Jensen 2009). Media literacy education
might include provision of information that
increases knowledge regarding potential
influencer goals and the tactics used to mis-
lead and influence audiences, also known as
persuasion knowledge (Friestad & Wright
1994). Persuasion knowledge increases abili-
ties to resist the influence of misleading
claims and information (e.g., Xie & Quintero
Johnson 2015).
Generally, media literacy interventions
appear to have positive impacts on multiple
outcomes, including knowledge and criti-
cism of the media and awareness of media
influence (Jeong et  al. 2012). However, the
full utility of media literacy education in
promoting knowledge of and resistance to
Russian propaganda across diverse audiences
requires additional investigation. In addi-
tion, the design of media literacy education
efforts must be considered when promoting
resistance to influence, such that it cannot
be assumed that any media literacy educa-
tion will be effective. For example, indi-
viduals exposed to media literacy education
might assume that they are already resistant
to persuasion and propaganda, reducing the
effectiveness of this education. Possessing
knowledge of manipulation tactics and disin-
formation does not guarantee that people will
use this knowledge (Pratkanis & Aronson
2001).
People underestimate their own suscep-
tibility to biases and misperceptions, such
that they perceive they are less susceptible
to biases in judgement and inferences than
others, and this tendency might reduce the
extent to which people pay attention to and
use media literacy education. Pronin and col-
leagues have termed this phenomenon ‘bias
blind spot’, wherein people see themselves
as less susceptible than others to multiple
biases in cognition and motivation (Pronin,
294 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
2006; Pronin et al. 2002). This bias blind spot
appears when people evaluate the perceived
effects of fake news and online comments.
Research has demonstrated that individuals
believe that others, particularly those who
are members of different social groups than
themselves, are more susceptible to the harm-
ful effects of fake news (Jang & Kim 2018)
and more influenced by online comments
(Chen & Ng 2016) than the individuals them-
selves are. To be most effective, individuals
need to be aware of, or made aware of, their
personal vulnerability to be influenced by
information, including deceptive and illegiti-
mate messages (Sagarin et al. 2002).
Through awareness of their own vulner-
ability to influence, people may be more
inclined to monitor their own responses to
information and messages. For example, if
someone experiences an emotional response
to a message, their acknowledgement of
these feelings might stimulate analytic con-
siderations of why they have experienced
these emotions, or what characteristics of the
message primed these emotions (Pratkanis &
Aronson 2001).
However, for people to remain vigilant to
their own exposure and responses to false
and misleading messages, they must have the
cognitive resources to do so. Although they
may have knowledge regarding different dis-
information sources and tactics, individuals
might not draw from this knowledge when
fatigued. In other words, the ability to detect
manipulative intent and falsehoods is dimin-
ished when people are distracted, tired, or
cognitively overloaded (Wentzel et al. 2010).
Avoiding propaganda rich environments
when fatigued, preoccupied, or in a similar
cognitively vulnerable state may reduce the
potential to be influenced by propaganda.
Promoting analytic thinking and careful
consideration of sources, messages, and one’s
own cognitive biases and limitations can help
individuals to develop a healthy skepticism
to use when exposed to different pieces of
information. However, ill-considered use of
different strategies, such as by never trusting
any new information, has the potential to lead
to the development of unhealthy skepticism,
or fear of and an unwillingness to consider
new ideas (Johnson 2002).
Certain practices might promote unhealthy
skepticism. For example, as part of efforts to
appear neutral, reporters often present claims
from two or more sides of an issue or story
without adjudicating this information, known
as he said/she said reporting. The issue with
this strategy is that it can provide credibility
to clearly false claims and promote misper-
ceptions (Weeks 2018). Although he said/
she said reporting might be implemented as
part of journalistic efforts to appear unbiased,
research suggests that journalistic interven-
tion through provision of additional facts
and analyses not only minimizes mispercep-
tions but also promotes positive perceptions
regarding news quality (Pingree et al. 2014).
DEBUNKING, REFUTING,
COUNTERCLAIMS, AND
ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES
One tactic that has been used in attempts to
counter falsehoods is to disseminate clear
and credible corrections to this incorrect
information, or to debunk the myths. The
common, yet false, assumption about debunk-
ing is that misperceptions are a function of a
lack of knowledge, so simply conveying cor-
rect information will be sufficient in elimi-
nating the influence of the false information.
This model, known as the ‘information defi-
cit model’, is wrong (Cook & Lewandowsky
2011). Corrections are often of limited use in
reducing or eliminating reliance on misper-
ceptions developed through exposure to
falsehoods. Even if people receive and
believe corrections, the previous falsehoods
to which they were exposed, and had believed
to be true, continue to impact their reasoning
(Ecker et  al. 2011). Successful debunking
requires an understanding of not just what
people know and think, but how they think.
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
Reliance on false information following
a correction is thought to be due to mental
models, or stories, that people develop after
receiving initial information on a topic or
event. A correction produces a gap in the
mental model one had developed, and as
noted previously, people would rather hold
onto an incorrect mental model that contains
falsehoods than an incomplete mental model
that has gaps due to removed inaccuracies.
To address this, corrections can include
correct and factual alternative information
to replace the incorrect information people
held in their mental models (Swire & Ecker
2018).
In their Debunking Handbook, Cook and
Lewandowsky (2011) propose that successful
debunking efforts must have three major ele-
ments: 1) a focus on core facts rather than the
myth or falsehood being debunked in order to
avoid reinforcing the familiarity of the false-
hood; 2) preceding any explicit mention of
the falsehood with forewarning that upcom-
ing information is false; 3) an alternative
explanation to replace the falsehood being
debunked.
INOCULATION AND FOREWARNING
One way to address the potential influential
effects of Russian propaganda and falsehoods
is by inoculating audiences against these mes-
sages or moving first. The concept underlying
this approach is that, just as one’s immune
system can be inoculated against viral infec-
tions, so can one’s attitudes be inoculated
against false and misleading information.
Inoculation typically involves both forewarn-
ing individuals about falsehoods to which
they may be exposed and providing counter-
arguments to these falsehoods. Multiple stud-
ies have shown that inoculation promotes
resistance to persuasion (Compton 2013). For
inoculation to be most effective, audiences
must understand that they will be the targets
of persuasive attacks, acknowledge their
295
potential vulnerabilities, have information
that they can use to counterargue falsehoods
to which they will be exposed, and be moti-
vated to counterargue these falsehoods.
Moving first can also be advantageous
in addressing crises and negative informa-
tion. Proactively communicating negative
information about one’s organization or self
is known as ‘stealing thunder’ (Pratkanis &
Aronson 2001). This approach allows those
who implement it to control the information
flow and minimize others’ ability to sensa-
tionalize a topic. Further, stealing thunder
can promote positive perceptions, such that
the voluntary release of negative information
promotes perceptions that the entity of inter-
est is honest and credible. However, if audi-
ences perceive this approach is being used to
manipulate them, then the positive effects of
stealing thunder disappear (Lee 2016).
Naming and shaming, or discounting, the
sources of and outlets for Russian propa-
ganda and discussing Russian tactics are
additional strategies for countering disinfor-
mation that also assume a protective advan-
tage can be gained by providing individuals
with pertinent information. James Farwell
(2018) advocates transparent discussion
of Russian tactics and practices, both to
increase public awareness of their efforts
and to signal to the Russians that the United
States is aware of and does not approve of
these activities. He also advocates better
enforcement of the requirement for various
entities to register as foreign agents (in com-
pliance with the Foreign Agents Registration
Act) and would like to see Russia’s Sputnik
International, RT, and other foreign agents
required to label their informational materi-
als (web pages, broadcasts, etc.) with a con-
spicuous disclosure of their foreign agent
status. This source identification strategy is
most likely to effectively counter falsehoods
when people must attribute information
to a source or otherwise remember where
information came from. However, people
often forget the sources of information. As
such, they may remember the influential
296 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
information and forget that this information
came from a source with little or no credibil-
ity (Marsh & Yang, 2018).
FACT-CHECKING AND VERIFICATION
Consumers increasingly use social media
sites and applications to get their news, and
social media are major sources through
which Russian propagandists can spread dis-
information (Lazar et  al. 2018). Keir Giles
(2017:2) at the Council on Foreign Relations
suggests that ‘Social media companies
should more aggressively police their plat-
forms for malicious state-sponsored content,
and they should work with news organiza-
tions to promote verified and fact-checked
content on their platforms’. Anne Applebaum
and her colleagues (2018) suggest broader
revision to the digital rules, including a social
media code of conduct, more transparency
regarding political advertising, and better
systems for authentication of users.
Categories of services for addressing online
disinformation include fact-checking and
verification services (Brandtzaeg et al. 2017).
Fact-checking services examine and ascer-
tain the validity and credibility of online
content, and verification services analyze the
authenticity of users and pieces of online
content (e.g., images).
Three potential social media approaches to
fact-checking are (i) increased use of human
editors; (ii) crowdsourcing; (iii) techno-
logical or algorithmic solutions (Althuis &
Strand 2018), and each of these approaches
has its own inherent limitations. The vol-
ume of online content hinders the ability for
human editors and experts to review all, or
even most, online claims, and crowdsourc-
ing fact-checking can be both highly prone to
error and resource intensive (Babakar 2018).
Ensuring accuracy among computational
fact-checkers can also be challenging, in part
due to large variability in online content and
the ability of disinformation disseminators
to modify messaging content and strategies
(Boididou et al. 2014).
As discussed earlier, debunking previously
believed claims can be ineffective. As such,
consumers would ideally receive informa-
tion regarding the validity and credibility of
claims before they have a chance to believe
them. This might be accomplished by encour-
aging consumers to include information from
credible fact-checking sites in the feed of
information they receive (e.g., ‘follow’ fact-
checking sites) and by labeling social media
content.
Traditionally, social media has sought to
democratize the news, allowing that egre-
gious political clickbait and items from
respected news media appear without dis-
crimination in newsfeeds. However, sources
could be scored based on criteria that users
value and contribute to trust, and those scores
could be displayed (Waldrop 2017). Such a
labeling approach must be implemented care-
fully, however. A 2017 study by Pennycook
and Rand found that a newsfeed in which
some items were labeled as ‘disputed’ back-
fired, in that all items that had no flag were
then considered to be more credible. This
suggests that, to function effectively, a labe-
ling system would need to label all items,
even if just with a placeholder tag that indi-
cates an item is new and has not yet been
either verified or disputed.
Better verification of users and content
through identity resolution and bot removal
has also been considered as part of efforts
to disinformation. In April of 2018, the
European Commission announced the intro-
duction of a European Union-wide code of
practice on disinformation. Among the things
that will be required of online platforms are
transparency about sponsored content (partic-
ularly political advertising) and taking meas-
ures to identify and close fake accounts and
accounts run by bots (European Commission
2018).
Supporting increased use of regulations
requiring user and content verification, James
Farwell (2018) has noted that the freedom of
 Defending against Russian Propaganda
speech commonly guaranteed in democracies
does not extend to robots, and inauthentic
speech or speech artificially echoed should
not be protected. However, there are risks
involved in indiscriminate use of verification,
particularly with regard to a user’s identity.
While identity resolution and elimination
of false personas (run by bots or otherwise)
would be a positive step in protecting estab-
lished democracies, it could be dangerous in
fledgling or non-democracies. If discover-
able by an authoritarian regime, it would not
be a positive development for pro-democracy
advocates to be restricted to one account per
platform, each associated with a confirmed
identity.
CHANGING THE INCENTIVES
Beyond fact-checking and verification ser-
vices, sites and application can also reduce
incentives for promoting misinformation.
Some entities may use disinformation to bol-
ster their ad revenues or brands, so making it
harder to profit from disinformation may
help to decrease its production and dissemi-
nation. Addressing this, Waldrop (2017)
noted positive steps by Facebook and Google
in 2016 and 2017 to prevent blatantly fake
news sites from earning money on their
advertising networks and lowering the news-
feed ranking of low-quality sources.
REGULATING CONTENT
Several countries have implemented regula-
tions or policies aimed at reducing the flow
of propaganda. For example, in 2014, Latvia
suspended broadcasts from Russia’s RTR
Planeta for three months based on a violation
of their national law on Electronic Mass
Media (Freedom House 2015). In addition,
Indian authorities have warned social media
group administrators that they can be held
297
accountable for disseminating false news or
fabricating stories that could inflame com-
munal tension (Connolly et al. 2016).
Notably, content regulation has the poten-
tial to become, or might be considered to be,
censorship that prevents the human right to
freedom of expression. In addition, if a site
or application removes content without edu-
cating users regarding why or permitting
appeals, then users may feel dehumanized
and frustrated (Myers West 2018). This can
lead users to search for alternative online
communication avenues.
CYBER-BLURRING
An additional possible avenue for addressing
Russian propagandists’ tactics is to create
confusion through the use of cyber-blurring.
Cyber-blurring includes creating fake email
accounts and fake documents to confuse
and slow hackers. This tactic appears to have
been used as a counteroffensive measure
employed by Emmanuel Macron’s campaign
team during the 2017 French presidential
election to address Russian hackers (Nossiter
et al. 2017). Although this might be effective
in addressing hacker activity, deliberate dis-
semination of falsified information to the
public could harm the credibility of an indi-
vidual or organization.
CONCLUSION
In summary, Russia’s approach to propa-
ganda represents a firehose of falsehood with
four distinctive features. It is high volume and
multi-channel; rapid, continuous, and repeti-
tive; shows no commitment to objective real-
ity; and shows no commitment to consistency.
Although difficult to quantify, at least some
research suggests this approach has been
effective in influencing audiences. This
runs counter to conventional wisdom on
298 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
government persuasion, which suggests that
truth and consistency are of paramount
importance, However, research in psychology
suggests these features can be persuasive.
Various studies have demonstrated that
dissemination of a high volume of messages
across different types of media sources can
influence attitudes and perceptions. In addi-
tion, rapid dissemination of information
provides a first mover advantage that can
influence the mental models, or stories, that
individuals create; thereby influencing an
individual’s interpretation of related subse-
quent information. Repetitive and continu-
ous presentation of falsehoods makes it more
difficult for audiences to identify misleading
information, and propagandists can use false
and misleading information about themselves
(e.g., pretend to be in a group) and a topic to
manipulate the cognitive shortcuts, or heu-
ristics, that people employ. Although a lack
of consistency can reduce persuasive impact,
there are instances when a lack of consistency
might promote persuasion, such as when a
source that is believed to be credible appears
to have been previously mistaken.
Although research suggests that the char-
acteristics of Russian propaganda might pro-
mote its ability persuade audiences, there are
avenues to countering this propaganda. For
example:
• Media literacy programs that both increases
awareness of personal vulnerabilities to being
influenced and educate audiences regarding the
goals and tactics of propagandists are avenues
to reducing the persuasive efficacy of Russian
propaganda.
• Debunking efforts that not only indicate previous
information to which audiences were exposed
was false but also provide an alternative expla-
nation to replace the incorrect information can
also be used in efforts to counter disinformation.
• Inoculation efforts that inform audiences that
they will be targeted and might be vulnerable to
persuasive attacks and that also provide audi-
ences with information to counterargue false-
hoods can be pursued to reduce audiences’
potential to be influenced.
• Rapid and increased fact-checking of claims and
verification of information can be used to reduce
audiences’ exposure to disinformation on social
media.
• Reducing the potential for disinformation dis-
seminators to profit from their messaging tactics
may also help to reduce the creation and spread
of disinformation.
• Another avenue that different governments have
considered or used is that of increased regulation
of social media users and content. Importantly,
the multiple implications of and potential issues
with this approach, including the potential to
limit freedom of expression, should be strongly
considered.
• New strategies to counter propagandists and
disinformation, such as cyber-blurring, continue
to be considered and developed, and their utility
in reducing the effectiveness of Russian propa-
ganda should be evaluated.
Use of only one approach to countering dis-
information is likely to be far less effective
than a multi-pronged approach that promotes
multiple different avenues. Further, any set of
approaches that is pursued with little or no
consideration of the social contexts and
audience characteristics of those who will
be exposed to these efforts will also be
less effective. Continued development of new
strategies, based in theory and research, fol-
lowed by implementation and systematic
evaluation is also needed to effectively coun-
ter Russia propaganda.
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Fighting and Framing Fake News
Maria Haigh and Thomas Haigh
INTRODUCTION
Discussion of ‘fake news’, a once obscure
concept, was catalyzed in late 2016 when a
gunman started firing inside a Washington,
DC pizzeria that he, and many others, were
convinced held children being imprisoned
and sexually abused by senior members of
Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Reporters discov-
ered that this was just the tip of a previously
underreported iceberg. The surprise victory of
Donald Trump in the US Presidential election
had been facilitated by a wealth of fabricated
reporting and conspiracy theories spread
through websites and social media. Still more
strikingly, a succession of statements, reports,
and eventual criminal indictments (Kahn,
2018) from US intelligence and justice offi-
cials revealed that this disinformation cam-
paign had been in large part fomented by
Russian agents, including trolls using social
media tools to spread divisive messages and
fabricated stories. Russia’s success led other
19
governments, including those of Myanmar
(Reed, 2018) and Saudi Arabia (Benner et al.,
2018), to set up their own troll farms and
online disinformation campaigns.
Realizing the scope of the online fake
news problem led Western scholars to study
it and propose cures, from technical fixes
like tweaks, through the algorithms used by
Facebook to place stories in the newsfeeds
of its users, to calls for the public funding
of quality journalism to inoculate the public
against disinformation. We focus here not
just on the United States but also on Ukraine,
where exposure to Russian-sponsored fake
news peaked not in late 2016 but in mid 2014.
Because the Russian campaign in Ukraine
accompanied more traditional modes of mili-
tary attack, Ukrainians were quicker to recog-
nize the threat posed by state-sponsored fake
news. Their efforts to fight it have shifted
over time from debunking efforts to broadly
based media literacy campaigns.
304 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

DEFINING FAKE NEWS attempt to get personal humor value’. Claire

In the summary above, we did not systemati-
cally distinguish between fake news, misin-
formation, and disinformation. Researchers
have defined or categorized fake news
according to the intent of its creators and
initial disseminators: ‘most taxonomies agree
that the phrase refers to the intentional dis-
semination of false information’ (Levi,
2017). One recent definition suggests that
‘Fake news is the deliberate presentation of
(typically) false or misleading claims as
news, where the claims are misleading by
design’ (Gelfert, 2018). By that definition,
fake news would be disinformation, which is
conventionally distinguished from misinfor-
mation by the intent of its disseminator to
deceive.
Some have identified degrees of fakeness,
based on the truth content of the news and/or
the intent of its disseminators. For example,
Verstraete et  al. (2017) categorized several
kinds of fake news. They distinguished sat-
ires from hoaxes based on the intent of the
hoaxer to deceive, even though both were
purposefully false and financially motivated.
They also distinguish between propaganda
and trolling based on intent: both intend
to deceive, but trolls are ‘motivated by an
Wardle (2017) similarly categorized differ-
ent kinds of fake news on a scale based on an
increasing intent to deceive (see Figure 19.1).
When we tried to operationalize these
taxonomies to categorize fake news stories,
we discovered a problem: they center (liter-
ally in Wardle’s case) on the intentions of the
creator. In Wardle’s taxonomy, for example,
satire and fabricated content are both entirely
false but are placed at opposite ends of her
spectrum, based on the intent of their crea-
tors. Yet, intent is a mental state, impossible
to document with certainty. Typically we
must infer it from clues in the news story and
its context. Even when one can observe the
creation of the news story, for example in
the 4chan threads that gave birth to the
Pizzagate conspiracy theory (Tuters et  al.,
2018), intent is elusive. White nationalists
and other extremists routinely describe their
propaganda as satire. How to categorize
specific anonymous posters as paid trolls,
frustrated satirists, or would-be patriots who
sincerely believed themselves to be uncover-
ing a monstrous conspiracy?
Neither the production nor distribution of
such a story can be attributed to a single indi-
vidual. Giglietto et al. (2016: 30) have argued
that disinformation should be studied not as

Satire or Parody Misleading Content Imposter Content Fabricated Content

No intention to cause harm Misleading use When genuine sources New content that is
but has potential to fool of information to frame are impersonated 100% fake, designed
an issue of an individual to deceive and to do harm

INCREASING INTENT TO DECEIVE

False Connection False Content Manipulated Content

When headlines When genuine content When genuine information

visuals or captions is shared with false or imagery is manipulated
don’t support the content contextual information to deceive

Figure 19.1  Wardle’s (2017) taxonomy of ‘7 types of mis- and dis-information’ is centered on
the intent of the creator of fake news, which may be challenging to determine
Source: Wardle (2017).
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
the result of the deliberate actions of mis-
chievous actors but as the ‘emergent result of
a series of interconnected actions’ taken by
loosely coordinated actors.
Even if we could somehow determine
whether the creator of a news story was mali-
cious or unhinged, this would change nothing
in the impact of the story or its relationship
to reality. We prefer to define the difference
between fake news and real news with refer-
ence to the process by which it was produced
and disseminated. To infer the intent of a
story, one must do the following:
1 Compare the claims made in the story to the
sources it draws on, to look for places where
information is misleadingly contextualized,
claims are made that can’t be found in any other
sources, etc.
2 Draw inferences from this about the process by
which the story was produced. For example, its
author mischaracterized evidence to support an
argument it does not truly support. Or the author
must have fabricated information, because it
contradicts trusted sources.
3 Draw a further inference about the intention of
the author, based on the processes he or she
chooses to use. For example, in Wardle’s tax-
onomy, someone who manipulates a photograph
has a high intent to deceive.
Hence, to infer intent is to first make a judg-
ment about the process used to produce a
story, and then to make a second judgment
about the motivations of someone who would
use such a process. Process can potentially
be observed, but intent must always be
inferred. It would surely be more reliable to
categorize a news story as fake based on its
production process.
Fake News is Bullshit
Some experts dislike the term ‘fake news’
and prefer to use the more general categories
of disinformation or misinformation. Wardle
and Derakhshan (2017: 15), for example,
have called the term ‘woefully inadequate’.
In contrast, we feel that it has a valuable
305
specificity. The concept of ‘fake’ news dis-
tinguishes shoddy, unreliable, or biased jour-
nalism from material that is not journalism at
all but is presented as if it were. Fake news
takes the form of a news report but is not a
news report, just as a fake Vermeer is not
a Vermeer and a fake diamond is not a dia-
mond. Other disinformation takes other
forms: fake science, fake history, fake letters,
fake government documents, or fake statis-
tics. Mimicking the form of the news report
gives disinformation an aura of trustworthi-
ness, misappropriated from the news stories
it resembles, just as certain flies mimic wasps
to exploit the deterrent power of stingers they
do not possess.
In that sense, fake news is, to use the
category established by philosopher Harry
Frankfurt (2005), bullshit – something pro-
duced without regard to the truth, or even to
the need to appear truthful. This distinction
was clearest in the avalanche of poorly faked
news that appeared in the immediate after-
math of the Russian annexation of Crimea in
2014, some of which was produced in bulk
by workers in Saint Petersburg’s notorious
Internet Research Agency. The pages linked
by its trolls and bots looked like news reports,
but the images they included were often misi-
dentified or doctored, supporting details were
imagined, and quotes were misattributed or
distorted.
As Frankfurt (2005: 47) pointed out ‘What
is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is
like, but how it is made’. A real news story
is the visible product of an elaborate process,
unseen by its readers, of reporting, writing,
verifying, and editing. A fake news story is
produced by a different process, one that
makes no effort to create verifiable corre-
spondences between the claims made in the
news story and the real world.
Real vs. fake news therefore constitutes a
different analytical axis from true vs. untrue
reporting. Fake news is usually untrue, but it
doesn’t have to be. As Frankfurt (2005: 47–8)
observed, ‘although it is produced without
concern for the truth, [bullshit] need not be
306 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
false. The bullshitter is faking things. But
this does not mean that he necessarily gets
them wrong’. Real news reporting is full of
factual errors and misleading conclusions.
Journalists are fooled by seemingly plausi-
ble sources, mix up their notes, or do shoddy
work; newspapers run corrections every day.
Just as stopped clocks are right twice a day,
a piece of fake news might occasionally be
more true than a badly produced piece of real
news. Yet the untrue news story is still real
news, the genuine product of a journalistic
process as flawed and compromised as any-
thing else undertaken by humans.
We have argued elsewhere (Haigh et  al.,
2018), drawing on the literature of science and
technology studies, that defining fake news
by its production process lets us distinguish
between real and fake news without pretend-
ing that real news is objectively true. News is
always biased in one way or another, whether
by the conscious demands of newspaper and
television proprietors or the unconscious
assumptions of the journalists reporting it. The
very idea of ‘news’ itself is structurally biased
towards sudden, discrete events and away
from analysis of chronic, long term issues.
As Lucas Graves (2017: 520) has observed,
‘fact checkers, investigative journalists and
scientists [all deal] with controversies in
which not just facts but rules for determining
them are in question’. Although science stud-
ies has been caricatured (Gross and Levitt,
1994) as an anti-science or crudely relativist
field, in recent years some of its most promi-
nent scholars have come to the defense of the
robustness of knowledge produced by climate
science (Kofman, 2018; Edwards, 2010).
Something is accepted as scientific when its
truth claims have been constructed and tested
via specific social processes accepted by
respected scientists in the relevant field
(Latour, 1987). Likewise, something is real
news when it has been produced using the
social processes accepted as adequate by
respected journalists in the relevant field.
The end products produced by applying these
rules are different – a newspaper article would
not be publishable in a scientific journal – but
both sets of processes create confirmable
correspondence to reality. When that corre-
spondence is tested and found to be defective,
both communities have ways to evaluate the
credibility of publications and mechanisms to
correct or recall work that proves defective.
FRAMING FAKE NEWS
As the historian Michael S. Mahoney (2011)
liked to say, ‘nothing is unprecedented’.
When faced with a new and unfamiliar thing
we frame it as a special version of an old and
familiar thing, stretching or combining exist-
ing mental categories. Our minds identify the
most suitable precedent. As a putatively new
thing of interest to a broad range of commen-
tators, fake news has been framed using
many different precedents. To select one of
these frames is to commit to an understand-
ing of what fake news is and, therefore, what
possible fix might be appropriate for it.
Frame 1: Fake News as a Weapon
of War
When the term ‘fake news’ began to gain
currency in 2014 it was to describe part of a
broad Russian offensive against Ukraine.
During Russia’s initial military occupation of
Crimea, its special forces removed their
insignia and its government denied know­
ledge of their identity. Its media and trolls
supported this message of uncertainty to
discourage international intervention. When
Russian military and intelligence officers
fomented a rebellion in Eastern Ukraine and
took up leadership positions in rebel ‘repub-
lics’, its information-warfare specialists sup-
ported these efforts by spreading fake news
of Nazis in the Ukrainian leadership, the
persecution of ethnic Russians, and atrocities
by Ukrainian forces. In late summer, when
regular Russian forces crossed the border to
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
prevent a rout of the separatists and freeze
the conflict, Russian disinformation cam-
paigns denied their existence. When separa-
tists shot down a passenger jet using a
missile recently driven over the Russian
border, fake news blamed everything from a
Ukrainian plan to assassinate Vladimir Putin
to a false flag operation involving a plane full
of bodies harvested from morgues.
This tight coupling of conventional forces,
paramilitary units, conventional propaganda,
hackers, trolls, and fake news spread via
social media attracted considerable attention.
Russia was said by Jonsson and Seely (2015)
to have coupled military, informational, eco-
nomic, and energy weapons with political
influence operations in what was sometimes
called ‘postmodern warfare’. Mark Galeotti
translated a 2013 speech on the topic by
General Valery Gerasimov on the use of pro­
paganda and subversion (which he believed
the United States was deploying against
Russia). After Russian’s action in Crimea,
Galeotti’s headline phrase, ‘Gerasimov
Doctrine’, entered common use to describe
this coordination of forces (Bartles, 2016).
The extent to which Russia’s extensive use
of social media trolls and online fake news rep-
resented a completely novel or coherent mili-
tary doctrine has been questioned. Kuzio and
D’Anieri (2018) argue for the continuity of cur-
rent Russian information weapons with Soviet
practices to undermine internal challenges and
earlier Russian efforts to fragment other post-
Soviet states such as Moldova and Georgia.
Galeotti (2018) himself has apologized for
coining the term ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ argu-
ing that there is no ‘single Russian “doctrine”’
but a ‘broad political objective’ pursued in
ways that are ‘opportunistic, fragmentary,
even sometimes contradictory’.
Frame 2: Fake News as a Form of
Online Dishonesty
Fake news has been understood primarily as
a recent, primarily online phenomenon,
307
though isolated uses of the phrase have been
found in earlier periods. The idea that people
act differently in online and offline interac-
tions is well established, going back to
Howard Rheingold’s (1993) early advocacy
for the potential of ‘online communities’,
Sherry Turkle’s (1995) sociological analysis
of online identities and early work on the
study of ‘cyberculture’ and ‘cybersociety’
(Jones, 1994). These authors stressed the
inclusiveness of online communities and the
fluidity of online identity. The message was
summed up in the famous 1993 New Yorker
cartoon, in which a dog using a computer
keyboard tells another dog, ‘On the Internet,
nobody knows you’re a dog’. In contrast,
Lawrence Lessig (1999) argued that the
subtle design decisions embedded in the code
used to create these online environments
could have profound influences on the way
people behave in them.
Some of the discussion of fake news has
focused on the characteristics of today’s
online environments, which make fake news
easy to generate, easy to spread, and hard
to combat. In traditional communities, peo-
ple know each other well enough to recog-
nize lying, establishing identities over time.
Antisocial actions are more likely to have
direct personal consequences. (Keyes, 2004).
The same affordances that make flaming
(Bukatman et  al., 1994), spam (Brunton,
2013) and trolling (Phillips, 2015) common
features of online interaction also help to
explain the prevalence of fake news.
In this frame, fake news is one of several
forms of online dishonesty, and its rise can
be explained by looking at the general char-
acteristics of social interaction online and at
the specific affordance provided by platforms
such as Twitter, Facebook, and 4chan. Twitter
provides a social environment that rewards
short, aggressive, decontextualized commu-
nication. Facebook’s algorithm, in 2016 at
least, promoteed material that was likely to
be shared and clicked, which favored fake
news stories designed to produce strong and
immediate emotional responses. 4chan and
308 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
reddit make it easy for users to self-segregate
into micro communities in which behavior
that would be usually be stigmatized is nor-
malized. The anonymity they provide further
loosens restraint and accountability. This is
seen most clearly in the collective work of
4chan users in collectively fabricating the
elaborate Pizzagate narrative, in the appar-
ently sincere belief that they were discovering
clues to a vast conspiracy (Tuters et al., 2018).
Frame 3: Fake News as a Form of
State Propaganda
Work that frames fake news as a specifically
online form of dishonesty, or as part of a new
approach to warfare, typically stresses the
novelty of fake news. Fake news looks differ-
ent if one frames it as a continuation, with
new tools, of long-established forms of state-
sponsored propaganda. In the context of this
Handbook, we need not belabor the point that
governments have used news reporting to
manipulate public opinion for a long time,
both among their own populations and abroad.
During the Cold War, propaganda and
disinformation became still more impor-
tant. The KGB and its sister intelligence
services in Eastern Europe fabricated evi-
dence to put fake stories into circulation in
Western media, including an elaborate hoax
that AIDS had been developed by the United
States as a biological weapon (Selvage and
Nehring, 2014). The CIA likewise planted
false stories to show the Soviet Union and its
allies in a bad light, as part of its campaigns
in places like Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and
Chile. Recent alarm about fake news does
not always recognize these deep continuities
with historical practice.
There are, of course, differences between
modern fake news and traditional propaganda.
We highlighted one of these differences when
we called online fake news (Haigh et  al.,
2018) ‘peer to peer propaganda’. Even stories
posted by trolls or promoted by bots were still
liked and shared by many real humans, who
invested their own social capital to became
inadvertent propogandists.
Modern fake news, particularly in the
intensive campaigns of 2014 and 2016, has
tended to be more amateurish than earlier
state-sponsored campaigns. Planting stories
in foreign media could disguise their origin,
but much traditional state propaganda, such
as radio broadcasts over borders or pam-
phlets dropped from planes, was experienced
by its targets as a message sponsored by a
foreign government. Fringe media outlets,
where conspiracy theories were more likely
to appear, used production methods and
distribution channels that clearly set them
aside from mainstream media. Someone who
purchased a fuzzily printed newspaper on a
street corner from a shabbily dressed stran-
ger shouting about world government could
use these contextual clues to distinguish its
reporting from that found in a more orthodox
publication or in a professionally published
book found in a library.
Social media had a levelling effect: news
stories of all kinds were likely to be encoun-
tered by readers as headlines, links, and a small
graphic shared in their social media page by
friends, groups, or institutional pages that they
had ‘liked’. An online news story, particularly
when experienced on the small screen of a
smartphone, has a similar appearance whether
it came from a major news organization or a
hastily created fake news site.
Frame 4: Fake News as
a Profitable Business
Fake news can be understood as a commodity
produced to maximize profits in the modern
media marketplace: low-cost viral content
that will attract large numbers of visitors to
maximize advertising revenues. As Pablo
Boczkowski (2010) has shown, modern online
journalism requires its practitioners to con-
stantly monitor the media environment and
rapidly copy the information in new reports or
post links and paraphrases of their content.
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
The shift online has also hurt the pay, working
conditions, and job security of journalists.
This makes in-depth verification and fact
checking harder. Publications that rely on
social media shares, rather than subscribers,
for financial viability are more likely to inad-
vertently spread fake news or heavily biased
reporting.
From this viewpoint, fake news is no dif-
ferent from top-50 lists, teaser headlines
promising dramatic celebrity revelations, or
blog posts recycling scraps of information
from other blogs. Journalists who went look-
ing for the sources of widely shared politi-
cal fake news after the 2016 election found
stories that originated with Russian state-
controlled media and trolls. They found
other sites run by people who claimed to be
Internet entrepreneurs with no state affilia-
tions or deeply held political beliefs who
were mass producing fabricated stories to
bring in advertising revenue via social media
shares (Ohlheiser, 2016).
One of the most successful of these
entrepreneurs, Cyrus Massoumi, built a siz-
able business on fake news and clickbait
(O’Brien, 2018). He began in the aftermath
of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings by
purchasing Facebook adverts asking those
who opposed gun-control legislation to click
a ‘like’ button. He directed these users to ‘a
series of inflammatory conservative web-
sites, finely turned to produce the most viral
and outrageous version of the news’ (Frier,
2017).
Thanks to the global nature of the Internet,
entrepreneurs based overseas could also
profit from the US market for fake news.
Beqa Latsabidze, a 22-year-old computer-
science student in the post-Soviet nation of
Georgia, ran a popular website, departed.co,
full of fake news stories celebrating Donald
Trump and denigrating his opponent, Hillary
Clinton. He claimed (Higgins et al., 2016) to
be serving no geopolitical agenda and to have
begun with a website posting favorable sto-
ries about Clinton only to discover that there
was no market for them.
309
Frame 5: Fake News as an Extreme
Form of Media Bias
The social processes of journalism work
within broader cultural and institutional con-
texts that determine which stories are reported
and how the new event is framed (Harcup and
O’Neill, 2001). Within communication
research there is a tradition of exploring how
concentrated media ownership, self-interested
elites, and political ideology skew news cov-
erage and marginalize certain kinds of report-
ing. One influential propaganda model by
Herman and Chomsky (2010) identifies five
sources of biases in corporate mass media:
ownership, funding sources, sourcing, flak,
and ‘fear ideology’. From this viewpoint,
there are differences in degree but not in kind
between BBC World and Russia Today as
state-sponsored broadcasters, or between cnn.
com and departed.co as for-profit online news
outlets. The former pair exist to serve the
ruling elites of their countries, the latter pair
to make money for their owners.
Some of the other tactics used in Russian
disinformation campaigns also have analogs
in established Western practices, such ‘astro-
turfing’ where corporations establish fake
grassroots groups to lobby for their preferred
policy positions, on the basis of claimed pub-
lic interest rather than corporate self-interest
(Walker, 2010). In such cases, fake news is
spread by fake activists.
During the summer of 2018, we inter-
viewed Ukrainian journalists, media literacy
specialists, and local news-website operators
in Kiev and Lviv. They explained that fake
news had evolved since the initial onslaught in
2014 of blatantly fake news produced within
Russia. Fake news has become more subtle
and harder to debunk, mixing real details
with fabricated claims. Several mentioned
a wave of domestically produced fake news
favoring particular politicians and factions.
Ukrainian media has long been dominated
by a handful of powerful business interests,
so as the fake news crisis of 2014 is replaced
with a chronic, ongoing fake news problem,
310 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

the dividing line between old-school biased
reporting and newfangled fake news becomes
less clear.
The mix of fabrication and bias is cap-
tured in the humorous fake news bingo
game (Figure 19.2) circulated by StopFake.
It mixes the tactics of fake news, such as
manipulated images and entirely fabricated
stories, with biased reporting that exagger-
ates Ukraine’s real problems such as poverty,

Figure 19.2  This satirical bingo card, produced by StopFake, summarizes the most common
fake news and biased media tropes used against Ukraine around 2017
Source: StopFake (2017).
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
weak leadership, and political instability. The
central square holds a unifying message of
the current fake news campaign: Ukraine is
a failed state.
Frame 6: Fake News as a Plot to
Delegitimate Alternative Media
The fact that all media has structural biases
can be used to redefine the category of ‘fake
news’. In this view, ‘The term “fake news”
(or “misinformation”) has been introduced
very deliberately and consciously into the
vernacular of American and international
politics as the catch-all justification for cen-
sorship’ (Damon, 2018). Fringe publications
often assert that establishment media is the
real fake news (Damon, 2016). When respond-
ing to evidence that one of their writers was a
plagiarizing Russian troll using a fake iden-
tity, the editors of the anti-establishment
magazine Counterpunch repeatedly referred
to the role The New York Times and
Washington Post played in spreading false
claims in the run up to the Iraq War (Clair
and Frank, 2017).
Media scholar Oliver Boyd-Barrett
(2017) explored divergent narratives around
the 2014 Ukrainian crisis. Denying the abil-
ity of ‘an analyst to declare what is “true” or
“false”’ he drew conclusions not about the
accuracy of specific reports but the struc-
tural bias of different types of media. He
noted the role of mainstream Western media
in serving the ‘propaganda aims of imperial
power’, praising ‘the countervailing influ-
ence of alternative news sources that have
a demonstrable good-faith track record
and capability in the provision of informa-
tion’, such as the World Socialist Web Site
(the ‘online newspaper of the international
Trotskyist movement’). Its publishers have
complained that measures against fake news
have hurt their ranking in Google’s search
engine (Wakabayashi, 2017). They chal-
lenge the view that fringe and highly par-
tisan news websites and media ecosystems
311
have contributed to the spread of fake news
(Benkler et al., 2017).
Boyd-Barret (2017) noted that Western
media suggested that Russia had helped
‘thugs in the Donbass to establish separatist
fiefdoms’ whereas Russian media and some
alternative media organizations suggested
that Russia ‘maintained a cool distance’. He
believed that the resulting narrative ‘clash
inevitably tends towards the destabilization
of the hegemonic Western discourse’. This
analysis echoed many of the motifs included
by StopFake in its bingo game (Figure 19.2),
referring throughout to Ukraine’s 2014 revo-
lution as a ‘coup’ and asserting that ‘events
in Crimea were an inevitable response to
the Western meddling that had precipitated’
it. Timothy Snyder (2018), observing the
frequency with which Russian propaganda
tropes were echoed in news outlets of the
kind favored by Boyd-Barret, argued that
such journalists ‘were not analysts of, but
rather participants in, the Russian campaign
to undermine factuality’. One scholar’s fake
news is another scholar’s destabilization of
hegemonic discourse.
Belief that establishment media is the
real fake news has recently moved from
the political fringes into the White House.
Although Donald Trump’s administration
has eagerly seized on the occasional retrac-
tion or corrections of unfavorable reporting,
the president’s assertions of fakeness have
rarely focused on specific errors. He has
attempted not just to redefine what makes a
news story ‘fake’, typically that itmakes him
look bad, but to shift the locus of fakeness
from specific pieces of reporting to entire
publications and media companies. At a
rally in August 2018, he called the journal-
ists caged at the rear of the event ‘horrible,
horrendous people’ and said ‘they can make
anything bad because they are the fake, fake,
disgusting news’ (Reuters, 2018). Media
organizations such as CNN, The New York
Times, and the BBC are motivated by the
animus their reporters hold for him and ordi-
nary Americans.
312 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Frame 7: Fake News as Part
of a Post-Truth Society
Discussion of ‘fake news’ is often joined to
the idea that political discourse has entered
an era of ‘post-truth’, named as the 2016
word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries
(2016). The phrase ‘post-truth’, which goes
back at least as far as the declaration of a
‘Post-Truth Era’ by Keyes (2004), is invoked
to explain the ability of politicians to con-
tinue to repeat claims that have been widely
rejected by experts and fact checking groups.
Politicians such as Donald Trump often con-
tradict themselves and show little interest in
even pretending to offer evidence to support
their assertions, yet they remain popular with
many voters.
The post-truth frame explains the effec-
tiveness of fake news, not as a result of fake
stories being hard to tell apart from real
reporting but on a collective lack of interest
in attempting any such distinction. This, it
is claimed, reflects a broader loss of faith in
social institutions and governing elites. For
example, a RAND corporation study (Wardle
and Derakhshan, 2017) termed the problem
‘truth decay’, and suggeted that it reflects a
privileging of opinions and experiences over
facts as well as a loss of faith in formerly
respected institutions and sources of factual
information.
Like fake news, ‘post-truth’ echoed a phe-
nomenon familiar to observers of Russia.
Peter Pomerantsev (2014) titled his account
of Russian media and politics Nothing Is True
and Everything is Possible. That itself was a
phrase borrowed from a description of totali-
tarian propaganda by Hanna Arendt (1951:
382): ‘the masses had reached the point
where they would, at the same time, believe
everything and nothing, think that everything
was possible and that nothing was true…
its audience… did not particularly object to
being deceived because it held every state-
ment to be a lie anyway’.
Some observers see this as part of a broad
shift in Western society away from faith in
objective truth and towards an ideology that
favors individual belief, often blaming the
situation on the influence of postmodern lit-
erary theorists (Kakutani, 2018; McIntyre,
2018). Kurt Andersen (2017), for example,
has knitted together scholarly enthusiasm for
critical theory, science fiction, and new-age
religion into an overarching narrative of the
United States as a country with a particular
fondness for self-delusion.
The idea that fake news is part of a broader
shift towards post-truth is not incompatible
with the other frames presented here, though
it does imply that fake news can’t be treated
in isolation. Fake news could be both driving
and benefitting from a broader breakdown of
truth, whether spread as a weapon of war, a
tool of state propaganda, or a business oppor-
tunity. Timothy Snyder (2018) has argued
that Russia’s use of state-sponsored fake
news is intended not to replace one coherent
understanding of reality with another but to
weaken Western countries by undermining
public faith in politicians, media, and other
democratic instructions. Frankfurt (2005:
56) argues that liars make an effort to appear
truthful: ‘a person who lies is responding to
the truth, and he is to that extent respectful to
it’. Public tolerance of bullshit, in contrast,
weakens the power of truth. This implies
that bullshit is more dangerous to democracy
than lies.
Frame 8: Fake News as Flaw in
Human Nature
The post-truth frame explains fake news as
the results of broad social and cultural shifts,
while the online-dishonesty frame focuses on
the particular characteristics of online inter-
action and the affordances provided by par-
ticular platforms. Other work has pushed
these ideas in a disturbing direction, suggest-
ing that a preference for fake news is a fun-
damental feature of human nature rather than
the product of a particular historical moment
or form of online interaction.
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
Because the producers of fake news are
indifferent to truth and are not constrained
by journalistic practice, the stories they
produce can be honed to include whatever
claims are most likely to induce an imme-
diate emotional response in the reader. This
leads to rapid, ‘viral’ sharing on social media.
Disinformation spreads faster on social media
than debunking stories and has more impact
(Starbird et al., 2014).
A major study by Vosoughi et  al. (2018),
reported in Science, examined the diffusion
of an enormous sample of around 126,000
true and (as ranked by fact checking organi-
zations) false news stories on Twitter from
2006 to 2017. It found that ‘falsehood dif-
fused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and
more broadly than the truth’, particularly for
false political news (Vosoughi et  al., 2018).
People are drawn to disseminate novel and
unexpected information (being new is the
defining characeristic of ‘news’). Because
fake news is unconstrained by reporting prac-
tices, it is usually more sensational and more
surprising than real news and hence more
likely to be shared.
Quoted in The Atlantic, the study’s lead
author, Soroush Vosoughi, said that ‘false
information outperforms true information….
That is not just because of bots. It might have
something to do with human nature’ (Meyer,
2018). This is a question for the field of evo-
lutionary psychology, but it certainly seems
plausible that humans evolved to favor emo-
tional stories over rational ones and to pay
more attention to shocking information than
unsurprising information. This compounds the
well known phemomena of confirmation bias
and congnitative dissonance: the well docu-
mented preference of humans for informa-
tion that confirms our existing beliefs and the
tendency to avoid evidence that might chal-
lenge them. The rise of political polarization
and partisan news outlets makes this easier
than ever, facilitating the spread of fake news
(Beck, 2017). We might expect information
that is both sensational and aligned with our
prejudices is particularly likely to be shared.
313
FIGHTING FAKE NEWS
Given these many ways of framing fake
news, we should not be surprised that efforts
to fight it have been similarly diverse. The
Yale workshop ‘Fighting Fake News’ dis-
cussed actions by actors including legisla-
tors, regulators, and technology and media
companies (Baron and Crootof, 2017). No
method has so far proven to be a ‘magic
bullet’ able to vanquish the problem.
Weapon 1: Fact Checking and
Rebuttals
The most direct response to fake news is to
reveal a specific fake story as ersatz by
debunking it. This was the approach taken by
the Ukrainian group StopFake, which we
have studied previously (Haigh et al., 2018).
Within 16 months of its foundation in May
2014, StopFake had posted 539 pieces online.
Each debunked at least one fake story, usu-
ally from fake social media accounts, Russian
websites, or Russian media.
StopFake was influenced by Western fact
checking groups like PolitiFact. Its found-
ers described the group to us as an attempt
to promote the journalistic standards they
had been taught at university in Kiev. They
insisted that they were not enlisted on the
Ukrainian side of the conflict, pointing with
pride to their occasional debunking of pro-
Ukrainian fake news. This suggested a deter-
mination to adopt the frame of fake news as a
kind of biased reporting. Like traditional fact
checkers (Graves, 2016), StopFake fully doc-
umented its work, describing not just its con-
clusion that a news story was fake but the trail
of evidence that supported the conclusion.
In other respects, however, it was doing
something quite different. Traditional politi-
cal fact checkers evaluate the claims of poli-
ticians. They assume the politician’s words
were accurately reported and then adjudicate
their honesty, typically using a scale offer-
ing options such as ‘partly true’ or ‘mostly
314 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
false’ as well as complete truth or absolute
falsity. They rely heavily on experts and
sources of trusted facts, such as government
statistics, to reveal subtle distortions or iden-
tify facts taken out of context. In contrast,
StopFake was investigating the trustworthi-
ness of the reporter. The closest established
parallel for StopFake, therefore, was services
like Snopes.com that attempt to evaluate the
truthfulness of online folklore.
Unlike most fact checking groups, every
published StopFake evaluation declared a
story fake. Those that could not be defini-
tively debunked were not posted. These
methods were adapted to the flood of shod-
dily produced fake news inundating Ukraine
at the time. For example, 35% of the 539
StopFake rebuttals posted between May
2014 and August 2015 showed that an image
in the story had been misidentified, and 10%
proved an image had been manipulated. This
highlights the frame of fake news as online
disinformation.
The same model has been adopted by
other organizations fighting fake news. Since
September 2015 the European Union has
produced a weekly digest of disinformation.
Debunked stories are logged in an online
database (EU vs Disinfo, 2018). Its website
mentions that 14 full-time staff members
are working on fact checking. Ahead of the
2018 midterm elections in the United States,
the political news organization Politico.com
launched its own service (Lima and Briz,
2018) tagging known fake news stories as
‘hoax’, ‘imposter’, or ‘doctored’.
The impact of StopFake is hard to mea­
sure. Fake news has not been stopped, but
over its first 18 months the group achieved
impressive things given its almost nonexist-
ent budget. Its website received more than
five million visits. Its posts were spread
widely by its 120,000 social media followers,
though not as widely as the fake news stories
they were disputing. As we mentioned above,
real news is typically shared less widely and
less rapidly than fake news. Selecting fake
stories to evaluate, researching them, writing
up a careful analysis, and translating it into
several languages took several days, giving
the fake stories time to spread unchallenged.
The frames of fake news as the product of
a post-truth society or a flaw in human nature
suggest that its consumers may not be swayed
by debunking pieces and will certainly not
seek them out. Analyses of the 2016 US elec-
tions suggest that the impact of fact check-
ing is in decline (Vargo et al., 2018). People
whose attachment to an unreliable source like
Infowars or Russia Today can be shaken by
fact checking will likely be convinced after
reading a dozen careful takedowns of fake
reporting. Posting rebuttals of another hun-
dred stories from each will not change many
more minds. Treating fake news only as a
form of media bias is an inadequate response
to its deployment as a weapon of war or as
part of a state-sponsored propaganda cam-
paign, since its producers will not be deterred
by appeals to journalistic standards. Neither
will for-profit producers of fake news.
The group’s biggest success may have been
in drawing the attention of journalists outside
Ukraine to the fake news phenomenon. This
made journalists cautious about echoing its
tropes and claims, for example that Ukraine
was run by Nazis, in their own reporting.
Weapon 2: Policing Online
Platforms
Facebook and Twitter have received several
waves of bad publicity since the 2016 elec-
tions, for business models that promoted
whichever stories were most likely to maxi-
mize user engagement. In response, Facebook
used a combination of data mining and human
investigation to flag, evaluate, and eventually
delete hundreds of accounts used by Russians
to spread fake news (Glaser, 2017). Some of
these accounts had been used to organize
marches or stage other events. Pages held
messages targeted at different groups, includ-
ing conservatives, African-American activists,
gun enthusiasts, and Hispanics. These efforts
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
are continuing: a criminal complaint against a
worker at the Internet Research Agency filed
in October 2018 documented the use of fake
Twitter and Facebook accounts to skew politi-
cal discourse ahead of the 2018 midterm elec-
tions (Glaser, 2018).
While the amount of human labor needed
to police a platform like Facebook for signs
of fake news, extremist propaganda, or
state-sponsored political disinformation
might seem prohibitive, platform companies
already employ a mixture of automated tools
and human moderators to screen content for
nudity, obscenity, and hate speech (Roberts,
2016). The companies routinely flag and
delete accounts identified as vehicles for
commercial spam or the products of bots pro-
grammed to create accounts in bulk. During
the first quarter of 2018, Facebook deleted
more than 500 million such accounts (Romm
and Harwell, 2018). Expanding these sys-
tems to police fake news and hate speech is
a shift of emphasis within an existing regula-
tory regime, not the imposition of censorship
on a formerly open platform.
One reason Facebook regulated nudity
much more aggressively than fake news or
extremist politics was the profitable customer
engagement produced by fake news. Since
2016, tweaks to algorithms used to prioritize
the personal newsfeeds of Facebook users
have reduced the number of clicks received
by fake new sites and by news organizations
in general (Oremus, 2018). This has changed
the economics of the news business. In
August 2017, fake news entrepreneur Cyrus
Massoumi closed the most successful of his
disinformation sites, MrConservative.com,
complaining that changes to Facebook’s
newsfeed algorithm meant that what he
himself called a ‘garbage website’ was left
‘barely profitable after the fake news crisis’.
Instead, he poured his resources into a liberal
clickbait website, TruthExaminer, which he
hoped would stand more chance under the
new measures. He aimed to ‘offload’ this for
an ‘eight-figure deal’ during the next election
cycle (Frier, 2017).
315
Companies would like to find ways to
limit the proliferation of fake news without
sacrificing other forms of profitable user
engagement. One high-profile experiment
at Facebook was to partner with fact check-
ing and fake news debunking organizations
to flag disputed stories with a red warning
banner. This proved counterproductive –
users were more likely to click on flagged
items (Constine, 2018). Instead, Facebook
announced a new tactic, giving fake stories
smaller displays further down a user’s per-
sonal feed and placing them next to links to
reports debunking them.
Its fact checking partners told Facebook
that ‘they felt taken for granted, used as pub-
lic relations cover, and ignored’ (Ananny,
2018). Like StopFake, they struggled to pro-
duce debunking stories fast enough to sig-
nificantly impact the rapid spread of viral
fake news. One solution would be an algo-
rithm able to successfully identify fake news
before it spreads far enough to attract atten-
tion from human fact checkers. Lucas Graves
(2018) suggested that the ultimate goal of
‘automated fact checking’ is to build a sys-
tem able to automatically evaluate stories and
instantly deliver corrections. He cautioned
that ‘much of the terrain covered by human
fact-checkers requires a kind of judgement
and sensitivity to context that remains far
out of reach for fully automated verification’
(2018: 1). So far, Facebook has been more
cautious, using an algorithm to flag items that
fit the profile of fake news for attention by its
fact checking partners.
Weapon 3: Counterpropaganda
Campaigns
Another response, driven by the frame of
fake news as a weapon of war, is the idea that
Western countries should counter like with
like. This might take the form of retaliatory
propaganda designed to favor their national
interests, or the international dissemination
of accurately reported news to demonstrate
316 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the power of the values of the ‘open society’
in the clash of free and unfree systems, as
promoted during the Cold War by philoso-
pher Karl Popper and in recent decades by
the Open Society Foundations set up by phi-
lanthropist George Soros.
During the Cold War, the United States
used both approaches. After it ended, inter-
national broadcasting efforts such as Radio
Free Europe and the Voice of America were
closed or reduced in scope, as were efforts to
build ‘soft power’ through cultural program-
ming and exchanges.
NATO made efforts in recent years
(Fredheim, 2018) to evaluate and publicize
the threat posed by fake news as a weapon
of war or tool of state propaganda, and to
coordinate efforts to fight it (Guerrini, 2018).
The United States retains programs to pro-
mote democracy and press freedom, though
these are viewed with suspicion by some on
the left who see them as ways of dressing up
the pursuit of US self-interest. It is hard to
imagine the Trump administration adopting a
strategy to build international respect for pro-
fessional journalism, still less pursing it with
any credibility. In 2018, for example, Radio
and Television Martí, a group sponsored by
the US government to broadcast to Cuban
audiences, ran an anti-Semitic piece calling
Soros a ‘nonpracticing Jew of flexible mor-
als’ and blaming him for the global financial
crisis of 2008 (Sonmez, 2018). This echoed
conspiracy theories that have long been com-
mon in Russian-sponsored fake news, sub-
sequently adopted by far-right wing groups
in the United States, and most recently
endorsed by Trump and other Republicans
(Vogel et al., 2018).
Weapon 4: Censorship or
Regulation of Media
The trend in democratic countries has been
away from media regulation, following the
idea that reducing government interference
makes for a more open and vibrant media
market. Rules to prevent concentration of
ownership of print and broadcast media have
been relaxed. Cable, satellite, and Internet
news is not subject to the same regulation as
broadcast television. Russia Today was
treated as a television channel like any other,
broadcast digitally in some US cities, includ-
ing Washington DC, and widely available on
cable-television providers.
The Ukrainian experts we talked to, echo-
ing the framing of fake news as a weapon of
war, suggested that one-sided openness to
state-sponsored propaganda was not sustain-
able during a military conflict. Ukraine had
curtailed the dissemination within Ukraine
of many Russian television channels, which
were owned by the state or by oligarchs tied
to Vladimir Putin. In 2017, it blocked access
to the Russian social network VKontakte,
used extensively by trolls. Since the expul-
sion in 2014 of its founder, Pavel Durov,
reportedly following his unwillingness to
disclose information on Ukrainian protestors,
it has been owned and controlled by forces
closely aligned with the Kremlin.
These moves were controversial, criticized
by some international groups such as Human
Rights Watch (2017) and the Committee to
Protect Journalists (2017) as infringements
on freedom of expression. Such dramatic
restrictions seem unlikely in the United
States, not least because of the constitu-
tional protections for press freedom and the
strength of domestic media organizations
such as Fox News operating on the borderline
of biased reporting and fake news. The most
dramatic effort so far was a private business
decision targeted at conspiracy theorist and
fake news entrepreneur Alex Jones. In 2018,
Apple, Google’s YouTube service, Facebook,
and Twitter all terminated distribution of his
Internet television show InfoWars. Shifts in
public opinion and the threat of legal liabi­lity
pushed online media gatekeepers to apply
clauses against hate speech in their terms of
service. Such action responds to the frames
of fake news as a business and as a form of
online dishonesty, by making that business
 Fighting and Framing Fake News
less profitable and the online environment
less rewarding for fake news producers.
Government actions in Western countries
have so far focused on political fake news
designed to sway elections. Robert Mueller’s
ongoing FBI investigation of Russian election
tampering has, as of October 2018, issued
criminal indictments against 26 Russian
individuals and three Russian companies
involved in conspiring to influence the out-
come of the election by spreading fake news,
hacking and leaking Democratic party docu-
ments, and organizing political rallies within
the United States. In 2018, the European
Union persuaded Facebook, Google, and
Twitter to sign up to a voluntary code of
practice designed to fight political fake news,
including monthly progress reports on imple-
mentation. According to two European com-
missioners (King and Gabriel, 2019), their
initial compliance has been disappointing.
Weapon 5: Media Literacy
Training
Studies testing the ability of citizens to distin-
guish between real and fake news have pro-
duced worrying results. A widely reported
study suggested that even Stanford undergrad-
uate students, so-called ‘digital natives’, could
not evaluate the credibility of online reports
(Stanford History Education Group, 2016).
News consumers are not in the habit of
performing searches to validate claims and
details, or of looking closely at domain names
or the presence of links for clues that might
reveal a story as fake news. Training them to
do these things, becoming ‘media literate’,
might inoculate them against infection with
fake news. By the summer of 2018, even our
Ukrainian informants still associated with
StopFake had accepted that media literacy,
rather than expert debunking of fake news,
would be their primary long-term weapon.
Media literacy addresses several frames for
fake news: weapon of war, form of state
propaganda, and extreme form of media bias.
317
We have written in detail elsewhere (Haigh,
Haigh & Matychak) about the Ukrainian
‘Learn to Discern’ media literacy program
run by the US-headquartered nonprofit
group IREX, the International Research &
Exchanges Board. The program covered tra-
ditional print and television reporting, from
which most Ukrainians get their news, as
well as online reporting. It encouraged news
consumers to evaluate news messages in the
context of the ownership and credibility of
the news outlet providing it. Its centerpiece
was an elaborate 193-page training manual
with real examples of fake and biased news
and information on Ukrainian media own-
ership. Over a nine-month period, around
15,000 members of the public were trained
to evaluate the credibility of media reporting,
identify manipulative techniques, and check
startling claims against other sources.
The study (Murrock et  al., 2018) con-
cluded that 18 months after being trained,
participants were better than a control group
at evaluating the credibility of news stories.
They also felt more confident in their ability
to distinguish fake news from genuine report-
ing, which made them more inclined to trust
news media. This suggests that training can
increase awareness of fake news without rein-
forcing belief in a ‘post-truth’ world. Media
literacy expert Renee Hobbs called this a new
model for how to ‘measure media literacy
competencies acquired by adults though for-
mal media education programs’ (Guernsey,
2018). At the time of writing, IREX is
attempting to integrate similar skills into edu-
cation for eighth- and ninth-grade school stu-
dents in Ukraine, and extending the Learn to
Discern program to other countries including
the United States, where pilot programs were
planned in Arizona and New Jersey.
Weapon 6: Political Reform
The Ukrainians we spoke to pointed to gov-
ernment corruption and cynicism about the
likelihood of politicians enacting fundamental
318 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
reform as an underlying cause for people’s
openness to disinformation. More than two
centuries ago, with the chaos of the French
Revolution in mind, Joseph de Maistre
quipped that all nations get the governments
they deserve; perhaps they also get the news
media they deserve. If the post-truth political
environment is real and reflects a loss of faith
in democratic institutions, then fake news is
the product of gradual but profound cultural
changes. Reforms that rebuild faith in the
authority of expert knowledge, the practices
of professional journalism, and politicians
whose claims are constrained by reality might
reduce the reach of fake news.
Whether they fill us with gloom or with
hope, we tend to assume that current trends
will continue forever. As communications his-
torian Michael Schudson (1981) has shown,
veneration for objective reporting is not an
inherent characteristic of US society but a
product of the historical conditions under
which US journalism evolved. Its stress on
journalistic objectivity and separation of news
and opinion writing was only fully institu-
tionalized in the Progressive Era, a period of
dramatic reform in US society during which
expertise of all kinds was venerated (Kaplan,
2002). During the Cold War, competition from
unfree socialist countries pushed the United
States to demonstrate its commitment to the
institutions and practices of open democracy,
including free and putatively disinterested
reporting. Although these specific economic,
technological, and political circumstances are
unlikely to recur, our own historical moment
will prove equally impermanent.
CONCLUSION
Fake news, as it appeared in Ukraine in 2014
and in the United States in 2016, has many
similarities with other forms of propaganda,
dishonesty, and disinformation, but it was
distinct enough to be usefully treated as a
new phenomenon. Our discussion of the
many frames that can be applied to fake
news, each invoking a different set of prece-
dents, shows that it combines aspects of pre-
viously understood phenomena as something
distinctively new. We see fake news as a
metastasis of everything toxic in the modern
media environment and contemporary politi-
cal discourse, ruthlessly exploited by state
and commercial interests.
The epistemological threat posed by politi-
cians undermining the very concept of fake
news by redefining it as professional report-
ing unfavorable to them is particularly grave.
We resist it here by using the term precisely
and urge others to do so also.
The methods appropriate to fighting fake
news vary according to which frames one
chooses to favor. None of the methods we dis-
cussed could address every frame. Platform
policing, debunking, counter propaganda,
legal enforcement, media literacy train-
ing, and political reform all have potential.
Political reforms and cultural shifts to roll
back acceptance of bullshit and post-truth
politics would provide the strongest defenses
against fake news. Fake news will never be
beaten, but it may be contained.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Our understanding of fake news has been
deepened by interactions with scholars and
informants including Lucas Graves, JoAnne
Yates, Maryna Dorosh, Roman Shutov,
Ruslan Deynychenko, Tetyana Matychak,
Olga Yurkova, Natali Ulynets, Taras Yatsenko,
and Vsevolod Polishchuk. We are grateful to
Nadine Kozak for her contributions to an
earlier article from which we draw here.
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Measuring the Unmeasurable:
Evaluating the Effectiveness of
US Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications
INTRODUCTION
This chapter documents for the first time, in a
comprehensive fashion, a case study of US
counter-propaganda efforts against the most
notorious, and arguably, most successful ter-
rorist media operation in recent history.
Organized in chronological fashion as events
unfolded, it looks at the challenges in measur-
ing these US efforts through the lens of the
anti-Jihadist Arabic language video-messaging
efforts of one small operation housed in the
US Department of State from 2011 to 2018
and the nascent efforts of its successors.
Selecting this specific part of a much larger
(often covert) effort, this case study narrates
the rise and transformation of a little-
understood part of counterterrorism commu-
nications during the height of the high-
profile media campaign by the Islamic State
(ISIS) terrorist group.
An evaluation of the effectiveness of US
strategic counterterrorism communications
seems like an idea that has had its time.
20
Alberto M. Fernandez
The overwhelming majority of US activity in
this field is either covert or discretely organ-
ized. To be sure, internal evaluations are
constant in government and US government
agencies who may work in the field of influ-
ence operations or information operations,
and they have robust performance metrics.
Often, they may be connected with perfor-
mance indicators used to evaluate success
achieved by government contractors pro-
viding services in this field. This process is
usually opaque, although it occasionally sur-
faces in the media.1 Details usually surface
when there is some sort of scandal involving
money or performance issues.2 Another occa-
sional source of insight is when a government
agency selectively leaks material to get good
press.3 This sort of selective leaking of your
best is, of course, rather easy to do when most
counterterrorism material is not branded.4
As the process of strategic counterter-
rorism communications has migrated and
grown from public diplomacy to the more
hermetic worlds of the military and the
324 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
intelligence community, it has become
more difficult, indeed impossible, to track.
Public diplomacy efforts, especially if they
are branded, can still be tracked if you know
where to look.
There is a rich and complex historical
record of efforts to evaluate US public diplo-
macy programs aimed at influencing foreign
audiences. Such attempts preceded the estab-
lishment of the United States Information
Agency in August 1953 and have only inten-
sified since USIA’s incorporation into the
Department of State in October 1999.
The issue of measuring the effectiveness
of official efforts against extremism and anti-
Americanism in the Middle East became even
more salient in the 1990s, after the 1991 US
War with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and particu-
larly after al-Qa’ida’s spectacularly success-
ful attack on the US homeland in September
2001. Some policymakers assumed that
anti-American hatred and extremism were
constants in the region.5 But after 9/11, coun-
terterrorism communications efforts entered
crisis mode with enhanced resources but also
a highly politicized domestic and interna-
tional political discourse not very conducive
to solid evaluation.
Even seemingly straightforward academic
evaluation in this field has been tarred with
controversy. In 2004, a widely derided State
Department media campaign, the Shared
Values Initiative (dubbed by some skeptics
as the ‘Happy Muslims’ campaign) was sur-
prisingly deemed effective in a study done
by two advertising professors.6 Middle East
experts noted that the study was flawed by
failing to focus on the fact that the intended
audience for the campaign were Muslims,
not generic foreigners.7
With US government efforts in this field
scattered, not just in the Department of
State but also across the interagency in the
Department of Defense, the Intelligence
Community and even White House Public
Affairs, the problem of metrics became an
even more complex one.
A ONE-STOP SHOP IN
COUNTERTERRORISM
COMMUNICATIONS
The informal establishing of the interagency
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications (CSCC) in late 2010, sub-
sequently formalized in September 2011,
seemed to offer an opportunity for greater
clarity, but this entity lasted for less than five
years, with CSCC replaced by the much
larger Global Engagement Center (GEC) in
April 2016. This was a step in the right direc-
tion, as for the first time, strategic counterter-
rorism communications efforts were
seemingly centralized in one government-
wide clearinghouse. However, when it comes
to government information, nothing is as
easy as it seems. A data-driven evaluation of
CSCC’s efforts seemed to focus on one key
but short-term part of its overall work, the
overt communications initiatives of the
Digital Outreach Team (DOT), which can
still be tracked online to this day and which
will be a major focus of this study, as one
activity that can definitely be measured and
evaluated because it can be seen.
Much more ignored, and much more diffi-
cult to quantify, were CSCC’s and the GEC’s
coordination efforts and long-term invest-
ments channeled through proxies. After all,
the biggest contribution that strategic coun-
terterrorism communications make is often
not what they produce themselves but rather
what, through the convening process, agen-
cies get others (proxies, non-governmental
organizations, other government agencies,
foreign governments) to produce for them.
An early example of this type of indirect
work, albeit in the form of traditional pub-
lic diplomacy, from CSCC was the creation
in 2011–2012 of the Resilient Communities
Fund program, funded by the State
Department, who are working through US
embassies worldwide ‘to amplify the voices
of survivors and victims of terrorism’. Small
grants to local partners in order to achieve
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
a common goal is a long-standing staple of
the work of public diplomacy sections at US
embassies around the world.
Much of the principal ‘work of govern-
ment’, which is mostly embodied in the
bureaucratic ability to convene and to write
policy, is largely impervious to outside evalu-
ation. The mandate of the much larger and
better-funded GEC has now been expanded
to include counter-propaganda efforts against
state actors like Russia, China and Iran, not
just counterterrorism communications.8 The
GEC’s work against Jihadism is now mostly
unattributable and therefore unmeasurable,
at least to the general public, if we judge by
the office’s lack of precision in testimony
before the US Senate Homeland Security
and Government Affairs’ Sub-Committee on
Investigations in July 2016 with the GEC’s
then Chief of Staff Meagan LaGraffe, for-
merly from the Departments of Defense and
Homeland Security.9
One constant of CSCC’s work and the
GEC’s efforts that has a track record and can
be readily accessed (as of July 2018 anyway)
and evaluated are the efforts of the DOT, an
online effort of the State Department dating
back to 2006, in Arabic and other languages.
Initially part of the Department’s International
Information Programs (IIP) Bureau, the team
has always been controversial and attracted a
fair amount of scholarly attention.10 It was an
outgrowth of a 2002 Arabic language media-
outreach center first established by the State
Department in London, then a major hub of
pan-Arab media.
A careful study evaluating the DOT’s
participation in Arabic internet discussions
of Barack Obama’s Cairo speech of June
4, 2009 was mostly negative.11 That study
noted ‘there may be covert US approaches
that proceed in parallel with the DOT, but
the DOT’s policy to genuinely identify
their posts is a key strategic choice in their
efforts to gain credibility’.12 The Arabic por-
tion of the team was transferred from IIP to
CSCC in late 2010 and given a new strategic
325
counterterrorism communications message
beginning in February 2011.13
With the transfer to CSCC, the mission
morphed into one much more closely focused
on counterterrorism, rather than the previous
one of generally defending US policy in the
Middle Eastern social-media space. The work
still consisted of attributed interventions
in online forums and of the production of
graphic and video material. But in conform-
ing to the new ethos of CSCC’s mandate, the
material was to be intentionally aggressive
and provocative, challenging the space previ-
ously ceded to the propagandists of Jihadism.
The change from the old DOT to the new
DOT was made manifest on February 16,
2011 with the release of the first two ‘attack
videos’ using the words of the Al-Qa’ida
deputy leader, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, on the
impossibility of peaceful change in the Arab
world against him.14
The work of this team from 2011 on would
increase in both volume and impact, reach-
ing its highest volume of production in 2016
(Table 20.1). In terms of audience views on
YouTube, the DOT Arabic language videos
would peak in 2014 (Table 20.2).
A review of DOT videos produced under
IIP and still available on YouTube place in
stark relief the change that was occurring in
February 2011. From 2007 to January 2011,
DOT Arabic language videos were mostly
translated, antiseptic clips of talking heads,
mostly senior US officials like President
Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
or, less frequently, more ‘Happy Muslim’
talk. One popular example of the latter is
from 2008 and featured Brooke Samad, an
American Muslim convert developing her
own line of ‘modest clothing’.15 Still others
covered the 2009 President Obama Cairo
speech, entrepreneurship, US Agency for
International Development (USAID) pro-
grams helping Muslims, Ramadan events
such as Eid al-Fitr in the United States or
official White House or State Department
Iftars.
326 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Table 20.1  Growth of DOT Arabic language YouTube videos

Number of videos
160
140
120
Number of videos

100
80
60
40
20
0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Year

Table 20.2  Total views of DOT Arabic language YouTube videos

Total views
1800000
1600000
1400000
1200000
Total views

1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Year

THE BIRTH OF US GOVERNMENT videos had about 85,000 views.16 As techni-

OVERT ATTACK VIDEOS IN ARABIC
The two new-style videos of February 16,
2011 juxtaposed al-Zawahiri’s views on the
need for a violent jihad with scenes of happy
Tunisians and Egyptians celebrating in the
streets during the first, seemingly optimistic,
flush of the Arab Spring. These cheap-
looking inartful ‘mashups’ were essentially
calling al-Zawahiri a hypocrite and someone
who was out of touch with the Arab Muslim
masses he hoped to lead, and they did so by
using his own words against him. The two
cally crude as these initial videos seemed,
they were in a sense revolutionary. While
very much in the tradition of the US political
attack ad –attacking your opponent rather
than defending yourself, changing the sub-
ject and using your adversary’s words against
him in an act of political jujitsu – this is not
something that had been attempted before in
counterterrorism communications.17
Not surprisingly, there is a considerable
body of research on attack ads and negative
advertising, a subject of great interest to both
politicians and big business. While there is
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
considerable debate about their effective-
ness, there seems to be none on whether such
campaigns hurt those who launch them.18
Negative advertising tends to be more memo-
rable.19 Given that the image of the United
States in the Arab and Muslim world is gen-
erally poor and has been so for decades, there
seemed little risk that it could make a bad sit-
uation any worse than it already was. That, at
least, was the motivation at the time, behind
such an approach. It was less about improv-
ing one’s own image than blackening that of
the adversary.
CSCC did use analytical tools to evalu-
ate its video materials. Certainly, Google
Analytics and Topsy were employed on a
regular basis to provide some basic insight
for operators on a day-to-day basis. One can
surmise that the National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC), part of whose mandate is
evaluation, would have at some point meas-
ured the effectiveness of CSCC’s online
engagement at least.
While CSCC’s Digital Outreach Team in
2011 worked mostly in Arabic, it would add
an Urdu and eventually a Somali component.
A small but controversial English-language
effort would start in December 2013. That
first year, 2011, the Arabic team would
release 21 videos with 599,561 views, for a
healthy average of 28,545 views per video.
These numbers are skewed, however, by
a May 2011 video mocking Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qaddafi, with 175,000 views.
The video was released while the popular
struggle that overthrew al-Qaddafi was in
full swing.20
In March 2012, I replaced Ambassador
Richard LeBaron, who was the founder and
first Coordinator of CSCC. I held this position
from March 2012 to February 2015. Rashad
Hussain held that position from February
2015 to December 2015. Michael Lumpkin
headed CSCC/GEC from 2016 until the end
of the Obama Administration in January
2017. Lumpkin formerly served as Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/
Low-Intensity Conflict from 2013.21 From
327
January 2017 and into 2019, the Center has
only had an acting coordinator in place.
In 2012, the DOT would release 27 Arabic
language videos with 564,596 YouTube
views, for an average of 20,910 views per
video. It should be noted that these numbers
are always conservative as videos were also
placed on other platforms, such as Vimeo;
but generally those numbers were always far
below the total views achieved on YouTube.
The top video in 2012 marked in May 2012
the one-year anniversary of the death of the
al-Qa’ida leader, Osama Bin Ladin, with
155,000 views.22 It used clips of a range
of media voices from the Arab world – not
Westerners or Americans – decrying what a
calamity Bin Ladin had been for the Muslims.
As with almost all of the ‘attack videos’, it
had more ‘dislikes’ than ‘likes’ on YouTube.
The next year saw a quantitative jump in
production, with 65 Arabic videos produced
with 577,575 views, for an average of 8,885
per video. The major success that year, in
terms of views, was a September 2013 video
targeting the newly prominent ISIS, with
over 147,000 views.23 This video relied on
Arab media and civil-society voices, noting
how ISIS was targeting, jailing and killing
anti-Assad activists and fighters. Footage
included veiled women and children dem-
onstrating in Raqqa, which was newly fallen
into the hands of the Islamic State, call-
ing for their (anti-Assad male) relatives to
be released from ISIS prison. This was, of
course, the heyday of the Syrian revolution,
when drawing a link between the innocent
victims of ISIS and the innocent victims of
Assad would be one way to try to appeal to a
Sunni Arab Muslim demographic.
2013 was also the year in which the out-
side world first took note, in an informed way
and by an actual expert, of the nature of the
online struggle between the DOT and ISIS
supporters.24 Will McCants of Brookings
noted ‘that it’s difficult to quantify the team’s
progress (and easy to laugh at its failures),
but there’s one thing it is doing successfully:
Making the right enemies’.25 This July 2013
328 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
piece in Foreign Policy magazine appeared at
a time when the Islamic State was less well
known, much less of a spectacular Western-
media phenomenon than it would be a year
later, after the fall of Mosul and the declara-
tion of the ISIS caliphate.
The year 2014 would see the Arabic lan-
guage video production of the DOT reach its
peak in terms of viewership. The number of
videos increased from 65 to 86, but the num-
ber of views more than tripled from 577,575
to 1,709,110. The average view per video
soared to 19,873. Three videos topped over
100,000 views. The first, on January 22, 2014
(102,000 views) contrasted laughing, dancing
ISIS members enjoying life, using their own
words and images, with those of Syrians suf-
fering at their hands.26 The fact that many of
the ISIS fighters featured, such as Abu Talha
al-Almani (the former German rap singer
Denis Cuspert), were foreigners and that some
of the suffering and complaining Syrians were
children only increased the contrast.
The second-most popular video (153,000
views) was released on July 8, 2014, in the
full flood of ISIS fervor after Mosul and the
caliphate declaration. The theme here was
that ISIS was targeting Sunni Arab Muslims,
and images and videos were used that graphi-
cally demonstrated this point.27 Among them
was a clip from the 2011 bombing by the
Islamic State of the Umm al-Qura Mosque
during Ramadan. Another showed the homes
of Sunni-Arab tribesmen opposed to ISIS,
being blown up by the group. Still another
showed ISIS youth threatening to slaughter
the rulers of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The top-rated video for 2014 appeared on
November 4 (181,000 views) and consisted
entirely of smartphone footage of excited
ISIS fighters laughing and joking, awaiting
the distribution and sale of slave girls.28 The
headline used on YouTube was ‘Very Very
Dangerous: Video Taken From Daesh Slave
Girl Market’. This video was first posted
online by Dubai’s Al-Aan Television and
widely circulated in the mainstream media,
including in the West.29
Not counted in the Arabic total for the year
but worth mentioning is the production in
July 2014 of the most notorious of all DOT
videos, one that has been written about exten-
sively: the English-language ‘Welcome to
ISIS Land’, with close to one million views
online. One of only a handful of English-
language videos produced by the team in
2014, it was mostly mocked but was cer-
tainly widely seen. Depending on one’s defi-
nition,30 the DOT had at least four videos ‘go
viral’ that year. It should be noted that either
YouTube or the State Department seems to
have deleted the Arabic version of ‘Welcome
to ISIS Land’ from the DOT playlist.
A frequent staple of DOT videos, but partic-
ularly those produced in 2014, was the ‘fitna’
narrative. Fitna is an Arabic word meaning
strife, temptation or sedition but has a heavy
politico-religious context based on its use in
the Qur’an and Islamic history. Promoters
of ‘fitna’ among Muslims are evil-doers by
definition. In several of its p­ roductions, the
DOT was able to mine the rich vein of mate-
rial produced as a result of the contention
between a seemingly ­triumphant ISIS and
its rivals and former masters at al-Qa’ida.31
The Jihadist ‘civil war’ between ISIS and
­al-Qa’ida began after the open break between
the two in February 2014 and continues to
this day.
The number of videos produced in 2015
clearly demonstrates the beginning of a
decline that would accelerate and deepen
over time. That year, 87 videos were released,
with 1,024,566 views. The average view per
video declined to 11,776.
The top video (139,000) was released on
January 26, 2015 and combined ISIS footage
with US military and the Kurdish People’s
Protection Units’ (Yekîneyên Parastina
Gel, YPG) footage to tell the story of the
bloody defeat that ISIS suffered at Kobane
in Northern Syria in late 2014. First, you
see ISIS captive John Cantile in an offi-
cial ISIS video, ‘Inside Ayn al-Islam’, say-
ing ‘the battle for Kobane is coming to an
end, the Mujahideen are just mopping up’
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
and ‘contrary to media reports, the fighting
for Kobane is nearly over’. ‘Ayn al-Islam’
(Spring of Islam) was the new name that the
Islamic State intended to give to this his-
torically Kurdish town (Kobane’s traditional
Arabic name is Ayn al-Arab). The video then
notes ‘but the battle for Kobane was not over
as ISIS claimed’ and shows combat foot-
age of repeated Coalition airstrikes, before
switching to another ISIS video featuring
Abd al-Halim al-Checheni, his voice break-
ing, mentioning the ‘martyrdom and loss of
many of our brothers’ and that most of their
fighters in Kobane had been killed. This is
followed by footage of wounded ISIS fight-
ers buried in the rubble, being mocked by the
anti-ISIS fighters who rescued them. Another
captured ISIS fighter weeps in the back of a
pickup truck.32
A RADICAL CHANGE IN TACTICS AND
VENUE
As 2015 rolled on, the nature of the DOT
videos seemed to change. There was a dis-
cernible return to the type of material the
team produced at IIP before its incorporation
Table 20.3  DOT Arabic video production/views on YouTube, 2011–2017
Total views/number of videos 2011–2017
1800000
1600000
1400000
1200000
Total views
1000000
800000
600000
400000
200000
0 0
2011 2012 2013
Total views
329
into CSCC in 2011: more use of official
statements, more talking by senior officials,
less attempts at storytelling and less attack-
ing. One might say that the choices were
safer, less adventurous or risky and less
likely to be embarrassing to the government
if they backfired.
Rather than seeing this as some sort of
an anomaly, this change seems to have been
part of an intentional policy decision to play
down branded overt strategic counterterror-
ism communications and to focus on proxies.
CSCC’s leadership at the time noted that a
priority would be to have others ‘support the
creation and dissemination of credible con-
tent and positive alternatives to extremist nar-
ratives’.33 An early example of such an effort
was the much heralded July 2015 launch of
the Sawab Center in Abu Dhabi, a joint effort
at counter-messaging by the United States
and United Arab Emirates governments.34
Two seemingly paradoxical DOT trends
from 2016 are clear: great output and
decreased impact. That year, 137 videos were
produced, with 574,109 views. This is more
than twice the number of videos produced in
2013 but with slightly fewer views. Average
views per video declined to 4,190. The top
video of the year, released in June 2016, had
160
140
120
Number of videos
100
80
60
40
20
2014 2015 2016 2017
Year
Number of videos
330 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
70,000 views and was a short, simple piece
taken from an ISIS video of a member exe-
cuting his own brother.35 This is another story
that circulated in the Western media.36
By 2017, the number of individual items
released remained very high – in terms of
DOT’s historic production – at 130 videos.
Nevertheless, views declined precipitously
to 160,519 total views, for an average of
1,234 per video. Many videos had less than
100 total views. The top video released that
year had 20,000 views. Another simple video
consisted of a short 40-second clip of a testi-
mony from captured ISIS wives and widows
describing poor treatment and disillusion-
ment at the hands of ‘the State of the Idols’
rather than the ‘Islamic State’.37
This trend of numerous short, simple vid-
eos – with very few views –continued well
into 2018. Particularly noteworthy has been
the reliance on clips of government officials
speaking, something which hearkened back
to the work of the DOT a decade before when
it was part of the IIP Bureau, and which is
more often associated with public-affairs or
press work.
As of July 2018, the top video (3,243
views) released for the year was titled ‘Who
is Khalid al-Batarfi?’, which consisted of bio-
graphic information on the Saudi al-Qa’ida in
the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader and not
much else.38 Launched on January 29, 2018,
it was coordinated with the announcement by
the State Department of al-Batarfi’s identifica-
tion as a special designated global terrorist.39
It is unclear why biographical information on
this individual would be of particular interest
to an Arabic language audience; indeed, an
AQAP supporter might find the video rela-
tively positive. However, for the first seven
months of 2018, that was the best there was.
This short history of attributed US govern-
ment counterterrorism video production in
Arabic from 2011 to 2018 teaches us much.
We can see broad growth and decline in
viewership at the same time that production,
at least in terms of sheer numbers, remains
high. We can, of course, discern the topics
discussed and the style used. Often, the ori-
gin of the reused material is obvious, whether
these are news organizations or terrorist
propaganda. For example, there has always
been the short, factual clip featuring senior
officials or public events that typifies the
daily work of a public-affairs or press office.
From 2011 to 2015, the DOT was more ambi-
tious and frequently produced material that
was more polemical and pointed. These pro-
ductions made more frequent use of terrorist-
produced content and sought to use their
words and images against them to make a
point. These are the ‘attack ad’ type of DOT
videos that are no longer produced.
It would be easy to make the point that
as DOT videos became less polemical (one
could say they became less original and less
interesting), overall numbers declined, as
indeed they have declined since late 2015.
But there is no clear causal link. The top
Arabic language video in 2014, a year of
seemingly many successful videos, was a
completely unoriginal reuse of a video taken
from pan-Arab media. If the reason for this
particular clip’s success was its crudeness
and authenticity, those were qualities entirely
accredited to the ISIS supporter who taped
his friends on his phone.
In addition to the content and style of the
videos, are there any external factors that
could explain the decline in DOT video view-
ership? There seems to be an obvious one:
the growth in DOT video viewership seems
to roughly mirror the growth in ISIS videos
themselves, and the heyday of 2013 to 2015
matches the peak period for ISIS’s own offi-
cial production. Indeed, ISIS video produc-
tion peaked in August 2015 and then declined
by 94% in three years.40 If we compare views
rather than number of videos, DOT’s Arabic
language videos also declined by about 90%
from a high in calendar years 2014 to 2017.
In discussing how to evaluate and con-
textualize this material, the ISIS figures are
also both instructive and sobering. According
to the July 2018 West Point CTC study by
Daniel Milton, ISIS official visual-propaganda
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
production peaked in August 2015, with
754 releases in that month. This means that
ISIS video production in that one month was
roughly equal to the video production of the
DOT in its entire ten-year history.
This is not to denigrate the work of the
DOT; ISIS prioritized media production in
a way that no terrorist group has (even few
governments have), with hundreds of peo-
ple producing high-quality, original content
from Africa to Southeast Asia. All of this
was amplified by a massive and diffuse dis-
semination network that was revolutionary in
its scope. Still, it underscores that when we
study attributed US counterterrorism com-
munications efforts that are visible to the
naked eye, we are examining a very small
response to a much larger phenomenon.
And even these numbers connected with
DOT videos can be misleading. Large num-
bers of views do not necessarily translate into
influence: it depends who is watching this
material. Indeed, a video with fewer views
but more of the right viewers, say potential
extremists, would be more successful. The
question of how propaganda is consumed is
an underexplored one.41 Just like the radicali-
zation process is not readily observable by
researchers, the process of not being radical-
ized is even more opaque.
While some measures of performance
(number of views especially) are in place
for DOT Arabic language material, what is
clearly lacking are additional measures of
effectiveness that would enable us to truly
evaluate a piece of material in time. One
could subject existing material to various
evaluation tools such as sentiment analysis
or focus groups, but that would not provide
an accurate assessment of how material was
viewed in the moment. Much of the content
of such media operations (this is true of ISIS
and of its adversaries) is time-sensitive and
tied to breaking events or controversy that not
only drive up numbers but provoke specific
responses in time.
For example, the very successful February
2011 DOT videos using al-Zawahiri’s words,
331
about the impossibility of peaceful revolu-
tion in the Arab world, against him would
probably have a very different and less posi-
tive response today. Popular responses to the
Arab Spring in 2011 were very different to
what they would be today, including in the
two countries portrayed in the video – Tunisia
and Egypt.
The work of the DOT in countering ISIS
and al-Qa’ida propaganda, viewed objec-
tively can be seen as a failure. Although,
given how small an effort it was, especially
during the peak years of the Islamic State,
they probably outperformed, based on the
resources at hand and the fact that this was
an overt platform attributed to the US gov-
ernment. The overt government connection is
part of a process described as ‘the outcome
of extreme caution compounded by bureau-
cratic bargaining on a mind-boggling scale’,
so perhaps it was the best possible outcome,
given the circumstances.42
Subject to a great deal of sensationalist
media coverage, there was very little evalu-
ation occurring in real time of this material,
certainly nothing like the case study of the
DOT in June 2009 at the time of President
Obama’s Cairo speech. What studies there
have been have attempted to focus on the
small subset of English-language visual
material produced by the DOT (under the
‘Think Again Turn Away’ slogan in 2014)
and confused that small, if high-profile, sub-
set of content with the much more extensive
Arabic language material available.43
CONCLUSION
There has to be a better way forward. Given
that there are no good extant open-source
models to evaluate overt US strategic coun-
terterrorism communications, what would a
possible future model look like, at least when
it comes to visual productions? Such a model
would combine measuring a selection of
high-performing and failing videos – in terms
332 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
of measures of performance – with Arabic
language focus groups conducted by proxies
in the region in roughly the same timeframe
that the videos are disseminated online.
These focus groups can, of course, be config-
ured to examine the views of key demograph-
ics such as youth or inhabitants from certain
ethnic or socio-economic backgrounds.
At the very least, such a combination would
provide some desperately needed timely con-
text and insight into best practices. It could
try to avoid that perennial bane of govern-
ment evaluations – an emphasis on process
rather than on impact – and produce data
that are actionable. It would help to illumi-
nate with greater granularity why a particular
video was successful or even reveal impor-
tant insight into what particular elements in
a ‘failed’ video may contrastingly have value
for a target audience. Most importantly, such
an effort could be tangible progress in the
direction of ‘greater attention by academia
and more collaboration between practitioners
and scholars’.44 There are many easily avail-
able diagnostic tools, such as Socialbakers,
which would enrich this research further.
Also ripe for further research and evalu-
ation are various official Arabic language
online accounts that contain counterterror-
ism content. The DOT’s Twitter account (@
DigitalOutreach), established in February
2009, is still up, with more than 8,000 tweets
and more than 14,000 followers. It is worthy
of a comprehensive examination. But, the
regular State Department in Arabic Twitter
presence (@USAbilaraby) which was estab-
lished in February 2011 and has more than
737,000 followers, is also available.
Even more pertinent to this study is the
Twitter account of the Sawab Center (@
sawabcenter), which was established in May
2015 and intended to be a replacement for
the Arabic DOT. Sawab Center has almost
16,000 tweets as of July 2018 and 688,000
followers. Sawab has more than 3 million fol-
lowers on Facebook.45 These are numbers that
the (admittedly much smaller) DOT never
achieved, even in the peak year of 2014.
The obvious question here is would a joint
project by the US Government and an Arab
government in counter-propaganda was more
credible or effective than what was produced
in the past solely by the State Department.
This is still ‘overt’ counter-messaging, albeit
one-step removed from the US Government.
Sawab Center material has no government
labels on it.
Certainly, Sawab Center’s considerable
video production is worth evaluating. As of
July 2018, it has produced more than 250
videos since its 2015 launch.46 They seem to
have begun poorly and improved over time,
in both quality and viewership. Like the DOT,
Sawab Center’s video production is dwarfed
by that of ISIS. Sawab’s videos certainly
look much better than the previous State
Department videos, and some of the mate-
rial is clearly geared towards children. State
Department public diplomacy programs are
generally not focused on children. Given that
Sawab Center in a sense ‘replaced’ the pre-
2015 DOT, a study of both efforts and of the
continuity and differences between the two
would be illuminating for scholars.
Given the fact that Jihadist propaganda is
still radicalizing people who are far removed
from the Middle East47 and that a new itera-
tion of al-Qa’ida or the Islamic State could
well return with renewed strength, the time
for such a renewed effort in evaluating strate-
gic counterterrorism communications is now.
An innovative and revolutionary organization
like ISIS that pioneered the use of terrorist
propaganda will certainly match a resurgence
on the ground with a reemergence in social
media. And beyond ISIS, there is still a broad
constellation of other terrorist groups seeking
to catch lightning in a bottle and imitate the
Islamic State’s meteoric propaganda success.
Terrorist propaganda has not disappeared,
despite technical efforts by companies and
governments to decrease its availability and
attempts by militaries to crush the actual
terrorists in the field. It will always have to
be answered, by somebody, in some way. This
study has shown that even overt government
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
messaging (CSCC’s DOT) or overt messag-
ing by proxies (Sawab Center) can play a pos-
itive role. But overt government messaging
comes at a price in terms of public criticism
or questions of credibility. Outside the scope
of this study is counter-propaganda that is
carried out by covert means through military
or intelligence organizations or messaging
campaigns by the private sectors or private
institutions receiving government money.
The point is that governments have a wide
variety of potential tools at hand in counter-
propaganda and need to arrive at an effec-
tive combination of approaches, strategies
and messengers. The question of measur-
ing results will always be a difficult one.
Governments will almost always find them-
selves in an urgent situation of needing to
both launch counter-propaganda campaigns
and somehow measure their effectiveness at
the same time.
This case study of one aspect of the US
government’s media efforts against the
Islamic State also graphically underscores a
grim reality in our understanding of counter-
propaganda. Governments, with their some-
times elephantine decision-making processes,
public oversight and multiple s­takeholders,
are often at a disadvantage compared to nim-
ble, streamlined terrorist or insurgent forces
in the field of propaganda. This may be
especially true when there is a reformist or
­utopian ideological or religious component.
A lesson learned in the story of CSCC’s DOT
reveals that, sometimes, counter-propaganda
can succeed, at least temporarily and in lim-
ited circumstances, in landing blows against
their adversary. Nevertheless, those limited
tactical successes can amount to naught in the
absence of a broader strategic perspective.
Notes
1 Altman, Howard. Socom web initiative on
Senate chopping block. Tampa Bay Times,
­ 14 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Thawrata Tunis wa
December 8, 2013, http://www.tbo.com/list/
military-news/socom-web-initiative-on-senate-
chopping-block-20131208/
333
2 Butler, Desmond and Lardner, Richard. U.S.
military botches online fight against Islamic
­
State. Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2017,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nation-
world/ct-islamic-state-propaganda-war-military-
20170130-story.html#
3 Cooper, Helene. U.S. drops snark in favor of
emotion to undercut extremists. New York
­
Times, July 28, 2016, https://www.nytimes.
com/2016/07/29/world/middleeast/isis-recruiting.
html
4 Ibid.
5 Makdisi, Ussama. ‘Anti-Americanism’ in the Arab
World: An Interpretation of a Brief History. The
Journal of American History, vol. 89, no. 2, 2002,
pp. 538–557, www.jstor.org/stable/3092172.
6 Kendrick, Alice and Fullerton, Jami A. Adver-
tising as Public Diplomacy: Attitude Change
among International Audiences. Journal of
Advertising Research, vol. 43, no. 3, 2004,
http://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/
content/44/3/297
7 Pintak, Lawrence. Dangerous delusions: Advertis-
ing nonsense about advertising America. Public
Diplomacy.Org, August 27, 2004, http://www.
publicdiplomacy.org/32.htm
8 Tracy, Abigail. A different kind of propaganda:
Has America lost the information war? V ­anity
Fair, April 23, 2018, https://www.vanityfair.
com/news/2018/04/russia-propaganda-america-
information-war
9 https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/
investigations/hearings/isis-online-countering-
terrorist-radicalization-and-recruitment-on-the-
internet_social-media
10 Bean, Cameron. State’s digital outreach team
may do more harm than good. Arizona State
University Center for Strategic ­Communications,
­November 11, 2010, https://csc.asu.edu/2010/11/
11/states-digital-outreach-team-may-do-more-
harm-than-good/
11 Khatib, Lina, Dutton, William H and Thelwall,
Michael. Public Diplomacy 2.0: A Case Study
of The Us Digital Outreach Team. Middle East
Journal, vol. 66, no. 3, 2012, pp. 453–472, https://
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_
id=1734850
12 Ibid.
13 Fernandez, Alberto. ‘Contesting the Space’:
Adversarial Online Engagement as a Tool For
Combating Violent Extremism. Soundings: An
Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 98 no. 4, 2015,
pp. 488–500, muse.jhu.edu/article/601430
Misr al-Salmatan Tadahatan Hujat al-Zawahiri.
YouTube, February 16, 2011, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=2uL6SXE8w4w
334 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
15 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Shabba Muslima
Musamat Azya wa Sida Amal – Mudablaj. You-
Tube, July 18, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=_9Qh3uDUux8
16 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Al-Zawahiri wa
­Itruatihi al-Ma’adiya lil-Thawra al-Silmiya bi-Misr
was Tunis. YouTube, February 16, 2011, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hKqFUaPk4c
17 Dan, Avi. How the first political attack ad
changed politics. Forbes, July 24, 2016, https://
www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2016/07/24/how-
the-first-political-attack-ad-changed-politics/
#17f33aa86b32
18 Lau, Richard R, Sigelman, Lee, Heldman, Caroline
and Babbitt, Paul. The Effects Of Negative Politi-
cal Advertisements: A Meta-Analytic Assessment.
The American Political Science Review, vol. 93,
no. 4, 1999, pp. 851–865.
19 Dresden, B. The pros and cons of negative and com-
parative advertising. Intellectual Property, 2011,
http://studylib.net/doc/8732276/the-pros-and-
cons-of-negative-and-comparative-advertising
20 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Al-Qaddafi wa ma
Yaqsiduhu bi-Zinga Zinga. YouTube, May 4, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl1BBgpxmuU
21 Spero, Domani. @StateDept announces Michael
D. Lumpkin as head of new Global Engage-
ment Center. Diplopundit, January 11, 2016,
https://diplopundit.net/2016/01/11/statedept-
announces-michael-d-lumpkin-as-head-of-new-
global-engagement-center/
22 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Tasreeb Video Maqtal
Osama bin Ladin. YouTube, May 3, 2012, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6crlOxgiDg
23 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Al-Dawla al-Islamiyya
Tuqadam Lakum. YouTube, September 20, 2013,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN0l4tx59FU
24 McCants, Will. Cyber jihadists, State Department
now in full-blown Twitter war. Foreign Policy,
July 30, 2013, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/
30/cyber-jihadists-state-department-now-in-full-
blown-twitter-war/
25 Ibid.
26 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Murtazaqa Daesh
Yuraqisun fi Haflat al-Qatal al-Jima’i. YouTube,
January 22, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=zS-pnEL3d04
27 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Daesh tuhadid Ahl al-
Sunna fil-Saudia wal-Urdun. YouTube, July 8, 2014,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcQxGG6y-MY
28 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Khateer Jiddan Jid-
dan: Video Musarrab an Suq Sabaya Daesh. You-
Tube, November 4, 2014, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=w92_qxwlT9g
29 Steinbuch, Yaron. ISIS fighters laugh about buy-
ing and selling female Yazidi slaves. New York
Post, November 3, 2014, https://nypost.com/
2014/11/03/isis-fighters-laugh-about-buying-
and-selling-female-yazidi-slaves/
30 Rockett, Aaron. Goingviral: Three definitions of
viral video.
31 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Umara’ al-Fitna.
YouTube, May 23, 2014, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=vJSt84LPbSM
32 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Haqiqat al-Dawa’ish
baeeda ‘an al-Kamera’. YouTube, January 26, 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O9YgiSuwc4
33 Hussain, Rashad. Countering violent extrem-
ism and terrorist recruiting in the digital age. US
Department of State, December 9, 2014, https://
2009-2017.state.gov/p/io/rm/2014/234988.htm
34 Khan, Taimur. Abu Dhabi counter-terrorism
­centre to battle ISIL’s online lies. The National,
July 7, 2015, https://www.thenational.ae/world/
abu-dhabi-counter-terrorism-centre-to-battle-isil-
s-online-lies-1.45777
35 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Daeshi Yaqtal
Akhuhu. YouTube, June 21, 2016, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=YfBCOp9KX0E
36 Samuels, Gabriel. Isis militant shoots own brother
in the head after accusing him of spying. The
Independent, June 13, 2016, https://www.
independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/
isis-militant-shoots-own-brother-head-after-
accusing-him-spying-a7079136.html
37 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Shihadat Zawjat
Daesh: La Tanghrau fihum. YouTube, July 24, 2017,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY7isk1jHD8
38 Fariq al-Tawasul al-Electroni. Man hua al-Irhabi
Khalid Batarfi. YouTube, January 29, 2018, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CN7nGArz1g
39 Joscelyn, Thomas. Senior AQAP leader added
to US terror list by State Department. Long War
Journal, January 23, 2018. https://www.longwar-
journal.org/archives/2018/01/senior-aqap-leader-
added-to-us-terror-list-by-state-department.php
40 Milton, Daniel. Down but not out: An updated
examination of the Islamic State’s visual pro-
paganda. Combating Terrorism Center at West
Point, July 24, 2018, https://ctc.usma.edu/down-
but-not-out-an-updated-examination-of-the-
islamic-states-visual-propaganda/
41 Cottee, Simon and Cunliffe, Jack. Watching
ISIS: How Young Adults Engage with Official
English-Language ISIS Videos. Studies in
Conflict & Terrorism, 2018 DOI: 10.1080/
1057610X.2018.1444955
42 McCants, Will and Watts, Clint. Why the United
States can’t make a magazine like ISIS. Brookings,
January 13, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/
blog/markaz/2016/01/13/why-the-united-states-
cant-make-a-magazine-like-isis/
 MEASURING THE UNMEASURABLE
43 Allendorfer, W. and Herring, S. ISIS Vs. The U.S.
Government: A War Of Online Video Propa-
ganda. Paper presented at Internet Research 16:
The 16th Annual Meeting of the Association of
Internet Researchers, October 21–24, 2015.
Phoenix, AZ: AoIR, http://spir.aoir.org.
44 Banks, Robert. A Resource Guide to Public
­Diplomacy Evaluation. CPD Perspectives on Public
Diplomacy, Paper 9, Los Angeles, CA: Figueroa
Press, 2011, p. 51.
335
45 https://www.facebook.com/sawabcenter/
46 Sawab Center. Swab Center YouTube channel,
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Qpvb2iP-
6NnsDuxuGT7_w/featured
47 Pefley, Al. Police say alleged killer wanted to join
ISIS, had terrorist ideologies. CBS12, March 13,
2018, https://cbs12.com/news/local/police-say-
alleged-killer-wanted-to-join-isis-had-terrorist-
ideologies
 21
Countering the Fear
in Propaganda
Paul Baines and Nigel Jones

INTRODUCTION analysis with a view to responding effectively.

In 1952, a top-secret US Government memo-
randum was sent to General Walter Bedell
Smith, then the Director of the CIA, and other
senior government security and defence offi-
cials, entitled ‘Staff Study – Preliminary
analysis of the communist BW [biological
warfare] propaganda campaign, with recom-
mendations’ (USG PSB, 1952). It describes a
campaign conducted by North Korea, accus-
ing the United States of using ‘germ warfare’,
with a view to implicating the United States
in atrocities. The memorandum describes the
historical and political context of the cam-
paign, its conduct, likely impact on audiences
and motivation for the propaganda. It makes
a number of recommendations on how to
respond, taking into account the inherent fear
of biological weapons and the possibility that
people in Asia might be subject to weapons
created by the ‘perversion of science’. It
exemplifies the strategic, campaign level of a
government conducting counter-propaganda
In this chapter, we explore this and other
examples of counter-propaganda designed to
reduce the exploitation of fear, in order to
understand how fear appeals work and how
they might be countered. In doing this, we
illustrate how a theoretical grounding can cast
light on the practice of propaganda and open
options for responding to it. Our 1952 case
study pre-dates the development of the theory
on fear appeals examined in this chapter. We
will briefly assess its implications in retro-
spect, whilst examining its applicability in
counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency
operations today and the rise of the strongman
in the rerun of great power confrontation. In
this context, we can justifiably use Robin
Corey’s (2004: 2) definition of ‘political fear’
because of its exploitation in propaganda in
conflict for political and societal ends:
a people’s felt apprehension of some harm to their
collective well-being—the fear of terrorism, panic
over crime, anxiety about moral decay—or the
intimidation wielded over men and women by
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
governments or groups. What makes both types of
fears political rather than personal is that they
emanate from society or have consequences for
society. Private fears like my fear of flying or your
fear of spiders are artifacts of our own psycholo-
gies and experiences, and have little impact
beyond ourselves. Political fear, by contrast, arises
from conflicts within and between societies.
A GERM OF FEAR – GREAT
POWER BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
PROPAGANDA IN THE COLD WAR
The 1952 memorandum was published on
7th August and written by the US
‘Psychological Strategy Board’. It describes
the anti-US biological warfare propaganda
as ‘communist’ indicating how the bi-polar
ideological divide was drawn between the
communist and the free worlds. This is
despite the historical context described in the
memorandum, discussing Russian, Chinese
and North Korean dimensions to the cam-
paign. The relevant historical context is
assessed to have begun on 21st January
1951. This was seen as the start of the
‘Soviet hate campaign’ against the United
States, marked by a speech to the Politburo
by Pyotr Pospelov, who had previously been
Chief Editor of Pravda (Saxon, 1979). His
speech was entitled ‘The hands of the
American imperialists are steeped in the
blood of the Russian people’. The memoran-
dum assesses that this speech was followed
by a campaign that sought to document US
atrocities with ‘corroborative evidence’ in
newspapers. The campaign targeted ‘Russian
consciousness’ with a ‘never forget and
never forgive’ theme and was carried beyond
the USSR to satellite states in Europe and
Asia. The memorandum states that the
Communist Party in Romania issued direc-
tions on how to run the campaign. In 1951,
the Chinese communists made allegations
that the United States was engaged in germ
and ‘poison gas warfare’. It continued on 22
February 1952, with charges made by North
337
Korea that biological warfare was being con-
ducted by the United States in North Korea.
This was followed in March by North Korean
announcements that 448 US planes had con-
ducted a biological warfare mission over
North Korea and that any pilots captured
would be treated as war criminals. North
Korea stated that the aims of the United
States were to ‘wreck the armistice talks in
Korea, prolonging and expanding the aggres-
sive war in Korea, and instigating new wars’
(USG PSB, 1952: 2).
According to the memorandum (USG
PSB, 1952), the CIA concluded that the cam-
paign was directed exclusively at the United
States. It notes the attempt by its adversar-
ies to bring the allegations to the United
Nations and that alleged evidence appeared
in Chinese and Soviet publications, which
included photographs of ‘insects, germs and
germ bombs’ (USG PSB, 1952: 2). The pri-
mary assessment was that the campaign pre-
sented a political risk for the United States,
exploiting legal protocols in what we might
describe today as ‘lawfare’.
A number of potential effects of the cam-
paign were outlined in the document, which
indicated that other audiences were relevant
to the campaign and that fear was seen as a
lever of influence. It was, however, assessed
by the Department of State missions in a
variety of locations that the campaign had
‘not been effective in most countries’ (USG
PSB, 1952: 3). It was thought that attempts
to denounce the propaganda would simply
prolong it. Nevertheless, several concerns
were noted by the British Foreign Office,
who assessed that the campaign could grow
to become effective for five reasons:
• Anti-US feeling in certain areas
• Ignorance of realities of war
• Fear of plague
• Resentment of any Western warfare against
Asiatics [Asian people] and
• Pacifism and lassitude in Burma. (USG PSB, 1952: 3)
Several motivations for the propaganda cam-
paign are listed in the memo, though it is
338 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
admitted that there is uncertainty about the
‘real’ reasons. The motivations given include:
• It discredits the US in the eyes of Asiatics.
• It provides an alibi for current (and future)
epidemics.
• It makes Communist troops more fearful of pick-
ing up UN propaganda leaflets and less willing
to be captured.
• It creates a moral climate in which it might be
difficult for the U.S. to employ BW [Biological
Weapons], CW [Chemical Weapons], or AW
[Atomic Weapons] in the event of global war.
(The Stockholm Peace Petition of 1950 combined
all three in the category of weapons to be “out-
lawed”)
• It provides a justification for possible Communist
use of BW.
• It provides as justification and a psychological
preparation for all out global war if the USSR
decides if such a move is expedient. (USG PSB,
1952: 3–4)
Once again, despite the primary target of the
campaign being determined as the United
States, the motivations listed point toward
other audiences such as domestic audiences in
Russia and Asia. This apparent disconnect
between the United States as the primary
target and the other audiences that are implied
in the list of the motivations can perhaps be
explained by the ultimate impact being aimed
at sabotaging the United States’ ability to pros-
ecute its own operations and interventions.
The memorandum draws a series of con-
clusions. It argues that the campaign is a
continuation of the ‘hate-America cam-
paign’ but also represents a move towards
a greater emphasis on the role of the cam-
paign in ‘Soviet psychological strategy’. It
assesses that the selection of germ warfare
for the campaign aligns with a narrative of
the US ‘perversion of science’ by its mili-
tary. It also expresses that the ‘atrocity type
of propaganda’ is particularly significant
for the United States, and it indicates that
the United States is further concerned about
the impact of allegations in Korea regarding
use of poison gas and ‘scientific extermina-
tion and torture methods in Korean prison
camps’ (USG PSB, 1952: 5). This leads the
Psychological Strategy Board to conclude
that the campaign may compromise the US
psychological warfare position in terms of
the future use of such weapons in the event of
general war. Nevertheless, the Board detects
a Soviet psychological vulnerability, given
the ‘shrill pitch of this type of communist
propaganda’ (USG PSB, 1952: 6), presuma-
bly from the fear of the use of such weapons.
It is concluded that any response needs to be
through a multi-stranded approach involv-
ing wider governmental actions, not simply
propaganda alone. A series of recommenda-
tions in keeping with this last conclusion is
made. These include coordinated statements
with the UN, inspections by neutral parties
regarding US weapons systems and potential
legal action against the USSR for libel. The
Board recommends the following action:
Additional steps to secure due credit – not grati-
tude – to the U.S. for its positive assistance in dis-
ease and pest control, indicating that the
responsibility for putting such efforts in the proper
perspective rests principally on the governments
concerned. (Purpose – to anticipate Soviet attempts
to make the U.S. the scapegoat for epidemics and
insect plague). (USG PSB, 1952: 6)
The distinction between credit and gratitude
is of interest. It may be interpreted as an
acknowledgement that the United States does
not expect people to be grateful, or it may
be to ensure that local populations are clear
about who is ultimately responsible for dis-
ease control; i.e. local authorities. Either way,
a risk is identified, based on making claims
of responsibility for prevention, which might
also be taken to mean some culpability when
diseases are not prevented. ‘Due credit’ can
be taken to mean some reassurance that the
United States is not involved in actively try-
ing to engender sickness in people.
This US–communist case, based on this
memorandum alone, illustrates a number
of additional points of interest regarding
counter-propaganda research in general and
countering fear in particular. Firstly, the
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
assessment takes place within the frames of
reference and historical context perceived by
the defending party. Therefore, Communist
propaganda is seen as being a coordinated, or
at least a related, set of actions concerning a
singular threat to the United States in a bi-
polar world. Secondly, analysis is undertaken
with a view to understanding the extent to
which propaganda presents a problem for the
defending party, and therefore the extent to
which action needs to be taken. The assess-
ment aims to inform decision-making con-
cerning the choice of actions to be taken in
response. Thirdly, the impact on audiences
and the motivations of the adversary are essen-
tial elements of the assessment and are used
to understand adversary future intentions and
the impact on the defending party’s strategic
and tactical freedom of action. Finally, the
assessment throws light on the perceptions
of all parties’ vulnerabilities and strengths.
Consequently, the US moral high-ground
and technological and scientific prowess as
virtues are attacked as immoral and perverse,
through atrocity propaganda. Fear of disease
is seen as a vulnerability of the population,
cases for which the United States will get
the blame. When this is combined with the
‘perversion of science’ trope, it frames Asian
populations as people upon whom experi-
ments are conducted and in which their self-
efficacy is reduced against a technologically
dominant and immoral United States.
FEAR, TERRORISM AND INSURGENCY:
TACTICS TO PROTECT AND TO HARM
Since the Cold War, strategic thought has
largely been focussed on the rise of militant
Islam and terrorism in parallel with the coun-
ter-insurgency and counter-terrorism opera-
tions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Given the strategy and tactics of Islamist ter-
rorists, by definition, generating fear has been
a prominent characteristic of their propa-
ganda. This has renewed an interest in how
339
fear is used, its effectiveness and how it might
be countered. Note that these questions are
largely the same as those in the US counter-
propaganda assessment above. At the time of
writing, there has been a resurgence in great
power confrontation, and we will return to
this later in the chapter, as work on fear in
terrorism and insurgency might have informed
the approaches that the United States utilised
in responding to North Korean and commu-
nist propaganda. However, we will first exam-
ine the development of fear-appeal theory in
relation to our more recent understanding of
terrorism and insurgency.
Using psychological techniques, specifi-
cally persuasion, to recruit new members has
long been a key tactic of terrorist and insur-
gency groups, e.g. Boko Haram. This Islamic
extremist group, based in north-east Nigeria,
has used cash loans as a mechanism to recruit
members to spy on security-agency opera-
tions for them, as it has sought to maintain
its numbers after Nigerian government forces
cracked down on some of their criminal activ-
ities. Their cash-loan tactic follows previous
Boko Haram approaches, including attacks
on schools and the kidnapping of schoolgirls.
The question arises: why do these cash loans
work? Why don’t the victims recognise the
group’s tactics?
In psychology, reciprocity is a powerful
mechanism for persuasion (Cialdini, 2001).
Most of us can relate to the idea that if we
receive something from someone, we feel a
need to ‘return the favour’ and are likely to
do so. In this case, things are more serious.
Refusing a cash loan from Boko Haram can
result in death. Ergo, the group is using a
fear appeal as a means of persuasion. Here,
the fear appeal expresses that the alternative
to accepting the loan offer is serious danger.
Such an offer is akin to the Italian mafia mak-
ing ‘an offer you can’t refuse’. In fact, most
terrorist groups maximise their publicity by
generating a fear of crime and causing disrup-
tion to lives, often causing mass casualties.
In Boko Haram’s case, the way to avoid the
threat of death and potentially even long-term
340 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
abuse against the victim’s family is to accept
the loan. In psychology, this is called adap-
tive behaviour to mitigate the threat, or dan-
ger control; rejection of the offer requires fear
control (Witte, 1992; see next section).
In Afghanistan, fear was an important part
of the Taliban information campaign, par-
ticularly aimed at deterring local collabora-
tion with NATO security forces. One activity
undertaken by the Taliban was the pinning
of ‘night letters’, defined by Foxley (2007:
9) as ‘leaflets or letters posted to doors or
walls to inform, threaten or advise’. He lists
this alongside other means of dissemina-
tion, including fax, telephone, mobile phone
and satellite telephone; radio and TV; news-
papers; direct contact with the population;
CDs/DVDs/videotapes; and websites and the
Internet. The following is an example of text
from a night letter translated into English:
We inform those people of Maroof district that serve
Americans day and night and show the places of the
Mujahedeen to them or those who dishonour sin-
cere Muslims of the country that American guards
will not always be there and we can catch you any
time. We know the name and place of every person;
learn a lesson from those who were loyal to
Russians; (if God wills) soon you will come under the
knife or bullet of Mujahedeen. (Johnson, 2007: 327)
The following threatening letter, which also
displays the fear appeal, is directed towards a
named woman:
[Name], you are working with the government. We
Taliban warn you to stop working for the govern-
ment otherwise we will take your life away. We will
kill you in such a harsh way that no woman has so
far been killed in that manner. This will be a good
lesson for those women like you who are working.
The money you receive is haram (forbidden under
Islam) and coming from the infidels. The choice is
now with you. (Human Rights Watch, 2010: 8)
A MECHANISM FOR FEAR APPEALS
The above examples of fear appeals illustrate
their powerful psychological nature. Most
people would think carefully about whether
or not to comply with such a message.
Campaigns that use fear appeals, for example
those in commerce and marketing, have been
well studied over the years and provide us
with a good understanding of how these
forms of advertising appeal work. Such cam-
paigns tend to adopt a three-step process that
incorporates the following:
• Creation of a message containing an appeal
designed to activate a person’s feeling of risk
and vulnerability.
• Danger serious enough to capture the subject’s
attention and;
• A suggested means of resolution of that fear.
(LaTour and Zahra, 1989)
Fear-appeal studies have focused on experi-
mental methods; few field-research evalua-
tions of this form of advertising campaign
exist. For many years, fear-appeal research
considered whether or not a high- or low-
intensity fear appeal persuaded the most.
The first theory of fear appeal, the Fear-
Drive Theory (Janis and Feshbach, 1953),
proposed that a subject’s attitudes might
accept the line of persuasion suggested by the
message contained in the fear appeal, so as
to decrease fear levels (Dillard and Anderson,
2004). This theory indicated that moderate
fear appeals were the most persuasive because
high-intensity appeals would create an avoid-
ance reaction and low-intensity appeals
would be ineffective. Other evidence contra-
dicted this view. One study found that mild
fear-arousal messages created greater resist-
ance to counter-propaganda (Chu, 1966).
Another study suggested that high-intensity
fear appeals reduce persuasion only where
the person has a tendency towards neuroti-
cism (Leventhal, 1967). There is evidence for
a positive straight-line relationship between
fear intensity and its resultant persuasiveness
(LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997), as confirmed
in a meta-analysis (Witte and Allen, 2000).
Thus, high-intensity fear appeals persuade
more. Factors mitigating this persuasion
include how important the advocated issue is
to the subject, whether or not a fear-reduction
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
route is offered in the message and whether
or not the subjects believe themselves able
(self-efficacious) to do what the messages bid
them to do. Individual personality and other
characteristics also impact on how the mes-
sage is received.
EXTANT FEAR PROCESSING MODELS
There are various extant theories/models
regarding how fear appeals work and their
effects on audiences. None of these theories
pre-date the 1952 biological weapons propa-
ganda. They include the fear-drive model
(Janis, 1967) the parallel response model
(Leventhal, 1970), the protection motivation
model (Rogers, 1975), the ordered protection
motivation model (Tanner, Hunt and
Eppright, 1991) and the extended parallel
processing model (Witte, 1992), each of
which is described below.
The Fear Drive Model
This model, proposed by Janis (1967), sug-
gested that when a subject receives a danger
stimulus an emotional response occurs, initi-
ating fear, and that persuadability was related
to fear intensity in an inverted U relationship;
i.e. fear persuaded more as intensity increased
but only up until a certain point, then it
reduced. When feeling fear, the subject con-
sequently determines how best to respond to
reduce the danger. If, in this mental rehearsal
process, a form of action is recommended
and adopted that might reduce the sense of
fear, then relief is felt. This action can either
be adaptive (e.g. behavioural to reduce the
danger) or maladaptive (e.g. attitudinal to
deny the fear).
The Parallel Response Model (PRM) –
This model (also known as the Parallel Process
Model), developed by Leventhal (1970), pos-
tulated that subjects activate two processes
simultaneously when perceiving threats based
341
on fear appeals – a danger-control process
and a fear-control process – and that these
processes are related to threat cognitions as
opposed to affective responses (Witte, 1992).
Danger control causes an individual to iden-
tify a solution to the problem that they fear. As
fear increases, danger control increases mes-
sage acceptance until the medium level of fear
arousal and reduces thereafter. Fear control,
by contrast, inhibits message acceptance by
removing fear. Both processes can co-occur, so
acceptance depends on their relative strengths
and interaction (LaTour and Zahra, 1989).
The Protection Motivation Model (PMM) –
This model, proposed by Rogers (1975), sug-
gested that protection motivation arises from
a fear-appeal message. The message must
contain a significant threat and be likely to
occur, and the message must contained a rec-
ommended coping response that can appro-
priately respond to reduce the threat contained
in the message. If the threat is deemed not to
be serious (i.e. magnitude of noxiousness),
unlikely to occur (i.e. its probability of occur-
rence) or unstoppable (i.e. the efficacy of the
response is unlikely to reduce the threat),
then protection motivation fails to occur. The
model is therefore multiplicative because no
motivation is present if any one of the condi-
tions arises. The Protection Motivation Model
(PMM) is considered superior to the fear-
drive model because it prescribes the message
development process most likely to influence
adaptive behaviour (Tanner et al., 1991).
The Ordered Protection Motivation
Model (OPM) – Tanner et al. (1991) argued
for an ordered version of the PMM, indicat-
ing that four dimensions, rather than three,
needed to be considered when processing fear
appeals. These included self-efficacy as well
as response efficacy, as follows: 1) severity of
threat, 2) probability of occurrence, 3) coping
response efficacy, and 4) self-efficacy. Based
on this model, fear elicits leads to the process-
ing of the coping response and self-efficacy
information (i.e. a consideration of whether a
subject can undertake the action necessary to
cope with the fear and the threat). The model
342 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
recognised that coping responses based on
behavioural repertory appraisal were subject
to social norms and values. This theory high-
lighted that when fear-appeal messages fail to
provide coping response information, mala-
daptive responses are more likely to occur.
In addition, if coping response information
is provided after the threat information, it is
likely to be ineffective.
The Extended Parallel Process Model
(EPPM) – This recent model (Witte, 1992)
was developed as previous models exag-
gerated the role of cognitions over emotions
(Witte, 1992). The EPPM states that two key
processes result from threat evaluation (as per
Leventhal’s 1970 Parallel Response Model).
These are danger control and fear control. The
model explains that when a subject receives a
fear-appeal message that contains threat-sever-
ity information, subject-susceptibility infor-
mation, information on an effective course of
action to respond to the threat and it empowers
the subject to believe they can take that course
of action (self-efficacy), then they read each
of these components and determine what the
‘actual’ severity of the message is, how sus-
ceptible they really are to the threat, how effi-
cient the response suggested actually is as far
as they are concerned and whether or not they
are able to enact the proposed course of action.
If a threat is perceived to be low, they fail to
act on the message. If the perceived threat and
the perceived efficacy of the advocated mes-
sage are both high, subjects control the danger
by accepting the message and acting accord-
ingly. Where subjects are low on self-efficacy,
considering themselves unable to enact the
advocated course of action, or feel that they
cannot avoid the threat, they are motivated to
initiate fear control and reject the message.
This process could also occur through psy-
chological reactance. High levels of perceived
threat with low levels of perceived efficacy can
lead to a ‘boomerang effect’, whereby subjects
act in an opposite manner to that advocated in
the message (Witte, 2008). The EPPM incor-
porates elements of the Ordered Protection
Motivation Model (OPM), is comprehensive,
aids in the design of fear-appeal (counter-)
messages, explains defensive avoidance and
distinguishes fear arousal as a separate ele-
ment from a motivation to respond.
Terror Management Theory (TMT) –
Although the EPPM explains how some
subjects can do the opposite of what is advo-
cated in the message, it only explains certain
circumstances (i.e. high perceived threat/low
self-efficacy). However, TMT explains this
phenomenon explicitly. The theory operates
under circumstances in which fear appeals are
proffered under mortality salient conditions
(i.e. where subjects are informed that they are
in mortal danger). It postulates that following
the receipt of a mortality salient message, if that
message comes from an author with a ‘world-
view’ (i.e. a perspective that helps us conceive
death in a comforting way; Pyszczynski, 2004:
830) that contrasts with the subject’s, then that
subject will reject the message’s new world-
view and consolidate the pre-existing world-
view. An example might include a young
smoker who is actually smoking more despite
seeing adverts advocating smoking cessation,
using fear appeals. Two kinds of defensive
response to mortality salient messages can
occur, including a proximal defence (similar
to the fear control processes of the PRM and
EPPM) and a distal defence (occurring only in
mortality salient situations), which causes sub-
jects to reject a message inconsistent with their
own worldview, in order to boost their own
self-esteem (Maheswaran and Agrawal, 2004).
However, it is not currently known under
what conditions subjects undertake worldview
defence and/or a desire to increase their self-
esteem and how the two interact (Maheswaran
and Agrawal, 2004: 213).
FEAR-APPEAL EFFECTS BY AUDIENCE
SEGMENT AND CULTURAL GROUP
Market segmentation is where heterogeneous
markets of people with different needs are
broken up into like-minded homogeneous
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
segments. This process allows marketers to
make better use of scarce resources by target-
ing customers more likely to respond to their
marketing campaigns. Various studies have
indicated that audience members respond
differently to fear-appeal messages (Burnett
and Oliver, 1979; LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997),
based on age (teenagers are less susceptible
than older groups according to LaTour and
Rotfeld, 1997), gender (females are more
susceptible than males according to Samu
and Bhatnagar, 2008), self-esteem, coping
style and feelings of vulnerability to danger
(Higbee, 1969), level of education (Brooker,
1981), need for cognition (Ruiter et al., 2004)
and attention paid to the message and audi-
ence perceptions of source credibility
(O’Cass and Griffin, 2006). Some audience
segments may be more susceptible to social
threats as opposed to physical threats
(Dickinson and Holmes, 2008). Physical-
threat ads have been found to be more effec-
tive on Canadians than on Chinese in
changing attitudes (Laroche et  al., 2001).
Another study found no significant differ-
ence in reactions between French and US
students in how they react to fear appeals
(Vincent and Dubinsky, 2004). Islamic
beliefs may inculcate in children the desire to
report less fear when seeing fear appeals, in
comparison with Christian children, accord-
ing to a study conducted in Kenya and
Nigeria (see Ingman et al., 1999).
MEET THE RESISTANCE: COUNTERING
FEAR APPEALS
One standard approach to determining how to
counter propaganda is to use SCAME analy-
sis. This method suggests analysing adversary
propaganda based on the source of propa-
ganda, the content of propaganda, an analysis
of the audiences and media type used and the
effects and impact created (Paul, 2008).
Military field manuals give extensive descrip-
tions of what these approaches entail and ways
343
to conduct the assessment. There are therefore
a variety of message strategies that can be
used, including, but not limited to, creating
new messages, modifying existing messages,
changing the level of attention to messages,
co-opting existing messages, subverting mes-
sages, staying silent (perhaps an overused
approach) or restricting access to messages
(Allen, 2007). Countering the fear in propa-
ganda does often require a rebuttal of the
propagandist message. However, to this we
would add that much more attention to the
psychology of the message needs to be facili-
tated in the analyst’s toolkit; that is, the mecha-
nisms by which fear acts, or is controlled,
beyond messages and rebuttals concerning the
facts of the matter or situation at hand. This is
because the notion of propagandists and com-
municators gleefully injecting ideas into peo-
ple’s heads without any resistance from the
audience whatsoever has long been debunked.
Termed ‘the hypodermic needle model of
communication’ (and ‘magic bullet theory’), it
was first proposed by Katz and Lazarsfeld
(1955). This model required a quiescent audi-
ence, and various studies have identified that
audiences undertake counter-arguing when
perceiving fear appeals. For example, in exper-
iments, subjects reject persuasive health mes-
sages when those messages threaten their
perception of freedom, even when the message
aligns with the subject’s attitudes, except when
self-preservation is necessary (Dillard and
Shen, 2005). Such psychological reactance
(Brehm, 1966), where people respond in the
opposite manner to that suggested in the mes-
sage, also occurs when a fear appeal ‘back-
fires’, creating audience anxiety and negativity
towards the source. The contrariness discussed
in the Terror Management Theory is acting in
a similar way.
Persuading the public to act is therefore
not a trivial undertaking, particularly when it
comes to terrorism. The normalisation of the
risk posed by terrorism in some societies can
persuade people simply to carry on, on the
basis that there is little they can do about it,
and the likelihood of them being directly and
344 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
harmfully affected by an incident remains
low. This is a problem for the police, who
need the public to remain vigilant. This is also
a problem for the terrorist, who wants a reac-
tion from the population and an over-reaction
from the government in pursuing a security
agenda or change in policy. Communicating
what needs to be done to remove/control the
risk, combined with enhancing the percep-
tion of likelihood and severity of the threat, is
in part something that both the defender and
attacker share.
These, of course, are the variables dis-
cussed in fear-appeal theory. Therefore, we
propose that the following variables, primar-
ily taken from The Extended Parallel Process
Model (EPPM), are included as factors in
analysis and propaganda-response design:
• Self-Efficacy – The perception that an individual
has that they are personally able to manage the
risk.
• Response Efficacy – The perception that if a
person actually responded as required the risk
would be managed effectively.
• Susceptibility – The perception of the likelihood
of a threat materialising.
• Severity – The perception of the level of impact
of the threat were it to materialise.
To this, we add audience segmentation (demo-
graphics, psychographics, cultures etc.), con-
text and an understanding of contrarian or
unintended response from the audience.
So how might we use fear-appeal theory
to assist the analyst in thinking about the
construction and psychological impact of a
message – and a suitable response? As was
pointed out earlier, theory in this area has
largely been developed through experimen-
tation rather than in the field. This naturally
poses a problem for the analyst, whose work
is so contextual. Nevertheless, armed with
some robust understanding of the mecha-
nisms by which fear appeals are accepted
or rejected, one can support the analyst and
indeed, the communicator’s ability to ethi-
cally, and constructively, use fear appeal
to help people keep themselves safe. For
example, we can observe the ethical and
constructive adoption of fear appeals by
UK police forces to encourage the public to
report suspicious activity in relation to terror-
ism/criminality – itself a form of counter to
the terrorist’s propaganda.
The police play a key role in delivering
public security communications to inform the
public that they are working to disrupt both
individuals and groups of criminals. These
campaigns require the crafting of a very subtle
message that raises the audience’s vigilance
by suggesting a security risk but also offers
to reduce their fear as consequence of their
heightened perceptions of risk, by explaining
how the public can report suspicious activities
and security threats more generally. In doing
so, perception of susceptibility and severity
are slightly heightened, whilst offering the
means by which self-efficacy and response
efficacy can be effectively exercised.
Campaigns of this type have been delivered
by the City of London Police, Police Scotland
during the 2014 Commonwealth Games in
Glasgow, British Transport Police, North
Yorkshire Police and the Royal Gibraltar
Police, amongst other UK police forces.
These forces have all implemented ‘Project
Servator’ (Latin for ‘watcher/observer’), as the
campaign is formally known. Project Servator
involves deploying uniformed and non-uni-
formed officers, dogs, horses, vehicles, closed
circuit television (CCTV) and automatic num-
ber-plate-recognition (ANPR) technology.
These tactics were deployed in locations that
were potentially subject to terrorist or crimi-
nal activity. For North Yorkshire Police, this
has included, but is not limited to, the historic
walled city centre of York (a major tourist
destination with a high footfall) and Catterick
Garrison (a large army base). The Project
Servator approach also required the deploy-
ment of promotional campaign materials such
as tannoy safety messages, leaflets, social
media, A-board posters and Project Servator
webpages. These materials all convey a vari-
ety of mild fear-appeal-based messages for
example: ‘She’s here to keep you safe. Don’t
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
worry our search dogs are friendly. They sniff
out drugs, firearms and explosives and help us
keep them off the streets. Together, we’ve got
it covered.’ (North Yorkshire Police, nd). This
message, and others like it, were designed to
convey the need to be vigilant but also to report
any suspicious (criminal/terrorist) activity.
The latter message also hints at the police use
of surveillance techniques, which would only
be likely to raise fear levels in those people
who are up to no good.
One question that arises is whether other
countries faced with a threat from Islamist ter-
ror groups might launch their own version of
Project Servator, e.g. the Nigerian government
to deter Boko Haram. Actions to counter the
threat and to reduce the fear generated in the
public could include criminalising the accept-
ance of their loans, developing their own legit-
imate loan-assistance programme and setting
up a system of reporting ‘dodgy loan’ offers,
using a social-marketing campaign (the sort
of tagline that might be used could be ‘Been
offered a “loan” you can’t refuse? Report in
confidence to XYZ’), to allow security forces
to respond accordingly. The campaign might
need to be tailored to young and older people,
men and women, all of whom will have dif-
ferent reasons for being duped into accepting
a loan and responding to that situation and
will feel differently about their own abilities
to get themselves out of the dangerous situ-
ation they are in. Such an activity might help
to close down one of the many tactics used by
Boko Haram to terrorise the Nigerian people.
Note how the Boko Haram intervention sug-
gests the need for segmentation, self-efficacy,
enforcement and mixed communication chan-
nels that are culturally tailored.
THE RISE OF THE STRONGMAN
IN A GREAT GAME
How might this suggested approach apply to
the context of a US analysis of the North
Korean biological weapons propaganda in
345
1952? Much of the theory informing terrorism
and insurgency was developed in the 1950s.
With a post-hoc rationalisation of the North
Korean campaign, we note the strategic nature
of the assessment, including the collective
term ‘communist propaganda’ for a series of
activities that had Russian, Chinese and Asian
dimensions. How audiences were to be seg-
mented in culturally relevant ways would
have been a challenge with significant
resource implications. Self-efficacy as an anti-
dote to the threat of biological and germ war-
fare (and the perversion of science) does
present a problem, and one that has been uti-
lised by communist propagandists for pre-
cisely that reason. Not only is there an attempt
to accuse the United States of atrocities, but
there are other audiences involved, including
citizens in the Soviet Union and Asia.
From a US perspective, their assessment
required a response based on these poten-
tial fears of local populations, whilst noting
that these weapons presented a fear for the
authorities in Russia and Asia as well. As
a consequence, the United States assessed
that an effective response could not rely on
countering the propaganda alone. Instead, it
would require a mixture of joint statements
with credible others, inspection regimes and
finding opportunities to show the United
States was effectively supporting disease pre-
vention and pest control. These, in the lan-
guage of the fear-appeal theory arising since
1952, would feed into mechanisms for fear
and danger control.
From a communist perspective, the biolog-
ical warfare messaging could create fear in
local populations in which self-efficacy and
response efficacy are both low. Susceptibility
would also be enhanced by stories of abuse in
Korean prisons, and severity would be raised
through the narratives of perverse science. In
this situation, the population may blame the
United States for local disease but also feel
they have little alternative but to unite behind
their leadership against an evil enemy. The
fear appeal in this circumstance becomes one
of control by the regime, particularly when
346 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
there is an information asymmetry between
government knowledge of the threat and sci-
ence and the local population’s knowledge
and ability to fact check. In these circum-
stances, one can sense how difficult it would
be to rebut one’s own government assessment,
let alone the risks inherent in opposition.
It is easy to argue that fear, uncertainty and
frustration have marked recent years in the
international information environment. The
year 2014 saw the annexation of Crimea by
Russia, as it continued to develop a hybrid
approach to warfare that accentuated propa-
ganda and information warfare alongside
traditional operations. Since then, Russian
interference in the French and US elections
have seen the rise of cyber operations, both
in terms of hacking and social media manip-
ulation. The international community has
struggled to respond to a Russia that acts
with impunity, including in its support for a
Syrian leader clearly using chemical weapons
against his own people, implicating Russia in
war crimes. Of course, Russia has also used
advanced chemical weapons against a target
in the UK. Immigration dynamics influenced
by war, politics and economics in the Middle
East and Africa have fuelled a growth in
right-wing politics in US and European poli-
tics. Whilst Russia was hacking the elections,
data-mining companies in the west have been
shown to be illegally and unethically using
microtargeting of the population for politi-
cal effect. Notions of fakeness and alterna-
tive facts have dominated the daily news. The
year 2017 saw threats of nuclear annihilation,
exchanged in very personal and insulting lan-
guage by the leaders of the United States and
North Korea, with a cooling effect in 2018
as both leaders seemed to move towards
showing how good their relationship is. It
would seem to be clear that responsibility for
whether nuclear war will or will not happen
lies within the power of two opposing indi-
viduals, each seeking to influence interna-
tionally and, perhaps more importantly, their
base support. Some degree of segmentation is
required in understanding audiences in which
fear is generated and controlled in a context
much more complex than the supposed bi-
polar world of 1952, where trust is low and
fear is driven by environmental, social and
nuclear concerns, amongst others.
Like the 1952 assessment of biologi-
cal weapons, when it comes to nuclear war
between the United States and North Korea,
the apparent audience is the mind of the lead-
ership of the opposing country. However,
as the messaging from a US perspective is
promoted at political rallies and on the presi-
dent’s twitter, one can at least assume that the
US population, and the president’s support
base in particular, are affected audiences.
The fear appeal in shaping public opinion
behind the US president is promoted in the
context of him personally being tough in his
deal-making, a trope he has pulled through
from his business life, both for enhancing
perception of his skill and offering a different
approach to the usual form of politics. When
it comes to international issues, particularly
in the nuclear context, a sense of self-efficacy
may be low in the population. There is little
opportunity to personally respond, other than
to hope the president succeeds and doesn’t
make matters worse. In these circumstances,
the perception of the likelihood of nuclear
war is increased, as is the impact involved
with such weapons.
Fiery language has of course been a char-
acteristic of North Korean bellicose propa-
ganda, broadcast on state TV to the North
Korean population and then re-broadcast by
carriers around the world. The very real devel-
opment of the nuclear threat by North Korea,
alongside its rhetoric, has required an inter-
national response. As with the US president’s
tactics, the identified threat lies abroad and
is used to enhance control over, or influence,
the local population and provide opportuni-
ties for the leadership’s self-esteem. We can
see in both the United States and North Korea
propaganda approaches that are designed to
enhance fear and reduce the self-efficacy
and response efficacy of populations. In the
context of information asymmetry, the aim is
 Countering the Fear in Propaganda
arguably to raise support for the strongmen
and offer prestige when they have broken
through in a crisis they themselves helped
to create. Arguably, this political use of fear
appeal is manipulating the same variables
highlighted in our model, and it therefore has
utility in thinking about how trust is formed
and behaviour influenced in the uncertain
world of hybrid warfare.
It is likely that effective approaches to
mitigating fear appeal in politics will require
rebuttal and fact-checking to understand
the likelihood and impact of the real risk
that is posed, even whilst political rivals try
to manipulate these variables towards their
own ends. Civil engagement in the issues
requires a demonstration of how individual
actions and responsibility in democratic
processes can help shape policies, which at
times seem remote from everyday life. Yet,
the new great game is being played out at
a hyper-local level on the mobile phones of
individuals, which in turn may yet provide a
real opportunity for exercising self-efficacy
and response efficacy in a way not possible
in 1952.
CONCLUSION
A number of conclusions can be drawn from
the discussion presented in this chapter.
Firstly, the topic of ‘fear’ in propaganda is
persistent. From the few examples we pre-
sent, we can think about it in strategic and
tactical terms: in great powers dialogue on
the one hand and in individuals whose door
has a night letter nailed to it on the other.
Secondly, what these scales of focus have in
common is the anxiety felt by individuals and
their ability or inability to do something
about it. The Afghan lives alongside their
potential attacker, presenting a very real
threat that needs to be countered by reassur-
ance and local security. The challenge of
people maintaining a personal collaboration
with law enforcement requires a belief that
347
through this self-efficacy, their lives can
really be safer someday. At the other end of
the scale, the return of great power confronta-
tion looms on the Korean peninsula, South
China Sea and Central Europe. The rise of
strongmen, working through secretive bi-lat-
eral engagements, reduces the feeling of self-
efficacy in populations, raising anxiety for
some and bellicosity from others as they form
right and left in- and out-groups in identity
politics. Thirdly, an understanding of fear-
appeal theory can help shine a light on the
strategies of others and may help formulate
responses that reduce anxiety, bellicosity and
perhaps the outbreak or escalation of
conflict.
What we have tried to show in this chap-
ter is that armed with fear-appeal theory, one
can start to dissect the propaganda of others
in much more detail. One can then start to
understand more fully the way that propa-
ganda is intended to work, and on whom, and
construct measures by which one might coun-
ter such propaganda. The challenge for our
time is to think about the scale of our analysis
in an era of terrorism and strategic strongmen.
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Peace Marketing as Counter
Propaganda? Towards a
Methodology
Dianne Dean and Haseeb Shabbir
INTRODUCTION
‘Can there then be no meritorious propa-
ganda?’, asks O’Shaughnessy (2004: 15) in
his seminal work on the intersection between
politics and propaganda. This, he elaborates,
is an important question since propaganda
has become a pejorative term, largely due to
its historical associations with Hitler and the
Third Reich. Furthermore, following on from
World War II we saw the creation of the
Soviet Union and the start of the Cold War.
Throughout this post-war period, ‘black
propaganda’ was used both by the West and
the East to manipulate opinion, (see for
instance, Schwartz, 2009) and, for Lenin, to
ultimately change culture (Hazan, 1982).
Recognized as an insidious type of persua-
sion that manipulates citizens, appealing to
emotion rather than reason and using ‘dirty
tricks’ and lies to achieve its objectives,
propaganda has been instrumental in creating
outgroups, demonizing minorities and conse-
quently fostering xenophobia (Croft and
22
Dean, 2014). These effects are typically
achieved through repetition, fabrication and
myths, amplifying cultural symbols and
embedding emotional, irrational messages.
For Briant (2015), propaganda comprises a
series of multidimensional continua: truth/
lies; internal/external; vertical/horizontal and
state/insurgents. Numerous scholars argue
that it is the breadth of propaganda that pro-
vides the biggest cause for concern (Briant,
2015; O’Shaughnessy, 2004), for instance
through the contested relationship between
propaganda and education (Pratkanis and
Aronson, 1992/2001; Wooddy, 1935), enter-
tainment (Ellul, 1965/1973) and even aca-
demia (Jones, 2009). The pervasiveness of
consumer marketing penetrating almost all
aspects of everyday life has also been scruti-
nized as a form of propaganda (Applbaum,
2004). Indeed, for Pratkanis and Aronson
(1991) advertising is nothing more than com-
mercial propaganda.
However, rather than replicate these notions
of the insidious and pervasive nature of
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
propaganda, this chapter adopts an alternative
lens in addressing O’Shaughnessy’s question.
It does this by proposing that peace marketing
is not only a meritorious form of propaganda
but also an effective counter propaganda
tool, reducing the efficacy and reach of agi-
tative propaganda. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War her-
alded a ‘Peace Dividend’ where reductions
in defence spending could be used to build
stronger economies (Knight et  al., 1996).
However, within two years the Balkans were
riven by war, with more than two million peo-
ple displaced and over 100,000 people killed
(Woodward, 1995). Moreover, the increase in
civil conflicts in Africa, the Middle East and
elsewhere, the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar
and the growth of global non-state terror has
shown the peace dividend to be an illusory
ideal. The need for a realistic and renewed
peace dividend, therefore, is more urgent than
ever (Kotler, 2017). We seek to show how
peace theory can be operationalized by the
marketing domain, concurring with Galtung’s
(1996: 265) view that ‘theory building is
not the goal: action to reduce violence and
enhance peace is the goal’. More recently,
Philip Kotler has underscored the role of
marketing for peace at the Hiroshima World
Peace Conference (Kotler, 2016), arguing for
a strategic alliance between the diverse range
of peace organizations, greater emphasis on
sustainability, a reconsideration of the distri-
bution of wealth and resources and discussion
of the implications of satisfying the needs of
competing groups as we move from conflict
towards peace. Astorino-Courtois (1996)
considered how political marketing could be
applied to the Jordan–Israel peace agreement,
emphasizing the benefits of strategically
positioning peace messages to diverse inter-
est groups. More recently we have seen the
Colombia peace process come to fruition by
integrating marketing activities with outreach
to paramilitary groups (Ghosh, 2015; Logan,
2016) and marginalized groups, including
women, (Herbolzheimer, 2016) to secure a
sustainable peace. We structure this chapter
351
by firstly delineating the similarities between
marketing and propaganda while arguing that
marketing is not only more nuanced than
propaganda but can also be used to construc-
tively inform, educate, remind and reinforce.
Crucially though, and contrary to the conven-
tional view of propaganda and indeed of mar-
keting, peace marketing focusses on citizens’
benefits from peace rather than manipulating
their needs, creating fear and uncertainty.
Finally, we show how marketing, as a strategic
type of integrative propaganda, can be used to
counter agitative propaganda and build peace.
PROPAGANDA
Propaganda has been defined by Jowett and
O’Donnell (1999: 6) as ‘the deliberate, sys-
tematic attempt to shape perceptions, manip-
ulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to
achieve a response that furthers the desired
intent of the propagandist’. An important
component of propaganda is the ability to
create a story with occasional truths rather
than just lies, which provides a wedge of
credibility (O’shaughnessy, 2004). These
occasional truths need to fit with existing
social-cognitive schemas, which reinforce
their credibility and legitimacy. As Edelman
(1964/1985: 31) observed,
It is a characteristic of large numbers of people in
our society that they see and think in terms of
stereotypes, personalization and over simplifica-
tions, that they cannot recognize or tolerate
ambiguous and complex situations, and that they
accordingly respond chiefly to symbols that over-
simplify and distort.
These simplified narratives are used to shape
perceptions of the target group, for a pur-
pose. They often create a negative picture of
a particular group of people, building a clear
distinction between the ‘in’ group and the
demonized ‘other’, to use Anderson’s (1983)
terminology. Terrorism is another tool of
propaganda, an act of terror or ‘propaganda
of the deed’, which as an act of political
352 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
violence that creates shock and its associa-
tive psychological effects, through action
rather than words. Bolt (2012) argues persua-
sively that insurgents use violence by articu-
lating the relationship between revolutionary
memory, time and narrative. This notion of
agitative propaganda is in stark contrast to
the more inclusive integrative propaganda.
While agitative propaganda reflects Jowett
and O’Donnell’s (1999) notion of disinfor-
mation, urban myths, folk wisdom, inse-
curity, fear and the creation of outgroups,
integrative propaganda is considered to be
the propaganda of nation building. There is,
however, a degree of overlap here as integra-
tive propaganda can also induce fear within
their own states, for instance by creating
fear of other states, other ethnic groups and
other political systems or religions. It is this
Machiavellian approach to nation building
that persuades the citizen that their onto-
logical securities can only remain intact by
conforming to these hegemonic and sym-
bolic values. This is consistent with Bernays
(1928/2005) and Ellul (1965/1973), who
view integrative propaganda as long-term,
adaptable, participative and emphasizing
the importance of becoming a member of an
integrated society, sharing the same values.
Moreover, ‘Integrative propaganda aims at
stabilising the social body, unifying and rein-
forcing it’ (Ellul, 1965/1973: 75). As Bernays
(1928/2005: 48) argued ‘propaganda is the
executive arm of the invisible government’,
but for Wooddy (1935: 231), ‘propaganda
masquerades as a contribution to the public
benefit’. Chomsky (1997/2002) also takes a
critical stance on this process, arguing that
the elites within government are framing
the messages to appeal and persuade a dull,
naïve population to conform to their views
and agendas. This specialized class of citi-
zens plans, controls and executes decisions
because, using Lippman’s analogy, ‘we have
to protect ourselves from the trampling roar
of a bewildered herd’ (Chomsky, 1997/2002:
16). This inherent governmental control of
opinions is particularly pervasive where there
is limited engagement in politics, as ‘democ-
racies are controlled through their opinions’
(Dewey, 1929: 519). The prevailing view in
early communication studies suggested that
the bewildered and naïve citizen may have lit-
tle interest in or understanding of politics but
can be mobilized through sentiment, ‘that can
be manufactured by mass methods for almost
any person or cause’ (Dewey, 1918/1982:
119). This is utilized by propaganda in the
form of state-sanctioned news outlets provid-
ing ‘the cheapest and most effective way of
developing the required tone of public senti-
ment’ (Dewey, 1929: 519). More recent stud-
ies illustrate the underlying tension between
scholars ‘scholars who argue there is a rela-
tionship between the controlling elites who
seduce a passive citizenry and those who
believe that propaganda is merely a mecha-
nism used by elites to ‘focus and sharpen
existing trends and beliefs’ (Welch, 2015:
11). The contrast between these perspec-
tives conceals the real issue for propaganda,
in that it is a mass-communication method
using a range of tools whereas a modern suc-
cessful strategy needs to resonate with the
experiences and needs of the intended target
audience (Edelman 1964/1985: 124; Payne,
2009). For Schattschneider (1960/1988: 137),
The most important thing about any democratic
regime is the way in which it uses and exploits
popular sovereignty and what questions it refers to
the public for decision or guidance and how it refers
to the public, how the alternatives are defined and
how it respects the limitations of the public.
Some groups of citizens tend to be accepting of
the ‘tyranny of an elite’ (Riesman et al., 1964: 165)
and view political issues rather like spectators,
casually observing and maybe subject to occa-
sional manipulation. For instance,
the peer-group exchange of consumers prefer-
ences, …. [these] preferences are seldom taken
into the political market and translated into pur-
chase of political commodities. (Riesman, et  al.,
1964: 171)
Instead, they are persuaded to vote for the
political commodities that are presented within
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
a recognizable narrative as beneficial to them,
whether they truly are or not. While Qualter
(1985: 124) stops short of suggesting that this is
manipulative, he does concede that propaganda
is ‘the deliberate attempt by the few to influ-
ence the attitudes and behavior of the many by
the manipulation of symbolic communication’.
This reflects the basic premise of market-
ing, where understanding consumer needs
are paramount when devising an appropriate
marketing strategy, and the use of segmenta-
tion, targeting and positioning is what distin-
guishes marketing from traditional views of
propaganda. It is precisely because citizens/
consumers are not a bewildered herd that seg-
menting the market is crucial, and through
this process different groups are identified
with different levels of interest, different
levels of ability and who are exposed to dif-
ferent types of media. Therefore, citizens are
diverse groups with a range of multiple char-
acteristics such as rationality, irrationality,
apathy, cynicism and emotion, all with differ-
ent levels of understanding and engagement
with politics (Dean and Croft, 2009).
MARKETING AS PROPAGANDA
This chapter does not seek to elevate the ethics
of marketing above propaganda, as marketing
does indeed focus on uncertainty and occa-
sionally fear as persuasive mechanisms (Dean,
2005; Packard, 1957/2007; Pratkanis and
Aronson, 1992/2001). Marketing also has its
critics, and it is commonly perceived as a per-
nicious persuasion tool that equates to ‘spin’
and ‘commercial propaganda’ (O’Shaughnessy
and O’Shaughnessey, 2003; Pratkanis and
Aronson, 1992/2001;). Marketing is seen as
the foot soldier of capitalism, who parades the
commodification of everything from culture
(Fuat Firat and Dholakia 1998; Hetrick and
Lozada, 1999) to health (Pellegrino, 1999)
and even time (Araujo, 1999; Debord, 1984).
Moreover, the motivation to consume is
underpinned by inducing desire to ‘magically’
353
transform the self through one’s possessions
(Belk, 1988) and through our relationships
with brands (Schembri et  al., 2010). An
extreme example of this illusionary transfor-
mation of the self includes the consumption of
cosmetic procedures (Banet-Weiser and
Portwood-Stacer, 2006; Hurd, et  al. 2007).
Integral to this commodity fetishization is the
notion of exchange: a central tenet in market-
ing theory. Commodity exchange is the trans-
ference of values associated with product,
brands or services to the consumer. However,
the transaction between producer and con-
sumer conceals the undercurrent of power in
these relationships, where consumers can
become locked into the power of the market
(Montgomerie and Roscoe, 2013); for
instance, when consumers perceive that they
will incur costs if they switch to a new prod-
uct, thus increasing the power of the producer
and generating brand loyalty (Klemperer,
1995). There are other tactics such as obfusca-
tion pricing and distribution-channel obstruc-
tion that are indirectly linked to propaganda,
but they also help to maintain the balance of
power with the producer.
Furthermore, consumers are persuaded
to believe that their aspirations can only be
realized through the exchange of a product
or brand that is imbued with the magical
qualities that can transform the self through
ownership of these brands (Belk, 1988).
Thus, identity is produced and sustained
through consumption, but as these products
or brands do not in fact fulfil the brand prom-
ises, consumers then need to go shopping
again (Klein, 2000; Lodziak, 2002). The shift
towards experiential, affective and symbolic
consumption is far removed from the notion
of the rational processor of information that
shapes consumption decisions. The range of
choices and consumer capacity for rational
decision making is determined by their abil-
ity and motivation to evaluate the range of
options available (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986).
However, for Klein and Yadav (1989), even
consumers with strong cognitive capabili-
ties make few decisions based on analytical
354 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
processes. This is exacerbated further by
marketers who focus on risk and uncertainty
in their communications strategies (Hoyer
et al., 2010/2013), and this clearly casts mar-
keting in the light of propaganda. Therefore,
both marketing strategists and political elites
seek to manage their citizens’ or consum-
ers’ preferences by ‘reducing their alterna-
tives to the extreme limit of simplification’
(Schattschneider, 1960/1988) or, conversely,
using choice complexity to create cognitive
dissonance, which uncouples the consumer
from the decision-making process (Iyengar
and Lepper, 2000). Therefore, engagement
is determined by a range of heuristic devices
that both simplify and constrain the degree
of elaboration in both the electoral and con-
sumer decision-making process.
However, marketing can be also be used for
meritorious and transformative purposes (Mick
et al., 2012a, 2012b). The transformative poten-
tial of marketing is evident, for instance, in the
growth of organic and ethical consumption such
as FairTrade (Cherrier, 2007), in the promotion
of recycling (Shrum et al., 1994) or in present-
ing the self through the ethical consumption
of food (Grauel, 2014). Indeed, the birth of
Kotler and Zaltman’s (1971) Social Marketing
was a direct response to Wiebe’s (1952) ques-
tion: Why can’t you sell brotherhood like you
sell soap? Since this counter-point, numerous
applications on the use of marketing to encour-
age positive behaviours and discontinue nega-
tive behaviours have emerged (Kotler, 2006).
Specific examples include Andreasen’s (1995)
work on using marketing to promote health
communications or Sargeant’s (2009) work on
non-profit marketing.
Perhaps the most recent example of this
transformative potential of marketing is the
idea of peace marketing as a unique form of
international diplomacy based on social mar-
keting (Nedelea and Nedelea, 2015). Each of
these examples, whether rooted in social mar-
keting, non-profit marketing or peace market-
ing, conform to the same values of integrative
propaganda: guiding the citizen towards
behaviour that supports both the citizen, the
society and the environment. Given the role
of agitative propaganda in engineering con-
flicts and social violence (Bagdikian, 2004),
peace marketing represents an important
integrative form of propaganda to counter
these maladaptive effects. However, there is
increased urgency as recent forms of propa-
gandists, such as Daesh’s death-cult brand,
‘ISIS’, have shown increasing strategic and
refined forms of propaganda, integrating
marketing techniques into their armoury and
social media (Shane, 2017). Peace marketing
as a theory and practice enables strategists to
build sustainable peace in the face of increas-
ingly sophisticated propaganda designed to
disrupt peace and social harmony.
PEACE MARKETING
Peace marketing seeks to understand and
develop marketing programmes and insights
designed to foster peace-building and peace-
making between belligerent groups. (Shabbir,
2017). As Nedelea and Nedelea (2015: 188)
remind us, peace marketing is needed because
‘our future depends on the efficiency of the
marketing campaigns for peace’. Extending
the concept of marketing to peace should not
be viewed as ‘sarcastic, facetious or flippant’,
since ‘no other means, after all, have brought
permanent peace’ (Foegen, 1995: 29). Indeed,
Reychler’s (2006: 13) seminal research
agenda on the challenges facing peace
research also concludes with a recognition of
the need to ‘ask marketing specialists’ to
‘make the concept of peace more attractive’.
While propaganda is typically character-
ized by its ‘mass suggestion’, hypodermic-
syringe methods and disallowance of critical
reflection and choice (Jowett and O’Donnell,
1999), peace marketing is rooted in construc-
tive engagement and dialogue with affected
stakeholder groups or segments (Shultz,
2007; 2016). Unlike propaganda’s ‘mass
suggestion’, peace marketing therefore
relies on segmenting citizens into key-actor
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
groups and subsequently understanding how
the benefits of peace can be positioned for
each group. There needs to be an overarch-
ing strategy rooted in constructive engage-
ment, distributive justice and ethics (Shultz,
2007; 2016), but one which also enables a
multiple-positioning approach to differenti-
ate between the nuances of individual stake-
holder segments. A specific mix of marketing
messages, tools and channels are selected, in
order to achieve optimal impact. Public rela-
tions, for instance, can also be harnessed
within this mix, since the identification of
influential opinion leaders is important in
optimizing reach. This is a gradual process,
and once the peace marketing strategy has
been initiated, an iterative process of evalu-
ation and adaptation is required. To under-
stand this process further, we examine the
conceptualization of peace in more detail.
For Galtung (1996: 9), peace ‘is the
absence/reduction of violence of all kinds.
Peace is nonviolent and creative conflict
transformation’. Galtung (1969) classically
differentiated two types of peace: negative
peace, where peace is enforced, and posi-
tive peace, which uses engagement leading
to citizen empowerment that consequently
engineers peace. For Galtung (1969; 1996),
power is critical to the success of peace,
since political, military, economic and cul-
tural power all need to be harnessed in dif-
ferent combinations in order to encourage
and sustain an optimal peaceful outcome.
This interplay of power dynamics can be
used to install both, or either, negative or
positive peace. Negative peace is enforced
through imposition of practices that force a
peaceful solution. This is peace character-
ized as the absence of violence, but this is
unsustainable as it obscures or suppresses
rather than address the core nature of the
conflict. It is impossible to overstate the
impact of social distance and othering of
social or political groups, nations, religions
and the rise of conflict. Gandhi’s critique
emphasized the zero-sum game that creates
and sustains conflict:
355
It is not nationalism that is evil, it is the narrow-
ness, selfishness, exclusiveness, which is the bane
of modern nations which is evil. Each wants to
profit at the expense of, and rise on the ruin of,
the other. (cited in Singh, 1998)
Sharp’s (2002/2012) work focusses on peace-
ful internal insurrection against dictatorships
and authoritarian regimes, and it adopts a
realist-outcomes perspective. Inspired by
Gandhi’s example of peaceful, civic disobe-
dience in agitating and disturbing colonial
repression, the Salt March was indicative of
the symbolic power of peaceful protest. The
strength of Sharp’s work is based upon the
need for a strategic vision for the success-
ful overthrow of dictatorships, through an
understanding of the history, context and the
environment in which the oppression or con-
flict occurs. This need for strategic vision is
closely aligned with the approach of market-
ing, which also examines the context and the
environment to generate an overarching stra-
tegic vision to drive marketing interventions
forward. Indeed, central in marketing logic is
the imperative to understand the needs, wants,
values and desires of targeted segments of
consumers/citizens. Similarly, within a con-
flict situation it is crucial to understand citi-
zens’ motivation for peace and to prioritise
groups’ willingness to engage in the peace
process (Shultz, 2007; 2016). Therefore, for
peace to be sustainable, citizens have to be
persuaded that the benefits of peace outweigh
the continued costs of war and conflict.
Clearly, just as there is significant overlap
between marketing and integrative propa-
ganda, there is also overlap between integra-
tive propaganda and peace marketing. Both
seek to persuade through positive commu-
nications and peaceful symbolic actions that
shape public opinion and change behaviours,
and for Gandhi (1951: 1961), ‘the method
of reaching the heart is to awaken public
opinion’. Critically, however, we argue that
peace marketing, as a unique form of inte-
grative propaganda, is more nuanced and
more sustainable than agitative propaganda.
While agitative propaganda relies primarily
356 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
on fear, anger and building social distance
between groups, often cloaked in positive
symbology (Jowett and O’Donnell, 1999),
peace marketing as integrative propaganda
relies on genuine constructive engagement,
fostering mutual empathy and attaining dis-
tributive justice.
Peace marketing builds a deeper under-
standing of citizens through marketing-
research methods to identify the needs,
values and desires of a wide range of actors,
while recognizing the history and context of
the conflict (Shultz, 2007; 2016). Moreover,
in line with Gandhi’s philosophy, peace
marketing seeks to reduce social distance
(Sharp, 1973), opening the door for human-
izing dehumanized ‘others’ and thus con-
tributing towards conflict resolution. Peace
marketing uses positive-peace methods such
as constructive engagement, dialogue, dis-
tributive justice, ethics (Shultz, 2007; 2016)
and, of course, deeply symbolic gestures
that are embedded in the culture and con-
text, in order to re-humanise ‘others’ and
subsequently foster mutual empathy between
conflicting stakeholder groups (Shabbir and
Dean, 2017). Building on the central tenets
of marketing – segmentation, targeting and
positioning (STP) – we propose a framework
that shows the intersections between actors,
the environment, propaganda and peace
marketing. Given the explicit role of STP in
marketing, we argue that understanding the
values, needs, desires and wants of affected
stakeholder conflict groups, or actors, is
central to harnessing peace marketing. This
should be embedded within an understand-
ing of the complexity of the conflict-laden
environment, such as its historical and con-
textual dynamics. Understanding the needs
and wants of consumers or citizens enables
strategists to produce targeted communi-
cations, derived from an understanding of
demographic, psychographic, geographic or
behavioural characteristics (Dibb and Simkin,
2009; Wedel and Kamakura, 2000; 2002).
This logic should also apply to conflict-
affected stakeholders, since here there is also
a range of different actors all with different
levels of power and influence, commitment
to the struggle and, most importantly, willing-
ness to accept conflict resolution. Ergo, once
the segments have been identified, specific
groups can then be targeted and the product,
service or political promise optimally posi-
tioned in the minds of the consumer (Baines
et al., 2014). Each actor group is exposed to
a different conflict-resolution message; i.e.
with an adapted message that focusses on
the benefits they uniquely seek. Hence, the
consumer or citizen sees what they expect to
see, which is, of course, also what they are
told they want. In contrast to the classical
view on propaganda, marketing’s require-
ment for STP demands a constructive and
differentiated stakeholder approach rather
than the destructive logic of traditional and
contemporary propaganda (Stanley, 2015).
Communication strategies for traditional
agitative and integrative propaganda, there-
fore, have tended to focus on a mass audi-
ence, using heuristic devices, spectacular
events and repetitive messages, often through
unconscious processing routes, using a range
of communication channels. More recently,
contemporary propaganda continues to use
the same heuristic devices but engages in
STP using destructive rhetoric, fear and the
de-humanization of others. The significance
of peace marketing is its strategic impetus
to identify key target segments and subse-
quently develop a constructive positioning
strategy. The role of public relations and
opinion leaders is also crucial in enhancing
the value and credibility of the message, to
persuade each target group. The strategy is
then evaluated in order to measure effective-
ness, evaluate and adapt where necessary,
and the process starts again. Figure 22.1
provides an illustration of the subtle differ-
ences between propaganda and marketing.
Central to our model is, however, the voice
of the key actors, or segments, in the con-
flict. However, essential to sustainable peace
marketing is emancipation of the silenced
voices in the conflict. An emancipatory ethics
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
Figure 22.1  Marketing & Propaganda (Dis)similarities
framework can underpin peace marketing as a
mechanism for constructive engagement and
empowering this often silent majority. For
Booth (2007: 112), emancipatory ethics is
‘the philosophy, theory and politics of invent-
ing humanity’. Emancipatory ethics focusses
on the vulnerable in the conflict rather than
the state-centric political elites (McDonald,
2007). Conflicts silence the vulnerable,
taking away their voice, and thus they are
under-represented in any actions, negotia-
tions or even chances of escaping the conflict
(Dingli, 2015). Emancipation is ‘freeing peo-
ple from those constraints that stop them car-
rying out from what they would freely chose
to do’ (Booth, 1991: 319). In peace market-
ing, the design and implementation of any
peace product ultimately rests on unlocking
the silenced voice as the primary segment of
focus, hence its constructive ethos.
357
BUILDING THE ISIS BRAND THROUGH
AGITATIVE PROPAGANDA
Some of the most successful agitative-
propaganda campaigns over recent years have
been initiated by Al-Qaeda and more latterly
by Daesh’s death-cult brand, ‘ISIS’. Such
was the success of ‘brand ISIS’, for instance,
that Ignatius (2015) argued it was ‘one of the
world’s most powerful brands’, and Sheffield
(2015) suggested it had become ‘a global
brand to rival Western corporations’. We
adopt a peace marketing lens in order to
understand how this marketing application
can, or rather could have been, leveraged
more effectively to dismantle the propaganda
machinery of the malevolent communications
of ‘brand ISIS’. Central to our approach is the
leveraging of an often neglected key actor, the
mainstream Muslim voice (Esposito and
358 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Mogahed, 2007), which is consistent with an
emancipatory peace marketing approach:
unlocking the voice of the ‘silenced’.
Al-Qaeda was a global franchise of indi-
vidual, regional jihadi groups brought
together by an ideological base that was
determined to provide a response to Western
secular, cultural and globalized hegemony
(Burke, 2007). ISIS, born out of one of these
groups in Iraq, subsequently presented in
many ways a stronger and more targeted mes-
sage to young disenfranchised Muslim men.
Adopting its more virulent ‘management
of savagery’ (Maher, 2016), their messages
sought to differentiate themselves from other
radical Islamic groups, in particular from
Al-Qaeda, through a message of visually vis-
ceral hyper-violence and therefore aggressive
propagandist imagery of torture and often
‘live’ vicious executions (Fishman, 2016).
Winter (2017: 13) summarizes their propa-
ganda as ‘clumsy strategic communications-
focused exegesis of the Quran; analogiz[ing]
the hadith and Sunnah; and cherrypick[ing]
from other ideologues’ work’. Successfully
aligning themselves with ‘Islamic cultural
values to justify their actions’ (Antúnez
and Tellidis, 2013: 118) was central to both
malevolent brands and therefore so was using
Islamic values as a ‘veneer of legitimacy’
(Kundnani, 2016: 23).
Moreover, and consistent with agitative
propaganda, ISIS propagandist messages in
particular sought to agitate and instil anger
by creating a rhetoric of Muslims as victims,
while also creating an apocalyptic messianic
option. The notion of the ‘Islamic State’ or
a caliphate, played on the process of ‘other-
ing’ Non-Muslims and ‘infidel’ Muslims
(Corman and Schiefelbein, 2008), with radi-
cal social identity strengthened further by an
irrational binding with scripture, thus accen-
tuating a sense of purpose (Flannery, 2015).
Presenting the caliphate as a lifestyle option
or as ‘a utopian alternative within which the
new adherents would be blessed as founding
fathers and mothers’ (Winter, 2015: 30), ISIS’
vision of resurrecting an idealized caliphate
was imbued with a ‘sense of serving a sacred
mission’ (Gerges, 2014: 342). This is consist-
ent with radical apocalyptism, or the active
eschatology wherein an ushering in of the
‘end times’ is positioned as a noble mission
(Flannery, 2015). Using traditional and social
media as its global channels of communica-
tions, they built a slick propaganda appara-
tus that served the dual purpose of recruiting
new ‘Jihadis’ to the cause but also reinforc-
ing the morale and commitment of ‘Jihadis’
within the caliphate (Winter, 2018). The key
tropes articulated in the material focused on
the victimhood of Muslims, showing foot-
age of civilian casualties and fatalities carried
out by the ‘crusaders’, wrapped in a utopian
vision where Muslims could feel safe and
secure with a sense of belonging, rather than
being an alienated ‘other’. The propaganda
adopted therefore illustrated a marvellously
functioning and yet illusionary caliphate,
portrayed with pleasant schools and public
spaces and economic and even manufacturing
capabilities. The illusory caliphate presented
an environment that was safe for families and
children, with an emphasis on Sharia law,
demonstrating swift retribution for transgres-
sors with public shows of punishment such
as executions and the like. Finally, the prop-
aganda focused on celebrating warfare, to
demonstrate that they could still defend their
caliphate and to emphasise their effectiveness
as a military force (Winter, 2018). However, as
Winter (2018) has noted, there was shift in the
propagandist rhetoric from 2015 to 2018 after
sustained military attacks on the professed
caliphate. This led to a dispersal of the key
actors within ISIS to other areas in the Middle
East such as Libya, with many ‘Jihadis’ seek-
ing to return to their countries and work from
the inside rather from the professed caliphate.
Despite the dispersal of its mercenaries, a
central aim of ISIS was retained – positioning
itself as representative of Islam.
Rafiq (2016) argues that using the Islam
label benefits ISIS and its variants in achiev-
ing two aims. First, by legitimizing their iden-
tity to Muslims, it enables the organizations
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
to conceal the underlying non-religious
ideology they are promoting, thus ‘…coat-
ing their poison with honey’ (2016: 120),
and second, by legitimizing their identity to
non-Muslims, it deflects exposure and criti-
cism of their actual ideology to mainstream
Muslims or the ‘genuine adherents to which
they are the staunchest enemies’ (2016: 120).
ISIS therefore, employed and continued to
use a common propaganda technique, ‘block
and bridge’ (Hill, 2015), or ‘shift[ing] focus
from a primary issue to a secondary issue’
through ‘block[ing] the key issue by bridging
or shifting interest to the secondary issue so
it appears from the first issue’ (Rafiq, 2016:
276). The illusionary link between Saddam
Hussein to Al-Qaeda and weapons of mass
destruction (see for example O’Shaughnessy,
2004; Lewandowsky et  al., 2013), for
instance, was engineered by a ‘block’, the ‘45
minute’ lie, and the bridge to terrorism cre-
ated by Hussein’s apparent involvement with
Al-Qaeda. ISIS uses Islam as its ‘block’, to
divert attention on its underlying ideology by
shifting it to ‘Islam’. This works especially
well, given the widespread pre-existence
of Islamophobic schemas (Entman, 2003)
and the regurgitation of its own rhetoric of
‘Islamic Terrorism’ by its opposition (Waller,
2007), thus utilizing a complementary propa-
ganda tool – the bandwagon technique – or
using the ‘premise that everyone is doing it,
and so should you’ (Hill, 2015: 276). Given
the perverseness and agitating form of such
propaganda, we address how peace market-
ing can serve as a form of meritorious inte-
grative propaganda.
PEACE MARKETING AS COUNTER
PROPAGANDA
In order to provide a counter branding-based
propaganda strategy, this work seeks to
extend Sharp’s strategic approach to peace
and democracy by using peace marketing as
a counter propaganda tool against ISIS. One
359
key aspect that Sharp (1973; 2002/2012)
emphasizes is that there has to be a coherent,
realistic plan because ad hoc activities don’t
build momentum, hence the need for consist-
ency between the aims of the strategic plan
and its anticipated outcome. We also concur
with O’Shaughnessy and Baines (2009), who
argue that
there are no simple solutions, a part of any solu-
tion must be the development of a counter-
narrative, one as compelling as the deviant terror-
ist narrative, and sustained and refreshed also
through global marketing channels.
This is a long process, and the moral impera-
tive is crucial to maintain propagandist supe-
riority over ISIS. Tugwell (1986) argues that
‘Political, spiritual and cultural leadership
are in the end even more important than intel-
ligence, response teams and firepower’.
With this in mind, there are some peace-
ful counter propagandist practices that can
be encouraged, and controlling the message
through the media is crucial for the success-
ful execution of this advocated approach.
Unfortunately, the international media has
reinforced and glorified the spectacle of ter-
ror by reporting and replicating the messages
of ISIS (Jackson, 2007; Waller, 2007). This
also alludes to the notion of ‘an Islamic ter-
ror’ or the ‘Muslim Other’, and it essentially
conflates Islam with terrorism. Furthermore,
media coverage reinforces Huntingdon’s
myth of the irreconcilability of the Christian
West and Islamic countries (Jackson, 2005;
Kumar, 2012). As well as inferring a legiti-
macy of being Islamic to extremists and
extremist organizations, thus reinforc-
ing their intended self-identity and public
image, the ‘regular association of Islam and
Muslims with crime and terror in the media
and on the internet is vital to the spread of
Islamophobic rhetoric’ (Versi, 2015: 1).
Confirming and adding credence to these
myths perpetuated by ISIS has the effect of
increasing the social distance between groups
and placing all Muslims into one group that
is sympathetic to the ISIS cause. In one of the
360 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
few dedicated counter-branding studies on
the War on Terror, Waller (2007: 54) argues
that ‘Having accepted the enemy’s terminol-
ogy and adopting its definitions as our own,
we ceased fighting on our terms and placed
our ideas at the enemy’s disposal. We are
hardly conscious of it’, and in doing so ‘we
reward the enemy’. Therefore, rather than
‘starving terrorists of the oxygen of public-
ity’, a reference made by the former British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (1985) in
relation to the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
Western media has used, for instance, ISIS’s
propaganda ‘in ways that serve Islamic
State’s objectives’ (Williams, 2016: 1).
Alarmingly, according to former Head of
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, Sir
Richard Dearlove, as a result, ISIS are getting
more coverage than in ‘their wildest dreams’
(Norton-Taylor, 2014). Freear (2016), refer-
ring to the War on Terror brands in general,
argues that, ‘it is clear that today’s persis-
tent terrorist organizations are manipulating
marketing ideas like consistency, uniqueness
and credibility far more effectively than we
are undermining them. Often, we inadvert-
ently help them, without realizing how they
are succeeding’. In doing so, peace market-
ing here is constructively engaging with a
silenced stakeholder segment; namely, the
voices of Muslim majority.
Therefore, during the segmentation pro-
cess, actors and groups need to be identified
in order to assess their propensity to sup-
port initiatives that reduce the social dis-
tance between Muslims and non-Muslims
but also crucially to increase social distance
between mainstream Muslims and ISIS or
other Islamic-terrorist actors. Key actors
in this initiative would be opinion leaders
within the Muslim community, politicians
and media representatives. These actors are
influential in encouraging others to become
involved. Indeed, the counter-narrative schol-
arly community also recommends challeng-
ing extremists, using Muslim-derived Islamic
theological accounts, thus accurately decou-
pling extremist narratives from Islam (e.g.
Braddock and Horgan, 2016; Christianmann,
2012; Corman and Schiefelbein, 2008, etc).
As Corman and Schiefelbein (2008: 19) note,
‘A key problem for jihadis is legitimating
what they do, [therefore], the tenets of Islam
provide rich sources of contradiction that
complicate their legitimation efforts’. It fol-
lows, therefore, that the ubiquitous ‘Islamic
terrorism’ discourse, will, by default, fail to
establish the legitimacy of the source of their
narratives and therefore fail to be successful,
since ‘credibility, legitimacy and relevance
are…key ingredients of [successful] narra-
tives’ (Barrett, 2009: 8).
Some Western scholars have also noted
the need to re-label or re-position Muslim
extremists as ‘Khawirijites’ – an historical
term in Islamic theology, effectively refer-
ring to a renegade in Islam and commonly
accepted as the worst possible label a Muslim
could be given as it indicates apostasy – to
challenge the nature of the ideology such a
person has embraced inaccurately as Islamic.
Habeck (2006), for instance, observes that
Muslim anti-radicalization discourse against
extremists, based on the Khawrijite label has
been so strong that these groups have been
forced to deny this claim, in fear of it erod-
ing credibility and thus delegitimizing their
propaganda. Habeck (2006: 175) further
highlights that given that the term is already
present in Islamic discourse and polemics,
‘Making khawrij a common term for jihadis
will not only differentiate them from the rest
of the Islamic world, but it will also make
it plain to moderate Muslims just how het-
erodox and violent toward other Muslims
the jihadis are’. Antúnez and Tellidis, (2013:
131) also highlight that ‘Kharijites’ way of
thinking has been replicated in modern times
by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups claim-
ing to represent Muslims and/or to emanate
from Islam’ and, based on this, they pro-
pose ‘labelling of those terrorist groups that
emphasise the practice of takfir and justify the
killing of innocent people as neo-Kharijites’
(2013: 131). Consistent with Habeck (2006),
Antúnez and Tellidis (2013: 131) justify this
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
term’s efficacy based on its widespread dis-
dain among Muslims but also for the ‘igno-
rant, overly simplistic and, in some cases,
purposefully misguiding Western discourses
to win back their legitimacy on Islam-related
terrorism’. Ironically, the CRCL report for
Homeland Security USA (2008) also recom-
mended educating the American public on
the ‘cult’-like nature of the Khawarij, since
‘“Cult” is both normative and accurate in that
it suggests a pseudo-religious ideology that
is outside the mainstream’ (2008: 4). Indeed,
Larson (2011: 119) concludes that the decline
of al-Qaeda’s framing efforts was as a direct
result of ‘reducing al-Qa’ida’s ideological
appeal’ through the use of ‘Khawarij’ label-
ling efforts by Muslim critics. More recently,
the Economist (2016: 1) in an article called
‘A disarming approach – can the beliefs
that feed terrorism be changed?’ proposed
that ‘Today’s jihadists can also be cast in an
unflattering light by drawing parallels with
an extremist sect from Islam’s earliest days…
Known as the Khawarij’. Counter propaganda
that opposes the propaganda of ISIS discred-
its and presents an alternative negative view
of the Islamic state to the target groups and
is consistent with recognizing that ‘language
is the vehicle for demagogic propaganda’
(Stanley, 2015: 410), thus delegitimizing the
language of agitative propaganda.
As there will be multiple groups identi-
fied in the segmentation process, it needs
to be ascertained which groups should be
prioritized again in order to help encourage
momentum to represent silenced unrepre-
sented voices in the seemingly intractable
conflicts. In order to mobilise effectively,
each specified group requires their own
marketing strategy with their own market-
ing mix. The marketing mix includes prod-
uct, price, place and promotion. Each group
is targeted with a focus on the ideology, but
a different emphasis is placed on the values
and policies. Therefore, each target group is
presented with a slightly different product
that meets their needs most closely while still
being clearly identifiable with the core brand
361
offering (See Downs, 1957: 135, for exam-
ple). ‘Homegrown’ Muslim movements in
the West that are actively involved in counter-
radicalization at the grass-root level and that
are regarded as best-practice examples have
used the Khawrijite label as an instrumental
part of their counter-radicalization strate-
gies. The STREET project in London, for
instance, formerly funded by the UK gov-
ernment, has been recognized as a model of
good practice (Christianmann, 2012) and is
characterized by changing extremist ideol-
ogy by raising awareness of the dangers of
the Khawrijite ideology. Similarly, Active
Change Foundation (ACF), founded by a
reformed former extremist, Hanif Qadir,
and also formerly funded by the UK gov-
ernment, similarly recognizes extremism
as a manifestation of Khawrijite ideology.
Furthermore, Islamagainstextremism.com,
founded by Amjad Rafiq and affiliated with
Salafipublications.com – arguably the largest
online Salafi education platform in Europe
– seeks to counter the claims of extrem-
ism through a theological evidence-based
approach and has published several-hundred-
thousand pamphlets against ISIS, describing
them as Kwarijites – many of which have been
adapted by other anti-radicalization Muslim
initiatives in the UK and translated into
French and Dutch. As Rafiq (2016: 68) points
out, ‘The Kharijite terrorists have been con-
tinuously refuted and condemned by Islamic
scholarship for 1400 years’. Figure 22.2
provides a simple overview, comparing agita-
tive terrorist propaganda from ‘ISIS’ with its
decoupling using a counter-branding peace
marketing approach.
However, just as costs are incurred with
consumer products or brands, engaging in
peaceful political action has a cost. When
making a peaceful stand against an aggres-
sor, there is the personal cost of the loss of
safety due to violent retribution; indeed, ISIS
promulgates the message of reprisal against
non-adherents to ISIS values. For Gandhi,
this is where courage is so highly valued.
There are few groups that do engage in the
362 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Figure 22.2  Replication and counter branding strategies
early stages of a response to an aggressor, but
if they are successful then more groups will
follow. Distribution is defined as the place
where the process of exchange takes place.
This is where the physical acts of peaceful
protest take place, such as marches and so on.
Sharp’s work is again useful where he identi-
fies peaceful activities such as pray-ins (1973:
379) and religious processions (Sharp, 1973:
155). These conform to universal Islamic
values, and as peaceful endeavours they seek
to bring into sharp relief the violence and
aggression of the terrorist organization. But,
as Gandhi commented, non-violent activi-
ties are courageous and selfless acts because
there is a risk of violence against participants
in such non-violent activities, from the group
who seek to control the agenda. Non-violent
activities are also deeply symbolic of the true
values of Islam.
Promotion is the most familiar element of
the marketing mix. This includes the control
of the media, rhetoric and counter arguments
and public-relations activities, all related to
propaganda methods. Apart from control-
ling the media channels, as suggested earlier,
there needs to be a positive, inclusive mes-
sage dramatically contradicting the ‘clash
of civilizations myth’. David Cameron’s
failed attempt (supported by a written let-
ter endorsed by 120 members of the British
Parliament) to convince the BBC to refrain
from perpetuating the intended brand identity
of ISIS as the ‘Islamic State’ is also a case
in point, and it raises the need for adopting
‘peace media’ outlets as critical stakeholder
groups in fully actualizing peace market-
ing communications. The potential for the
business community to contribute to peace
communications as corporate social respon-
sibility is an area being championed by
Kotler (2016), and a good exemplar of this
is Amazon’s 2017 Christmas campaign, dis-
playing the friendship between a Church of
England Vicar and a Muslim Imam, provid-
ing a rhetorical challenge to viewers on the
need for Christian ethics and, in the process,
a reversal of the clash of civilizations dis-
course to a collaboration of civilizations.
The key aspect is that this process is
ongoing, and all the stakeholder groups are
involved in the process, therefore once the
strategy has been articulated and put into
practice, it then needs to be monitored, evalu-
ated and refined. Peace tends to be built ini-
tially on a fragile foundation that needs to
be maintained and can be strengthened over
time. Therefore, the questions to be asked
are: Where are the potential flashpoints?
What successes are there? How are the peace
resources allocated? To what extent has the
message been accepted? These questions will
help us to revise the strategy to ensure a more
sustainable peace.
 Peace Marketing as Counter Propaganda? Towards a Methodology
CONCLUSION
The aim of this chapter has been to investigate
if there is indeed a meritorious form of propa-
ganda. We have distinguished integrative prop-
aganda from agitative propaganda and used
peace marketing to provide an initial foray into
the meritorious nature of integrative propa-
ganda. It is crucial for integrative propaganda
to respond to the current cultural environment
where there is a range of actors, frequently
with different needs. The integrative-
propaganda message needs to be maintained
and respond to the dynamics of current and
historic cultural, political, economic and
social concerns. Therefore, the democratic
state must ‘channel and shape public opinion’
(Ellul, 1965/1973: 126) that prepares for the
end of conflict and builds a new pathway to
peace. We argue that peace marketing has the
capability to undermine agitative propaganda
and build a platform for peace. We use the
case of ISIS to demonstrate how their agita-
tive, maladaptive propaganda machine can be
destabilized by a counter-propaganda strategy
using peace marketing methods. The core of
our argument focusses on decoupling Islam
from the terrorist discourse, thus construc-
tively engaging, through representation, with
the ‘silenced’ view of mainstream Muslims as
the key actors. By giving representation to
these key actors, peace marketing demands
the marginalization of what Pyszczynski et al.
(2008: 320) describe as the ‘Zealots on each
side hold[ing] an apocalyptic vision in which
the elimination of the other will benefit
humankind while demonstrating the superior-
ity of their own worldview’. In line with this,
we have shown how STP, a crucial component
of a peace marketing strategy, identifies and
prioritizes these key-actor groups and then
positions the benefits of peace in relation to
their needs and wants to other like minded
segments. The segmentation process therefore
includes not only state actors, media and
conflict groups but, crucially and foremost,
the victims of the conflict as the central ful-
crum in this process. This is an inclusive
363
segmentation process that has the potential to
emancipate the silent majority or those with-
out a voice in the conflict discourse
(McDonald, 2007). Giving a voice to a usu-
ally silent or excluded minority or marginal-
ized group helps to counteract and dilute the
more extreme messages and therefore shifts
the focus on building momentum for peace
through constructive engagement. However,
this is a slow process, recovering from war,
conflicts, suspicions, grievances, perceived
injustices and unhappiness, so peace market-
ing as an integrative counter-propaganda
method needs time and courage.
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Winter, C. (2017). Media Jihad: The Islamic
State’s Doctrine for Information Warfare.
Report for The International Centre for the
Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.
Winter, C. (2018). Apocalypse, later: A longitu-
dinal study of the Islamic state brand. Critical
Studies in Media Communication 35(1):
103–121.
Wooddy, C. H. (1935). Education and propa-
ganda. The ANNALS of the American Acad-
emy of Political and Social Science 179(1):
227–239.
Woodward, S. L. (1995). Balkan Tragedy: Chaos
and dissolution after the Cold War. Washing-
ton, DC: Brookings Institution.
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 PART IV
Propaganda in Context
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Propaganda and Information
Operations in Southeast Asia:
Constructing Colonialism and
Its Antithesis, Statehood and
Peaceful Ambiguity
INTRODUCTION
It is a moment of enormous irony composing
an exegesis on propaganda in the region of
Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century.
Modernization was theoretically supposed to
have systematically cleared out superstition,
false beliefs, and unthinking tradition in the
minds of the young populations who have
grown up without the direct experience of
the trauma of mostly Western colonialism.
But this has yet to be realized in the practice
of modern statecraft among the ten countries
that formally comprise the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). These ten
postcolonial states have instead found it poli­
tically convenient to resort to the hybridization
of political knowledge and the outright obfus-
cation of contentious politics. In the act of
colonialism, a relationship of informational
power had to be constructed by the West over
indigenous Asian society in order to subjugate
the latter. But subjugation was not the only
purpose for which colonial information power
23
Alan Chong1
was applied; it was also to organize and ani-
mate the subjugated into networks of produc-
tive power. This supported European empires
economically and militarily for nearly four
centuries. When the colonial information
power was consequently undermined through
the proliferation of elite education among the
subjected peoples and the exposure of double
standards by two world wars, the indigenous
elites that succeeded at the helm of the
modern state, constructed by colonial power,
tweaked the information power, for develop-
mental purposes. This is where Southeast
Asian modernizing states stand: the power of
information needs to continuously introduce
modernity while retaining the values of a
none-too-distant precolonial past that cele-
brated a patrimonial form of politics within
and across fluid borders. Modernity, too,
manifests its built-in contradictions in
Southeast Asia as much as in the industrial
heartlands of the original West: the emerging
consumption-driven middle class finds its
members’ occupational mobility crimped by
372 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
technological changes and wage pressures of
borderless economic competition; the obses-
sion with science and Cartesian thought mar-
ginalizes traditional philosophies of humane
considerations and manual craftsmanship,
and the rivalry between explaining causation
through human intervention and the reliability
of machine-like automation.
This elaborate sketch of the Southeast
Asian culture and practice of propaganda
is necessary to preface this chapter, since it
epitomizes the centrality of propaganda in
the politics of modernizing societies. Jacques
Ellul’s (1973) reflective ruminations on the
adjustments needed to adapt to what he dubs
the technological society, instead of ‘moder-
nity’, captures the underlying rationale for
propaganda in Southeast Asia today, circa
2018. For man to adapt to the idea of tech-
nique or method in modern life, he must find
its approximation to the notion of pre-modern
‘magic’. The latter refers to ‘an aggregate
of rites, formulas, and procedures which,
once established, do not vary’ (Ellul, 1973:
24). This ready-made set of formulas medi-
ate man’s needs and the supernatural, ‘higher
powers’ by binding the latter to serve man,
by delivering a predetermined result through
strict performance of a series of prearranged
invocations. The social contract for protec-
tion between gods and men is bound by a
blind faith. Likewise, scientific ‘technique
serves to cause nature to obey’ (Ellul, 1973:
24). The typewriter, the railway, the steam
ship, the motorcar, the weather barometer,
the almost perfectly homeostatic refrigera-
tor, and now the artificial intelligence within
iPads, laptop computers, nuclear reactors,
driverless cars and aircraft autopilots were
all designed to calm man’s fears of the unex-
pected or the likelihood of malfunction.
Hence, modern education in Southeast Asia
is intended to be transformative by reassur-
ing the population that science works for both
regulating the economy and stabilizing the
government for their welfare.
With the idea of diffusing the techniques
of modernity in mind, the political scientist
Harold Lasswell (1995) argued that val-
ues are embedded, and thus disseminated,
along with the learning of techniques that
one takes for granted, like learning to read
and write, ‘lathe handling’ or comprehend-
ing and then applying science through the
manipulation of dialectical forces (Lasswell,
1995: 13). Propaganda comes into being
when it encourages the predisposition to act
out techniques learnt in order to be modern.
For Lasswell (1995: 13), propaganda ‘is
the technique of influencing human action
by the manipulation of representations’.
Unsurprisingly, a very thin, and often invis-
ible, line divides education from propaganda.
In every political activity in the modern era,
parties, revolutionaries, governments, lobby
groups, pressure groups and every conceiv-
able nongovernmental organization (NGO)
practises propaganda to spread their cause.
The Catholic Church had ironically coined
the term way before the discourse of mod-
ernization arrived: propaganda was meant
to spread the faith, literally to propagate
beliefs staunchly espoused from one centre
outwards. Writing in the 1930s, Lasswell’s
meditation on propaganda amply paid heed
to the rise of totalitarian fascisms. Where one
ruling elite is scandalized in the perception
of the population it rules, a rival elite is often
waiting in the wings to take its place. To actu-
ally set into motion the change of regime, the
hearts and minds of ‘the masses’ needed to
be captured. This is where Lasswell placed
propaganda as the anvil of revolutionaries
and other political challengers, legal or oth-
erwise, liberal and authoritarian, as equally
prolific in propaganda campaigns (1995:
17). As such, Lasswell (1995: 25) has given
us that famous phrase: ‘The propagandist
takes it for granted that the world is com-
pletely caused but that it is only partly pre-
dictable…’. The propagandist must actively
use every means, including violent ones, to
reinforce attitudes favourable to one’s course
while reversing hostile attitudes favouring
the other side. Where public opinion cannot
be decisively swayed in one’s favour, it is an
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
acceptable achievement to merely isolate and
maintain its indifference to one’s political
ascent (1995: 18).
For all of modernizing Southeast Asia’s
relatively short geopolitical history, propa-
ganda was integral to political mobiliza-
tion, whether for domestic change or foreign
adventures. The points by Ellul about the bur-
dens arising from modernizing populations
who are unaccustomed to the idea of moder-
nity are completely relevant in comprehend-
ing the rest of this chapter, in relation to why
every visibly stable government cannot take
its vigilant official hand off the rudder of
their propaganda machine. And the defini-
tions and characterizations of propaganda by
Lasswell are instructive in the strategizing of
propaganda in Southeast Asia as equally the
arts of liberation in domestic politics, as well
as of closure and the checkmating of one’s
opponents at home and abroad. To pronounce
fully the characteristics of propaganda in
Southeast Asia, we engage in turn the colonial
and anti-colonial campaigns; the propaganda
of asserting statehood amidst conditions of
othering the external enemy; and the institu-
tionalized diplomatic technique of peaceful
ambiguity practised repeatedly by ASEAN.
In each of these three sections, it should be
understood that propaganda operates as a dia-
lectical or bipolar process: for every thrust,
there is a counter-thrust, and where the lat-
ter is weak compared to the initial thrust, one
might – at the very least – term the reaction
of the target an informational parry. This is
something Harold Lasswell understood very
early on in the twentieth century.
Hence, in this chapter, while we acknowl-
edge that propaganda is evidently wide-
spread as a political practice in Southeast
Asia, its subset, ‘information operations’,
needs to be taken into account specifically
as ‘that entire range of symbolic resources
straddling both military and civilian spheres
that are aimed at achieving national objec-
tives in both peacetime and wartime. These
include psychological operations (PSYOPS),
military deception (MILDEC), electronic
373
countermeasures warfare, and public diplo-
macy’ (Chong, 2014a: 601). This overlap
needs to be acknowledged from the outset,
since this Southeast Asian experience with
propaganda ranges from the politicization of
scientific knowledge to revolutionary incite-
ment, to peacetime information campaigns
vilifying an entire rival state and to wartime
military propaganda. This chapter therefore
articulates through a historical survey a set
of Southeast Asian ‘lessons’ to the peren-
nial question of how political propaganda is
practised through the manipulation of con-
tent. In this case, the content ranges from
pure humanistic knowledge to scientific
information.
CONSTRUCTING COLONIZATION
THROUGH KNOWLEDGE
MANIPULATION
The historical entry point for the practice of
propaganda in the region is actually an
imported one: the propaganda of Western
colonialism. Colonialism, as it is convention-
ally understood, meant the creation of settle-
ments for people displaced either voluntarily
or involuntarily from elsewhere. The land
where the colonies were to be settled could
be acquired as a result of pure discovery of
uninhabited territory or the forcible eviction
of pre-existing inhabitants. In many Southeast
Asian cases, it was usually a hybrid of rea-
sons, where Western colonial settlers desired
to trade with the existing inhabitants of the
land, and so they needed to reside beside
their commercial partners. Alternatively,
colonial settlement for trade, mineral extrac-
tion, naval ambition, military protection or
acquisition of cheap, indentured local labour
necessitated Westerners drawing up legal
occupancy rights for their settlement. This
appears to have been mostly non-violent and
matter of fact by the standards of twenty-
first-century neoliberal globalization. The
historical reality, however, was far from it.
374 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Colonialism started with the act of amassing
cartographic knowledge. In the words of his-
torian Jeremy Black,
Cartography provided an opportunity to under-
stand and assess the success of overseas territories
and was thus linked to efforts in metropoles to
develop tools of national accounting. More gener-
ally, geographical information was an adjunct, if
not an enabler, of imperial power, and this infor-
mation was fed through to plans for colonisation.
(2015: 78)
In this regard, Spanish and English coloni­
alism in the Americas set a troubling prece-
dent for the native inhabitants, when the
remit of their legalistic propaganda, targeted
obviously for the consumption of their
European peers, articulated the superiority of
their conquest through cartographic appro-
priation. One sample issued by King Henry
VII to the intrepid Venetian explorer John
Cabot and his heirs granted them
full and free authority, faculty and power to sail to
all parts, regions and coasts of the eastern, west-
ern and northern sea, under our banners, flags
and ensigns, with five ships or vessels of whatso-
ever burden and quantity they may be…to find,
discover and investigate whatsoever islands, coun-
tries, regions or provinces of heathens and infidels,
in whatsoever part of the world placed, which
before this time were unknown to all Christians.2
Cabot’s rival, the infamous Christopher
Columbus, obtained a comparable patent for
acquiring those parts of the New World for
Henry’s rival monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel
of Spain in 1492–1493. Alarmingly for the
natives of territories ‘discovered’ by the
imperial European states, these patents inter-
preted discovery and investigation liberally
to include conquest of the said territories,
including the rights of tolerating and dispos-
sessing the pre-existing inhabitants of the
land. This form of naming, geographical and
economic propaganda in the service of physi-
cal imperium subsequently escalated into
anthropological imperialism. In this chapter,
imperialism is treated as a deliberate attempt
to impose one’s intellectual, governing and
territorial needs upon a pre-existing territory,
culture, government and population without
their express consent.
Cartographical imperialism came first.
In Southeast Asia’s ‘discovery’ by the first
Western colonizers from Portugal, Spain and
the Netherlands from the 1500s through to the
1700s, maps had to be made that incorporated
this region of the world, into European con-
sciousness. Ironically, fragmentary historical
artefacts from the region suggest that long
before the European arrival, Arabs, Chinese
and various Indian and Malay ethnicities
had already treated the Straits of Melaka,
the Straits of Johor, the Straits of Singapore
and the South China Sea as major maritime
junctions for trade and ideas. Kingdoms
that professed to be inspired by blends of
Buddhism, Hinduism and Animism imported
from proximate Asian lands established ports
all along the northern Sumatran coast as well
as the western coasts of the Malay Peninsula
(Borschberg, 2010: 19–20). Rival maritime
kingdoms competed nearby by establishing
themselves on Java, the Malukus, along the
coasts of the present-day Gulf of Thailand
and Vietnam. Not content to be merely
one among multiple traders, the Portuguese
Estado da India trading company entered the
scene by conquering the Kingdom of Melaka
in 1515. Knowledge of the Malay Sultanate
of Melaka supplied the means for its con-
quest. Following in their train, Portugal’s
Iberian rival attempted to locate an impor-
tant fort somewhere along the same Straits
of Melaka to establish a threatening position
vis-a-vis Portuguese Melaka. Not coinciden-
tally, the Spanish fleet, headed by Ferdinand
Magellan, ‘discovered’ the Philippines by
sailing across the Pacific and claimed the ter-
ritory for his sovereign. Consequently, the
British, the Dutch, the French and, by the
late nineteenth century, the Americans, all
entered Southeast Asia, utilizing in whole or
in part the conjoined arguments of trading
with the locals and mapping the ‘unknown’
archipelagos, river basins and interior high-
lands. (Gunn, 2011; Headrick, 2000) This
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
was ostensibly propaganda targeted at audi-
ences in the metropoles of the West to legiti-
mise imperialism far from home.
The natives of Southeast Asia knew
who they were even if they thrived within
a proto-sovereign inter-societal system of
political relationships that were completely
comfortable with amorphous territorial bor-
ders (Chong, 2012). Western colonial pow-
ers invoked a different form of propaganda
strategy to pacify the natives and to gain their
acceptance of them as legitimate interlop-
ers: anthropological imperialism and power
balancing. In regard to the latter, when the
Spanish and Dutch attempted to outsmart
their Portuguese rivals, they offered ‘protec-
tion’ and ‘alternative trading’ to Southeast
Asian port entities across the Malay world
and much of Indochina in the hope that the
native populations would ditch their trading
relationships and subservience towards the
Portuguese. Likewise, the latecomers – the
British, the French and Americans – in turn
carefully urged the native populations to aban-
don political fidelity towards the Portuguese,
Spanish and the Dutch and to invite the new
interlopers into the region on the basis of
building a better ‘peace’ that included justice
and progress. In promoting the latter, anthro-
pological imperialism can be construed as a
unique form of propaganda that converts the
inquiry into the original, physical and cultural
development of particular human races into a
discourse of civilizational improvement that
invites external intervention to facilitate it.
Britain’s ‘forward movement’ into gaining
a political foothold in the Malay Peninsula
between 1819 and 1885 was deliberately
explained away, both to local Malay sul-
tans and Western audiences, as delivering
social and political order to a hitherto cha-
otic world. The infamous tract titled British
Malaya, by the one-time British Governor
of the Straits Colony (of Singapore, Melaka
and Penang) and High Commissioner for the
Federated Malay States, Frank Swettenham,
boldly claimed that between 1867 and 1874,
when Britain started consolidating its first
375
colonial Malayan possessions under a unified
administration, ‘it was almost inconceivable’
that no European, and ‘very few Malays’
could correctly name all the governed territo-
ries from Singapore island in the southern tip
of the Peninsula up to the boundary with the
kingdom of Siam (Swettenham, 1948: 113).
In place of cartographic order, the majority
of Malay elites knew and practiced rapidly
shifting alliances that participated actively
in sporadic political and military warfare
between rival claimants to a power ‘which
claimed comparatively few victims’ in direct
combat. Instead, up and down the Peninsula,
the lands were ‘being depopulated more by
emigration and disease than by the num-
bers slain’ (Swettenham, 1948: 113). With
a self-assumed air of authority, Swettenham
asserted that if local Malays and Chinese
(immigrants) had not lent money to those
engaged in fomenting these disturbances and
had not appealed to UK authority in Penang,
Melaka and Singapore for legal and other res-
titution of the loss of their investments, the
violence would have claimed lives ‘to the last
man without our interference’ (Swettenham,
1948: 114). It was therefore inevitable that
UK officials had to undertake the study of the
Malay in his pastoral setting:
The searcher after knowledge must journey with
them by land and river and sea; he must take the
field with them, join in their sports, listen to their
gossip, their complaints, their stories…respect
their prejudices, be kind to their superstitions, and
always treat them with consideration. If he does
this, and exercises a great patience, he will gain his
end, and the end is worth the effort. Only he must
be able to make or seize the opportunities without
which he cannot reach the innermost heart of the
people. (Swettenham, 1948, 133–4)
By strategizing to convert the Malay popu-
lation into willing tutelage under the British
Empire, British Malaya lasted 171 years, with
the brief exception of 1941–1945 when Japan
seized Malaya during the Second World War.
Britain set out to elaborately treat the Malays
as intellectually and vocationally under-
prepared for the modern ways of an industrial
376 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
empire, and to protect their traditional occu-
pations of smallholding agriculture, fishing
and arts and crafts. A select few were pro-
vided limited schooling and were groomed to
serve as enforcers of law and order on behalf
of Her Majesty’s Government, on Malayan
soil. Meanwhile, UK officials retained and
accorded a mostly ceremonial respect for
the traditional Malay monarchies (sultan-
ates) reigning in the respective Malay states.
Effectively, modern laws enacted by the
British Crown, in tandem with its officials
dominating the partially elected state assem-
blies in the Malay states, served as the foun-
dation of unchallenged UK authority. The
effects of this sort of structural propaganda
are still felt and politicised by ‘postcolonial’
Malaysian politicians including the much
acclaimed Mahathir bin Mohamad, who
warned his ethnic countrymen that their def-
erential mental attitudes towards Westerners,
non-Malays, and alienation from the world
of rational scientific methods needed to be
eradicated by fiat, if necessary, if the country
were to make developed status by the 2020s
(Chong and Balakrishnan, 2015; Mahathir,
1970).
Likewise, the French in Indochina and the
Americans in the Philippines acted to accli-
matize the native populations to modern civi-
lization, using varying degrees of propaganda
mixed with official sanction. In Vietnam, the
transition to French rule provoked an acri-
monious intellectual confrontation among
court officials long inured to Confucian val-
ues under the reign of the Nguyen Dynasty
emperors. Three values ordered social and
political relationships: loyalty to the ruler,
which is approximately analogous to loyalty
to one’s parents; piety of the son to the father;
and fidelity, especially that which binds wives
to husbands (Tai, 1998: 29). Evidently, the
latter was an inner ordering principle, from
which piety and loyalty emanate into becom-
ing wider, socially encompassing values. The
court official’s or Mandarin’s career depended
on the faithful observance of these values.
The French colonial authority demanded an
absolute transfer of loyalty by the mandarins.
This polarized the pre-existing court elite.
One eminent mandarin, Pham Dinh Phung,
refused to accept French sovereignty, since it
violated the Confucian order where his loy-
alty was owed ultimately to the Emperor, or
his successors, who were now declared ‘pro-
tectorates’ under French rule. Phan organized
an ‘Aid the King’ movement that initiated an
insurgency. The opposite route, embodied
by Hoang Cao Khai, embraced the modern
idea of patriotism and the abstract idea of a
contractually framed colonial state. As such,
Hoang was embraced by the French as the
exemplary new patriot. Being contemporar-
ies in the former Nguyen court, Hoang pitied
Phan and appealed to him in the language of
the French nationalist discourse, a la the rev-
olutionary ideals of 1789, calling on him to
cease his armed resistance, since this would
bring down greater misery upon the count-
less families in his region, given the fact of
the inevitable French economic and military
retaliation against his insurrection. In other
words, Hoang was reinterpreting loyalty to
family and fidelity to one’s people as tran-
scending loyalty to the Emperor (Tai, 1998:
30–1). By doing so, Hoang was hoping to
preserve the Vietnamese people’s core values
in the face of political encroachment by an
indomitable European invader. In doing so,
Hoang’s prescription could also be viewed as
a strategic concession to French colonialism.
Likewise, in the late nineteenth century,
the US control of the Philippine islands fol-
lowing their lopsided victory in the Spanish–
American War of 1898, was positioned as an
exercise of pastoral power facilitated by the
continuous operation of information opera-
tions through social and economic structures
that claimed to deliver benefits to the native
populations. Historian Rebecca McKenna
(2017) has argued that pastoral technology
had already been deployed in a simplistic way
by the Spanish colonists when they appointed
missionaries across the distant reaches of the
provinces, as collectors of tributes, exercisers
of the delegated power of appointing natives
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
as arms of colonial administration in the
remote villages as well as acting the part of
pacifiers of souls through ‘Christianization’.
Quoting Foucault, McKenna (2017: 31)
explains that pastoral technology comprised
the ways and means of achieving spiritual
sway over the Christian flock, and this in
turn set the broad precedent for the perva-
sive thought control exercised by the modern
state emerging in the 1500s. The US colonial
apparatus in the Philippines appropriated
much of the Spanish precedent but dressed it
up in modernist discourse.
The Americans promised ‘benevolent
assimilation’ in all spheres, despite hav-
ing turned their guns upon their expedient
Filipino allies in the counterinsurgency war
of 1899–1902 that followed immediately
after the US fleet destroyed Spanish author-
ity in the islands during the Battle of Manila
Bay. US propaganda was spectacularly suc-
cessful in pacifying the Filipinos after 1902,
through the physical construction of roads
and regulated, sanitized marketplaces. Roads
for motorcars and horse-drawn transporta-
tion connected towns and marketplaces in
an unprecedented way. Filipino land-holding
elites were persuaded that US road building
helped to secure their interests. At the same
time, the remaining holdouts from the insur-
gency, hiding in the jungles and mountains
bestride the roads, were depicted as ban-
dits and highway robbers acting inimically
towards progress (McKenna, 2017: 52–3).
Modern roads also offered employment and
the honing of modern skills to the previ-
ously ‘backward’ and ‘apathetic’ natives. A
wage economy quickly displaced the infor-
mal patrimonial economy of non-monetary
exchange in favour of a new culture of
freedom of labour, within a system of con-
tracts (McKenna, 2017: 55–61) Likewise,
the renovated Filipino physical marketplace
was a site for the observance of fair trad-
ing and consumer choice. Moreover, previ-
ously hostile ethnic groups would learn that
their historic rivalries could be converted
to profitable commercial relationships if
377
their agricultural produce and crafts could
be offered for sale in a common emporium.
Additionally, the Filipinos would learn
hygienic food handling under the new US
guidelines for wearing clean garments when
serving customers, sanitizing hands before
selling and putting meat in ‘screen cages’ to
protect their freshness from disease-carrying
insects, et cetera (McKenna, 2017: 122–7).
Commercial civilization tames unruly public
passions and fosters cultures of respect and
fair exchange among the hitherto unrefined
native ways. This is clearly an information
operation aimed at pacification through the
‘marketization’ of native culture. In 1911,
the erstwhile US Secretary of War, Henry
L. Stimson, was quoted as arguing that the
Filipinos should not be exhibiting the habits
of Latin American people indulging in ‘over-
attention to political thought and discussion
and underattention to commerce and busi-
ness’ (McKenna, 2017: 112–3). Hence, US
administration ought to deliberately reorient
the Filipino mind towards business and mate-
rial improvements at the expense of fostering
aspirations towards political autonomy. It is
only now that historians of the Philippines
have shed appropriately harsh light on the
enduring effects of colonial propaganda, the
tone of which reinforced the myth that US
colonialism in the Philippines was tremen-
dously benign (Ileto, 2017).
CONSTRUCTING SOUTHEAST
ASIAN AGENCY: DECONSTRUCTING
COLONIAL KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES
THROUGH NATIONALIST POLEMICS
Understandably, substantive decolonization
required a response to cultural subjection and
the ideational reincorporation of the colonized
subject into a world of teleology and history.
In other words, the various strands of Southeast
Asian nationalist thought collectively embody
a propaganda of awakening towards recover-
ing the autonomy of the subject. Filipino
378 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
nationalists set this as the aims of the
‘Propaganda Movement’, which witnessed its
greatest output between the 1870s and mid-
1890s. For illumination, we turn to the
Philippine nationalist philosopher Jose Rizal
for an entrée into this section. His entire body
of writings was virtually hinged upon rewrit-
ing the purported superiority of colonial narra-
tives in their public constructions of their
native subjects. Sample, for instance, Rizal’s
philosophical commentary on Spanish colo-
nial educational policies in 1889:
The duty of modern man to my way of thinking is
to work for the redemption of humanity, because
once man is dignified there would be less unfortu-
nate and more happy men that is possible in this
life. Humanity cannot be redeemed so long as
there are oppressed peoples, so long as there are
some men who live on the tears of many, so long
as there are emasculated minds and blinded eyes
that enable others to live like Sultans who alone
may enjoy beauty. Humanity cannot be redeemed
while reason is not free, while faith would want to
impose itself on facts, while whims are laws, and
while there are nations who subjugate others.
(Rizal, 1992: 128)
As historian Cesar Majul put it, the incipient
goals of Philippine nationalists were to
awaken the conscience of both Filipinos and
Spaniards towards renovating a colonial rela-
tionship that had morally degenerated (Majul,
1996: 2–3). In authoring abstract ideas about
the place of humankind in world history, and
along with it articulations of indigenously
synthesised ideas of man being bound to
society though moral dignity, the leading
lights of the propaganda movement, includ-
ing Marcelo del Pilar, Graciano Lopez-Jaena
and Mariano Ponce, were collectively trying
to redeem Spanish political virtue while
simultaneously educating Filipinos about
their place in the world. Only when Spain
failed to realize and mend its wickedness did
the need for political independence arise
(Majul, 1996: 25–7). The massive attempt to
theorize nationalism, statehood, human
rights and moral intellect was a propaganda
of idealism. For reasons of space, I will quote
Rizal, the most internationally renowned of
the Movement, on the need for anti-colonial
nationalism to be righteous in anger and uni-
versally communicating with world human-
ity. In the first of his two ambitious novels
castigating Western imperialism, Rizal ren-
ders a reflective confession of political
incompetence, through the fictitious charac-
ter of the Governor-General of the Philippine
colony:
Here, we old soldiers have to do it all and be all:
King, Minister of State, of War, of Governance, of
Supply, of Grace and Justice, and so forth. What is
even worse is that for each thing we have to con-
sult the faraway Mother Country [i.e. Spain],
which approves or rejects, according to the circum-
stances, sometimes blindly, our Proposals…
Besides, generally we come knowing very little of
the country and we leave it when we have begun
to be familiar with it…I have to be frank with you
for it would be useless to be otherwise. Thus, if in
Spain, where each governmental branch has its
minister, born and developed in the same locality,
where there is press and public opinion, where a
frank opposition opens the eyes of the govern-
ment and enlightens it, everything works defec-
tively and imperfectly, it is a miracle that here
things are not in upheaval, lacking those advan-
tages, and with a more powerful opposition living
and conniving in the shadows.
We, the ruling government, are not wanting in
goodwill, but we are obliged to make use of out-
side eyes and arms, which generally we do not
know, and which perhaps, instead of serving the
country, are serving only their own interests. This
is not our fault; it is due to circumstances. The
friars are a big help in meeting the problems, but
they do not yet suffice. (Rizal, 1996: 251)
The government of the Westerner is depicted
as knowingly practising double standards.
This is the result of administrative centraliza-
tion qua incompetence, and it is also partly
the result of the wilful neglect of a faraway
overseas colony. In Spain proper, govern-
ment is checked by a political opposition,
whereas in the faraway colony the opposition
is ‘living and conniving in the shadows’
(Rizal, 1996: 251). Spanish administrators
and their allied mestizo officialdom are the
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
mercenaries hired to operate the colonial
machinery, and yet they are not trustworthy
or conscientiously governing for their hap-
less charge: the Filipino natives. Pastoral
power exercised by the Spanish-appointed
friars become all the more oppressive because
there was no countervailing check on their
authority. In the character of Elias, the rural
son of a persecuted and financially distressed
farmer, Rizal gives voice to the Filipino-
insurgent discourse that is equally martial
and philosophically outraged:
Remember what the prudence of the Capitan-
General de la Torre achieved: the amnesty he
granted to these hapless wretches [of rural bandits]
has proven that in those mountains still beat the
hearts of human beings who only yearn for pardon.
Terrorism is useful when the people are enslaved,
when the mountains have no caves, when power
places behind each tree a sentry and when the
slave’s body has only guts and hunger. But when
the desperate one who fights for his life feels the
strength of his arm, his heart beats and his whole
being is filled with bile. Will terrorism be able to put
out the fire on which it pours more fuel?…
[To the authorities, terrorists are] Criminals or future
criminals – but why are they such? Because their
peace has been broken, their happiness wrenched
from them; they have been wounded in their most
cherished affections. When they asked justice for
protection they became convinced they can expect
it only from themselves. But you are mistaken, Sir,
if you think criminals only ask for it. Go from town
to town, from house to house, listen to the silent
sighs of families; you will be convinced that the
evils the Civil Guard correct are the same, if not
less, than the evils they continually cause. Are we
to infer from this that all the citizens are criminals?
Then what is the use of defending the others? Why
not destroy all of them? (Rizal, 1996: 326–7)
These extended quotations reveal the subtle-
ties and moral cudgels embedded in the
nationalist discourses that were ingrained in
virtually every colony in Southeast Asia in
the decades of transition between the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Colonial governments, in spite of all their
claims to benevolent tutelage of inferior peo-
ples and the deployment of pastoral technol-
ogies of pacification, all ran out of normative
379
credibility when the more educated among
the colonial subjects built propaganda for self-
determination through political theorizing.
Rizal was articulating his own political
theory as anti-colonial propaganda around the
same time that Marxism began to appeal to
the working classes in industrialized Europe.
Before long, the future Vietnamese president
Ho Chi Minh was agitating against French
colonial rule by rousing the ire of the work-
ing class, conjoined with patriotic appeals to
an incipient rendering of ‘folk nationalism’ in
pre-modern Annam. In interpreting Ho Chi
Minh thought, Vietnamese communism was
creatively syncretic in retrospect. Although
Marx and Engels emphasized class warfare
in the rudiments of their theory of revolution-
ary violence, Ho and his fellow compatriots
plumbed historical lessons from Vietnam’s
struggles against foreign occupiers – nota-
bly the erstwhile Chinese imperial dynasties.
Two lessons have been highlighted in official
tracts. Firstly, one was to achieve national sol-
idarity between the reigning ruler and his sub-
jects. When translated into policy, this meant
that the monarch ought never to drive his
subjects into deep resentment over matters of
welfare and governance to the point of revolt.
Secondly, the foundation of resistance against
alien rule ought to be built upon mustering the
strengths of the entire population (Ministry
of National Defence, 2016: 18–20). If hon-
ouring these principles enabled Vietnamese
‘patriots’ in the thirteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies to defeat their foreign oppressors, eject-
ing French colonialism required an armed
revolutionary strategy animated by the propa-
ganda of tactically class-blind unity. Marxist
thought was amended with Lenin’s arguments
about a national armed force that could not
only attain revolutionary ends but defend the
same revolution against reactionary forces.
Additionally, deriving military victory meant
using propaganda to rouse the resourceful-
ness of the entire population. A ‘people’s war’
would theoretically blend the folk tradition of
‘bamboo-like’ resistance – bending with the
wind without breaking – and the scientific
380 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
premises of Marxism–Leninism about eradi-
cating the political and economic domina-
tion of the French imperialists (Ministry of
National Defence Vietnam, 2016: 2–5).
Southwards across the South China Sea,
the Dutch East Indies witnessed a compara-
ble ideological struggle to attain nationalism,
through the critique of a racialized capitalism
that triggered territorial and economic impe-
rialism in Southeast Asia. Soekarno, leader
of the Partai Nasional Indonesia, the first
President of independent Indonesia and ulti-
mately an ally of the ill-fated Indonesian com-
munist party, the Partai Kommunis Indonesia
(PKI), produced an elaborate discourse con-
demning Dutch colonial power as a conflation
between racism and crude non-industrialized
capitalism. In Soekarno’s thesis, capital-
ism as an exploitative economic system was
imported from ‘white’ Europe but with very
different ‘colour’ characteristics in each Asian
colony. Mindful of the Indian nationalist cam-
paign against UK capital in India, he argued
that Indian nationalists were able to effec-
tively pursue a campaign of autonomous pro-
duction and consumption – the politics of the
Swadesi movement – to force the British to
the negotiating table by displacing imported
consumer goods produced by UK-owned
firms in Indian markets. Indian entrepreneur-
ship and capital were already imitating UK
industrialization in fits and starts alongside
the penetration of British manufactures in
the Indian colony (Soekarno, 1966c: 132–4).
Therefore, the pursuit of Indian independence
revolved around beating British capitalists at
their own game of industrialization. In the
nascent Indonesian-independence struggle,
the propaganda reasoning had to condemn
instead the crudeness of an essentially under-
industrialized Dutch capitalism that was para-
sitic in the worst sense, upon the colonies. In
Soekarno’s words,
Dutch society is a society poor in basic raw materi-
als, a society without iron mines, a society with not
much coal, a society that is too “anaemic” to be
able to become a liberal industrialistic society…Are
we surprised if this Dutch imperialism has never in
its deepest principles known the teachings of
modern liberalism, namely, freedom in various mat-
ters, for instance “free labour, free competition,
free trade, free contract” and other similar things?
Are we surprised if that Dutch imperialism is always
basically monopolistic? (Soekarno, 1966c: 135)
The truth about Dutch capitalism qua impe-
rialism during the 1800s–1930s may well be
more nuanced than Soekarno made it out to be,
but this simplification paved the way for his
logic of returning to the idealization of a sub-
sistence economy that was fairer to the origi-
nal inhabitants of the East Indies before it was
colonized. Soekarno coined ‘marhaenism’ to
describe his idealistic vision of a nationalistic
economy comprised of millions of subsistent
smallholders growing food for themselves and
their families, as the more righteous alterna-
tive to Dutch monopolistic machinations in the
service of profit and exploitation (Soekarno,
1966c: 142–4). ‘Marhaen’ was the ‘David’
to the Dutch imperialist ‘Goliath’. Moreover,
as a tactical device, it suited Soekarno’s stra-
tegic alignment of socialism, Islamism and
nationalism into a united front for mobilizing
mass action against the restoration of Dutch
authority following the Second World War
(Soekarno, 1966a).
If budding nationalists from the ‘larger’
colonial territories of the Philippines,
Vietnam and Indonesia sought energetically
to reimagine their peoples’ places in world
history and political thought for salvation
from colonial subjugation, the task was even
more immense for the ‘smaller’ aspirants to
independence. Cambodia was once the seat
of a Khmer kingdom associated with the
world-renowned Angkor Wat palatial temple
site, but its royal fortunes had ebbed con-
siderably before the advent of French rule.
Under France’s jurisdiction, it became a
state, with borders fixed by European notions
of geography. Following Japan’s short-lived
occupation of French Indochina, Cambodian
nationalism found advocates among both
commoner politicians educated in the West
and the royal personage of Prince Norodom
Sihanouk. Despite his royal upbringing,
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Sihanouk was determined to be his own man
and the leader of independence from France,
capitalizing on France’s tenuous situation in
neighbouring Vietnam, where Ho Chi Minh
was leading a full-scale armed revolution
against the re-imposition of colonial rule.
The Cold War offered both opportunity and
danger alike to Sihanouk’s Cambodia and
Ho Chi Minh’s cause. But, Sihanouk was
determined to side with the enemies of the
Western powers expeditiously, where it
helped further the termination of Western
colonialism, first by France (1953–1954),
and subsequently a neo-colonial strategy
practised by the Nixon Administration in
the United States (1970–1975). Consider the
sophistication of political narrative contained
in this salvo of anti-imperialist critique fired
by Prince Norodom Sihanouk at the Nixon
presidency’s strategy towards ending the
Vietnam War in 1970:
I am not and will not become a communist, for I
disavow nothing of my religious beliefs or of my
nationalism. But I know the Khmer people, the
Vietnamese people and the other peoples of our
region too well to believe that they can accept
having the interests of reactionary, fascist, milita-
rist and corrupt leaders imposed on them or
accept having a great white power insist that for
their own sakes they should take dictatorship in
place of democracy and the satellization of their
country in place of national independence.
In the eyes of rich bourgeois and feudalists, com-
munism must seem terrifying. But in the eyes of
peoples who are continually exploited by these
bourgeois, these feudalists and these dictatorships
which owe their strength solely to US protection,
communism can only be, now and in the future, a
deliverance. A deliverance, yes – because the prob-
lems of social injustice, of corruption, of militarist
or bourgeois dictatorship, and of national inde-
pendence, too (see the examples of China, North
Vietnam and North Korea, which are incontestably
independent), are being or will be solved thereby.
This is why the longer the United States insists on
maintaining unpopular and pro-imperialist regimes
in our countries, the more it will draw upon itself
the hatred of our peoples and will, in conse-
quence, build up both their revolutionary move-
ments and their fighting solidarity.
381
In the face of the pro-United States “Phnom Penh-
Saigon-Bangkok-Vientiane Axis” there was formed,
in April 1970, the “Axis” of the revolutionary peo-
ples of Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, China and North
Korea. The pro-United States axis will vanish the
moment the Washington government stops sup-
porting it with dollars, guns and bombs. But the
common anti-imperialist front of the Khmer,
Vietnamese, Laotian, Chinese and Korean peoples
will survive it whatever happens, for even atom
bombs will not be able to halt the revolution of the
Asian peoples. (Sihanouk, 1970: 5)
These are indubitably the words of a nation-
alist, quasi-socialist ‘David’ against the
‘Goliath’ of lingering Western imperialism
reinterpreted through the local lenses of the
Cold War. Today, Washington’s power cir-
cles are still trying to come to terms with the
inconvenient truths that the ‘Vietnam War’,
which ensnared Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos, was perceived very differently from
a global contest between communism and
capitalism, simplified inside the ‘Beltway’
of Washington policymakers. Even tinier
Singapore threw up important anti-colonial
visionaries such as Lee Kuan Yew and S.
Rajaratnam, who sought to position their arti-
ficial new postcolonial states as integral par-
allel ventures in anti-colonialism. Lee Kuan
Yew’s memoirs record the moment between
1946 and 1947, when living in the UK, that
Lee found his moment of epiphany in terms
of defrocking the myth of colonial superior-
ity, vis-a-vis its Asian subjects. He wrote,
I had now seen the British in their own country and
I questioned their ability to govern these territories
for the good of the locals. Those on the spot were
not interested in the advancement of their colo-
nies, but only in the top jobs and the high pay
these could give them; at the national level they
were primarily concerned with acquiring the for-
eign exchange that the exports of Malayan rubber
and tin could earn in US dollars, to support an
ailing pound sterling. (Lee, 1998: 113)
Like Sihanouk, Soekarno Ho Chi Minh and
Jose Rizal, Lee proved he was never averse
to siding with the political left, in both rid-
ing and driving the tides of nationalism
towards political independence. Lee also had
382 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
no veritable roadmap. He only mustered the
art of improvisation and synthesis of politi-
cal thought as he sought, first, a merger with
neighbouring Malaysia that was ultimately
unsuccessful, and thence, by default, an inde-
pendent island state that even the colonial
founders had never imagined. Propaganda
then, at the point of independence in 1965,
made much of the new postcolonial state,
inheriting its entrepot functions. By the early
1970s, the nationalist narrative reinvented the
state into becoming a ‘global city’ and a tech-
nological oasis, able to marshal modern eco-
nomics and capital into a modernized Venice
of Asia, the parallels of which had yet to be
accurately invented (Chong, 2006). By 2017,
it was a huge moment of irony that Malta,
Iceland, Scotland and the former colonizer,
the UK, openly aspired to be ‘Singapores’
in their immediate regions! Such is the mal-
leability of the propaganda of anti-colonial
imagination (Castle, 2017; Neal, 2017).
INFORMATION OPERATIONS WITHIN
INSURGENCIES AND POSTCOLONIAL
CONFLICTS
Most of the decolonization-propaganda cam-
paigns mounted by Southeast Asia’s national-
ists achieved their intended targets by the late
1960s. Yet, helming a modern state turned out
to be a more severe challenge than their ide-
alistic propaganda promised. This was an
operational terrain of modernizing societies
through the twin paradigms of state-building
and nation-making (Black, 1967). Institutions
had to be created to endure by earning and
reinforcing the newly liberated populations’
confidence in them (Lara, 2016: 2–4). This
confidence needed in turn to transcend the
structural injustices perpetrated by the pasto-
ral technologies and the cartographic and
anthropological imperialisms put in place by
the departing colonial powers. In short, the
propaganda of the new national governments
had to be attuned to demonstrating that they
were something other than reinvented colo-
nizers of their own peoples. Soekarno’s rheto-
ric had notably juxtaposed the ‘brown front’
of Southeast Asians united against imperial-
ism, alongside the persistence of ‘white neo-
colonialism’ and continuing armed
imperialism of the Dutch and French re-
occupation forces in the late 1940s through
1950s (Soekarno, 1966b). In this section, we
can identify three themes of the information
operations involved in state- and nation-
building: security and prosperity in a multi-
ethnic polity; unity within ideological
diversity vented against foreign neo-colonial-
ism; the wars of national liberation anchored
to indigenous versions of Communism; and
the threat from unintegrated Islamic minori-
ties. I label these as information operations,
since they are designed to conflate the bound-
aries between wartime and peacetime, for
such is the nature of state- and nation-build-
ing in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the indige-
nous elites manning these successor states
have had to occasionally leverage on the
departing colonial powers’ resources and
residual goodwill, to win ‘hearts and minds’
over to their cause. Information operations
therefore often involve psychological opera-
tions, influence operations and even military
deception. (Chong, 2014a) The fact that the
first three case studies of the Malayan
Emergency, the Indonesian Konfrontasi and
the Indochina Wars overlapped and were
partly provoked by the global Cold War, with
the United States on one side and the USSR
and China on the other, ensures that they are
comprehensively relevant as classic mini-
studies of propaganda usage. The Cold War
was, after all, mostly conducted through the
publication of falsehoods, semi-fabrications
and semi-truths, to displace the enemy’s con-
fidence in its ideology and welfare provi-
sions. The post-9/11 fundamentalist Islamic
unrest afflicting mostly Thailand, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines will
also feature as an important ongoing sub-
drama of the Southeast Asian episode in
propaganda struggles.
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
The Malayan Emergency:
1948–1960, 1968–1989
The creation of the vast majority of Southeast
Asian postcolonial states coincided simulta-
neously with either the ongoing insurgencies
against the return of colonial rule or the start
of one. In the latter case, it was usually the
‘losers’ of the independence settlement or the
outcasts of the emerging political spectrum
who were intent on destabilizing the status
quo. Additionally, information operations on
both sides – that is, of the ‘peaceful’ main-
stream political parties and colonial authori-
ties on one side and the armed insurgents on
the other – had to begin by reckoning with
the legacies of the Second World War, when
the European empires across the region were
ideologically emasculated by the blitzkrieg-
like momentum of Japan’s military occupa-
tion forces. The Japanese military had
deliberately preached their ‘Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ as a conjoined
undertaking to liberate their fellow Asian
races from white domination. The sole excep-
tion to this propaganda picture was the
Chinese race, which was singled out for per-
secution by Japanese-military authorities
everywhere. The Japanese proceeded to arm
the natural opponents of the European colo-
nists: the Indonesian nationalist groups that
included Soekarno’s followers, various
Malay Islamic nationalists in both Malaya
and the Dutch East Indies and briefly even
the communist underground in Malaya, and
Indochina. In Burma, the Japanese unleashed
a young General Aung San and his Burma
Independence Army as a de facto fifth
column to wreak havoc behind UK lines, that
was to coincide with a Japanese invasion.
The Japanese even installed or openly sup-
ported ‘puppet’ regimes headed by previ-
ously jailed or exiled nationalists in Burma,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Dutch
East Indies. The nominally independent gov-
ernment in Bangkok underwent a coup that
sought to realign Thailand with Japan and its
Axis Alliance. Subsequently, a few of these
383
groups turned against Japanese brutality and
duplicity and sought an expedient realign-
ment with the ousted Western powers. For
the communist groups, the falling out with
the Japanese came about because of Japan’s
siding with Nazi Germany, in the latter’s
invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The
upshot of these manoeuvres was to generate
a complicated propaganda labyrinth for both
the Western colonial powers and the nation-
alist groups on the ground. The latter collab-
orated with the Japanese imperialists hoping
to play them off against the British, French
and Dutch powers, but, subsequently, they
joined a revamped ‘anti-fascist’ alliance with
their despised white colonizers, in an under-
ground movement of armed resistance
against their erstwhile allies, the Japanese. In
Malaya, the communists created the Malayan
Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), as a
form of guerrilla movement cum ‘revolution-
ary army in waiting’. When the Japanese
occupation ended following the Allied atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
propaganda conundrum deepened: would the
anti-Fascist native underground forces and
other nationalists reconcile themselves with a
return to the Western colonial order that
existed before 1941 (Aldrich, 2000;
Poulgrain, 2014)?
Here is where the Malayan Emergency
offers a case study of information opera-
tions conducted by moderate and status quo
forces, encapsulating the grand strategy of
political concessions in an open democratic
process, alongside law and order rhetoric
and urban resettlement aimed simultaneously
at the modernization and sanitization of the
local population’s temptation to support
revolution. This was wartime and peacetime
commingling. To begin with, the Malayan
Communist Party (MCP) sought to pursue
a Marxist–Leninist strategy that capital-
ized on the economic disaffection of mostly
Chinese urban and rural, agrarian workers
(Ramakrishna, 2002: 28–9). Just as it did in
the interwar years when the Great Depression
hit the Malayan and Singapore economies,
384 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the capturing and consequent mobilization of
the trade unions was expected to pay politi-
cal dividends for the MCP, under an open
quasi-democratic colonial legislature that
seemed to allow the possibility of attain-
ing power through the ballot box and nego-
tiation for self-government. However, ‘open
front’ activities were soon severely crimped
by UK ordinances restricting the political
mobilization of trade unions, along with the
declaration of a state of emergency in June
1948 (Ramakrishna, 2008: 8–9). Moreover,
the influence of Moscow’s new Cominform
line persuaded the MCP to initiate a full-
scale armed revolution in 1948 instead.
Simultaneously, the MCP leadership sought
to emulate Mao Zedong’s successful capture
of the apparatus of state power located in the
urban centres by building ‘safe bases’ in the
countryside from which to strangle the cit-
ies into political capitulation (Stubbs, 1993:
59–60). On top of that, the MCP promised
the hardworking, pragmatic, mostly agrarian
Chinese labourers and their families a secure
future as citizens of a ‘Peoples’ Republic’,
instead of the heavily UK-influenced plans
for, first, a Malayan Union under Crown
control, and subsequently a mostly Malay-
negotiated Federation plan that privileged
ethnic Malays as primus inter pares among
citizens (Stubbs, 1993: 22–9). In short, the
Malayan Emergency or the decision by the
MCP to proceed with armed revolution estab-
lished the propaganda battle-lines around
securing an independent multi-ethnic inde-
pendent Malaysian postcolonial state that
assured its Chinese residents of citizenship
of the protection of their livelihood and the
political confidence that their future lay with
peaceful pathways towards building a mod-
ern Malaysia.
The propaganda rhetoric of the MCP-
controlled newspapers and radio, first
Freedom News and subsequently the Voice
of Malayan Revolution, played on corrup-
tion, elitism and the economic inequalities
perpetuated by UK colonialism and their
‘puppet’ non-communist nationalists, such
as the United Malays National Organization
(UMNO), the Malayan Chinese Association
(MCA) and the Malayan Indian Congress
(MIC) (Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore,
2008). Moreover, taking a direct leaf out
of Maoist revolutionary doctrine, the MCP
could mobilize its experienced fighters from
the recent guerrilla war against Japanese
forces (1941–1945). Under the cover of
fighting Japanese imperialists and aiding the
‘united front’ with the Anglo–American pow-
ers, the MPAJA secretly stockpiled captured
Japanese and Allied arms for a future reck-
oning with the British and other reactionary
forces in Malaya and Singapore. In this sense,
the MCP could transform the MPAJA into the
MPABA – with the ‘Anti-Japanese’ substi-
tuted as ‘Anti-British’ in the middle initials
– and prepare to reprise Mao Zedong’s suc-
cess on the Chinese mainland. Subsequently,
the MPABA was renamed the Malayan Races
Liberation Army (MRLA), and ultimately the
Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA).
The idea of the MCP and MPABA/MRLA/
MNLA acting as sincere defenders of the
rights of the Chinese rural community gained
traction, given the difficult economic times of
1946–1949, and the rise of a very threatening
Malay nationalism fronted by UMNO, which
seemed to desire the disenfranchisement
of every Chinese person living in Malaya.
This eventually compelled Britain’s politi-
cal and military representatives in Malaya to
embrace the idea of a quicker pace towards
granting independence to Malaya, and subse-
quently Singapore, as a way to undercut the
MCP information operations that were draw-
ing strength from the argument of prolonged
Western imperialism in both territories. The
constitutional forward movement between
1948 and 1957, inclusive of elections for
self-governing indigenous cabinets, was thus
a response by mainstream non-communist
nationalists and Her Majesty’s Government
to undercut the MCP politically.
Tactically, it took the UK a few more
years, following the spate of assassina-
tions and terrorist bombings that the MCP
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
launched from 1948 onwards, to realize that
the communist rank-and-file fighters were
the very pragmatic rural Chinese who needed
a reason to switch their support to the status
quo of a peaceful transition to a postcolonial
Malaya. As historian Kumar Ramakrishna
pointed out, successful information opera-
tions had to acknowledge the highly border-
line sympathies that most able-bodied young
Chinese men and women held for the MCP
(Ramakrishna, 2002: 28–30). After initially
promising more police patrols in rural areas
and proscriptions against nocturnal move-
ments but failing to provide effective protec-
tion against MCP attacks on innocent Chinese
and Malays in the rural areas, the UK brought
in veteran counterinsurgency military and
police officers with experience in Palestine,
Iraq and India to devise a military-oriented
strategy of carrot and stick. The stick was
deployed to rout the communist jungle camps
through deep-penetration commando raids,
foot patrols and targeted aerial bombings.
But these tactics depended excessively on
accurate intelligence and were prone towards
wrong targeting, inciting even more anti-
colonial hatred among those susceptible
towards MCP propaganda (Jackson, 2008).
The plan instituted by Lieutenant-General
Harold Briggs put forth the idea of an urban
resettlement of the Chinese rural population,
away from the fringes of the jungles, as a
way of securing them from MCP blandish-
ments and intimidation. At the same time, the
resettled populations were to be privileged
with new houses, guaranteed land for culti-
vation and other modern amenities. The ini-
tial optimism of urban resettlement quickly
gave way to disillusionment with the UK
largesse between 1950 and early 1952. The
‘Briggs Plan’ did not live up to its prom-
ises, due to mistakes in implementing the
so-called ‘Resettlement Areas’. Moreover,
the Malay population whose land the reset-
tlement encroached upon mounted fierce
resistance to what they perceived as heavy-
handed UK policies. When the British reset-
tled the Chinese to new locations following
385
Malay ‘resistance’, the resettled Chinese felt
betrayed. In large part, the UK propaganda of
words – promising a safe, stable new future –
was not fully reconciled with the propaganda
of deeds; that is, implementing the new set-
tlements faithfully. (Ramakrishna, 2002).
It required a final reshuffle on the UK side,
principally the fusion of the posts of High
Commissioner and the Director of Operations,
in the fresh appointment of General Gerald
Templer, another experienced ex-soldier, that
tipped the counterinsurgency campaign into a
winning streak. Up until early 1952, UK infor-
mation operations made significant inroads
into MCP propaganda, but the former never
decisively turned the tide. Templer improved
upon the Briggs Plan with more public out-
reach and what would be termed ‘positive
spin’ in modern public relations. Not only
did Templer rename the resettlement areas as
‘New Villages’, he encouraged its residents
to take charge of their township and organize
social activities among themselves. He made
the local governments guarantee the Chinese
farmers’ landholdings in the new territories.
Templer’s staff not only improved the fenc-
ing around the New Villages, he encouraged
its residents to actively volunteer information
in order to assist the forces providing law and
order. Finally, Templer conducted himself as
a ‘man of the people’ by visiting residents in
the New Villages and mingling with them to
hear their grievances and constructive criti-
cisms. As Ramakrishna described it, Templer
‘wanted to impress upon the common Chinese
that Government was not a Tormentor but
a Provider, a Friend’ (Ramakrishna, 2002:
125). His innumerable visits to the ground
conveyed the air of an earnest politician who
was desirous of winning the confidence of
the general population, instead of intimidat-
ing it through the discourse of economic dep-
rivation, class antagonism and inter-ethnic
hostility (Ramakrishna, 2002: 125–43). This
was how the Malayan Emergency turned out
in favour of the mainstream political pro-
tagonists by 1960, when the state of emer-
gency was lifted by a confident Malayan
386 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
government representing all the major races
in a consociational form of democracy. To
date, this episode has been treated in strate-
gic studies as one of a handful of textbook
counterinsurgency operations. The revital-
ized Communist Party of Malaya restarted a
second insurgency between 1968 and 1989
on the assumption that the psychological
gravity of communist victories in Indochina
and the Maoist cultural revolution in China
would aid in its ‘war of national libera-
tion’. But, the second insurgency fared even
worse, since the Malayan communists could
not fully capitalize on a foreign imperialist
bogeyman in their propaganda; Malayan liv-
ing standards were steadily improving and
the Sino–Vietnamese and Sino–Soviet stra-
tegic ruptures undermined the solidarity of
world revolution (Weichong, 2015: 148–72).
Indonesian Konfrontasi 1963–1966
The Republic of Indonesia was born from the
Dutch East Indies, as a product of an armed
struggle that lasted between 1945 and 1949.
During the colonial era from the early 1600s
to 1949, the Dutch Administration had delib-
erately under-funded formal education for
the natives. In fact, they reproduced the UK
strategy of schooling mostly the children of a
cultivated pro-colonial native elite to the
standards of a European society. The rest of
the natives were allowed to access disparate
traditional education avenues in the various
dialects or Indonesian Malay (Bahasa
Indonesia). Officially today, most descrip-
tions suggest that there exist over 300 ethnic
groups in Indonesia, corresponding to an
equivalent number of indigenous languages.
Most of these predate even the formation of
the Dutch East Indies. Such anthropological
diversity posed a tremendous barrier to the
propaganda of building nationalism as a dis-
course against Dutch colonialism and, con-
sequently, for building a stable postcolonial
nation-state. Like the protagonists on all
sides in the Malayan Emergency in their rival
aspirations towards creating a modern soci-
ety, the independent Republic of Indonesia
sought to establish in every sphere of public
life its own narrative that could engender
confidence in the new society, which could
be claimed as Indonesian modernity.
Understandably, this was an unprecedented
and even uphill task.
Soekarno, the most prominent author of
fiery, left-wing-tinged nationalist tracts, was
himself a mercurial figure inspired to synthe-
size a quixotic blend of ‘folk Indonesian-ism’
and modern ideologies that were circulating
worldwide since the early twentieth cen-
tury. In many ways, Indonesia epitomized
the creation of a post-colonial state, out of
the very unlikely ethno-religious strands that
were prevalent in the precolonial past. Dutch
colonialism had hardly assisted in the anthro-
pological dimension of moulding a nation
together. Instead, the Netherlands left behind
a legacy of an extractive economy that reduced
native smallholding villagers to near slavery,
while forcibly assigning roles in plantation-
style cash-crop cultivation schemes designed
to enrich large Dutch companies (Boeke,
1980). It was the same situation as the mining
of raw materials from Indonesian ground for
Dutch profits in a global economy. This was
a colony that was only partially modernized
through pure exploitation while its work-
ers kept below subsistence. In parallel with
Soekarno’s struggles as a nationalist agitator,
the cultural and psychological narrative of a
modern Indonesia could only cohere around
‘a shared sense of revolution and change,
and faith in the future’, as one scholar put it
(Lindsay, 2012: 2–3).
As a case study of nation-building infor-
mation operations directed abroad as a revan-
chist foreign policy that targeted primarily
UK neo-colonialism as represented by its
associated Malaysian and Singaporean state-
hoods, the campaign of Konfrontasi had its
beginnings in the cultural and ideological
struggles with ‘being Indonesian’. Between,
1950 and 1965, various political factions and
even ethnicities were caught up in intense
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
debates about Indonesia’s new-found place
in world history and whether its motley pop-
ulation were even empathetic towards their
new common identity as citizens. By the
mid 1950s, the ideas of the left were in the
ascendant, and they grew intolerant of those
who disagreed with them. It was a trend that
the charismatic Soekarno, the pre-eminent
Indonesian politician and nationalist, agreed
with. As Jennifer Lindsay explains,
artists and cultural practitioners sought alignment
(and protection) with political groups such as the
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU, Revival of Islamic Scholars)
or the Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI, Indonesian
National Party). Debates were no longer relatively
innocent combatant exchanges of ideas between
energetic young men, but became more inclined
towards vicious personal vilification. And divisions
and tensions were not only between broad ideo-
logical ‘camps’, but also within them. (Lindsay,
2012: 4)
Besides the NU and PNI, the greatest benefi-
ciary of the leftward turn towards incendiary
political debates was, of course, the PKI,
who persuaded Soekarno to sanction the
creation of Lembaga Kesenian Rakjat
(LEKRA), which translated as the Institute
of People’s Culture. The latter replayed a
strategy that most communist states enacted
worldwide during the Cold War – art, culture,
ideology, education and religion, insofar as
was tolerated as an interim alignment of
belief towards socialism, needed to be guided
towards creating the new Socialist Citizen.
The roots of the politico-military campaign
of Konfrontasi partially begins in the cultural
wars that existed in the first 15 years of the
Indonesian republic.
The spirit of the Indonesian Revolution
between 1945 and 1949 that liberated the
country from the Dutch was expressed in a
wide array of cultural, intellectual and lit-
erary forums in the decades that followed.
The ‘cultural political and literary journal’
Konfrontasi is one example that was closely
associated with nationalists and socialists
who disavowed communism (Foulcher, 2012:
31–2). It was characterized by audiences and
387
contributors who perceived Indonesian nation-
alism as being both part of ‘world culture’ as
well as influencing its formation. Featuring
interviews with cultural figures from Asia
and the West, along with longer think pieces,
the journal’s content was characterized by
an ‘ambiguity towards both the West and the
indigenous heritage [of Indonesia]’, and a
creative tension of encouraging Indonesians
to embrace fusions that had never been
attempted before. Most crucially, the jour-
nal’s editors stood for ‘universal human-
ism’, which connoted an ‘aesthetic ideology
founded on secularism, individualism and a
commitment to the cause of political justice
and equality that would enable the full reali-
zation of a common and universal humanity’
(Foulcher, 2012: 34). In this regard, the jour-
nal was living up to its name, which literally
translates as ‘Confrontation’. The journal
encouraged the revalorization of ‘Asian val-
ues’ as well as an openness to foreign ideas.
By 1956–1959, the subject matter of cul-
ture became overtly political, as the domes-
tic climate lurched to the left. Konfrontasi’s
editors lamented the erosion of the original
values of truth, honesty and principle of the
Indonesian Revolution and the double stand-
ards of Chinese and Soviet communism under
Mao and Stalin and Khrushchev respectively.
Konfrontasi even dared to publish an inter-
view with anti-communist Hollywood film-
maker Boris Pasternak, and the journal overtly
criticized a speech by a senior member from
the PKI-fronted LEKRA mentioned earlier
(Foulcher, 2012: 49–53). By 1960–1961,
allies of LEKRA and of Soekarno and the PKI
started applying pressure on publications that
stepped out of line with ‘Guided Democracy’
and the transfigured new revolution targeting
neo-colonialism around Indonesia’s bounda-
ries. Konfrontasi, the moniker, now acquired a
violent new meaning of ‘crushing’ the newly
established Federation of Malaysia, which
included Singapore as well as the peoples and
territories of Sabah and Sarawak on the island
of Borneo, half of which was Indonesian
controlled.
388 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Mirroring the pluralistic struggle among
intellectual currents, the domestic political
situation between 1950 and 1956 careened
from the collapse of one cabinet and coali-
tion to another. Democracy seemed to breed
excessive competition, to the detriment of
both economic growth and political stability.
Additionally, President Soekarno’s reputa-
tion and transcendental position as ‘leader
of the revolution’ came under threat from
these conditions. Inexorably, the patriotic
Indonesian military, ABRI, who had valiantly
fought a guerrilla war to displace the Dutch
reoccupation forces, needed to be involved
in any stabilization scheme. And then there
was the ‘civilian’ PKI, representing the pos-
sibilities of taking the revolution further in
the direction of eradicating social inequality
by force (Crouch, 1978: 43–5). In Soekarno’s
perception, he needed a catch-all concep-
tual slogan to unite the disparate factions
roiling the political scene, while also unit-
ing all Indonesians distracted by multipolar
ideological competition, through the fight
against a common external foe. The histori-
cal era dubbed ‘Guided Democracy’ (1957–
1965) was explained to the public and the
world as an act of authoritarian salvation for
Indonesia. It was interpreted as a continua-
tion of the unfinished Indonesian Revolution
from 1945. It can equally be analysed as an
information operation aimed at homogeniz-
ing the plurality of rival ideologies portrayed
so vividly by the short-lived proceedings of
the Konfrontasi journal. In this new order,
Soekarno needed to both balance and expedi-
ently align the PKI and the ABRI on his terms
(Crouch, 1978: 44–51; Hunter, 2007: 118–
24). Reprising typical authoritarian strat-
egy, ‘disciplined’ unity at home needed an
accompanying narrative of a foreign enemy
at the borders. It was an old enemy, white
neo-colonialism, or simply a rear-guard hold-
ing operation by an incompletely defeated
Western imperialism that sought to divide
and exploit the weak postcolonial states.
Between 1961 and 1962, Soekarno success-
fully implemented this strategy in ousting
the remaining Dutch colony in neighbour-
ing West Irian with astonishing US approval.
Before 1962 ended, another convenient pub-
lic enemy abroad presented itself for defining
Konfrontasi: the formation of Malaysia sired
principally by the pro-British Prime Minister
of Malaya, together with the centre-left pre-
mier of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew.
In military terms, Konfrontasi is often
described as an undeclared war, or a low
intensity war, occasionally amounting to
an externally supported insurgency. Other
official accounts in Malaysia and Singapore
describe it as a series of armed incursions,
state-sponsored terrorism and plenty of infor-
mation operations designed to turn the sym-
pathies of the constituent parts of Malaysia
against the political centre in Kuala Lumpur.
Western military accounts mostly treat
Konfrontasi as a series of successful counter-
insurgency operations by both conventional
and special forces, using airborne reinforce-
ments and deep jungle patrols that thwarted
mostly poorly trained rebels who were armed
and supported by Soekarno’s government
(Jackson, 2008: 119–40). One scholar argued
that Konfrontasi even provided the UK, fresh
from its victories in the Malayan Emergency,
with an opening to counter Indonesia’s
military adventure, by inciting ‘retaliatory’
insurgencies among a number of separatist
groups within Indonesian territory itself.
This ‘doomsday’ plan was ultimately deemed
unnecessary, given the way Soekarno’s politi-
cal fate was decided by the coup and counter-
coup of late September 1965 (Easter, 2000).
The real nature of Konfrontasi lay in its infor-
mation operations by both sides. As it has been
detailed above, Indonesia’s domestic political
currents behaved in a revolutionary mode,
experimenting with ideological shifts, incited
no less by a restless, idealistic Soekarno, an
ambitious communist party (PKI) and a polit-
icized military. Simultaneously, Indonesia’s
revolutionary introspection was obsessed
with the security of its ‘national identity’
(Budiawan, 2017). Indonesian-propaganda
posters of the Konfrontasi period depicted
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
British puppet masters orchestrating indig-
enous politicians in Singapore, Malaya,
Sabah and Sarawak, who were singing from
London’s script. Malaysia’s Premier, Tunku
Abdul Rahman, was portrayed as stand-
ing at the ready, pen in hand, to take dicta-
tion (Wirawan, 2017). Under the influence
of the left-leaning LEKRA, various popu-
lar-music studios took to romanticizing the
youthful male enlistees who were sacrific-
ing their time, and potentially their lives, to
‘crush Malaysia’. The patriotic melancholia
of leaving one’s girlfriend or wife behind the
frontlines was equally the object of celebra-
tion (Farram, 2014: 11–2). On the Malaysian
side, Konfrontasi justified continuation of
the gentlemen’s alliance with UK military
power, as a natural insurance policy against
the neo-communist and communist threats
from all directions. Likewise, Singapore offi-
cially remembers Konfrontasi as a marker of
the wide spectrum of tangible security threats
against a nascent small state with little stra-
tegic depth lodged between large, poten-
tially predatory, underdeveloped postcolonial
states.
The declassified UK accounts cited by
Greg Poulgrain’s (2014) book, The Genesis
of Konfrontasi, suggest that the information
operations by Her Majesty’s Government
may well have successfully provoked
Konfrontasi to enable the deposition of
President Soekarno and the protection of UK
interests through internal Indonesian actions.
Poulgrain argues that ‘long-term hostility’
between the Republic of Indonesia and UK
colonial power in neighbouring Malaya,
Singapore and Borneo (Kalimantan) had
been effectively seeded in 1945, when the
UK occupation forces were authorized by the
Dutch to reclaim the Indies on their behalf
(2014: 9). Predictably, the revolutionary
forces armed by the outgoing Japanese forces
put up a stiff resistance, which culminated
in the Battle of Surabaya, which resulted in
UK casualties. The British ambassadors in
Jakarta between 1960 and 1963 have also
gone on the record to state that their mission
389
to protect the Malayan and Bornean flanks
included fomenting sufficient hostility, either
within Indonesia or between Indonesia and
its new neighbours, to supply momentum to
oust President Soekarno (Poulgrain, 2014:
9). Additionally, an undeclared economic
war between Indonesia and the erstwhile UK
colonies of Singapore and Malaya, from 1951
to 1955, contributed to the reinforcement of
suspicions from both sides of each other’s
aggressive designs. Indonesia claimed that
the port of Singapore was diverting exports
(especially in rubber, textiles and consumer
goods) between Indonesia and its major trad-
ing partners, profiteering excessively as a
middleman and encouraging wanton smug-
gling. UK businesses also alleged in 1954 that
the Indonesians were secretly setting up ‘lib-
eration commands’ just across the border with
British North Borneo, to stir up economic
disenchantment as a prelude to revolution
(Poulgrain, 2014: 86–7). This set of com-
plaints encouraged the UK Colonial Office to
seriously contemplate preparing both public
opinion and nationalist elites in those ter-
ritories for some form of defensive political
union, to contain forces inimical to the con-
tinuity of UK mercantile interests. In Malaya
and Singapore, following the successful UK
accommodation of the still friendly Malay
campaign for a Malayan Federation, the
Commissioner-General Malcolm MacDonald
argued in 1955 that one primary objective
of granting independence to Malaya is to
achieve ‘self-government within the [British]
Commonwealth’, but this would be put at risk
if ‘the Malays lose their liberty through cold
war or hot war conquest by a Communist or
other foreign aggressor’ (Poulgrain, 2014:
130). Towards this end, MacDonald reported
to his superior in London that
I for one have been sedulously planting the idea…in
the minds of local journalists, over the last eight
years, and urging them to give public expression
now and then to this ultimate aim, so that the
people are gradually educated towards it… (But) the
Bornean leaders are perhaps less aware than those in
Malaya of our grand design. (Poulgrain, 2014: 133)
390 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
The story of the formation of the Federation
of Malaysia through referenda in Singapore,
Sabah (ex-British North Borneo) and
Sarawak, between 1962 and 1963, conse-
quently came to be dominated by the state-
ments and manoeuvres of the nationalist
politicians in these territories up until and
during the Konfrontasi period (1963–1966),
carrying the strong implication that UK infor-
mation operations could claim some credit in
delivering the desired result. Furthermore,
there was evidence that UK authorities and
US intelligence were assisting the simultane-
ous PRRI and Permesta rebellions in Central
Sumatra and Sulawesi, to varying degrees
through ‘propaganda of the deed’, in allow-
ing the supply of weaponry to these anti-
Soekarno rebels. Although the UK forces
technically did not supply arms, the Royal
Air Force and Royal Navy actively inter-
cepted Indonesian armed vessels who strayed
into Singapore and Malayan waters in pursuit
of smugglers. The UK too closed one eye to
the rebels’ acquisitions of arms through
Singapore. It was the US CIA, whose arms
were captured by forces loyal to the govern-
ment in Jakarta, who were shamed by the
public exposure of US plots to destabilize
Indonesia. One CIA pilot assisting the rebels,
Allen Pope, was shot down in his US-made
B-26 bomber, captured by Indonesian forces
and paraded by Jakarta as proof of Western
complicity (Poulgrain, 2014: 197–200).
Additionally, the UK-controlled Singapore
was depicted by Indonesian propaganda
as a SEATO base for the undermining of
Indonesia (Poulgrain, 2014: 174–88).
The Indochina Wars 1945–1954,
1964–1975, 1978–1991
The Indochina wars mirrored the local politi-
cal dynamics operating in the Malayan
Emergency and Konfrontasi. Yet their pro-
tagonists became entangled in the global
Cold War to an unprecedented degree, aris-
ing from the interventions of the United
States, the USSR and China. In fact, infor-
mation operations were deliberately played
up through both official and unofficial read-
ings of history and ideology. As with the
preceding subsections on information opera-
tions managing the ambiguity of delineating
wartime from counterinsurgency and low-
intensity war, the tactical deployment of
propaganda is less important than the grand
strategic interplay of narratives that justified
and energized kinetic combat by the various
armed protagonists.
If one examines the two ‘wars of libera-
tion’ that culminated in the unification of
Vietnam as an independent socialist republic,
there are significant similarities in terms of
the contention and overlaps between local
propaganda dynamics and the strategic ones
operated among the intervening great powers.
For this reason, this chapter will only focus
on Vietnam’s ‘American war’ as the more
representative (Asselin, 2018). Revisionist
historians have in fact served the study of
propaganda extremely well. Pierre Asselin’s
(2018) book has attempted to understand the
Vietminh’s struggle against the French return,
as a re-enactment of an unfinished civil war
between the North and the South in Vietnam’s
two-century-old history as a united territory.
Our earlier mention of the divergent routes
of proto-nationalist resistance to French
colonialism echoed this. The South was
mostly a borderland population that was vari-
ously subject to the rival ancient empires of
Champa, occupying the present-day Mekong
Delta in southern Vietnam and Angkor in
neighbouring Cambodia. This variegated
population protected their mixed identity
fiercely and resisted attempts to homogenize
them (Asselin, 2018: 18; Turley, 2009: 10).
This identity-cum-political crisis was exac-
erbated by various attempts by indigenous
clans such as the Trinh and Nguyen to forci-
bly unify the northern parts with the southern.
The north was subjected to heavy Chinese
influence and evolved a more Confucian-
oriented political culture that also grafted
on, via Chinese inspirations, a penchant for
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
territorial acquisition. According to more
recent accounts, it was highly plausible that
kingdoms in the south were amenable to
French protection from the predatory behav-
iour of ruling dynasties in the north. Hence,
it was no surprise that France’s earliest politi-
cal beachheads in the colonial takeover of
Vietnam were all in the south (Asselin, 2018:
18–20; Turley, 2009: 9–10). The alignment of
pro-Western sympathies with the missionary
successes of Catholicism reflected the deep
entrenchment of colonial ideas in what was
to become South Vietnam, or the Republic of
Vietnam following the final defeat of French
forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Availing themselves of freshly declassi-
fied Vietnamese sources, historians have now
shed light on North Vietnam’s elite think-
ing about the urgency of reunification of the
south between 1954 and 1964. Coinciding
with the peace settlement at Geneva that
divided the former French colony into two
halves at the 17th parallel, the leadership of
the Lao Dong Party (Vietnamese Workers’
Party) had begun debating whether the even-
tual reunification of the country under the
leadership of the north should be postponed
until such a time when the north had rebuilt
its war-ravaged economy and overcome the
conditions of under-development bequeathed
by two centuries of French colonial rule
(Ang, 2002: 14–5). At the same time, Ho Chi
Minh and others within the Lao Dong Party
were acutely conscious of their responsibili-
ties towards Moscow’s designs for a world
proletarian revolution. A third consideration
would be to avoid demoralizing the com-
munist underground in the south, who made
sacrifices to disguise their ultimate plans for
armed reunification with the north (Ang,
2002: 18–20). Ultimately, the Lao Dong
Party’s directive to their southern counter-
parts was to set up so-called self-defence
units and ‘armed propaganda forces’, in
anticipation of the eventual call for a violent
insurrection against the supposedly deca-
dent capitalist-puppet nationalists ruling in
Saigon under Western protection (Ang, 2002:
391
20). Although North Vietnam’s leaders were
always fully conscious of their obligations to
the cause of global communism as integral to
their prosecution of a war of national libera-
tion, the thrust of their revolutionary strategy
was to evict the final vestiges of neo-coloni-
alism, whether it manifested in the guise of
the French or the Americans, after 1954. A
study of Viet Cong propaganda in the south,
specifically noted that graphic radio descrip-
tions of both fictitious and actual US and
South Vietnamese acts of torture of innocent
civilians were intended to fan the outrage of
Vietnamese citizens against the foreign occu-
pier and its local partners in oppression. The
study by a US Lieutenant Colonel concluded
that American soldiers cannot set foot in alien and
underdeveloped countries without becoming tar-
gets for charges of aggression and imperialism.
And the charges will probably stick. Backward
peoples often do not understand political idealism,
and no profound statement by the US Government
is likely to ring as true in their ears as the bald
assertion that the rich foreigners are in their coun-
try out of blatant self-interest. (Flammer, 1973:
213)
In a remarkable mirror of the obsession of
the Hanoi communist elite in reunifying the
country, South Vietnam, which titled itself
officially as the Republic of Vietnam (RVN,
as opposed to the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam (DRV) north of the 17th parallel),
appears to have instilled significant patriot-
ism towards its own cause. This obviously
reprises the traditional historical dynamic of
north–south rivalry in prestige, population
manipulation and territorial control. Recent
ethnographic studies of the memorialization
of the Republic of Vietnam Army, Navy and
Air Force former personnel who were exiled,
primarily in the United States and Australia,
have revealed a spirit of steadfast dedication
to their cause. South Vietnam’s soldiers did
not flee combat or suffer instantaneous col-
lapses in morale as regularly as the popular
Western narratives have depicted (Nguyen,
2016). Former Army General Lam Quang
Thi fondly recalls his service to the RVN as
392 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
‘the twenty five year century’ (i.e. 1950–
1975): he was part of the founding of the
‘Vietnamese National Army’ in 1950, fought
in the battles of ‘the Viet Cong Tet Offensive
in 1968 and during North Vietnam’s multi-
division Great Offensive in 1972’. This sig-
nals significant joie de vivre at the top ranks
of the RVN. By his own admission, General
Thi responded to the erstwhile colonial
French General de Lattre’s call to arms in
1951, on the basis that fighting the Vietminh
was the fight of patriots to claim the country
for themselves (Nguyen, 2016: 21).
In another case, Vu Hoai Duc’s military
career as a high-level officer and one-time
Special Aide-de-Camp to the controversial
Catholic RVN President Ngo Dinh Diem
was also comparable to General Thi’s trajec-
tory. Duc ardently believed in his cause, and
when appointed commander of the RVN’s
Psychological Warfare College in 1969, he
posited that good officers needed to be virtu-
ous in conduct and be persons of experience.
Additionally, good propaganda effects on
morale within the ranks depended on treat-
ing one’s subordinates in an inclusive manner,
regardless of religion and ancestral back-
grounds. Duc argued that he was too late arriv-
ing in his appointment to implement the Allied
forces’ lessons in psywar from North Africa,
where the Allies obtained local cooperation
by constructively aiding local communities
through gifts of books, newspapers, ‘school
equipment’ and the provision of decent health-
care services (Nguyen, 2016: 24–5). Duc
argued that it was a pity that even though
the RVN government usually produced good
plans, implementation had been disappointing.
In the clearest statement of how RVN propa-
ganda inculcated conviction in its soldiers, the
statement of faith by Bao, an air-force helicop-
ter pilot, suggests that the Second Indochina
War was indeed a case of an indigenous ‘us’
against its own self-identified ‘other’:
We, the South, we just defended ourselves. We
did not go up to the North. We were fighting but
also building our country. Up North, it was a differ-
ent story. They were supplied by Russia and China.
They did not build the country, they always sent
troops down to the South. They set up a third
government in the South, saying it was from the
South when it was actually from the North. After
1975, you no longer saw the flag with the two
colours and the star in the middle [the flag of the
Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG)]. The
war was controlled by the North.
We are all upset because now when people talk
about the war, they talk about the American war
against North Vietnam. South Vietnam has been
forgotten. (Nguyen, 2016: 63)
It is precisely this sort of logic, countervail-
ing the more hegemonic-flavoured ideologi-
cal information operations from the north,
that today enables us to argue that what US
scholars term ‘the Vietnam War’ as a spec-
tacular US military failure obviates the true
trajectories of the propaganda conflict across
the 17th parallel.
In the US-based perspectives, the Vietnam
War was either part of the global militarized
ring of containment against the commu-
nist menace or a challenge that evoked the
time-honoured, always victorious American
way of war. Scholarship on the memoriali-
zation of the Vietnam War focussed heavily
on the role of morality and faith in govern-
ment, as well as the disconnect between
means and ends; hence the frequent invo-
cation by both scholars and politicians of
the ‘Vietnam syndrome’, ‘hawks’, ‘doves’
and ‘liars in government’ (Hagopian, 2011:
23–9). Additionally, the idea of pinioning
the Southeast Asia of the Cold War into the
‘domino theory’ was a wholly Washington
production that began under President
Truman in 1947 and endured several itera-
tions under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson
and Nixon. It was particularly blatant
under the Johnson Presidency, whereby the
President and his advisors ignored the CIA’s
warning that ‘a continuation of the spread of
communism in the area would not be inexo-
rable, and any spread which did occur would
take time – time in which the total situation
might change in any number of ways unfa-
vourable to the communist cause’ (Gustainis,
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
1993: 13). The fact that the domino theory
did not pan out as planned, following the Fall
of Saigon and Phnom Penh in April 1975,
vindicates the resilience of the nationalist
and modernization-related information oper-
ations that the other pairs of conflicts that
we have examined in the preceding subsec-
tions bear witness to. Even North and South
Vietnam each touted their own grounded
nationalist creeds that militated against the
other. US-generated propaganda to prepare
their forces and public for the fight against
Vietnamese communism thus attains an air
of surrealism in contrast to ground realities in
Southeast Asia. President John F. Kennedy’s
deliberate cultivation of the image of the
‘Green Beret’ Special Forces as the 1960s
reincarnation of the New Frontiersmen in the
US national narrative clearly abetted the US
public’s complicity in supporting the initial
surge in US troops despatched to Vietnam
(Gustainis, 1993: 21–34). And this was also
the same US media that ‘provided aid and
comfort’ to the enemy by broadcasting the
Tet Offensive, with accompanying rhetoric
that suggested the Viet Cong were not losing,
unlike what was predicted by the Pentagon.
Moreover, the US-media coverage of the
movements of conscience against continued
military involvement in Vietnam cast the US
role in terms of its own moral navel-gazing,
quite removed from Southeast Asian realities
and President Nixon’s self-declared ‘silent
majority’ in favour of bringing the war to
an honourable conclusion (Faulkner, 1981;
Gustainis, 1993: 39–144; Hallin, 1986).
In the final important snapshot of the
Indochina theatre, one must acknowledge
the information operations that were wielded
by the fraternal communist governments that
victoriously claimed to have completed their
respective national liberation campaigns
from foreign colonialists by 1975. The newly
reunified Socialist Republic of Vietnam
(SRV), which captured Saigon on 30 April
1975, had ironically found itself providing
shelter for thousands of Vietnamese civil-
ians who had been forcibly ejected from
393
across the border in ‘fraternal revolutionary
Cambodia’. The Khmer Rouge armies had
encircled Phnom Penh and the remnants of
the US-supported, but deeply unpopular, Lon
Nol regime, just two weeks before the Fall
of Saigon. Pol Pot, the notorious head of the
Khmer Rouge, started reprising Cambodia’s
traditional rivalry with Vietnam. By 1978, a
foreign journalist who was allowed into the
Mekong Delta region reported that the SRV
had sheltered some 150,000 impoverished
ethnic-Vietnamese exiles in the first five
months following the Fall of Saigon. In retal-
iation for such large-scale ethnic expulsions,
Vietnam forcibly repatriated any refugees
found to be of Khmer or Chinese descent
back across the border to face the genocidal
policies of the Khmer Rouge (Chanda, 1986:
16). Within the same few months, Vietnamese
forces had seized a Cambodian island in
the Gulf of Thailand and then ‘returned’ it
to the Khmer Rouge, just to make a point
while welcoming the top leaders of the
Khmer Rouge to visit Hanoi to strengthen
ties. The Khmer Rouge was already hedg-
ing secretly against Vietnamese predations
by tightening their strategic embrace of Mao
Zedong’s China, from whom they sought
help to modernize Cambodia’s armed forces
and to furnish other civilian aid (Chanda,
1986: 12–23). While China made references
to revisionists and aggressors undermining
Cambodian socialist ‘liberation’ and sov-
ereignty, Vietnam countered with its Treaty
of Friendship with the USSR and obtained
Laotian expressions of solidarity against
hegemonic behaviour from all quarters.
In these ways, the victors of the Second
Indochina War (a.k.a. the Vietnam War) were
deterring one another against adopting armed
solutions to historic rivalries. What tipped
this balance of propaganda over into overt
armed conflict in the form of Vietnam’s inva-
sion of Cambodia in December 1978 (a.k.a.
the Third Indochina War) were the excesses
of the Khmer Rouge in attempting to trans-
form Cambodian society into instant commu-
nism by forcibly depriving the population of
394 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
privilege, status and creature comforts asso-
ciated with wealthy decadence. The Khmer
Rouge leaders truly believed that moderni-
zation synthesized from Marxism–Leninism
and Maoism could succeed in achieving the
ultimate postcolonial society. Some scholars
have adopted strategic-ritualization theory
to explain how the Khmer Rouge erected a
new earthly God comprised of a collective
organization of learned and wise ideologues
known as the Angkar, which roughly trans-
lates into the indigenous totalitarian meta-
phor of the ‘manifold eyes of the pineapple’
(Delano and Knottnerus, 2018). In reori-
enting, or in crude Khmer Rouge parlance,
‘re-educating’ the population away from
Cambodia’s Hindu–Buddhism–Animist syn-
cretic past, the population’s mentality could
be adjusted en masse to new developmental
horizons. As a continuous form of informa-
tion operation applied in the Foucaultian
sense of biopolitics, Khmer Rouge ritualiza-
tion has been documented by one of its sur-
vivors as follows:
Everyone will be reformed by work. Do not steal.
Always tell the truth to Angkar. Obey Angkar
whatever the circumstances. It is forbidden to
show feelings; joy or sadness. It is forbidden to be
nostalgic about the past. The spirit must not stray.
It is forbidden to beat children, as from now on
they are children of Angkar. The children will be
educated by Angkar. Never complain about any-
thing. If you commit an act in contradiction to the
line set forth by Angkar you will publicly self-criti-
cise yourself at the daily indoctrination meetings
that are compulsory for everyone. (Denise
Affonco, 2007, cited in Delano and Knottnerus,
2018: 91)
This is an extreme, but it is clearly a parallel
to the ideological reformation programmes
enacted in the other postcolonial internal and
international conflicts in Malaysia, Indonesia
and the rest of Indochina. Modernizing post-
colonial societies in this local context appears
structurally inclined towards near-totalitarian
propaganda. The only difference in each case
is the severity of implementation and conver-
sion of the human spirit.
Post-9/11 and Fundamentalist
Islamic Unrest
Since the events of 9/11, Southeast Asia has
witnessed the conflation of Islamic-
fundamentalist terrorism and local insurgen-
cies where minorities with Islamic allegiances
have become active protagonists. In some
cases, such as in Thailand and Myanmar, the
degree of ‘active’ participation in violence by
Muslim minorities is a matter of propaganda-
fuelled exaggeration, a puppet manoeuvre in
a game of domestic political theatre or a
direct reaction to the missteps of a rigged
political-recrimination campaign (Gershman,
2002). For instance, Marc Askew’s (2007)
study of southern Thailand’s sporadic Muslim
insurgency tracks the ups and downs of ‘the
labyrinthine patterns of informal authority,
corruption and influence that pervade the
southern provinces’ (2007: 16). In 2004, a
document produced by a ‘concerned’ and
mostly anonymous ‘The People’s Intelligence
Network’, surfaced to the Thai Deputy Prime
Minister for Security Affairs. The document
fabricated evidence that Thai Muslim politi-
cians linked to Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai
Rak Thai (TRT) party were turning traitorous
to their TRT ally by preparing for an uprising,
following a widely publicized but mostly
unattributed raid on a Thai Army camp that
pilfered weapons that would be useful in an
insurgency (Askew, 2007: 12–26). Given the
still ongoing polarization of Thai society into
pro- and anti-Thaksin camps, Askew’s argu-
ment that the insurgency was mostly made up
with the use of props such as the occasional
bombings in towns and beheadings of monks,
along with alleged links to Al Qaeda abroad,
was directly linked to political manoeuvres in
Bangkok in between elections. With a mili-
tary government currently in charge and elec-
tions yet to be called, the Thai South appears
coincidentally to have quietened down.
Likewise, in Myanmar, the official denial of
genocide against the Muslim Rohingya
minority by the government and military has
manifested as a continuous information
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
operation aimed at evading international
responsibility for likely crimes against
humanity, perpetrated under official sanction.
Meanwhile, the Myanmar government has
ingenuously cited the threat posed by what it
dubs ‘extreme Bengali Terrorists’, who since
October 2016 have attacked and killed sev-
eral hundred Buddhists, Hindus and police
officers in Myanmar (Pitman, 2017). In the
ongoing psywar, these terrorists have never-
theless given themselves a name, the Arakan
Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), that calls
attention to their need for self-defence and
counter-attack, by deliberately reverting the
name of Myanmar’s Rakhine state to its his-
torical name, which is more closely associ-
ated with its Islamic heritage and neighbouring
Bangladesh and India. Although ARSA
claims to have mostly acted in defence of the
Rohingyas, who have been made homeless
and stateless in their land, their initial Arabic
name was ‘Harakah al-Yaqin’, which trans-
lates as ‘Faith Movement’. Moreover, their
first YouTube video was issued with Arabic
subtitles, which instantly fuelled speculation
that they might be aligned with Al Qaeda,
ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and any
number of jihadist groups worldwide. Recent
nongovernment reports suggest that jihadist
groups in the Arab world and Pakistan merely
paid lip service to ARSA’s cause and made
little else available to them (AFP, 2017).
Indeed, the leader of ARSA, Ata Ullah, was
reported to have been brought up in Pakistan
and educated in Saudi Arabia, while his
Rohingya father taught in Saudi religious
schools. Ullah’s inspiration for resistance
purportedly came after the first reports of
genocide against the Rohingya emerged in
2012 (AFP, 2017). Once again, the miseries
of misgoverned modernization in the region
were propagated as being linked to foreign
interference from abroad, to provoke either
sympathy for government forces or to incite
external sympathy for localized causes.
The case of the insurgent Jemaah Islamiyah
and ISIS affiliates in Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore and the Philippines parallels the
395
Islamic unrest in southern Thailand and the
Rakhine state in Myanmar, but with some
important differences in the positioning of
their information operations. Islam has mostly
occupied a legitimate political space in all
of these states at one point or another since
independence from colonial rule. Hence,
both moderate and radical Islamic move-
ments and parties have thrived as open mag-
nets for Islamic ideology as a guide towards
modernizing society and the economy. In
Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to
a limited extent, the ruling coalitions or soft
authoritarian regimes have attempted to co-
opt Islamic parties with national and provin-
cial followings to good effect, until Al Qaeda
and ISIS abroad made the headlines with
their radical approaches to transforming gov-
ernments everywhere (Singh, 2004: 55–7). In
the Singapore case, it was the mostly secu-
lar People’s Action Party that marginalized
the only Islamic party in the island republic,
by co-opting the Malay elites into its high-
est ranks under the principle of multi-ethnic
pluralism within a Chinese-majority state.
All these civilian manoeuvres should be
seen as a strategic attempt to provide overt
and controllable representational space for
a religiously distinct minority. The agendas
of Al Qaeda and ISIS upset this equilibrium
by offering a different model of religious
state (i.e. that of a rejuvenated pan-Islamic
caliphate) from the Middle East. Through
YouTube videos and social media platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter, they attracted
middle-aged and younger Muslims through
their messages of a new reformation in
world politics. Based on extensive research,
mostly in Indonesia, where Al Qaeda and
ISIS appeals appeared the strongest, Bilveer
Singh has identified the causes of these
appeals in five streams. Firstly, Al Qaeda and
ISIS have woven a narrative that taps local
ethnic/Muslim grievances into their global
cause. Secondly, these Arab groups have
provided funding, accommodation and even
remuneration for foreign fighters to join the
‘frontlines’ against Western ‘infidel armies’
396 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and, most
recently, closer to home in Marawi city in the
Philippines. Thirdly, Arab terrorist groups
perceive Southeast Asian security forces to
be weak and penetrable. Fourthly, Al Qaeda
and ISIS have taken advantage of the limited
nature of counterterrorism and intelligence
cooperation across sovereign jurisdictions
within the porous region, unlike the tightness
of terrain during the Malayan Emergency
that favoured establishment forces. Fifthly, in
tandem with the ‘perks’ provided to foreign
fighters, association with Al Qaeda and ISIS
potentially has delivered significant material
advantages, vis-a-vis the families of the fight-
ers from Southeast Asia, funds for acquiring
weapons and training to destabilize existing
governments in Southeast Asia (Singh, 2018:
294). Although Al Qaeda and ISIS momen-
tarily appear to be in retreat in Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan, the fear across Southeast Asia
is that the ‘returnees’ from these frontlines
could be imbued with a mission to ignite the
much-feared second front in the struggle to
establish the caliphate (Singh, 2018: 292–3).
The siege of Marawi city in the Philippines
between 2017 and 2018 was a ‘demonstra-
tion’ of ISIS-affiliated capability, not unlike
perhaps the battles of Aleppo and Palmyra in
Syria waged by ISIS. Messaging about how
the Caliphate would supposedly restore pub-
lic morality to frequently corrupted civilian
postcolonial governments in Southeast Asia
will remain an over-the-horizon threat to
governments in Southeast Asia.
THE ASEAN WAY AS
OMNIDIRECTIONAL PROPAGANDA
AND THE EXTENDED PALLIATIVE
OF AMBIGUOUS DISCOURSE IN
PERSISTENT CONFLICTS
The final thematic phase of any study of
propaganda in Southeast Asia must obviously
account for the formation of the ASEAN,
which operates as a regional organization on
the basis of diplomatic ambiguity. Diplomatic
ambiguity is encapsulated in short by the
‘ASEAN Way’ which privileges a consensus
that allows for non-obstructive abstention,
polite obfuscated language and the mainte-
nance of prolonged silences on contentious
issues, where none of the organization’s
member states are prepared to commit to any
forward momentum. This peculiar form of
diplomatic propaganda, which many have
criticised as the legitimization of non-deci-
sion making, arose against the backdrop of
the entire range of postcolonial conflicts
treated in the preceding section, short of those
that erupted after the late 1960s. That said,
even the internationalized civil wars in
Vietnam and Cambodia were retrospectively
what ASEAN sought to forestall among its
members.
Thanat Khoman, the erstwhile Thai
Foreign Minister who served as one of the
key drafters of the ‘Bangkok Declaration’,
which created ASEAN on 8 August 1967,
recalled three points that shed light on why
ASEAN (and the ASEAN Way) had to be
invented as a means of weaving a narrative
about ASEAN community, where none had
existed before. Firstly, it was a critical act of
decolonization that did not create a power
vacuum which hostile outsiders might fill for
parochial reasons. The idea of ‘neighbours
working together in a joint effort’ was unprec-
edented for a modern Southeast Asia of new
nation-states, and it was normatively a step
in ending conflict between member states
and, hopefully, within them (Khoman, 1992:
xvii). Secondly, the negative experience of
having the Americans, British and the French
‘co-organize’ regionalism in the form of
SEATO for the grand purpose of fighting the
Cold War was inimical to local interest, since
the alliance members were mostly outside the
region and did not understand issues arising
from contiguous borders. Finally, Khoman
emphasized the need for community as a
basis for projecting a more realistic and per-
suasive voice for both its members’ collective
and national interests. By ‘hanging together’,
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
so went the logic, the ASEAN members
would not be strung separately to the men-
acing pulls of ‘Big Power rivalry’ (Khoman,
1992: xvii). In neorealist terms, ASEAN was
a non-starter, due to its inherent military and
economic weaknesses. But in terms of propa-
ganda power, the ASEAN could serve as an
unprecedented convening agent for the great
powers, whose rivalry cannot be tempered
either unilaterally or bilaterally among them-
selves. This appears relatively true even in
the era of Trumpist isolationism, circa 2017–
2019. In many ways, the creation of ASEAN
vindicates the erstwhile US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger’s memoirs concerning the
conclusion of the United States’ 11 years of
unhappy military entanglement in Vietnam,
wondering ‘why good men on all sides found
no way to avoid this disaster’ of the fall of
South Vietnam to communism (Kissinger,
2003: 555).
The whole logic behind ASEAN as a form
of do-it-yourself regionalism was to find a
way for less-than-perfect political ideologies,
politicians, authoritarian states, semi-democ-
racies and unevenly developed societies to
coexist, initially within an environment of
negative peace (that is, freedom from con-
flict), before progressing gradually towards
a positive peace – establishing freedom of
travel for citizens across the region, free-trade
agreements, joint industrial coordination and
mechanisms for pacific settlement of disputes
and so forth. The states that join ASEAN carry
no expectations that only ‘good’ statesmen
and their nation-states can qualify for mem-
bership. The whole idea of ASEAN implies
that peaceful coexistence is the cardinal
operating principle, while existing hostilities
will be allowed the elastic luxury of time to
dissipate. There is no expectation either that
bilateral territorial or economic disputes must
be solved as soon as possible, they only need
to be shelved or frozen (Leifer, 1989). Hence,
the ASEAN Way has firstly been interpreted
as a vague diplomatic path of consensus and
consultation towards deriving a common
ASEAN position on any given political issue,
397
with no member allowed a veto over all of the
rest. Dissenting members can only silently
abstain and ignore a joint resolution with-
out causing any public embarrassment to the
other ‘consenting’ members (Haacke, 2003:
49–51). Secondly, the ASEAN Way is heav-
ily dependent on all member states adhering
to the principle of non-interference in one
another’s domestic affairs in politics, eco-
nomics, security and civil society. The non-
interference norm is directly associated with
the sovereignty principle enshrined in the
United Nations Charter (S. Jayakumar, 1997,
cited in Chong, 2011: 148).
How, then, does the ‘ASEAN Way’ oper-
ate as a propaganda device of diplomatic
inclusiveness? Firstly, the ASEAN Way pre-
supposes the reciprocation of tolerance and
the obfuscation of threat perception (Chong,
2011: 145). Given the proliferation of the
propaganda of anti-colonial liberation and the
simultaneous eruption of postcolonial ideo-
logical and territorial conflicts in the 1950s
and 1960s, Southeast Asia’s political leaders
realized that accommodation and postpone-
ment of conflict resolution was far more feasi-
ble than definitive resolution. Better still, the
dynamics of the global Cold War ought not to
be allowed to engender local proxy wars for
the great powers. Tolerance was therefore one
way of interpreting the ASEAN Way as sati-
ating national interests without resorting to
the clash of arms. Indonesia’s change of gov-
ernment through a coup d’état in September
1965 ushered in a new set of leaders who
accepted that neighbouring Malaysia, and the
newly independent Republic of Singapore,
could not be forced to bend to its political
will. Likewise, the Philippines also accepted
that since Indonesia was unwilling to escalate
military confrontation to ‘destroy’ Malaysia,
Manila had to find a modus vivendi with
Kuala Lumpur over its own claim to the state
of Sabah. On its part, Thailand faced its own
border issues with Malaysia, arising from
colonial boundaries drawn by the British in
the 1900s; but, Bangkok was now prepared
to shelve these disputes in the interest of
398 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
preventing the communists in Indochina
from exploiting political differences among
the non-communist states for revolutionary
purposes. Ironically, as it has been elabo-
rated earlier, the communist governments in
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which cap-
tured power between the 1960s and the mid
1970s following the US military withdrawal,
found themselves reprising historic rivalries
that predated Marxist–Leninist ideology.
Among the original five non-communist
members of ASEAN – that is, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and
Thailand – the Bangkok Declaration and the
subsequent ambiguously titled Bali Concord
and Treaty of Amity and Cooperation were
drafted as touchstones of political tolera-
tion (ASEAN, 1967; ASEAN, 1976; Bali
Concord, 1976). Toleration was framed in
terms of respecting diverse national paths
to peace and development, commitments to
enhancing national prosperity and the avoid-
ance of force in settling territorial and politi-
cal disputes. Language was added to suggest
that regional states ought to chiefly rely on
cooperation among themselves to resolve
local disputes. Additionally, given that four of
the five founding states had retained assorted
bilateral military cooperation agreements
with the UK, the United States, Australia
and New Zealand, ASEAN’s founding
documents allowed that all foreign military
bases in the region ought to be regarded as
temporary in nature, without specifying any
expiry limits. The ultimate deliberate act of
obfuscation stated that ‘The stability of each
member state and of the ASEAN region is
an essential contribution to peace and secu-
rity. Each member state resolves to eliminate
threats posed by subversion to its stabil-
ity, thus strengthening national and ASEAN
resilience’ (Bali Concord, 1976). After
1991, following the breach of the Berlin
Wall and the dissolution of the USSR, the
door was opened wide for the admission of
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar into
ASEAN. Between 1967 and 1991, Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos had shunned ASEAN
as a pro-Western front, preferring instead
to align themselves with either China or the
USSR. Myanmar had adopted an isolation-
ist foreign policy back then. But after 1991,
the benefits of joining ASEAN were quite
evident, since all four Indochina states could
avail themselves of ASEAN’s qualities of tol-
eration and repudiation of the use of violence
in settling interstate disputes, including any
extant ideological scores. Joining ASEAN
also meant that national communism could
be accepted, since ASEAN did not contain
any clauses demanding regime change or
ideological uniformity.
Secondly, the ASEAN Way could also be
extended to elaborate a climate of soft dip-
lomatic balancing; most neorealist analyses
do not admit this possibility (Simon, 1995).
But ASEAN’s modus operandi has meant
that the consensually derived ASEAN state-
ments at virtually every summit and for-
eign- and defence-minister meeting are
watched for clues as to whether they lean
towards or against particular great powers
currently involved in a bilateral or multilat-
eral dispute with ASEAN members or third
parties. Officially, ASEAN declares in for-
mal language that it encourages the pattern
of an open and inclusive ‘regional security
architecture’ that obscures any explicit threat
perceptions towards China, India, Japan,
the United States or Russia. In signalling
displeasure, ASEAN communiques usually
make veiled statements to the effect that the
organization and its great-power dialogue
partners commit themselves to forego the
use of force in settling disputes, while reaf-
firming longstanding pledges to adhere to
the UN Charter and various ASEAN docu-
ments (Chong, 2011: 150–4). In this way,
ASEAN has mollified China over the South
China Sea island disputes, involving Brunei,
the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, by
not explicitly mentioning ‘international law’
and its sanctions while reminding Beijing
through indirect language that it expects
civilized behaviour over the island disputes,
in conformity with a rule- and norm-based
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
climate. Not infrequently, ASEAN has also
strategically facilitated India’s diplomatic
pot-shots at China’s intransigence over an
array of border disputes between both great
powers, by alluding to Beijing’s pattern of
behaviour in ‘bullying’ weak states without
once mentioning ASEAN by name. This has
frequently happened since the mid 1990s at
ASEAN-driven wider forums such as the
ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit
and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting
Plus.
On the economic front, ASEAN’s highly
consistent full-throated support of free trade
in its dialogues with the great powers, sig-
nals to Washington, Canberra and Tokyo that
protectionism might undercut their access
to markets in ASEAN and further afield
in Asia. Currently, the fact that ASEAN is
being courted by both China’s Belt and Road
Initiative and the Indo–Japanese–US vision
of the ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’, testi-
fies to its discursive success in soft balancing
(Chong and Shang-su, 2018). Other scholars
have termed this form of discursive balanc-
ing as either ‘associative balancing’, ‘great
power enmeshment’ and omni-directional
balancing, or a creative reinterpretation of
the ‘English School’ of international rela-
tions in creating ASEAN-centred regional
and international societies (Emmers, 2003;
Goh, 2007/8; Quayle, 2013).
It is quite evident that the ASEAN Way as
a propaganda appendage of ASEAN’s contri-
bution to regional peace is a fine sample of
what many have termed a dominant strategic
narrative (Miskimmon et al., 2013). It is also
a significant case study of how words circu-
lated as ideas assume the status of a psycho-
logically entrancing mantra for diplomatic
behaviour. Indeed, much scholarship has
appraised this point comprehensively in rela-
tion to Asia (Ba, 2009; Tan, 2013; Haacke,
2003). It remains for this chapter to highlight
the fact the ASEAN Way has been propa-
gated equally in the informal diplomatic
circuit known as ‘Track Two’. Track Two
obviously is distinguished from the formality
399
of diplomacy fronted by senior officials,
foreign ministers and heads of government
in summits and ministerial dialogues. Track
Two is usually attended by ex-Ministers,
former defence chiefs, ex-ambassadors, pro-
fessors and think-tank heads normally associ-
ated with particular governments. Track Two
forums occur under the monikers of ASEAN
Institutes for Strategic and International
Studies, the Council for Security Cooperation
in the Asia-Pacific, the Network of ASEAN
Defence and Security Institutions and the
Asia-Pacific Roundtable. A few, such as
the Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the
UK-based International Institute for Security
Studies, have been quickly transformed into
a meeting involving both ‘unofficial bureau-
crats’, ex-foreign affairs and military per-
sonnel and sitting defence ministers from
ASEAN and the rest of the Asia-Pacific and
Indo-Pacific states.
Deep interpersonal networks are built up
over time among the relevant foreign and
security professionals involved in decision-
making, and the reference to ASEAN as the
pioneer in shelving disputes is always inevi-
table and time-honoured. But, the position of
ASEAN officials and think-tanks as the pro-
genitor of Track Two is somewhat disputed
(Soesastro et  al., 2006; Tan, 2012). That
does not matter, since it is almost always an
ASEAN city that hosts the omnibus forums
for Track Two meetings with the more techni-
cal workshops, such as those concerned with
preventive diplomacy, nuclear proliferation,
humanitarian-disaster relief, safety at sea
and peacekeeping dispersed to other locali-
ties in the Asia-Pacific, including Hawaii.
It is widely known that the United States,
Japan, Australia, Canada and, to a lesser
extent, India, have always pushed for more
transparency and more tangible, timetable-
specific initiatives in diplomacy and security.
By contrast, ASEAN, the two Koreas, China
and Russia tend to be more accepting of elas-
tic proposals that merely make a start in dis-
cussing sensitive topics (Chong, 2014b; Tan,
2007). ASEAN representatives often push
400 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
a de facto discourse of achieving a ‘com-
fort level’ for all Track Two participants,
before formulating proposals that can be fed
‘upwards’ as recommendations for Track
One action. Oftentimes, Track Two also acts
as a necessary political safety valve, where
Sino–Japanese, Sino–US, Sino–Indian and
US–Russian tensions burst into open con-
frontation through speeches and incendiary
questions aired by the great powers’ ‘unof-
ficial’ representatives (Chong, 2014b). These
occasions for verbal and visual mudslinging
are also tests of resolve, behind the prover-
bial closed doors of informal diplomacy.
ASEAN representatives almost always mani-
fest their ASEAN Way of circumspection
and therefore appear, by default, as the most
diplomatic parties in Track Two. This in turn
vindicates ASEAN’s soft ‘convening power’.
CONCLUSION
The study of Southeast Asia through the
lenses of propaganda has largely demon-
strated the prospect that no society is worthy
of its existence if its members did not author
their own narratives of creation. Jacques Ellul
and Harold Lasswell were correct in reading
the pulse on the intertwining of modern soci-
ety with the generation of a commensurate
propaganda of change and of faith in ‘pro-
gress’. Yet, due to the space constraints in this
venture, this chapter has not examined the
propaganda practised by the pre-modern state-
less societies of Southeast Asia. Nonetheless,
the modern history of the region is visibly
intertwined with the modernist premises of
Ellul and Lasswell. It was the advent of the
colonial era that provided the natural marker
for the present chapter, since it was also the
moment in history where ‘Southeast Asia’
was mapped into formal existence.
The first important lesson that must be
drawn from this chapter is that the carto-
graphic and legal imperialism of naming ter-
ritories and geographical possessions have
an enduring impact. It is the power to define
identities consequently. It is equally the
power to constrain one’s political successors
in their choices of manoeuvring around pre-
fabricated boundaries. Therefore, in relation
to Global South regions, scholars can reason-
ably discuss them using the phrase ‘structural
properties of colonial propaganda’.
The second important lesson is that the
political theory of liberation, indigenously
synthesised or invented, is potent propa-
ganda for nation-building and national exclu-
sion. The anti-colonial tracts that have been
sampled for this chapter are fine samples of
path-breaking propaganda. The liberation of
a person and his entire community can only
be enabled through the shattering of pre-
existing mentalities and imagining new per-
sonas that the new society can embrace. In
fact, all political theory should be subject to
propaganda-oriented analysis to enhance our
social-scientific knowledge in every aspect of
area studies.
Thirdly, the Southeast Asian experiences
with postcolonial conflict have given birth to
the reality that warfighting is equally a simul-
taneously fluid battle between narratives of
denial and affirmation. The struggles among
rival ideologies cannot be won alone by
physical contests, as the cases of the Malayan
Emergency, the Indonesian Konfrontasi and
the Indochina conflicts show. Even today, the
ongoing religiously coloured insurgencies
in the region have to be scrutinized to deter-
mine whether they are indeed merely matters
of law enforcement or the evisceration of an
isolated group of troublemakers. The propa-
ganda analysis of ISIS and Jemaah Islamiyah
and other Islamic-fundamentalist groups may
yet reveal that the substantive fight might
lie with issues of social justice and extreme
interpretations of religion as solutions to
socio-political distress.
Finally, the diplomatic hybridity that is
embodied by the political regionalism of
ASEAN offers yet another ‘Global South’
lesson. Propaganda can assist in the cause of
building interstate peace insofar as it helps
 PROPAGANDA AND INFORMATION OPERATIONS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
to conjure an imperfect community out of
hitherto hostile nation-states that brook no
compromise on their national ideologies. If
the study of propaganda can speak to peace-
building efforts in the developing world, it
must be that vagary, calculated discursive
obfuscation and the optimal deployment of
euphemisms are politically useful. ASEAN’s
practice shows that propaganda can produce
a workable, imperfect peace that is celebrated
by its beneficiaries, even at the expense of
clarity of truths, identities and power rela-
tionships. In this sense, Harold Lasswell’s
(1995: 25) formulation that ‘the propagan-
dist takes it for granted that the world is
completely caused but that it is only partly
predictable’ is actually sage advice for peace-
makers everywhere.
Notes
1  Generous research assistance for tracking the
sources consulted for the composition of this
chapter was provided by Benjamin Low Quan
Hui and See Hao Yuan. Both of these budding
scholars will one day advance the social sciences
in Southeast Asia.
2  Reproduced in (Hunter D., 2011, p. 165).
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The Construction of the
Chinese Dream
INTRODUCTION
China’s Xi Jinping – General Secretary of the
Communist Party of China (CCP), President of
the People’s Republic of China, and Chairman
of the Central Military Commission – first
mentioned the phrase ‘Chinese Dream’ in
late 2012 when visiting ‘The Road of
Rejuvenation’ exhibition at the National
Museum of China. He had just become
China’s top leader two weeks earlier. He
defined the Chinese Dream as the great reju-
venation of the nation but did not illustrate
concrete ideas. Nonetheless, the use of the
phrase has become widespread ever since.
The Chinese Dream has become the
method by which Xi has consolidated his
power base and unified Chinese society
behind a single ideology. By framing the
dream with Xi and the CCP at the center, he is
presented as the only one who can bring back
a glorious China. Since the initial propaganda
phrase, the concept has evolved into the basis
of his whole ideology. Understanding the
24
C h u n g - M i n Ts a i
Chinese Dream can be deconstructed into
these three stages: the development of the
Chinese dream from an initial political slo-
gan; a ubiquitous symbol of ideology epito-
mized by Xi himself; and finally, the current
status of the Chinese dream and its relation-
ship to Communist Party rule. Based on the
humiliation discourse and rejuvenation nar-
ratives, the Chinese Dream was originally
raised as a propaganda phrase showing that
China has gone beyond the waning influence
of Marxism–Leninism and is now aiming to
regain the glorious history and excellent cul-
ture of the Chinese nation before the First
Opium War in the early nineteenth century.
Under Deng and later Hu and Jiang, the idea
of Chinese development was humble by
comparison.
Under Xi, the Chinese state has enriched the
strategic connotation of the Chinese Dream
and developed it into the guidelines for poli-
cymaking, covering various critical issues
such as sustainable development, economic
and political reform, individual lifestyle, and
406 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
international influence. In the 19th National
Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping
further solidified his thoughts on socialism
with Chinese characteristics for a new era,
which was approved and incorporated into
the Constitution of the Communist Party of
China. The idea of the Chinese Dream is now
integrated into the official political doctrine
as the grand vision of socialist modernization
and national rejuvenation. This chapter illu-
minates the core concepts and evolvement of
the Chinese Dream into the three dimensions
above. It contributes not only to our under-
standing of the construction and implementa-
tion of China’s official ideology but also the
rationale of the CCP rule.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHINESE
DREAM
Origin of the Dream
The Chinese Dream is not an innovative
notion coined by Xi. Over the last two dec-
ades and with the experience of rapid eco-
nomic growth in China, the term ‘Chinese
Dream’ emerged in the early 2000s, along
with extensive commentary about China’s
rise. Both Western and Chinese scholars have
published books on the topic, such as
Studwell (2003), Li (2006), Mars and
Hornsby (2008), Liu (2010), Wang (2010),
and Lemos (2012). Thomas Friedman pub-
lished an op-ed on October 2, 2012 in the
New York Times titled ‘China needs its own
dream’, a month before Xi officially pre-
sented the idea. Friedman’s comments
seemed to have had an impact on Chinese top
leadership. Such an impact is atypical in the
recent interactions between China and the
West, therefore Xi’s uncharacteristic move to
adopt such a slogan is puzzling for several
reasons. First, the history of CCP sloganeer-
ing rarely reveals the official adoption of a
major catchphrase as responding to a
American idea like the American Dream.
Second, the Chinese media attributed the
term to Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer-
winning American author and journalist, in
the context of Xi’s oration. Third, Xi deliv-
ered the seemingly unscripted remarks in the
absence of an official policy trend originating
in the National Party Congress.
Xinhua Daily, an organ of China’s
state-news agency, published an article on
December 7, 2012, about a week after Xi
brought up the Chinese-dream topic dur-
ing a visit to the National Museum. Written
by three Xinhua News Agency journalists,
it began with the observation that: ‘Some
points in time are out of the ordinary. The
morning of November 29th was just such a
special juncture’ (Economist, 2013). That
date was when Xi delivered his unscripted
remarks on the dream to a gaggle of reporters
and museum workers (yet another unusual
dimension: Chinese leaders are not known
for developing grand ideas on the hoof).
Having summarized Xi’s oration, the journal-
ists added the following:
Will the next Chinese leader have a dream that is
different from the American dream? In a year of
political transition, the world’s gaze is focused on
the East. On the eve of the 18th Party Congress
the American columnist Thomas Friedman wrote
an article devoted to analysis of the ‘Chinese
dream’ titled ‘China Needs Its Own Dream’. It
expressed the hope that marries people’s expecta-
tions of prosperity with a more sustainable China.
Suddenly the ‘Chinese dream’ became a hot topic
among commentators at home and abroad.
(Economist, 2013)
While the article could have pointed to many
a discussion in recent years of Chinese dreams,
it chose Friedman’s. Xi himself appeared to be
suggesting that he was talking about a recent
upsurge of discussion. Friedman (2012)
argues that ‘Everyone is talking about the
Chinese dream. I believe that the greatest
dream of Chinese people in modern times is of
the great revival of the Chinese nation’. This
article had indeed drawn some attention, at
least in the official media. A translation of it
appeared October 11, 2012 in Reference News
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
and the country’s best-selling newspaper. It
was cited in the headline. On November 12,
three days before Xi took office and while the
18th Congress was still under way, Oriental
Outlook magazine adorned its cover with the
words ‘Chinese Dream’ as well as ‘dream’ in
English. The related series of articles under
the title of ‘Quartet of the Chinese Dream’
inside was prefaced by a note from the editor:
The 18th National Congress of the Chinese
Communist Party convened November 8. ‘Does the
next generation of Chinese leaders have a “Chinese
Dream” that is different from the “American
Dream”? Because if the next government’s dream
for China’s emerging middle class–300 million
people expected to grow to 800 million by 2025–is
just like the American Dream (a big car, a big house
and McDonald’s Big Macs for all) then we need
another planet’. This was a question raised by one
of America’s most influential media figures, Thomas
Friedman. (Oriental Outlook, 2012)
Friedman was front and center of Chinese-
media discussion, and the link to Friedman is
hard to dismiss; the Chinese media have
continued to suggest one, albeit obliquely.
Using mediated discourse analysis, Wang
Jiayu (2016) discussed the difference between
media coverage of the Chinese Dream in the
United States (‘othering’ or judging Chinese
ideas with American eyes) and China (‘blind
to others’ or not paying attention to foreign
conceptions of the Chinese Dream), respec-
tively. Wang (2016) calls for the Chinese and
US media to reconcile cultural differences in
order to better understand one another’s
national narrative. Despite the apparent
differences pointed out by Wang, realizing
the ‘Chinese Dream’ of the great revival of
the Chinese nation has become the best
response to Friedman and Western critics.
Interpretation of the Dream
Since then, the rhetoric of the Chinese Dream
has developed beyond a stage when its origin
is of any consequence. The Chinese media,
along with scholars, have taken the phrase
and run with it. The ideology had proven
407
meritorious in almost every circle of Chinese
society; however, the message was vague and
lacked the support of tangible policy initia-
tives in its realization. What characteristic
changes, then, did Xi’s version of the Chinese
Dream entail? In July 2012, just before the
announcement of the official ‘Chinese
Dream’ ideology, the Wall Street Journal
(2017) examined the contemporary literature
on China, juxtaposing that from several years
earlier: the comparison indicated that the
middle-class aspirations, that ‘job security,
good health, educational opportunities for
their children, better housing–are universal’
of normal Chinese were slowly slipping
away. This observation came on the back of
the purge of Bo Xilai and several corruption
scandals that painted a venerable picture for
the CCP, thereby corrected through the Xi
administration and the new hopes of an
attainable ‘Chinese Dream’.
Interpretation of Xi’s conception was open
to debate, both from within and outside the
country. The examination of his remarks in
2012 exploded. International conferences
followed, such as ‘The Chinese Dream(s)’
in November 2014 in Denmark at Aalborg
University. The Journal of Chinese Political
Science dedicated a 2014 issue exclusively
to the Chinese Dream. Interpretations have
ranged from optimistic reform for citizen
rights and environmental protection to pessi-
mistic power plays by the CCP. In their piece
on media coverage of the Chinese dream,
Zhong and Zheng (2016) reinforce the CCP
economic, developmental and power girding
effect of the Chinese Dream narrative. They
also reinforce Wang’s (2016) concept that the
United States has largely upheld the ‘political
myth’ narrative that characterizes the slogan
as propaganda in support of one-party rule.
They point primarily to speeches in order
to show that while state interests and even
individual economic prosperity are central
themes ‘basic human rights and individual
interests such as freedom, equality, rule
of law, and democracy’ are not commonly
addressed (Zhong and Zhang, 2016).
408 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Fewsmith’s (2013) discussion of the 18th
Party Congress indicated early on that Xi
would be given a ‘relatively free hand’ over
the next few years, and he even alluded to
the relatively advanced age of the Politburo
Standing Committee, pointing to a potential
change in the succession process. The trend
of significant power turnover is ‘decennial’
in nature, Fewsmith argues, citing Deng from
2002 and the 18th CPC in 2012. His focus
on a trend away from institutionalization
through the appointment of Xi (balancing
power between political interests) rang true
at the 19th Party Congress. Although the
conception of Chinese governance was not
altered in the text of the Constitution, the rel-
egation of Mao thought to an era of past ‘val-
uable lessons’ and the inclusion of freedom,
equality, fairness, and rule by law into the
‘core values’ made way for a re-conception
of the Chinese Dream.
Landsberger (2015) writes about the
Chinese Dream from a historical perspective,
leading all the way back to the Mao era. He
defines not only the eras of pre- and post-
reform as an ‘inward’ vs. ‘outward’ perspec-
tive but also provides a new way of thinking,
concerning the origin of the current ‘Chinese
Dream’, which can hereafter incorporate
longstanding internal and external objectives
dating back to the Qing Dynasty. In this sense,
Landsberger (2015) is even able to redefine
the idea of ‘mengxian’ (dream) as it has been
altered throughout several regime changes.
Wang (2014) sympathizes with Landsberger,
by arguing that the Chinese Dream is actually
just an effort towards rejuvenation of Chinese
traditional power, stating that Chinese vic-
timization by the West has led to a collective
desire to regain a former glory.
The Chinese media’s interpretation was
similarly speculative as to the nature of
Xi’s Chinese Dream. This time, the deline-
ation was practical. What form would it take
and how could policy drive his remarks?
The speech by the Minister of the State
Council Information Office, Cai Mingzao, in
December 2013 indicated the embrace of the
Chinese Dream by the Chinese people, citing
‘more than 100 million’ articles related to the
topic. Turning next to a ‘mass line’ of educa-
tion activities, Cai then emphasized the impor-
tance of such efforts to educate bureaucrats on
the practice of good governance (Mingzhao,
2013). The Deputy Director of The Institute
for Strategic Studies at the National Defense
University, Meng Xiangqing (2013), takes
a singularly important stance on the PLA
when discussing the idea of the Chinese
Dream. He cites the need for a ‘force of quan-
tity’ to become a technologically competent
‘force of quality’ (Xiangqing, 2013). This is
one of the few analyses focusing on the mili-
tary aspect of the new Chinese ideal. David
Gosset (2013) suggested that the Chinese
dream was actually more concerned with
a ‘reinterpretation of (Chinese) traditional
notions’, emphasizing the meta-concept of
what it means to be Chinese. In this sense,
the dream was less about development or
economic goals, but rather a reinvigorated
national identity. Jusuf Wanandi (2013) and
Martin Khor (2013) highlighted the chal-
lenges ahead in order to achieve it. Both cite
a need for social equity, to allow the market
to play a ‘decisive’ role in setting prices, for
social reform (especially in the rural areas),
and for political reform in terms of an inde-
pendent judiciary and through tolerance for
NGOs.
The Chinese Dream Takes Shape
After exhaustive interpretation both in aca-
demia and the media, it was Xi’s propaganda
that gives us true insight as to the actual
meaning of his Dream. At the opening ses-
sion of the 12th National People’s Congress
(2013–2018), Xi made a speech that charac-
terized the Chinese spirit and core force as a
series of ‘persistent efforts’, ‘indomitable
will’ and ‘patriotism’ that required that the
nation ‘unite as one’ (Xinhua, 2018). His
first official act as chairman was the first
step: bring everyone in on the ownership of a
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
shared dream. Once it caught on, he was able
to shape the ideology through tireless dis-
semination rhetoric as it evolved to incorpo-
rate a diverse array of issues. Below are a
series of quotes (Ma, 2018), organized
chronologically, each attributing various
components of Chinese life to the Chinese
Dream:
November 2012 (Inclusive): ‘Achieving the rejuve-
nation of the Chinese nation has been the greatest
dream of the Chinese people since the advent of
modern times. This dream embodies the long cher-
ished hope of several generations of Chinese
people’.
December 2012 (Military): ‘To the military, the
dream is to make our forces strong. To achieve the
aim we must both enrich the country and build a
strong national defense and powerful military’.
May 2013 (Youth): ‘The Chinese Dream is com-
posed of the dream of every person, including that
of the youth … only by integrating individual
dreams to the national cause can one finally make
great achievements’.
July 2013 (Environment): ‘Ushering in a new era of
ecological progress and building a beautiful China
is an integral part of the Chinese Dream’.
October 2015 (International): ‘The Chinese Dream
is closely linked with the dreams of people in other
countries … China’s development is facilitated by
the development of the world, and it will bring
about greater impetus and opportunities for the
common progress of all countries’.
April 2016 (Belt and Road): ‘In proposing the Belt
and Road Initiative, we aim to carry forward the
spirit of the ancient Silk Road by combining the
dream of Chinese people with the of people living
in countries involved with the initiative’.
October 2017 (Party): ‘To deliver on the two cente-
nary goals, realize the Chinese Dream of national
rejuvenation, and steadily improve our people’s
lives, we must continue to pursue development as
the Party’s top priority in governance’.
The quotes above show the various dimen-
sions to which Xi has expanded the Chinese
Dream. By incorporating the gamut of
Chinese societal pressures, he is able to stage
a comprehensive shift from propaganda to
409
policy. His initial step was to get everyone on
board, which may explain his adoption of an
existing phrase coined by a foreign journal-
ist. Regardless of the origin, Xi repackaged
the phrase to positively resonate with
the Chinese people. Xi pledged ‘to realize
the great renewal of the Chinese nation is the
greatest dream for the Chinese nation in
modern history … History tells us that every-
body has one’s future and destiny closely
connected to those of the country and nation’
(Xinhua, 2012). Among the efforts to dis-
seminate propaganda concerning the Chinese
Dream, the interaction between the CCDI
(Central Commission for Discipline
Inspection) and Chinese Universities was
one of the most critical. The CCDI’s ‘rectifi-
cation reports’ citing low activity of party
committees at universities along with Xi’s
‘National meeting on political thought work
in universities’ meant to train ‘social succes-
sors’, show the extent to which Xi’s empha-
sis on ideology generally was reaching new
heights (CCDI, 2017; Ministry of Education,
2017; Xinhau, 2016). Already, Xi was build-
ing up a network of outlets for ideological
dissemination while bolstering the academic
community’s commitment to his Chinese
Dream. This method is nothing new, though,
as pointed out by Zhang Lifan, who reminds
us of the constant duality of capitalist fund-
ing and party control in Chinese universities
(Doyon, 2017; Zhang, 2016).
Alongside the universities, the Communist
Youth League (CYL) was also overhauled
in the years following Xi’s expression of the
Chinese Dream. This came in response not
only to corruption and over bureaucratiza-
tion reforms, but also as a reinvigoration of
a key tool in propaganda dissemination. The
reform agenda, aimed at ‘shrinkage at the top
and replenishment below’, resonated with the
theme of a Chinese Dream that was meant to
be shared by the entire populace, especially
in an organization that has its foundation
as a grassroots movement (CCDI, 2016;
Central CYL, 2016). In addition to educa-
tion and broad appeal, the Chinese Dream’s
410 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
connotation took on an international,
environmental, and military component.
Internationally, Xi conceives of the dream
of people in other countries. Later, the incor-
poration of the One Belt One Road (OBOR)
initiative broadens that scope and paves the
way for unlimited application of the ideology
in foreign policy. Mention of the environment
set a precedent for outcomes like those of the
Paris Accords, both with domestic and inter-
national ramifications. Although the military
aspect of his dream is not commonly touched
upon until the 19th National Party Congress,
the need ‘to make our forces strong’ shows
the foresight with which Xi was viewing
the geopolitical atmosphere, although this
addition may not necessarily signal conflict.
As the former President of China Institutes
of Contemporary International Relations,
Ji Zhiye (2017), discusses, China needs to
increase its hard power before it can imple-
ment a stronger effort towards soft power, as
has been the case for the United States. All
of these dimensions of the relentless propa-
ganda associated with the Chinese Dream led
to the 19th CPC Congress. Just before that in
2016, Xi became a ‘core’ (hexin) of the CCP,
indicating an elevated status.
FROM THE USAGE OF PROPAGANDA
TO THE FOUNDATION OF XI
JINPING’S IDEOLOGY
The 19th CPC Congress,
Xi Pivots to a New Era
It’s not until the 19th CCP Congress that we
begin to see parallels between Xi’s rhetoric
on the objectives of the Chinese Dream and
actual policy. The transition, however, was
remarkably clear. At the CCP Congress, Xi’s
burgeoning ideology, ‘Xi Jinping Thought on
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a
New Era’, was officially enshrined into the
Constitution (Xinhau, 2017). This both
returns the ideology of the party back to the
principles associated with the party’s begin-
ning while simultaneously strengthening
CCP rule. The addition of his name to the
Chinese Constitution alone indicates a rise in
Xi’s profile vis-a-vis his immediate prede-
cessors, Jiang and Hu. During the 19th
Congress, Xi called on all CPC members to
study the ‘spirit of the 19th CPC National
Congress’ and consider it as the ‘primary
political task’ moving forward. All members
were to ‘study CPC Congress spirit, and
adhere to and develop socialism with Chinese
characteristics for a new era’ (Xinhau, 2017).
By calling for a unified ‘spirit’ to guide the
implementation of every policy moving for-
ward, Xi is framing the future of China
within the context of the new era, with the
primary objective of realizing the Chinese
Dream (Xinhau, 2017).
The ‘New Era’ is meant to establish a
defining moment between the previous two
eras of contemporary China: Mao and post-
1976 reform. In July of 2017, Xi gave a
speech cementing these three stages as part
of the Chinese narrative by separating the
‘historic rise from standing up [1949–1976],
growing rich [1978–2012] to getting strong
[2012 onwards]’ (Holbig, 2017). Xi’s speech
included allusions to the need for a better life
for citizens and was praised by Study Times
(2017) as a ‘charismatic leader’ personally
responsible for the positive change in citi-
zens’ lives (Zhongwen, 2017). Scholars like
Feng (2015) set forth an analysis of values
and institutions alluded to by top members
of the CCP, calling the new governance style
a ‘socialist way of Chinese characteristics’
with an emphasis on some core values:
prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony,
freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, pat-
riotism, dedication, integrity, and friendship.
Nonetheless, it fails to realize that Xi’s com-
mitment to the Chinese dream had expanded
outside the bounds of economic develop-
ment and the rule of law. Instead, the ‘new
era’ was moving past the developmental
stage associated with the 1976 post-reform
time period.
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
Xi’s ideology cuts into the heart of the
‘principle contradiction’ of Chinese society
in his new era. Instead of simply focusing on
economic development or lowering its pro-
file, the Chinese government’s main prior-
ity is to address ‘unbalanced and inadequate
development and the people’s ever-growing
needs for a better life’ through ‘well-rounded
human development and all-round social pro-
gress’ (Jinping, 2017). European Council on
Foreign Relations’ writer Jean Mittletaedt
(2017) discusses the shift in the era to the
center of the ‘principle contradiction’ by cit-
ing leading Chinese scholars. The shift from
one era to the next, pivoting on the contra-
dictions in Chinese society, is necessarily
focused on a single ideological judgment
or persona, and becomes the justification
for nearly every major policy implementa-
tion (Wang, 2017; Xin, 2017). Therefore, by
the 19th CPC, Xi’s new ideology of a
Chinese dream was focused on the aspects of
Chinese society associated with the ‘new era’
of contradiction, specifically those that can-
not be rectified by wealth alone. Legal pro-
tection, social participation, access to quality
education, working rights, and even military
strength are outlined in Xi’s speeches at the
Congress, further indicating a desired shift
from quantity to quality implements.
Wang Xiaohui (2002), Vice Propaganda
Minister, along with other China scholars,
have emphasized the importance of Xi in
the formulation of the new era, and say that
without Xi, implementation of the Chinese
Dream would likely fail; his ideology has
become nearly synonymous with the con-
ception of modernized socialism in China
(Party Building Online Micro-Platform,
2017; Party Member, 2017; Xinhua, 2017;
Wang, 2017). The media coverage of Xi’s
new era is epitomized by a 2017 article in
Global Times that asks,
How to solve all kinds of major problems in the new
era? How to utilize China’s strength? How to make
the win-win principle transcend traditional geopoli-
tics among major powers? Xi Jinping Thought on
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New
411
Era will lead us to the answers … The unity of
China cannot be simply formed through institu-
tions. A powerful guiding principle will serve as the
basis for national unity. The inclusion of Xi Jinping
Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
for a New Era into the CPC Constitution paves the
way for the CPC to embark on a new journey. This
holds enormous significance for both the CPC and
the country. Xi Jinping Thought will make China
stand upright in the new era.
Underpinning all of the policy directions
promulgated by the 19th Congress of the
CPC is a common vein in striving for the
realization of the Chinese Dream, as written
in the 2017 CCDI work report: ‘With this,
they shall provide a strong underpinning for
China’s endeavor toward a decisive victory in
building a moderately prosperous society in
all respects and great success of socialism
with Chinese characteristics for a new era,
and contribute to realizing the Chinese Dream
of national rejuvenation’ (People’s Republic
of China, 2017). Similarly, the resolution on
the CPC Central Committee report empha-
sizes a ‘decisive victory in building a moder-
ately prosperous society in all respects, strive
for the great success of socialism with
Chinese characteristics for a new era, and
work tirelessly to realize the Chinese Dream
of national rejuvenation … and see that our
people realize their aspirations for a better
life’ (People’s Republic of China, 2017). All
of the language associated with the Chinese
Dream in the above two documents was
added to the constitutional amendment con-
cerning Xi Thought, further cementing the
conception of the dream to a political reality.
Xi’s Ideology Put into Action,
Propaganda to Policy
Having looked back on the accomplishments
of the last five years, especially the success in
massive cutbacks in government graft, a sus-
tained break-neck growth rate and effective
assertion of Chinese foreign policy abroad,
the party and Xi are forced to re-assess
their previously stated trajectory and design
412 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
policies which will address the inadequacies
brought on by an overemphasis on rapid
growth and political house cleaning. Xi’s
opening speech to the Congress gave some
indication towards ‘well rounded develop-
ment’ and a ‘moderately prosperous society
by: forestalling and defusing major risks, car-
rying out targeted poverty alleviation, and
preventing and controlling pollution’ (Holbig,
2017). This is a big signal to China strategists,
indicating the first ever intentional move by
Chinese leadership to pump the brakes on
Chinese economic growth, which could poten-
tially mean rebalancing economic disparities,
increasing the quality of development (over
quantity), and controlling pollution and envi-
ronmental degradation. The language of his
speech was drawn directly from the propa-
ganda on the Chinese Dream. This is no coin-
cidence. During the Congress, Xi’s speech
outlined the future for the party in a way that
was unique to his predecessors. Instead of
relaying another five-year plan, Xi expounded
on a 33-year plan to take place over several
milestones. The final milestone represented
the culmination of the Chinese Dream into a
‘great modern socialist country that is pros-
perous, strong, democratic, culturally
advanced, harmonious, and beautiful’ (Holbig,
2017). Xi’s subsequent report was especially
telling in the sections on national security and
foreign policy, as he mentioned a ‘dream of
building a powerful military’ (qiangjunmeng)
and a ‘community with a shared destiny for
mankind’ (renlei mingyun gongtongti)
(Holbig, 2017). These major deviations from
previous leadership are then tied specifically
to Xi, all utilizing the idea of a dream or des-
tiny to be fulfilled.
Unsurprisingly, Xi made no mention of a
previously stated pledge to double GDP by
2020. Although this may simply be due to
a shift towards quality development, Xi did
make additional projections beyond 2020
to the midpoint of the twenty-first century.
His new formulation will take place in two
stages: first, (2020–2035) emphasizing
‘basic development’ and perhaps indicating
that China itself doesn’t feel on par with
her first-world competitors; second, (2035–
2050) an advanced stage, possibly mov-
ing into service sectors and following the
prescribed pathways of development from
light and heavy industries and into service
provision. Additionally, Xi hinted at a num-
ber of other objectives by enumerating 14
points of focus that would dominate policy
over the next five years. Among them, there
is an increasing concern about the environ-
ment and livability, as well as a deepened
commitment to good governance through
oversight and inspection.1 In addition to
policy objectives, Xi reinforced the role of
the party and, by extension, himself in the
realization of the Chinese Dream. With the
party still growing and showing ever more
diversification, its appeal is stronger than
ever. In China, everything still centers on
the party and the strengthening of it as the
sole guiding arm of Chinese society. The
following objectives were rehashed dur-
ing the CPC in order to clarify its intent to
remain at the pentacle of political power, by
strengthening legitimacy and entrenching a
reliance on the one-party system for main-
taining stability:
Uphold and strengthen overall Party leadership
and ensure that the Party exercises effective self-
supervision and practices strict self-governance in
every respect;
Take strengthening the Party’s long-term govern-
ance capacity and its advanced nature and purity
as the main thrust, take enhancing the Party’s
political building as the overarching principle, take
holding dear the Party’s ideals, convictions, and
purpose as the underpinning, and take harnessing
the whole Party’s enthusiasm, initiative, and crea-
tivity as the focus of efforts;
Make all-round efforts to see the Party’s political
building enhanced, its theory strengthened, its
organizations consolidated, its conduct improved,
and its discipline enforced, with institution build-
ing incorporated into every aspect of Party
building;
Step up efforts to combat corruption and continue
to improve the efficacy of Party building; and
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
Build the Party into a vibrant Marxist governing
party that is always at the forefront of the times,
enjoys the wholehearted support of the people,
has the courage to reform itself, and is able to
withstand all tests (China Legal Information Center,
2018).
New education policies were also proposed,
meant to revitalize the Communist Youth
League and younger generation participation
in the party, especially associated with ‘Xi
Jinping Thought’ (Doyon, 2017). In addition,
Xi hinted towards expanding efforts to fur-
ther legitimize party rule through ‘consulta-
tive democracy’ and closeness to the
population it governs, citing documents
released during the final days of the
conference:
unity of Party leadership, the people running the
country, and law-based governance. This requires
us to strengthen institutional guarantees to ensure
the people run the country, give play to the impor-
tant role of socialist consultative democracy, and
advance law-based governance. We should
deepen reform of Party and government institu-
tions and the system of government administra-
tion, consolidate and develop the patriotic united
front, and consolidate and enhance political stabil-
ity, unity, and vitality. (International Department
Central Committee of CPC, 2017)
There is a fair amount of talk surrounding
‘issues that concern people the most’, ‘a
social governance model based on collabora-
tion and participation’, which could indicate
a more participatory, or at the very least, a
consultative relationship between the citizens
and government, stopping somewhere short
of democratization but making progress in
giving some semblance of political voice
(International Department Central Committee
of CPC, 2017). These changes in policy are
undeniably aligned with the rhetoric that
began in 2012 on the Chinese Dream. By
reframing the development path of Chinese
society into a ‘new era’, Xi has transformed
that rhetoric into policy solutions to a new
‘principal contradiction’ facing the CCP,
with Xi and the party as the undisputed
leadership.
413
CURRENT SITUATION AND
PREDICAMENT
Xi’s Leadership in Realizing the
Chinese Dream, Unchallenged
The 19th CPC fully personified the Chinese
Dream and solidified the nature of Xi’s ideol-
ogy, through a realistic outline of policy
implementation. By the end of 2017, signals
were clear that the Chinese Dream was
fueling Xi’s motives in every aspect of politi-
cal life, while also strengthening his position
at the helm. A new anti-corruption agency,
the Supervisory Commission, along with a
mandatory oath to the Constitution for all
government personnel (Xi also is the first to
take an oath to the Constitution upon re-
election), are signals that Xi has consolidated
his power with the CCP as a reliable justifica-
tion (Nadin, 2019). Political appointments at
the 19th Congress paved the way for the full
realization of Xi’s dream, especially Li
Zhanshu. Moreover, the provincial govern-
ments are even, now, participating in the
realization of the Chinese Dream (Zhiping
and Xiaoli, 2018). The 2018 National
People’s Congress officially negated any
expression of two term limits for a single
party chairman. Additionally, Xi’s strongest
ally in top leadership, Wang Qishan, was
appointed as vice president, while Li Keqiang
was further stripped of stature through Xi’s
power grab. If there was any question as to
the political stability of a Xi regime, it was
washed away after the first session of the 13th
National People’s Congress (Zheping, 2018).
Future Policy Areas, the Dream
Becoming Reality
The following sections delineate the future
direction of the Chinese Dream as represented
by recent events at the 13th National People’s
Congress and actions by top leadership. In
addition, recent media coverage on the Chinese
Dream helps to comprehend future impact.
414 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Foreign policy
Foreign policy is seen as being steady since
2012, with some scholars, like Feng
Zhongping and Huang Jing, iterating that
Chinese diplomatic policy may be adapting
to present circumstances. However, in the
context of policy centered around Xi and in
the pursuit of a Chinese Dream, it would
make sense that foreign meetings would be
more heavily focused on Xi’s personal deci-
sions. Meetings with US presidents Obama
and Trump in Mar-a-Lago and Sunnylands
in California are evidence of such (Waldron,
2017). This is especially important when
considering Xi’s direction towards a ‘new
type of great power relations’. Particularly
sensitive foreign policy issues like Taiwan
and North Korea are seen by most as areas
for potential conflict in the realization of a
Chinese Dream. However, some scholars,
like Wei Da, have placed importance on the
balancing of power between China and the
United States as an incremental and peace-
ful eventuality. Ultimately, the shift in
power could mirror that which took place
after WWII between the UK and the United
States, ultimately relying on constant inter-
action toward responsible and consistent
bilateral policy (Wei, 2017). Xi’s ideology
has also been compared to developed nations
in the West in the time of Trump and Brexit,
as a steady counterweight to anti-free trade
and green regulations. This gives legitimacy
to Xi’s term extension as a consistent lead-
ership by juxtaposition against foreign
political-regime change (Sautin, 2017).
‘Disorder in the West has become a major
source of global insecurity and instability
[and] the Western model now faces grave
challenges’, wrote Zhang Weiwei in the
official Communist Party journal, Qiushi.
‘In contrast is China’s good order’, he
added. ‘In just a few decades, China has
used the model the West refuses to recog-
nize to achieve its rapid rise’ (Kynge, 2018).
Foreign policy goals associated with Xi’s
ideology have even been extended to Chinese
overseas. Leading up to the first session of
the 13th NPC, Yu Zhengsheng called to
‘mobilize all the sons and daughters of (eth-
nic Chinese) to work together for the greater
national interests and the realization of the
Chinese Dream’ (Shih, 2018). In addition,
the Chinese Ambassador to South Africa
made a statement and emphasized the inter-
national objectives of the Chinese Dream –
vague though they are, he states that
Internationally, China will continue to firmly hold
high the banner of peace, development, coopera-
tion and win-win, follow the principle of planning
together, building together and sharing together,
join the efforts of the global community to pro-
mote the Belt and Road constructions, and work
together to pursue a new type of international
relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice,
and win-win cooperation and build a community
with shared future for mankind, making new and
greater contributions to a more fair and just inter-
national order and a more prosperous, stable and
beautiful world. (People’s Daily, 2018)
Education
In terms of education, the Xi ideology has
been widely embraced. By October 2017,
more than 20 universities in China had initi-
ated research institutes solely dedicated to
his ‘Thought on socialism with Chinese
characteristics’ (Financial Times, 2017).
The ‘Mid- to long-term plan for the develop-
ment of youth’, published in April 2017,
signifies a shift away from economic devel-
opment and healthcare back to ideological
training. By implementing this sort of
instructive propagandist strategy, Xi is able
to make more robust the facilities for control
at the disposal of the CCP (2017).
Educational attainment was brought into the
fold by a recent policy shift on citizenship.
An article in the New York Times (Friedman,
2012) brought the rural-area orphans of eco-
nomic migrants in China to light. The old
Hukou system, which restricts movement
(especially through a registration process
that affects education and social benefits),
needs reform in order to extend the Chinese
Dream to those throughout the entire
country.
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
Economics
Economically, Xi has outlined his reform
agenda quite clearly through the 19th
Congress into furthering supply-side struc-
tural reform. There is a wide range of issues
where China has room for improvement,
including upgrading traditionally low- to
middle-level industries and building infra-
structure that is conducive to green forms of
production and energy/resource conserva-
tion. Xi’s focus on quality improvements
indicates two things: first, Chinese economic
growth has reached maturity and will begin
to slow; second, China can be expected to
genuinely change its policy away from an
export-driven economy and begin to utilize
and develop its own domestic consumer
market. Xi aims to make China a country of
innovators, with a newly bolstered commit-
ment to education and innovation-inspiring
policy, which ranges from major science and
technology projects, through ventures among
private, public, and educational facilities, to
synergy in scientific application in the aero-
space, cyber, and transportation industries.
Pursuing a rural-vitalization strategy, Xi has
made a significant pledge to reform property
and contract rights meant to safeguard the
rights of rural people. Implementing the
coordinated regional-development strategy,
Xi rehashed an established policy of spread-
ing development evenly from the historically
wealthier coastal areas into the middle and
western regions of the country, occupied by
ethnic- and religious-minority groups. Xi has
promised to continue efforts in legitimizing
their residency of rural dwellers and migrant
workers in big cities, who have been denied
certain social benefits and even legitimate
work opportunities. In the midst of govern-
ment interventionist policy with his other
five points, Xi makes a contradictory pledge
to give power back to market forces and
break administrative monopolies in China
while simultaneously ‘strengthening’ the
state-owned sector, all in the name of elevat-
ing Chinese businesses to global dominance.
Finally, in the name of openness, Xi is
415
making moves toward free trade. In contrast
to US protectionist policies under Trump, Xi
has gone so far as to start opening up the
services sector for foreign business while
pledging to protect ‘legitimate’ rights and
interests of foreign investors (Xinhau, 2017;
Xinhau, 2017).
Some of these reforms have been met with
cynicism by Western media. For instance,
The Financial Times indicated that the mar-
ket reforms related to the Chinese Dream that
are meant to move away from state control
of major industries may actually be a façade.
These reforms, instead, may simply be forci-
bly shifting resources from declining indus-
tries into valuable, technological exports,
in order to meet the ‘Made in China 2025’
expectations. Xi’s team is also guiding con-
sumer behavior in China, to address qual-
ity vs. quantity outcomes (Xinhau, 2017).
In 2018, China will promote the healthy
development of online shopping and express
delivery services. Meanwhile, the country
will create integrated tourism demonstration
zones, and lower ticket prices at key state
tourist sites, according to the work report
(Xinhau, 2018). Further evidence of qual-
ity of life improvements have been met with
praise by some Western analysts as well:
Xi’s ‘Made in China 2025’ initiative calls for China
to be the global leader in key technologies, includ-
ing computing, robotics, artificial intelligence and
self-driving cars. Making China great again is thus
not just a matter of making it rich. Xi means to
make it powerful, make it proud and make the
party, as the primary driver for the entire venture,
once again the worthy vanguard of the people.
(Graham, 2017)
Military
During the 19th Congress, Xi’s tone shifted
towards prioritization of military strength and
modernization, with the aim to becoming a
‘world class force’ coupled with a desire to
‘develop strong and efficient joint operations’.
Xi and the Central Military Commission
ordered all members of the armed forces and
police, especially the higher-ranking officers,
416 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
to study the Congress outcome and docu-
ments. Media and academic actors are now
required to take part in the political education
of the military and police. The CMC plans to
send lecturers to major military installments to
assist in the formal education of its officers.
Furthermore, the CMC has officially imple-
mented a policy requiring that all military
personnel formally pledge their allegiance to
Xi as chairman of the CMC. Finally, follow-
ing the 19th Congress, Xi made visits to the
military leadership to exhibit the need for
combat readiness and the ability ‘to fight and
win wars’. Xi made these requests alongside a
push for further innovation in military tech-
nology and an emphasis on regional theatre
and joint operations-command systems
(International Department Central Committee
of CPC, 2017; International Department
Central Committee of CPC, 2017; Xinhau,
2017). All of the developments along the lines
of military improvements were mirrored at the
13th NPC when legislatures passed an 8%
increase in military budget to account for Xi’s
goals for military power.
Rule of law
During the second session of the 13th NPC,
a legislation plan was invoked to address Xi’s
goals regarding the rule of law and individu-
als’ rights, all associated with the Chinese
Dream. The plan addressed ‘legislative work
for 2019, which includes deliberating on the
Civil Code, formulating Amendment XI to
the Criminal Law and the real estate tax law,
and revising the Securities Law, among
others’, as well as ‘reforms on pilot free trade
zones, government review system, rural col-
lective land ownership, financial manage-
ment and the judicial system’ (Xinhau, 2018).
Major legislative items also included laws
related to
basic medical and health care, export control,
community correction, integrated military-civilian
development, guarantee for veterans, and admin-
istrative discipline; and revision of the Law on
Officers on Active Service, the Military Service Law,
the Law on the People’s Armed Police Force, the
Organic Law of the NPC, and the NPC procedural
rules. (Xinhau, 2019)
Alongside the developments Xi has planned
for individual protection, some aspects of
environmental policy were also addressed at
the 13th NPC, including the purification of
the Yangtze River.
Censorship
From a larger historical perspective, the Chinese
Dream may serve the dual purpose of simulta-
neously reorganizing the vision of Chinese
past, present, and future, while also consolidat-
ing party power ahead of major political and
economic reforms. This duality has on the one
hand given hope to those seeking individual
prosperity and increased freedoms, while on
the other hand necessitated an increase of cen-
sorship and oppression, all of which could
contradict what it means to be socialist or even
Chinese (Mahoney, 2014). The contradiction
associated with such a ‘duality’ may have over-
stepped the mark, especially when conceiving
of a broad audience of Chinese ‘dreamers’.
The implementation of censoring the
Chinese Dream has taken several forms,
including in the film industry, religious prac-
tices, and online censorship. For example, the
Shanghai Daily (2018) brought attention to a
State Council Information Office document
that depicted the Chinese Dream in terms of
religious freedom: ‘religious believers and
non-believers respect each other, and live in
harmony, committing themselves to reform
and opening-up and the socialist moderniza-
tion, and contribute to the realization of the
Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation’
(Shanghai Daily, 2018). Further, the Los
Angeles Times (2018) focused on the implica-
tions of the Chinese Dream on filmmaking.
A Chinese filmmaker with Hengdian World
Studios exposed the need to be sensitive to cer-
tain topics, even citing the need to cut a scene
from a recent film that needed to avoid show-
ing ‘people suffering’ (Kaiman, 2018). There
is a pre-determined list of subject-matter top-
ics that are out of bounds, including ‘Mao’s
 The Construction of the Chinese Dream
great famine of 1959-61; his calamitous
Cultural Revolution of 1966-76; skepticism
of Beijing’s historical claims to minority areas
such as Tibet and Xinjiang’ (Kaiman, 2018).
Maintaining consensus for Xi is paramount
and online sources are no exception, even in
special zones like Hong Kong and Macau. A
visit by Xi Jinping to Hong Kong in July 2017
extended the Chinese Dream across Shenzhen
and into the city. Xi’s visit indicated to rulers
in Hong Kong that, just as China is stepping
up censorship and control in pursuit of a con-
sensus on the future, they too must be vigilant
in the fight against independence activists and
critics of party rule (Kynge, 2018). Keywords
are unsurprisingly blocked by some state
search censors: ‘According to a list compiled
by China Digital Times, a California-based
website which monitors Chinese censorship.
“The emperor’s dream”, “the wheel of his-
tory” and “Dream of Returning to the Great
Qing (dynasty)” were among dozens of culled
phrases’ (China Digital Times, 2018). The
Wall Street Journal (2017) reports a new and
odd form of censorship regarding Chinese
Dream concerns over automated chatbots that
were commissioned by Tencent to chat on
certain subjects, based on online conversa-
tions. Interestingly, they began to repeat dis-
sent just before they were removed and sent to
‘reeducation camp’ for ‘improvements’ (Wall
Street Journal, 2017). Some of the ideas they
produced included things like ‘The Chinese
dream is a daydream and a nightmare’, and
the Chinese Dream was planning ‘to move to
America’ (Wall Street Journal, 2017).
CONCLUSION
Against the background of a much stronger
China, particularly vis-a-vis her neighbors,
the timing for the Chinese Dream has become
the cornerstone of the current political status
quo. Although China has risen to the status of
the second most powerful economy in the
world, there is still some development
417
necessary to surpass the United States. Zheng
(2014) groups China with her more powerful
neighbors (Japan, Russia, India) to assess
how realistically the Chinese Dream is being
realized. After considering government
effectiveness, economic confidence, direct
foreign-investment confidence, intentional
homicide, gender gap, international tourism,
and global competitiveness, he concludes
that China’s leaders have made significant
progress in comparison to China’s most
immediate neighbors (Zheng, 2014). For
now, the Chinese Dream is still a dream, but
the realization of that dream has been laid out
clearly by an unopposed Xi leadership.
Xi began by utilizing the concept of the
Chinese Dream as a perfect articulation of a
burgeoning sentiment in Chinese Society. Lu
(2015) uses public-opinion data to show that
the Chinese dream is somewhat an extension
of the feelings of the Chinese people, rather
than a top-down propaganda initiative with
three interlinked dimensions of a strong and
harmonious China where individuals may
prosper. Lu’s origin story, while compelling,
is as irrelevant as Friedman, who was dubbed
the original proponent of the term. The real
focus is how Xi has used it at an opportune
moment to frame public opinion. By adopt-
ing this new idea, Xi recognizes that the time
of rapid economic growth for China is over
and new aspirations of the Chinese people are
taking prominence. Once he was given the
wider public shared ownership of the dream
ideology, Xi began to expand the concept by
highlighting several facets with speeches and
propaganda through the mechanism of state
media. Now a clean environment, high-quality
development, and even military power have
become synonymous with dreaming the
Chinese way.
After promulgating the shared Chinese
Dream through propaganda and public opin-
ion on social issues, Xi reimagined a corner-
stone of Chinese political development known
as ‘principle contradictions’, to usher in a new
era of ideology to drive policy. The shift from
backwards development in the reform era to a
418 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
‘new era of socialism with Chinese character-
istics’ is meant to address the principle con-
tradiction currently facing Chinese society,
a better life for normal citizens. Xi’s success
in framing the object of Chinese struggle not
only justified his ideology as a policy driver
but also necessitated his continued leadership.
On the stage of the 19th CPC, Xi articulated
the future of development policies, all of which
resonated with specific components of his
Chinese Dream, especially in areas like green
policy, high-quality infrastructure construc-
tion, a significant boost in military spending,
and education policy, to bring the CCP back
into center stage. By 2017, Xi’s introduction
of the Chinese Dream in 2012 had come full
circle and matured into a comprehensive Xi
thought, now forever enshrined in the Chinese
Constitution. For five years, the propaganda
had drawn public support around a collective
destiny now attributed to Xi.
Now that the Chinese Dream has officially
evolved into the basis for Xi’s entire ideology,
the challenges to realize such high expec-
tations rest on Xi’s shoulders. With public
backing for new Xi-style goals related to eve-
ryday citizens and a quality life, he has begun
to solidify his leadership in the pursuit of
those objectives, this time through a 33-year
(as opposed to a 5-year) plan. By removing
political barriers in the form of term limits
and high-ranking political adversaries, Xi’s
ideology is guaranteed an unobstructed path
to implementation. New areas of focus reso-
nate with the Dream ideology and can be – or
will be – felt by every citizen once the plan
has matured. Ultimately, the realization of
such a vast dream may take time to imple-
ment; however, the process of reaching the
current stage of Chinese political governance
has certainly placed the CCP as the driver of
everything, with Xi firmly at the wheel.
Note
1  These 14 points are: ensure Party leadership over
all work; commit to a people-centered approach;
continue to comprehensively deepen reform;
adopt a new vision for development; see that the
people run the country; ensure every dimension of
governance is law-based; uphold core socialist val-
ues; ensure and improve living standards through
development; ensure harmony between human
and nature; pursue a holistic approach to national
security; uphold absolute Party leadership over the
people’s forces; uphold the principle of ‘one coun-
try, two systems’ and promote national reunifica-
tion; promote the building of a community with a
shared future for mankind; and exercise full and
rigorous governance over the Party.
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Darkness and Light: Media,
Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a con-
stant struggle – George Orwell.
THE SETTING
In propaganda management, the commission
and omission of words and images are weap-
ons of persuasion in war and peace. How
words and pictures are used or not used, and
in what manner they are presented or not
presented, makes a difference in the credibil-
ity, not the absolute truth, of the information.
The source of information beyond the words
used matters even more. Is the source trust-
worthy and if not, why? What if the source,
such as the nation-state of Japan, is otherwise
held in high regard as a trusted and reliable
ally of leading nations, is a cultural and soft
power superpower and the second most
wealthy industrialized free market democ-
racy? High regard or not, vexing policy
issues persist for this archipelago of East
Asia and the Japanese media’s ability to
25
Nancy Snow
cover these policy issues is even more vexing
when seen through the eyes of foreign jour-
nalists who cover Japan. Sometimes the
government attempts to try to explain a
policy position further exacerbate regional
tensions and perpetuate perceptions of intran-
sigence by a cultural powerhouse that then
builds more walls than bridges in globally
contentious matters. In this chapter, the
author highlights qualities of the Japanese
media and government propaganda environ-
ment that includes what foreign journalist
Karel van Wolferen (1989: 93)refers to as a
‘house-broken press’ that rarely takes on, or
critically analyzes, a socio-political system
dominated by a political party that digs in its
heels when facing a probing international or
domestic press. Imperial Japan’s posture
before and during World War II was to view
the press solely as an instrument of state
power and to integrate civil society into the
propaganda aims of the government and
military (Kushner, 2006). Postwar Japan uses
a form of friendly authoritarianism that
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
‘encourages each member of society to inter-
nalize and share the value system which
regards control and regimentation as natural,
and to accept the instructions and orders of
people in superordinate positions without
questioning’ (Sugimoto, 2010: 290-–1).
THE LETTER
On October 2, 2018, The Mayor of Osaka,
Japan, Hirofumi Yoshimura, sent a ten-page
letter to London Breed, Mayor of San
Francisco, United States, announcing that the
city of Osaka, after a 60 year citizen diplo-
macy tie,1 was terminating its sister city
relationship. The letter’s opening paragraph
was presented as a regretful pronouncement
as if a disappointed teacher had seen a good
student’s grades drop precipitously, requiring
an urgent note to be sent home to the child’s
parents:
Much to my regret, I must deliver an
unfortunate announcement. As you are
aware, the establishment of San Francisco
and Osaka’s sister city affiliation dates back
to October 7, 1957. Thereafter, the two cities
have developed genuine mutual understand-
ing and friendship fostered upon meaningful
exchanges across various fields, particularly
in business, education, and arts. In spite of
the prosperous relationship, I am afraid
to announce that the City of Osaka must
hereby terminate its sister city relationship
with the City and County of San Francisco.
The grounds to termination shall be detailed
as follows. I must sternly emphasize that
the Japanese Government holds a distinc-
tive standpoint on perceiving history, and
there is also disagreement among historians
when regarding the historical facts such as
the number of ‘comfort women’, the degree
to which the former Japanese Army was
involved, and the extent of the wartime harm.
Granted the aforementioned, it was solemnly
disappointing when the previous Mayor
of San Francisco personally finalized the
423
resolution on November 22, 2017, to accept
the Comfort Women Memorial and plaque as
a gift with provision of artwork maintenance
on public property as an expression of the
will of the City and County of San Francisco;
a memorial containing inscriptions that pre-
sent uncertain and one-sided claims as his-
torical facts.
The letter was released three years to
the day since the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors enacted a ‘Resolution Urging
the Establishment of a Memorial for
Comfort Women’ on October 2, 2015. Mayor
Yoshimura and Osaka’s previous mayor had
sought one – and only one – resolution on at
least seven previous occasions. That reso-
lution was to not establish a memorial for
comfort women in the city of San Francisco
with an inscription that singled out Japan. In
opposition to Osaka, San Francisco became
the first major international city to embrace
the comfort women cause for recognition,
remembrance, and reference to the modern
condition of women. In his letter that ended
the Sister City relationship, Mayor Yoshimura
framed history as one of unique perspective,
that Japan takes ‘a distinctive standpoint on
perceiving history’, and that Japan was being
unfairly targeted with charges of war atroci-
ties against women whose involuntary status
as sex slaves (‘comfort women’) has been
under question by some of Japan’s political
leaders, including the present prime minister.
Mayor Yoshimura defended Japan’s honor as
a country being singled out for engaging in
what he refers to in the October 2018 letter
as a ‘sex on the battlefield’ problem that was
common among Allied powers:
This problem was present during World
War II with the American, British, French,
German, and Soviet armies, as well as dur-
ing the Korean War and Vietnam War with
the South Korean Army. I have no inten-
tion to legitimize or defend the problem of
‘comfort women’ by the former Japanese
Army just because the other countries have
had the same issue. Still, attempts to sin-
gle out and criticize only Japan will make
424 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
us blind to other past atrocities and also to
contemporary problems of the same kind.
This issue should not be treated as an issue
specific solely to the Japanese military. As
long as widespread sexual problems on the
battlefields by countries other than Japan are
not openly recognized, past offenses, which
the whole world must face, will go uncor-
rected, and those violations in other parts of
the world will not be resolved. This is my
biggest concern.
What precipitated the mayor’s action was a
form of Japan-based integration propaganda
in response to the Japan-bashing agitprop by
Comfort Women activists including coalition
groups like the ‘Comfort Women’ Justice
Coalition (CWJC)2 who were able to obtain
the support of city and county governments
like San Francisco. What particularly piqued
the ire of the Osaka mayor was the represen-
tation of three different nationalities in the
statue, symbolizing a systemized Greater Asia
program of sexual enslavement during war-
time. It shows three young women standing
and holding hands, each representing China,
Korea and the Philippines, where many of
Japan’s comfort women originated. Looking
on is a statue in the likeness of the Korean
activist Kim Hak-sun who was a World War
II sexual slave (‘comfort woman’) in service
to the Japan Imperial Army.3 The statue is
accompanied by educational tools that teach
about the history of comfort women, and the
presence of multiple nationalities makes it
harder for Japan to single out its perennial
Comfort Women chiding state, South Korea,
a key US ally like Japan in a security alliance
‘vital to checking North Korea’s aggression,
and to balancing China’s power in East Asia’
(Fortin, 2017).
Yoshimura’s letter exposes adjunct griev-
ances that the Japanese government holds
with how its wartime image is portrayed
globally. He cites a widely adopted McGraw-
Hill world history textbook, Traditions &
Encounters: A Global Perspective on the
Past (Bentley et  al., 2015), now in its sixth
edition, that was openly criticized by Prime
Minister Abe in parliament for containing
what the government of Japan referred to
as factual errors, including one paragraph
in particular: ‘The Japanese Army forci-
bly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as
many as 200,000 women aged 14 to 20 to
serve in military brothels’ (Fackler, 2015).
This was not the first time the prime min-
ister raised an objection. In his first term as
Prime Minister (2006 to 2007), Abe told a
group of reporters in reference to comfort
women: ‘The fact is, there is no evidence to
prove there was coercion. We have to take it
from there’ (Tabuchi, 2007). Abe’s comment
was in response to a 2007 US congressional
resolution that called for Japan to ‘formally
acknowledge, apologize and accept historical
responsibility’ for using ‘comfort women’, a
Japanese euphemism for women who were
in fact forced to have sex with Japanese sol-
diers throughout Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.
Likewise, Abe boasted to the Asahi Shimbun
about his successful action to circumvent
critical commentary that was part of a 2001
NHK documentary about the comfort women
(Laurence, 2005; Kingston, 2017). Abe has
been supported by sympathetic revisionary
university professors who take umbrage with
Japan being painted in a bad light or singled
out for any wartime wrongdoings. Academic
supporters such as Tsutomu Nishioka of
Tokyo Christian University have questioned
the sexual enslavement category. In his 108
page report, ‘Behind the Comfort Women
Controversy: How Lies Became Truth’, spon-
sored by the Society for the Dissemination of
Historical Fact, Professor Nishioka refers to
comfort women as ‘prostitutes who provided
sex services to Japanese military personnel
prior to and during World War II’ (Nishioka,
2007).
Korean-American and other activists, along
with former comfort women, lobbied the San
Francisco government to place a Comfort
Women memorial at St. Mary’s Square in
the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Mayor Breed released a press statement that
placed the memorial in the foreground of the
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
#MeToo movement and the exploitation of
women worldwide:
The San Francisco Comfort Woman Memorial is a
symbol of the struggle faced by all women who
have been, and are currently, forced to endure the
horrors of enslavement and sex trafficking. These
victims deserve our respect and this memorial
reminds us all of events and lessons we must never
forget. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/04/us/san-
francisco-sister-city-comfort-women-trnd/index.
html
The former president of the San Francisco Board of
Supervisors succeeded Mayor Edwin Lee following
his sudden death by heart attack in December
2017. The Chinese-American Lee had by then
spent well over two years in contact with Mayor
Yoshimura in dispute over the comfort women
memorial. Yoshimura’s letter to Lee (2015) said
that falsehoods in the memorial inscription would
be carried widely by the mass media and, as a
result, many people would accept ‘this uncon-
firmed, one-sided view as historical truth…. this
problem must not be trivialized as an exceptional
case that only involves Japan’.4
At the time of his death, Edwin Lee was
praised as the quintessential ‘Left Coast’
liberal and pro-underdog leader (Weiss
and Bacon, 2017) in the port city known
worldwide as the birthplace of America’s
Counterculture of the 1960s. Lee was a
civil rights lawyer and community organ-
izer whose family had immigrated to the
United States from China and had lived in
public housing as a child. An up-by-the-
bootstraps success story, he later graduated
from the University of California, Berkeley
law school. It was Lee who had presided
over the installation of the comfort women
memorial on September 22, 2017, at which
time Mayor Yoshimura said that the city
of Osaka would be severing its relation-
ship with San Francisco in the future. The
statue, called ‘Column of Strength’, received
approval as an art installation by the Board
of Supervisors (Jones, 2017). The vote was
unanimously in favor of the political art piece
that indicted the behavior of the Japanese
Imperial Army over a 15-year period across
the Asia-Pacific, as noted by the following
425
inscription that was placed later at the base
of the memorial:
This monument bears witness to the suffering of
hundreds of thousands of women and girls,
euphemistically called Comfort Women, who were
sexually enslaved by the Japanese Imperial Armed
Forces in thirteen Asia-Pacific countries from 1931
to 1945. Most of these women died during their
wartime capacity. This dark history was hidden for
decades until the 1990s when the survivors coura-
geously broke their silence. They helped move the
world to declare that sexual violence as a strategy
of war is a crime against humanity for which gov-
ernments must be held accountable.
Japan’s media propaganda strategic approach
to the comfort women issue uses several tac-
tics, the most obvious being: (1) ‘We weren’t
the only ones’ and (2) ‘We resolved the prob-
lem’. But in the information war, the original
sin in this case, from which all other trans-
gressions follow, was the sin of omission. It
took the Government of Japan nearly 50 years
to acknowledge the existence of these women.
On August 4, 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary
Yohei Kono, the father of the current for-
eign minister Taro Kono, confirmed that the
Japanese Imperial Army had forced women,
referred to by the Japanese as comfort women,
to work in military-run brothels during World
War II. The key point of the Kono statement
is force. Subsequent administrations, particu-
larly the Abe administration, have proffered
the possibility that most, if not all, of these
women were not forced but were, in fact, will-
ing prostitutes. This ambiguous responsibility
injects life into the comfort woman cause that
has continued well into the 21st century. The
more Japan complains that it is being singled
out unfairly, the more attention it draws to the
activism around the issue. As the author points
out in The Japan Times:
Comfort women is an internet meme as much as a
horrible episode in history. If one wants to use a
short-circuit version of information war attacking,
Google these two words and see who comes out
the victor in the rhetorical battle. It’s not Japan.
Why? Because people in power, like Osaka’s mayor,
continue to use self-defeating persuasion tactics to
suppress debate and dialogue. (Snow, 2017)
426 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Why is it so difficult to have public debate on
policy issues that foment dissent and opposi-
tion globally and thereby impair Japan’s image
and reputation? Because there is no platform
in public life or the media with which the peo-
ple can engage, debate, or discuss matters of
importance. Japanese media cover politicians
all the time, especially the comings and goings
of the prime minister and his senior cabinet by
press club members (kisha kurabu) who have
gentlemen’s agreements about what to say
and what to omit. But the most controversial
policy debates do not involve the public. If the
prime minister and The Diet (Japanese parlia-
ment) want to pass some controversial legisla-
tion like approving overseas combat missions
in violation of the pacifist clause known as
Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution, it is
often under the cloak of darkness in a middle-
of-the-night vote, out of the light of public
view (Soble, 2015). Then, in the morning, the
people wake up to new realities having had
no say in the change. Japanese people do not
have a system of pluralism whereby diverse
political parties have the creative imagination
or ability to work out varying priorities such
as an alternative system that would prioritize
the public good over growth and econom-
ics – i.e., ‘GNPism’. The economics ueber
alles mantra lost its luster altogether after the
Japan Inc. bust of the 1990s, but it maintains
its lifeline through media-friendly buzz terms
like Abenomics and Womenomics (Oda and
Reynolds, 2018), neither of which can over-
come Japan’s declining and aging population,
inflation, or labor shortage. The real growth
has been in a form of managed democracy and
inverted totalitarianism, modeled along the
lines of its political and security benefactor,
the United States (Wollin, 2008), where state
power projects upwards to the antithesis of
constitutional power. In the Japanese version,
the populace remains in a vegetative state of
political apathy with the only political expec-
tation to vote – but even voting patterns have
started to decline because there is little differ-
ence among politicians or political parties and
therefore little to vote for.
JAPAN’S SOFT POWER STRATEGY
What the Japanese people continue to hang on
to in international reputation and status is first
and foremost, culture. Japanese culture is not
just soft power. It is power. The Soft Power 30
Report (McClory, 2018) ranks Japan fifth
among the world’s top 30 and the very top
Asian country in terms of soft power attrac-
tiveness. As Jonathan Soble (2015: 74) of the
Asia Pacific Initiative observes in the report:
‘Wealth, technology, cultural cachet — Japan
is blessed with an abundance of soft power
assets. And it is fortunate to have them: with a
constitution that forbids it from waging war,
Japan cannot rely on military might to advance
its interests the way some of its allies and
rivals can’. In reality, Japan boasts one of the
top ten militaries in the world but its abolition
of war clause in the Japanese Constitution
projects a global image of pacifism and no
standing army. Japan’s projected strength is
not hard power through a military but soft
power through culture. Cultural soft power is
a non-threatening approach that plays to its
public reputation strengths: a nice and beauti-
ful country that maintains its traditions and
offers modern technologies, is safe, clean, and
efficient with ample public transportation.
One can go from a high-rise, five-star hotel to
a remote centuries-old Japanese inn (ryokan).
But, as we can see in the example of the com-
fort women issue, culture can be an Achilles
heel in a global information context. It can
become the all-encompassing explainer for
why the Japanese are different or do not
deserve outside criticism that might upset
their inside harmony. Wareware Nihonjin
(‘We Japanese’) perceive history distinctly. As
Karel van Wolferen (1989) revealed in his
seminal study, The Enigma of Japanese
Power, and Alex Kerr added in Dogs and
Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan
(2001), Japan is in the world but not of it. This
distinction to brand its uniqueness is inten-
tional, and this explains why tourists are
flocking to the country with the weakened yen
and relaxed visa regulations. People want to
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
see firsthand what makes Japan so different
from the rest of the world. Japan, in turn,
plays on the mythos of uniqueness. Hugh
Cortazzi (2015), who served as Japan’s British
Ambassador in the 1980s, observed:
It is equally difficult for non-Japanese to under-
stand how intelligent and educated individuals
can propagate the concept of Japanese unique-
ness as propounded by the ‘Nihonjinron’5 theo-
rists. Japan is no more unique than any other
country. There are over 120 million Japanese
individuals, all different, and most generalizations
about Japan and Japanese characteristics are at
best approximations.
What Ambassador Cortazzi is describing as
difficult for non-Japanese to believe is not at
all difficult for Japanese to believe because
it is a mythos that serves the running of the
country quite well. It could be seen as the
Japanese equivalent of the American diver-
sity ethos; it is the myth of the melting pot in
America and the myth of the ‘100 million as
one’ myth in Japan.
That Japan is an enigma feeds an indus-
try of one-way communication where the
world has much more to learn about Japan
than Japan needs to understand the world. A
Japanese exceptionalism (Nihonjinron) myth
perpetuates, but it is not the style of American
Exceptionalism, which is more political.
Japan’s ‘otherness’ is more cultural and his-
torical, nourished largely by the Japanese
themselves who perpetuate exceptionality to
the rest of Asia and who are dichotomously
in awe of the West, particularly the United
States, but do not want to be seen as part of
the West or the world. Author Peter N. Dale,
a rare critic of the Nihonjinron literature,
(The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness) places
Nihonjinron exceptionalism in the context of
political conformity and nationalism. It is a
mythos for political advantage:
First, they implicitly assume that the Japanese con-
stitute a culturally and socially homogeneous racial
entity, whose essence is virtually unchanged from
prehistoric times down to the present day. Secondly,
they presuppose that the Japanese differ radically
from all other known peoples. Thirdly, they are
427
conspicuously nationalistic, displaying a conceptual
and procedural hostility to any mode of analysis
which might be seen to derive from external, non-
Japanese sources. In a general sense then, nihonjin-
ron may be defined as works of cultural nationalism
concerned with ostensible ‘uniqueness’ of Japan in
any aspect, and which are hostile to both individual
experience and the notion of internal socio-
historical diversity. Because of this common cur-
rency toward uniqueness, it’s rare that you will hear
any discussion in Japan about an East Asian or
Northeast Asian identity. The Japanese do not iden-
tify with the Koreans or the Chinese, despite having
much in common. As Jean-Pierre Lehman writes in
The Globalist: On the surface, the Northeast Asian
trio should have everything going for close union.
China, Japan and Korea are each other’s major
trade and investment partners and their economies
are highly interdependent. Furthermore, they share
a common culture. All three are Confucianist socie-
ties for which the most prized value is ‘harmony’.
Chinese, Japanese and Koreans not only have sig-
nificant common interests, they should also be able
to understand each other on the basis of a
common cultural wavelength.
Japan’s cultural straightjackets binds it to a
fixed and often defensive position: ‘You just
don’t understand us’ or ‘You will never under-
stand us’. If one reads the entirety of Mayor
Yoshimura’s letter to San Francisco Mayor
London Breed, one can draw the conclusion
that San Francisco’s error of judgment in plac-
ing the comfort woman memorial is because
of its lack of understanding the Japan posi-
tion. There seems to be no room for facts that
challenge perceptions of ‘distinctive’ history.
Alex Kerr (2001: 104), who has lived and
worked in Japan for over 40 years, observes:
‘Traditionally, in Japan, ‘truth has never been
sacrosanct, nor do ‘facts’ need to be real, and
here we run against one of the great cultural
divides between East and West’. That cul-
tural division is to value the ideal above the
real. From day-to-day, office-based commu-
nication to far afield diplomatic discourse,
Japanese people uphold the tatemae (official
stated position) over the honne (real or pri-
vate intent) in pursuit of social harmony. The
tatemae is what pulls people to consider visit-
ing Japan; it is what gives Japan the flavor of
being like no other place in the world. Much
428 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
communication takes place nonverbally and
with reserve, in the proverbial manner of ‘the
nail that sticks out must be hammered down’.
People give up their individual opinion or
stated position in exchange for things run-
ning smoothly. You will not find the Japanese
public expressing any views on the com-
fort women memorial statue or the comfort
women movement. Too much honne is like a
white slip showing beneath a black dress. It
is out of place.
Too much tatemae is worrisome when
applied to political communication. As Kerr
(2001: 106) explains: ‘Tatemae is a charm-
ing attitude when it means that everyone
should look the other way at a guest’s faux
pas in the tearoom; it has dangerous and
unpredictable results when applied to corpo-
rate balance sheets, drug testing and nuclear
power safety results’. Consider the tatemae
in overdrive by TEPCO that took five years
to admit to covering up the seriousness of
the Fukushima-Daichi Nuclear Power Plant
disaster associated with the Earthquake on
March 11, 2011 or the years-long tatemae
of the Tokyo-based Takata Corporation that
had to pay a total of $1 billion in criminal
penalties in the United States following the
company’s misconduct in revelations about
its defective airbag inflators (Department
of Justice, U.S., 2017). A longtime critique
of Japan, Debito Arudo (2011) explains the
delays and foot-dragging surrounding the
truth of Fukushima-Daichi radiation:
What is considered the most untrustworthy of
professions? Politics, of course. Because politicians
are seen as personalities who, for their own sur-
vival, appeal to people by saying what they want to
hear, regardless of their own true feelings. That is
precisely what tatemae does to Japanese society. It
makes everyone into a politician, changing the
truth to suit their audience, garner support or
deflect criticism and responsibility…Post-Fukushima
Japan must realize that public acceptance of lying
got us into this radioactive mess in the first place.
Japan’s closest relation internationally is the
United States, but this is not a partnership of
equals. Japan is the dependent to the patron in
an ill-defined ‘special relationship’. What this
dependency provides is a US shield against
Japan asserting a separate political or security
narrative in international relations. The shield
is not just one of military and diplomatic pro-
tection, but also a suppression of points of
view that challenge the special relationship.
The defenders of Japan and the Japan-US
relationship are known aptly as ‘Japan
Hands’, exemplified by soft power guru and
Harvard dean and professor emeritus Joseph
Nye and Richard Armitage, author of three
high-profile briefs on US-Japan relations. The
latest, More Important than Ever: Renewing
the U.S.-Japan Alliance for the 21st Century
(Nye and Armitage, 2018), calls for Japan
to increase its military spending and expand
military bases to accommodate threatening
neighbors like China and North Korea. The
proposed collective defensive posture, a com-
bined joint task force for the Western Pacific,
is currently prohibited in Japan’s peace con-
stitution but is needed to counter China’s
maritime advances (Sonoda, 2018).
Historian and former diplomat Ivan P. Hall
(1987, 1997) describes the system as a mind
cartel:
Unlike the flow of ideas between the US and
Europe, the Japan-US discourse is determined
largely by a small group of Japanese and American
experts on each other’s countries who have
bridged the great linguistic and cultural gap.
Ostensibly dedicated to mutual friendship, this
narrow channel of scholars, journalists, and diplo-
mats serves increasingly to skew the dialogue in
Japan’s favor. It does this through cultural excuses
and other special pleading; by fending off critical
analyses; by glossing over sensitive issues in Japan;
by assuming adequate Japanese knowledge of the
US, and by failing to protest Japan’s restrictions on
foreign academics and journalists.
The United States can take more of the
global public opinion’s opposition to its
military interventions and culture of vio-
lence, while Japan stands above the fray
as the nation-state of peace and a culture
superpower (Watanabe and McConnell,
2008; Watanabe, 2013). In lieu of political
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
and security leadership internationally, what
strategic narrative does Japan have in its
toolbox? The University of Tokyo interna-
tional security professor, Chiyuki Aoi, whose
background includes working on behalf of
Japan at the United Nations, says that Japan’s
strategic communication relies heavily on
‘messaging via deeds’ and the Abe adminis-
tration’s slogan of the nation-state as a ‘pro-
active contributor to peace’ that is ready to
‘embrace a more active role in international
security’ (Aoi, 2017).
JAPAN’S MEDIA SLIP IS SHOWING
Japan’s media system acts like a housebro-
ken pet in subservience to the man of the
house, in this case, the emboldened and
much more media-savvy, second term Shinzo
Abe administration. At first blush, the
Japanese media appear free and independent
from state intervention. Upon closer inspec-
tion, Japan’s press continues to slide down
global indices of media freedom. In 2018,
Reporters Without Borders ranked Japan 67
out of 180 countries based on journalists’
complaints that there has been a ‘climate of
mistrust toward them ever since Shinzo Abe
became prime minister again in 2012’.6
Adding to the drop is an ill-defined and jour-
nalistically unpopular state secrets law that
the press watchdog referred to as ‘draconian’
in 2015 (Sekiguchi, 2015). The State Secrets
Law took effect two years into Abe’s second
term. It gives power to the Japanese govern-
ment to jail any person who violates broadly
defined state secrets to up to ten years in jail.
Japan’s press ranking improved slightly from
72 in 2016 and 2017, but it is still a double
digit drop from 53 when Abe took office for
a second time.
The newly rebranded NHK World-Japan
(from NHK World),7 dubbed ‘Japan to the
world’, is the international broadcasting ser-
vice of NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai – Japan
Broadcasting Corporation). Its target audience
429
is global, operating much like the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in financing
and intent. It employs 10,300 in 54 domestic
stations and 30 overseas offices with an operat-
ing budget of 716.8 Billion Yen, 98 percent of
which comes from receiver fees. NHK World-
Japan cannot withstand state power entangle-
ment. The sin, as noted, is one of omission,
which is harder to track than commission. It
is also knowing who to invite or not to speak
on its network. In its corporate profile litera-
ture, NHK highlights six core public values
that reinforce NHK’s profile as Japan’s pub-
lic diplomacy broadcaster: (1) Provide accu-
rate, fair, impartial information; (2) Promote
safety and security; (3) Create high-quality
cultural experiences; (4) Contribute to local
communities; (5) Strengthen Japan’s global
connections; and (6) Contribute to education
and public welfare.8 For anyone who studies
the structure and content of this international
broadcasting organization, its core values are
subject more to the political leadership than
to the tastes of the public. As Krauss (2017:
69) observes:
NHK and the state are less two creatures eyeing
each other warily, occasionally coming into con-
flict – as the ‘watchdog’ metaphor of the demo-
cratic press would have it – than two octopi,
constantly locked in a multi-tentacle embrace
jockeying with each other, but in which the state/
LDP is the larger and more powerful of the two
and usually prevails.
Despite its high media profile in Japan and
regional recognition in Asia, NHK has nei-
ther the global visibility nor global credibil-
ity of the BBC on which NHK is modeled. It
is known for its aseptic newscasts bereft of
interpretive- or opinion-driven commentary.
Bland is its news brand. This style is condu-
cive to an organization that has been under
the watchful eyes of its government overseers
from one party that has ruled Japan, with few
exceptions, since 1955. In contrast, the Boston-
based Reputation Institute ranks the BBC, on
which NHK is modeled, among the Top 50
global brands with the best reputation in the
430 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
world and the top for news. BBC ‘continues
to be seen as the most trusted and objective
international news provider’9 and leads the
world in global breaking news. The BBC
is the world’s most popular news source on
Twitter.10 Domestically, NHK, as part of the
media establishment, maintains a declin-
ing reputation among the Japanese people,
despite it being at one time the most trusted
institution in Japanese society.11 As pointed
out by Edelman Japan’s CEO Ross Rowbury
(2018), the Edelman Trust Barometer shows
that in Japan only one out of three Japanese
in the general public has trust in media (32
percent), with just a slight tilt in trust in gov-
ernment (37 percent).
Despite the declining trust overall in social
institutions, NHK World-Japan, along with
the Abe administration, are part of the face
and nation brand image of Japan in the world,
specifically with regards to the 2020 Summer
Olympics and Summer Paralympics. NHK,
along with the prime minister, are attracting
the attention of the global publics and media
more than Japan has experienced since the
economic bubble years of the last century.
This media spotlight and public attention
on Japan is carrying with it questions about
the country’s declining press freedom rank-
ing that places Japan last among the Group
of Seven industrialized nations. A chorus of
international observers such as Reporters
Without Borders, think tanks like the
German-based Bertelsmann Stiftung (Pascha
and Köllner, 2018), and a 2017 report by
United Nations Special Rapporteur David
Kaye on the promotion and protection of the
right to freedom of opinion and expression in
Japan (Kaye, 2017) agree that Japan’s media
system is weakening and concentrating as
the LDP Party under Abe grows in strength.
The Bertelsmann Japan Report (Pascha and
Köllner, 2018: 24–25) notes that Japan’s
media structure is oligopolistic, consisting
of five conglomerates (Asahi, Fuji Sankei,
Mainichi, Yomiuri, and Nihon Keizai Group)
that control the leading national newspa-
pers and the major TV networks. The sole
public broadcaster NHK ‘rarely criticizes
the status quo to any significant degree’, and
Japan’s media system ‘does not capture the
pluralism of opinions in Japan’. The major
dailies do not expose scandals and investiga-
tive ‘gotcha’ journalism occurs more in the
weekly or monthly tabloid periodicals that
operate outside the press club system. Their
exposés, including those that alleged a shady
land deal and charges of a coverup by the
Prime Minister and Mrs. Abe, blew over in
time (Fifield, 2017). The foreign press pro-
vides more pressure, and since 3/11 is raising
concerns about its ability to do its job prop-
erly against a more assertive LDP-led coali-
tion that is countering critical reporting.
THE OPEN LETTER
As the author first accounted in Japan’s
Information War (Snow, 2016a), much criti-
cism of the Abe administration is coming
from the Western press, particularly reporters
from Europe and the United States who
reside in Japan. A shot across the bow came
from Carsten Germis (2015), foreign corre-
spondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, who exposed how he was treated
differently by the Democratic Party of Japan
and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of
Abe: ‘The country I’m leaving is different
from the one I arrived in back in January
2010’. Germis (2015) published his sayonara
piece in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of
Japan journal, Number 1 Shimbun. The FCCJ
is noteworthy for having been black-listed by
the second Abe administration. The title of
the article commanded attention with a title
related to the often unspoken relationship
dynamic between the state and media:
‘Confessions of a foreign correspondent after
a half-decade of reporting from Tokyo to his
German readers’. It reached well beyond his
German readers. It was a shot across the bow
to warn global publics about Japanese gov-
ernment intervention of the free press (and
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
by government in Japan we usually mean the
LDP and its party head, Shinzo Abe). The
article was forwarded widely on social media
and translated into Japanese because its
source was credible. He is no wild-eyed soul
who regularly harangues the powers that be.
He writes for the German daily, Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, a politically conserva-
tive and economically liberal (pro-capitalis-
tic) newspaper like the Wall Street Journal.
He is also not accused of being an ‘FOB’
(Fresh Off the Boat), a name-calling device
used in Japan to cut off anyone with whom
you disagree in general or to silence someone
who is considered particularly ignorant about
Japanese ways and norms. The open letter
from Germis (2015) reads like a rallying cry
for Japan’s media slippage:
There is a growing gap between the perceptions of
the Japanese elites and what is reported in the
foreign media, and I worry that it could become a
problem for journalists working here…there is a
clear shift that is taking place under the leadership
of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – a move by the right
to whitewash history. It could become a problem
because Japan’s new elites have a hard time deal-
ing with opposing views or criticism, which is very
likely to continue in the foreign media.
What allowed Carsten Germis to write such
a critical piece with less risk was because he
was leaving Japan. He would not have writ-
ten such words if he had been trying to gain
entry as a foreign correspondent to Japan.
He wrote about what he had experienced:
a downturn in openness, a closing instead
of an opening at a time when Japan is try-
ing very hard to present itself as open and
ready for the world to come visit. His expe-
rience with the Democratic Party of Japan
cast a contrast to the Liberal Democratic
Party of Japan under Shinzo Abe. Whereas
all three DPJ administrations (2010–2012)
were open to explaining their positions to
the foreign press, Germis critiqued Abe’s
LDP and its suspicious stance as well as its
defensiveness against any press criticism,
particularly around the administration’s revi-
sionist wartime history views that receive a
431
lot of drubbing in the foreign media. This
lack of press access corresponds with a new
government-led social media outreach plat-
form on Facebook and Twitter (Abe 2.0) to
reflect a perception of more outreach on the
part of the second administration of Abe
that began in December 2012. The govern-
ment of Japan’s message is to appear more
transparent, but in its press handlings, it
is coming across as smoke and mirrors.
Official communication efforts in Japan are
predominantly one-way and centrally con-
trolled. Outliers, that is anyone who is doing
investigative reporting or asking too many
questions, should not participate, and if they
do, they will be under greater scrutiny and
pushback.
Carsten Germis was pained to have to
reveal that the country he knew a few years
ago was no more. What he described in his
article was a country whose current political
leadership is more than just hypersensitive to
press criticism – all governments react nega-
tively to negative coverage – and so that is
to be expected. What got wide attention was
his description of the amateurish behavior of
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in trying to
intimidate and discredit Germis through ad
hominem attacks, the main charge being that
he was in the pocket of China. Germis writes,
‘After the appearance of an article I had
written that was critical of the Abe admin-
istration’s historical revisionism, the paper’s
senior foreign policy editor was visited by
the Japanese consul general of Frankfurt,
who passed on objections from ‘Tokyo’. The
Chinese, he complained, had used it for anti-
Japanese propaganda’. If this is an example
of the government’s beefed-up global public
relations, then Japan should have cause to
worry. One might imagine that the Japanese
consul general in Frankfurt has better things
to do than worry about Chinese reprints. This
astonishing anecdote reveals a core public
health problem. Asian studies scholar Jeff
Kingston highlights three chronic conditions
of Japan’s malodorous communication ‘ill-
ness’ that lead to a repeat misdiagnosis of
432 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
ramping up government paranoia and foreign
press intimidation:
The intolerance towards criticism is based on the
erroneous belief that all criticism of Japanese gov-
ernment actions equals anti-Japanese sentiment.
There is also a presumption that journalists are
‘guests’ who should be polite to their hosts while
scholars who take Japanese research money also
risk being labeled traitors if they express critical
views. In 21st century Japan, there is far too much
official paranoia that all criticism of Japan is aiding
and abetting China and Korea.
It is not just foreign reporters that are being
singled out. Japanese scholars in Japan are
subjected to government pushback. Professor
Koichi Nakano, who holds a Ph.D. in politi-
cal science from Princeton University, is one
of the most cited academics on Japan’s poli-
tics but has fallen victim to a smear campaign
to discredit him for being reliably critical of
the Abe government. Germis, among other
foreign reporters, was told by press relations
officials in the Abe administration not to use
Nakano as a credible expert source (Takeda,
2015). Japan maintains its status as a free
press country, but it cannot be held up as any
gold standard. Its sheer media market size
may be part of the problem since it allows
Japan to continue to cater to its own way of
doing things. In a Dentsu Public Relations
publication, Communicating: A Guide to PR
in Japan (Takagi, 2014/2015), the credibil-
ity of the Japanese mainstream daily news
media is not put to question, but is explained
to Western observers as uniquely Japanese:
The media organizations generally – and the major
dailies specifically – view themselves as intimately
intertwined with Japanese culture and society.
They seem themselves as bastions against cultural
decay and as beacons of light for all that is special
and sacred about Japan. Indeed, in their determi-
nation to champion the national good, the
Japanese media are at odds with Western counter-
parts that see their role more clearly as independ-
ent arbiters and defenders of free speech.
Takashi Inoue (2018), the CEO of Japan’s
oldest private public relations firm, explains
why Japan’s global public communications
lags behind other countries. The country’s
homogeneity and its Confucianism philoso-
phy has impacted Japan’s storytelling, mes-
saging, and relations with the world. Japan
‘developed a unique, high-context form of
communications’, that is not useful on the
global stage. The Confucian way of thinking
‘requires strict superior-subordinate relations
and reticence’ which is not the global way of
communicating. While the Japanese remain
voracious newspaper readers and honor the
power of written over spoken words, more
Japanese consume the traditional pencil press
and the digital versions available on smart-
phones. There is not widespread diversity in
ownership, but there is editorial and news
variety across the political spectrum from
right to left, including the Communist per-
spective. In practice, Japan’s media system
as a whole caters to the power elite center
and does not engage in investigative long-
form journalism. Reporters have little choice
but to set a tone in their articles that play to
their accepted angles. The Asahi Shimbun,
the leading liberal newspaper, is expected
to lament Japan’s rightwing dominance and
argue against changing Japan’s peace con-
stitution in its editorial pages. The Yomiuri
Shimbun plays its role as a more conservative
counterweight to the liberal Asahi, and the
Sankei Shimbun extends the rightward tilt as
the newest and most conservative of the five
dailies. The Nikkei is the top financial source.
THE DETAINEE
On November 19, 2018 a private plane
landed at Tokyo International Airport, better
known as Haneda, conveniently downtown-
adjacent to Tokyo. Inside the jet was Carlos
Ghosn, the 17-year veteran chairman of
Nissan and ‘one of the most romanticized
and ruthless chief executives the global busi-
ness community has ever seen’ (Chozick and
Rich, 2018). He is also one of the most
admired businesspeople in Japan, at least
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
until November 2018. He was in town to
attend a board meeting and to have dinner
with his daughter and her boyfriend at Jiro,
the renowned three-Micheline star restaurant
made famous by the award-winning docu-
mentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. But the board
meeting was a ruse and he never had that
dinner. Upon deplaning, he was met by
Tokyo prosecutors and taken immediately to
the same detention center that first impris-
oned cult leader Shoko Asahara, mastermind
of Tokyo’s deadly 1995 subway sarin gas
attack, before his hanging in July. As of this
writing, Ghosn is facing charges of ‘signifi-
cant acts of misconduct’ regarding his han-
dling of personal income and company
assets. He is being treated like any accused,
with no special privileges, surviving on rice
meals and hours-long interrogation with no
lawyer present. Putting aside the guilt or
innocence of the accused, it is how his case
is being covered differently by the Japanese
and international press that is revelatory. The
international press is covering Japan’s legal
system and ‘how the deck is stacked against
suspects in a country that boasts a 99 percent
conviction rate’ (Greimel and Okamura,
2018). The global press coverage is becom-
ing just as much a defendant in the Ghosn
case as the executive himself. NHK alone
was tipped off to cover Ghosn’s arrival at
Haneda. Since then, NHK’s coverage has
towed the prosecutorial line. The prolonged
detainment with no formal charges or family
visits is designed to wear down suspects to
confess to their wrongdoing. As the author
shared in a speech to the Public Relations
Society of Japan (PRSJ), the Japanese gov-
ernment and Japan Inc. are coming out the
losers in the global information and image
war vis-à-vis Ghosn. Japan is behind the
story as it goes global. Why? Because too
often the Japanese press play it safe and play
to the home crowd. NHK is the perfect safe
and reliable mass media vehicle for this. This
is why NHK cannot compete with the BBC
as a reliable global international broadcaster.
Whether it is NHK or NHK-World Japan, it
433
plays to the home crowd in style and content.
The longer this Ghosn story goes on without
resolution, the longer it goes on as an us-
versus-them scenario between Japan and
France or Japan and Lebanon – even Japan
and the world – the more it will favor Ghosn
and his sympathizers who will shift this from
a finance criminality (‘he’s just a fallen CEO
turned criminal’) to a human rights cause
celebrity story (‘he’s like a political pris-
oner’). The renowned Harvard professor
Alan Dershowitz (2018) wrote a scathing
opinion piece about Japan’s legal system,
concluding that he would advise his clients
against doing business in Japan because it
does not recognize constitutional protections
of open societies. There are two ways that
Japan might respond to the Dershowitz senti-
ment: (1) dismiss it as ignorant of the culture
of business or the legal system in Japan; or
(2) take his critical point of view to heart to
learn how others see Japan. Stepping outside
its comfort zone isn’t the norm when the
system is under the spotlight.
JAPAN’S MEDIA PROPAGANDA
ENVIRONMENT FLOURISHES
A 2016 Economist editorial began, ‘Japan is
not, by nature, a boastful country. Its oppor-
tunities for bombast have shrunk along with
its population’ (The Economist, 2016). This
was in reference to Abe’s much-hyped family
name economics program, Abenomics, with
its spin-off program to invite women back
into the paid economy after marriage and
childbirth. Is this self-revelation of humility
based on a lack of boasting or an aversion to
confrontation and conflict? It depends on
who you ask and where you look. At Dentsu
Public Relations (2018), boasting goes
against the grain of Japan’s culture, with its
suggestion that one work within the system
as it is and go through a press club for points
of contact. Julian Macfarlane (2018), a
40-year resident of Japan who works in the
434 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Japanese advertising industry, calls the infor-
mation environment not that of information
censorship but rather knowledge scarcity.
NHK, the leading news broadcaster, presents
information but omits a knowledge context
that would make the situation or event under-
standable or comprehensive. Hearsay is
common, for instance, using unnamed
sources from the intelligence and govern-
ment sectors, some of whom are the same
sources that lied about the safety of the
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
(Perrow, 2013) after 3/11. Macfarlane has
observed that no one displays vigorous dis-
cussion since this can make one stick out
from the crowd. As Westernized as Japan is
in convenience and modernity, it is still a
place of following the leader. An authority
tells one what to think and a respondent
feigns agreement. Within that system, every-
thing runs smoothly, until prying eyes (global
public opinion) or a vibrant global press
intervenes. In the West, you need the sem-
blance of a logical argument because the
heterogeneity expects debate and opposition,
but Japan plays up its collectivistic and
homogenic harmony. There cannot be toler-
ance for much dissent, outside of the almost
daily presence of the ultra-nationalist far
right groups (Uyoku dantai) of which any
Japanese or foreign resident is aware. These
groups, estimated to be in the thousands,
cruise the streets in their propaganda vans,
trucks, and buses (gaisensha) shouting their
screeds through loudspeakers prominently
marked with the Imperial Seal of Japan or the
Imperial Army flag (Ashcraft, 2012).
Newcomers to Japan are often surprised
at the lack of diversity not just among the
people, which is to be expected, but more so
among political parties and political ideas.
Japan touts a free and democratic society
as the top partner to the United States in the
region, but it does not have the give-and-take
or diverse representation of points of view
that are on display in its patron nation-state.
The circulation of ideas is rare. Press clubs
ensure homogenized and bland coverage of
the comings and goings of officials, with the
largest contingent assigned to the movements
of the prime minister. Prevailing wisdom is
nurtured by a cozy and closed intelligentsia
system of Washington think tanks such as the
Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS), Sasakawa Peace Foundation, East-
West Center and elite institutions of higher
learning such as Georgetown, Columbia,
and Harvard. Everyone seems to know the
other and outsiders – that is, those without
the right pedigree – are not allowed to join
the conversation. The comradery among the
Japan hands and those they handle is palpa-
ble, as exemplified by these opening remarks
of CSIS president John Hamre (CSIS, 2018)
in presenting Japan’s Minister of Defense
Takeshi Iwaya:
I’m so grateful for the Abe administration that is
willing to lead at a time when America is kind of in
retreat in Asia. Prime Minister Abe and Japan have
leaned forward to basically defend and support
these Western liberal international values that
they’ve embraced in their heart, so I’m very grate-
ful for that. And Iwaya-san is on the front line
every day. He’s on the front line every day for
Japan, he’s on the front line every day for us, and
it’s very important for that reason that he’s here.
On the Japan side, almost anyone one
encounters in the government ministries is a
graduate of the University of Tokyo (‘Todai’)
or two other Tokyo-based elite institutions,
Keio and Waseda. The political party sys-
tem is driven according to this same central-
ized and controlled hierarchical structure,
a Senpai and Kohai system of seniors and
mentors to juniors and helpers. It is a vertical
and masculine system that maintains domi-
nance and keeps outliers in check. If indeed
we accept that Japan is a cultural superpower,
we may want to consider the idea that Japan’s
cultural DNA is a product of a long history of
isolation and skepticism toward foreign, i.e.,
Western, ideas of free expression and debate.
The central government and its ruling party
present positions and rarely debate. It is not
to the standard in style or substance of the
parliamentary style of democracy seen in the
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
UK. Japan’s modern society is steeped in the
Edo (Tokugawa) period, the final political
period of traditional Japan where the sho-
gunate ruled. For over 220 years, from the
1630s until 1867, Japanese subjects were for-
bidden from leaving Japan (Sakoku period),
and, with a few exceptions for isolated trad-
ers and missionaries, all foreigners were
banned.12 A hierarchical system was put into
operation, which has its consequences today
with Japan’s continued adherence to control
of ideas and media in Tokyo. In the United
States, everyone has to accept that a lot of
people do not agree with each other. Japan
maintains allegiance to its homogeneous and
hierarchical background. In the Edo period,
consensus about behaviors in every stratum
of society was necessary for social order. If
you questioned consensus, you threatened
everyone at your level of society. They could
get into trouble with the people above them.
The presence of foreigners with foreign ideas
was threatening. According to communica-
tions specialist Julian Macfarlane, today we
still have the descendants of the Bakufu, the
samurai, the peasants, and the artisans, except
that everybody believes that they are the
same: Wareware nihonjin (‘We Japanese’).
This one-unit, one-mind approach to run-
ning society requires integration propaganda.
In fall 2015, shortly after The Diet voted to
relax restrictions on Japan’s Self-Defense
Forces, Prime Minister Abe called on the cre-
ation of a ‘Society in which all 100 million
people can make efforts as one’ (Ichioku so
katsuyakua). Ostensibly, the Japanese people
were being called upon to be active and con-
tribute to Japan’s economic growth. An Asahi
Shimbun editorial called the new slogan
‘unpleasantly pushy’. Its Vox Populi front-
page column added: ‘Abe’s slogan must have
reminded many people of similar expressions
of the past. A buzz phrase in the immediate
aftermath of Japan’s defeat in World War II
(Demetriou, 2015) was ichi oku so zange (the
entire population of 100 million is repent-
ant)’. Tokyo-based Japanese politics profes-
sor and writer Michael Cucek (2015) noted
435
that there was barely a shrug from Japanese
whose memory bank seemed to miss the
obvious comparisons between Abe’s 2015
slogan and imperial wartime Japan:
Anyone with a passing knowledge of pre-1945
propaganda can rattle off a string of ichi oku
phrases, none of which invokes happy memories.
There is the commandment for ideological
unanimity – Ichi oku isshin (100 Million Persons:
One Mind”) – or the encouragement to press for-
ward with the war effort – Susume ichi oku hi no
tama da (“Forward The 100 Million Balls of
Flame!”). There is the call for to be prepared for
extermination of every single Japanese citizen in
the final defense of the country: Ichi oku gyokusai
(‘100 Million Crushed Jewels’). All for one and one
for all makes for a population conditioned to
accept a top-down hierarchical status quo.
CONCLUSION
In 2013, BBC Two presented a documentary
film that called out Japan for being the most
sexless nation on the planet. The film, ‘No Sex
Please, We’re Japanese’,13 was a take on the
1970s English sex farce, ‘No Sex Please,
We’re British’, but that’s where all compari-
sons ended. The moderator Anita Rani
declared that ‘Japan is so different from any
other country in the world’. To a great extent,
she’s right, but she’s likely not thinking about
it along the lines of information, press and
politics, as laid out in this chapter. Most para-
chute observers of Japan, like Rani, are taken
in by its cultural traditions or cultural quirki-
ness. Yes, Japan does pride itself very much on
being different from other countries, but that
difference isn’t individual so much as socio-
logical. Its uniqueness is conformity. What we
have is the probability of a country immersed
in its own mythmaking vis-à-vis a very well-
oiled system of integration propaganda where
everyone participates and knows their place in
the hierarchy from bottom to top. Such propa-
ganda did not begin with the US occupation of
Japan at the end of World War II, an occupa-
tion that would last for seven years. Rather, it
took off in the 20th century as a form of
436 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
pre-war and wartime imperial propaganda
during Japan’s 15-year unsuccessful battle for
supremacy in Asia (1931–45). Kushner (2006)
notes that propaganda was never confined to
the upper echelons of the military and govern-
ment bureaucracy. The ‘thought war’, as the
Japanese called it, was designed to spring up
from society ‘or at least was made to appear
that way’ (Kushner, 2006: 6). There was no
government mandate in force, as the civilian
Japanese engaged in reciprocal relationships
from the military to the government to civil
society. This reciprocity principle reinforced
active participation in propaganda manufac-
turing. There was no need for a Joseph
Goebbels-like Minister of Propaganda. There
was no Ministry of Public Enlightenment and
Propaganda single authority. It wasn’t needed.
Kushner (2006) notes in The Thought War that
while the Americans and British in World War
II assiduously tried to avoid using the word
propaganda with all its negative connotations,
the Japanese ‘employed it. The pursuit of
democratic ideals did not hinder Japan’s
engagement of propaganda for the simple
reason that the Asian nation had little, if any,
desire to be democratic’ (Kushner, 2006: 7).
After Japan’s defeat, Once the emperor’s
demigod sovereignty status was replaced by
democratic sovereignty in the new US-authored
Constitution, Japan simply transferred over to
the democratic totalitarian model that contin-
ues to promote process over purpose.
Japanese integration propaganda educates
the Japanese in how to participate fully in
society from the time they are very young.
Its goals are stability; it propagates the belief
that one cannot be fulfilled on one’s own –
only through collective society working
together seamlessly. As Ellul (1965, 76) elu-
cidates, ‘it seeks not a temporary excitement
but a total molding of the person in depth.
Here all psychological and opinion analyses
must be utilized, as well as the mass media of
communication’. The individual should not
be left alone in integrated propaganda, just as
a journalist, foreign or domestic, should not
be left alone to conjure up contradictions in
the system. Similarly, in The Technological
Society (Ellul, 1964) we see the conse-
quences of a technological society, where the
state is an efficiency-oriented enterprise, not
an expression of the will of the people that
serves social justice purposes. The history-
making Shinzo Abe administration, Japan’s
longest serving prime minister, has now
enacted under his watch three controversial
decisions that impact freedom and social
justice. They are the Secrecy Act (2013),
Security Act (2015), and the Conspiracy
Bill (2017), all of which aim to enhance the
state’s ability to surveil and control its pop-
ulation (Ogasawara, 2017), in many cases
through threatening harsh consequences to
anyone who seeks out information that runs
counter to the state’s objectives. The most
recent Conspiracy Bill, renamed by Prime
Minister Abe as the bill for ‘Terror and Other
Preparation Crimes’, rationalized the legisla-
tion as a necessary counterterrorism meas-
ure before Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Similar to
the Security Act, this bill was passed in the
Diet on June 15, 2017 during the early hours
of the morning, suspending discussion and
debate. The 277 prohibitions run the gamut
from banning the plotting of serious crimes
such as terrorism as well as lesser offenses
such as copying music; conducting sit-ins to
protest against the construction of apartment
buildings; using forged stamps; to mushroom
picking in conservation forests or avoiding
paying consumption tax.14 The government
argued in part that illegal mushroom pick-
ing could potentially fund terror operations,
which is why the wide range of domestic acts
of disobedience were linked to terror.
The Japanese public largely maintains
its spectator function in the political pro-
cess, even as new laws arise in service of the
state and against dissent and critique. What
is useful and practical to the state predomi-
nates. Karel van Wolferen’s (1989: 82) mas-
terful writings on the inner workings of the
Japanese model of society illustrate one of the
basic tenets in Japan – that people in govern-
ment and education preserve the status quo
 Darkness and Light: Media, Propaganda, and Politics in Japan
homogeneity and uniqueness of its people
through enforcing rules and norms that pro-
hibit freedom: ‘It may seem perverse to lump
schoolchildren, journalists and gangsters
together. But Japanese schools, newspapers,
and organized crime have in common that
they are each highly politicized as servants of
the System’. Those who stray outside the mar-
gins of acceptable behavior may risk bullying
or ostracism, as noted in Straitjacket Society:
An Insider’s Irreverent View of Bureaucratic
Japan (1995), a bestselling tell-all by one-
time deputy director for Japan’s Ministry
of Health, Labour and Welfare (commonly
known as Korosho), Dr. Masao Miyamoto.
Miyamoto was fired by the Ministry for his
public revelations. Success is measured in
Japan through conceding to the consensus
perspective. Nobody fails as long as you work
within and never against the system. In turn,
the system takes care of you. In exchange,
you continue to work for the system. An echo
chamber makes up the dominant consensus.
Not everyone necessarily believes in it. They
have not really thought about it. They do not
have to. They believe in what others believe.
While some tend toward normative idealism
(‘what should be’) the Japanese tend toward
situations (‘what should I do’). The nation-
state goes to great efforts to protect itself
from outside ideas and people; too much
foreignness or too much foreign inspection,
as we see with the Carlos Ghosn revelations,
is never a good thing. Japan wants to protect
its own autonomy and follow the lead of the
United States in security; in exchange the
U.S. elite establishment does not come down
hard on Japan’s closed media system or Abe’s
state secrets or conspiracies laws. In Japan
(De Mooji 2010), belonging is everything,
even if it means that one does not get training
in individualistic thinking. To behave in an
individualistic way is to court the proverbial
hammer. This hesitancy to stick out or speak
up, coupled with a government and dominant
political party that views any press criticism
as an obstacle to its own ambitions, reinforces
conditions that do not offer proper checks and
437
balances on power or build trust between the
civil society and its elected officials.
A nation that kowtows to political power
and does not realize that media power is a
necessary check on that power will find it dif-
ficult to withstand the watchful eyes of the
world in 2020 and beyond. What can be done
to help welcome the world? As the author first
recommended in 2016, there isn’t enough
factual information about Japan in the world.
There is a mystery and secrecy surrounding
some of what Japan is and does. Information
abhors a vacuum. When there is a void, people
fill in that space with their own preconceived
notions and stereotypes. It is important that
Japan redefine itself to the world on its own
terms and not play catch up or constantly play
defense, attempting to explain things after
the fact. Japan needs to build more accessible
databases of statistical and other information
on its society and do this in a multilanguage
platform. In addition, Japan needs to educate,
train, and elevate its own Cultural Diplomacy
Corps, whose main focus is overcoming per-
ception and perspective myopias related to
Japan. We all operate with something called
belief perseverance, a strong tendency to hold
onto our beliefs despite overwhelming data
to the contrary. Stereotypes are particularly
vulnerable to belief perseverance, and Japan
is a country like no other that has more ste-
reotypes attached to what it is and who its
people are. Finally, Japan should be using its
ICT technology to increase global connectiv-
ity and to promote global transparency: inter-
national media, new media, including mobile
and social media, can help to demystify
Japanese society and encourage more global
interest and participation. All of these are cos-
metic surgery only to prettify Japan’s public
face before the world in 2020. Underlying it is
the commodification, ideology, and exploita-
tion of culture. As Karel von Wolferen (1989:
246) warned us more than two and a half
decades ago, when culture is used to explain
Japan to non-Japanese, e.g., ‘we do this
because it is our culture’, it is ‘not perceived
as tautology but believed to give a valid
438 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
reason for accepting all manner of practices
whose political nature has been lost sight of’.
If we continue to pay attention to the over-
worked cultural motives of the Japanese, then
we will continue to lose sight of the powerful,
top-down systemic forces that are subsumed
by it, and operate above it, beyond scrutiny,
debate, or even reproach.
Notes
1  Sister Cities International was created at Presi-
dent Eisenhower’s 1956 White House conference
on citizen diplomacy. The city of Osaka was San
Francisco’s first and oldest sister city, beginning in
1957.
2  The “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition is a
grassroots, multi-ethnic and multi-national group
of individuals and organizations that is part of a
global “Comfort Women” justice movement. The
CWJC led the lobbying effort to install the San
Francisco Memorial. Read more at http://remem-
bercomfortwomen.org/
3  Kim Hak-sun was a Korean human rights activ-
ist who campaigned against sex slavery and
war rape. During World War Two, Hak-sun was
among many young women forced into sexual
slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. She was
the first woman to come forward about the
plight of the comfort woman. (Wikipedia)
4  http://www.city.osaka.lg.jp/hodoshiryo/cmsfiles/
contents/0000326/326856/02sityouatekoukaisy
okan.pdf
5  Nihonjinron is a genre of texts that focus on issues
of Japanese national and cultural identity. Such
texts share a general assumption of the unique-
ness of Japan, and the term nihonjinron can be
employed to refer to this outlook. (Wikipedia)
6  https://rsf.org/en/japan
7  NHK World was rebranded NHK World-Japan
in April 2018. An NHK press release said that it
was “to establish wider global recognition for the
service’s Japanese roots in advance of the Tokyo
2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.” https://
www.nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/press/
pdf/20180222.pdf
8  NHK Corporate Profile, 2018-2019, https://www.
nhk.or.jp/corporateinfo/english/publication/pdf/
corporate_profile.pdf.
9  http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/insidethe-
bbc/whoweare/publicpurposes/world.html
10  BBC World News best for global branding news,
BBC Media Centre, http://www.bbc.co.uk/medi-
acentre/worldnews/2014/bbc-best-for-global-
breaking-news
11  Henry Laurence, “NHK and Abe’s Agenda,” The
Diplomat, February 8, 2014. https://thediplomat.
com/2014/02/nhk-and-abes-agenda/
12  The Seclusion of Japan documents: Tokugawa
Iemitsu, “CLOSED COUNTRY EDICT OF 1635” AND
“EXCLUSION OF THE PORTUGUESE, 1639; access
at http://users.wfu.edu/watts/w03_Japancl.html
13  https://vimeo.com/80542212
14  Japan passes controversial anti-terror conspiracy
law, BBC News, June 15, 2017.
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Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the
Arsenal of Information Warfare
INTRODUCTION
Taylor (2003: 5) has pointed to the inextri-
cable link between propaganda and war,
which has been a constant throughout the
ages. He also warned of the effects: ‘once
war has broken out, propaganda has proved
to be a weapon of no less significance than
swords, guns or bombs’ Taylor (2003: 5).
This ‘symbiotic’ relationship between war
and propaganda is owed in no small part to
what Payne (2005) characterises as the key
factor of winning modern wars, which are
increasingly dictated by political rather than
purely military factors. Political and mili-
tary leaders require a sense of the public
holding some measure of legitimacy and
belief in their military ventures. This cre-
ates the need for governments to engage in
information operations (that include the use
of propaganda) to support and enable mili-
tary operations, both before those opera-
tions commence and while they are being
conducted (Western, 2005; DiMaggio,
26
Greg Simons
2009; Zollmann, 2017a; Simons and Chifu,
2018).
This chapter will look at a recent and spe-
cific use of propaganda in the Syrian War.
While acknowledging that all sides involved
in the conflict use propaganda as a com-
municational means of trying to shape and
influence public perception and opinion,
the focus of this work will be on the official
(government and military) narratives that are
present in Western mainstream mass media.
In particular, one case study shall look at the
chemical weapons event that took place in
Douma on the 7 April 2018, with attention
paid to the first days of reporting. This chap-
ter will seek to address the question, how are
the propaganda frames operationalised in
order to attempt the gain of public consent to
military intervention?
The first section deals with defining and
detailing the role played by propaganda and
mass media in attempting to influence public
opinion and perception, as a means of prim-
ing and mobilising global publics in giving
442 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
their consent to a military intervention. In the
second section, a background is given to the
Syrian conflict, in order to provide the reader
with an understanding and appreciation of
the very complex nature of this conflict. This
all lays the groundwork for the third section,
which introduces the case study of media
coverage of Douma in April 2018 in selected
UK and US newspapers.
THE ROLE OF PROPAGANDA IN
OPINION AND PERCEPTION
There is not an intention to offer the many
and varied definitions of a highly loaded
word such as propaganda. Needless to say,
there are many definitions, and there are
other chapters in this Handbook of propa-
ganda that seek to do this more systemati-
cally than I am able to here in this limited
space. It is intended for this chapter to begin
with some basic characteristics of propa-
ganda, before moving to how propaganda
fits into the wider information and cognitive
domains and then to briefly examine how
these aspects interact during armed conflict.
Propaganda is understood to have a persua-
sive function, intend to reach a sizeable
target audience, be representative of a spe-
cific group’s agenda and make use of faulty
reasoning and/or emotional appeals (Taylor,
2003: 1–16; Shabo, 2008: 5). These aspects
are aimed at priming and mobilising a
selected target audience, by shaping an
emotionally based environment that manu-
factures their perception and opinion of
events.
Within the broader realm of information
warfare (within which propaganda is situ-
ated), there are three domains to be consid-
ered: the physical domain, the information
domain and the cognitive domain (Alberts
et al., 2001: 10).1 In terms of the search for
political and military influence, the domain
that they seek to influence is the infor-
mational one, in order to enable military
operations and foreign policy in the physical
domain. A general public’s understanding
of a reality and ‘ground truth’ can translate
into increasing the possibility of combat or
policy effectiveness and dominance. On the
intangible side, information exists and is cre-
ated in the information domain. It is shared
and can be subjected to manipulation, which
means that it may not accurately reflect the
ground truth. This domain concerns the
communication of information among and
between the various vested actors. The infor-
mation domain is subject to competition and
interference from other actors who are pre-
sent, which implies offensive and defensive
dimensions to communication activities. The
objective is to gain information superior-
ity within the information domain, over the
adversary or over domestic voices opposed
to the government’s chosen policy position.
The minds of the participants are found in
the cognitive domain, which is ‘where per-
ceptions, awareness, understanding, beliefs,
and values reside, and where, as a result of
sense making, decisions are made’ (Alberts
et al, 2001: 13). This is the domain in which
physical battles are actually won or lost, as
it involves such crucial intangibles as leader-
ship, morale, unit cohesion, level of training
and experience, situational awareness and
public opinion. All content in this domain
passes through the filtering process of human
perception.
A distinction needs to be made between
‘information’ and ‘knowledge’, where infor-
mation is the raw material communicated
within the information domain concerning
people, processes and events occurring in the
physical domain. Knowledge is when infor-
mation communicated from the information
domain enters the cognitive domain, and
an individual has made ‘sense’ of that data,
according to their world view and the infor-
mation supplied. This all concerns the ability
of an actor in shaping the perception of others.
‘Perception involves forming a view of some-
thing through intuition or interpretation of
available knowledge’ (Ministry of Defence,
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare
2010: 3–14). Efforts directed towards the
state of gaining information superiority can
be achieved when one actor is able to create
a relative information advantage over their
adversary, which is a mixture of being able
to maximize information efficiency while
simultaneously denying the opponent the
ability to do the same. The efficiency com-
ponent involves and concerns an actor’s abil-
ity to shape the information space according
to the operational requirements and needs
(Alberts et al, 2001: 54). Propaganda makes
use of deceptive and misleading wording that
is designed to be suggestive of another real-
ity, in order to influence the cognitive sphere
that is in-line with scripted propaganda.
According to Taylor (2003), the ‘golden
rule’ of propaganda when making use of a lie
is to lie by omission rather than commission.
In practical terms, this is a means, for exam-
ple, to omit the wrongdoings of the ‘good’
side, while emphasizing any wrongdoings
of the ‘bad’ side. The intention is to distract
public attention from certain acts and instead
focus public outrage on others, in order to
engineer consent. This raises the question,
what exactly is ‘scripted’ propaganda? This
is the tendency to script complex processes
and events within a simple Hollywood-like
propaganda narrative in order to influence
the brand and reputation, and therefore man-
age the public expectations of the primary
actors engaged. Thus, actors become scripted
and categorised as being ‘good’ and ‘bad’,
‘saviour’ and ‘spoiler’, ‘victim’ and ‘villain’,
‘aggressor’ and so forth. This can have the
effect of creating a simple and subjective
façade of a complex social and political envi-
ronment that can enable the influence of pub-
lic opinion and perception in order to prime2
and mobilise audiences, according to a man-
ufactured ‘reality’ in the cognitive sphere.
In order for an actor to succeed in persuad-
ing and influencing others, they need to be
able to communicate a compelling mass-
mediated message. It can manifest as an exer-
cise in the masking of interests as values and
norms, which in modern warfare is used as a
443
means of accumulating a sense of legitimacy
through persuading public perception and
opinion of a façade of moral and ethical high
ground over an opponent. Zollmann (2017a:
219) observes that ‘the politics of intervention
manifest as selective human rights shaming.
This entails highly dichotomised propaganda
campaigns during which “enemy” countries
are marked for “humanitarian intervention”’.
As such, propaganda is a form of information
operation within the framework of the stra-
tegic level of information programme that is
intended to support the physical political and
military goals and objectives within a given
area of operations, by shaping and influenc-
ing the information space that exists in and
around the physical sphere.
As noted by Entman (2004), political actors
need to ‘sell’ their versions and framings of
political events to the news media and public,
and the sale determines whether or not the
suggested policy is accepted as legitimate or
not. To aid in the perceived legitimacy and
acceptance, there is a scripted narrative of
exaggerated risks and dangers and oppos-
ing sets of projected realities of good and
evil. The problem is defined in a very simple
way, and in emotional terms, within sets of
frames.3 These frames are then repeated often
to reinforce the unambiguous and emotion-
ally compelling story and to exclude other
possible interpretations. The intention is
to shape public perception and opinion and
ultimately unify public approval (Entman,
2004: 1). The situation described within this
section creates a precarious environment for
the role of mass media and journalism, which
is nominally guided by the principle of a
fourth-estate role – a public guardian acting
as a check and balance against any excesses
of power by the judiciary, executive and leg-
islative branches of government.
Research by Zollmann (2017b: 13) pro-
poses that ‘news media allows powerful agents
and groups to intentionally manage the news
arena and thereby guide journalistic selection
and production processes’. One of the more
infamous examples of Zollmann’s observation
444 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
is seen in the case of the 2003 Iraq War. This
was a major global media event, which the US
broadcasting networks framed as Operation
Iraqi Freedom (the official Pentagon concept
for the military operation) and was a conduit
for Bush administration and Pentagon propa-
ganda (Kellner, 2004: 329). Some former
journalists take a much less optimistic view
of this assumed role. Payne (2005) charac-
terised mass media as being an instrument of
war, owing to the fact that coverage of con-
flict influences public perception and opinion
of the event, regardless of the nature of the
intentions of individual journalists.
FRAMING THE SYRIAN CONFLICT
The Syrian conflict began with protests on 26
January 2011 and rapidly escalated into a full
uprising on 15 March of that year, and it has
been the bloodiest of the conflicts associated
with the revolutionary wave of the Arab
Spring (Bhardwaj, 2012: 84). The carefully
scripted framing of the physical sphere in the
information sphere reveals the geopolitical
lines of this conflict, which if broken down
into the core operational aims involves the
task of regime change versus regime stability
(that is, to overthrow Bashar al Assad or keep
him in power). In 2012, a Defence Intelligence
Agency (DIA) report characterised the Syrian
conflict as a proxy war with geopolitical
dimensions that involved global and regional
actors. The report contradicted an important
mainstream frame of the time, which sug-
gested that the ‘moderate’ rebels were lead-
ing the opposition to Assad by stating
categorically that radical Jihadist elements
were the main driving force in the opposition
ranks. This report also revealed a significant
difference how political and military leaders
were projecting the conflict in the informa-
tion sphere and the apparent realities on the
ground in the physical sphere (DIA, 2012).
Previous research has demonstrated that
not all wars and conflicts are covered equally
in the mainstream mass media; a change in
the quality of coverage is seen depending
on whether an actor is labelled as being an
‘enemy’ or identified as being the ‘bad’ or
‘evil’ actors in a given conflict. Zollmann
(2017a) investigated six different cases,
including a Syrian case from 2012, and
searching through mass media sources in the
United States, UK and Germany, he came
across bias in the coverage that favoured
the official standpoint. There was a con-
certed propaganda campaign in the open-
ing of the Syrian War that was intended to
script the conflict (establish the ‘orthodoxy’
of accepted knowledge), establish the brands
and reputations of the primary actors (expec-
tation management) and make other inter-
pretations difficult to communicate (as they
would be rejected or the messenger labelled
an ‘Assadist’ or ‘stooge of Putin/Iran’;
Allday, 2016) (Simons, 2018).
Zollmann (2017a: 101) noted that the
Houla Incident from May 2015 (in which
116 civilians were killed) ‘constituted a tip-
ping point’ and ‘paved the way for sanctions
against Syria’. Zollmann (2017a: 101) notes
that ‘Houla had quickly served as a symbol
for Syrian [government] villainy. Yet again,
the factual record of Houla does not suggest
a monolithic picture’. Civilian suffering was
highlighted with the use of indignation and
moral and ethical judgements in order to gen-
erate a sense of outrage among the public.
News reports emphasized the villainy of the
Syrian government and army, while simul-
taneously downplaying the activities of the
Syrian ‘Opposition’ (Zollmann, 2017a: 115).
The nature of the news content demonstrated
the propaganda value of news content as
a mechanism for driving the military-
intervention agenda. This observation fits
with Bernays (1947) proposition that the
quality and timing of the news was not
accidental, but rather a deliberate strategy
intended to engineer public consent.
The Syrian conflict is an extremely com-
plex and multi-faceted event, which has
been argued by some from an early point
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare
(Malantowicz, 2013) as having the char-
acteristics of old and new wars, simultane-
ously. New wars are defined through the
basic assumptions concerning actors, meth-
ods applied, spread of violence and war
economy. Old wars are in reference to the
ideological and political background. The
conflict is highly scripted along diametri-
cally opposed polar opposites of assumed
and projected norms and values assigned
to the various actors engaged in the con-
flict, which in turn affects the framing used
in the analysis and reporting of the conflict
(Simons, 2016a). Intelligence assessments of
Syria have referred to it as a proxy war (DIA,
2012), and there are voices in academic lit-
erature that also refer to Syria as an exam-
ple of a proxy war, where the different sides
involved are becoming increasingly reliant on
external patrons; they warn of possible long-
term negative consequences of actors seek-
ing regime change, as the consequences may
prove to be producing an even more dire situ-
ation (Hughes, 2014). Although the Syrian
conflict is often framed within the context of
humanitarian norms and values, the conflict-
ing geopolitical objectives by various actors
are another means of framing the war.
As early as 2012, a Royal United Services
Institute (RUSI) report was published, which
recognised the geopolitical dimensions of the
conflict (regional and global) – the negative
effects of the war in Libya that limited for-
eign-policy options (of direct military inter-
vention) – yet tried to frame the ‘inevitability’
of a ‘collision course for intervention’. The
US approach was similar in how the conflict
was framed. A 2014 Congressional Research
Service (CRS) report (Blanchard et al., 2014)
outlined the highly complex nature of the con-
flict and the seemingly contradictory aims –
the fight against Islamic State, volatile sys-
tems of alliances, the possibility of volatility
spreading out from Syria to a wider area, iso-
lating and ‘punishing’ the Syrian government
and the train and equip programme for rebels.
At the time of an Institute for the Study of
War report that emerged on US strategy in
445
Syria in March 2017, the frames had not been
changed from the 2014 CRS report (Cafarella
et al., 2017: 25). But a new threat frame had
been added, the influence of Iran and Russia
in Syria, which was characterised as a risk
and threat to US interests in Syria and the
Middle East, but also a threat to the ‘global
order’ (Cafarella et al., 2017: 25). Within this
context, the US-led coalition sought to rec-
reate the so-called Libya scenario (to invoke
the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in a ‘civil
war’) in Syria, as the framing of the conflict
in its early stages bore a strong resemblance.
However, the US opinion and perception of
R2P’s application in Libya was controver-
sial and differed markedly from others on
the United Nations Security Council, such as
those of China and Russia. The memory of
Libya and R2P influenced the ability of the
attempt to apply this tool in Syria (Morris,
2013; Thakur, 2013). This is a demonstration
of the element of unpredictability that occurs
in the cognitive processing of material com-
municated from the information sphere. The
information sphere has evolved in terms of
the rapidity in disseminating data in order to
prime and mobilise audiences.
Different groups have been oppos-
ing each other on social media, promoting
their own version of events and attacking
their opponent’s version, such as the role
and work of the Syrian Electronic Army
(Government aligned) and the Syrian Free
Army (Opposition aligned) on platforms
such as Facebook and Twitter (Shehabat,
2013). Thus, on one side, the Assad govern-
ment seeks to convey messages and images
of a brave national leader with the interests
of the Syrian people at heart, while on the
other side, forces seeking regime change
seek to convey an image and reputation of
the brutality of Assad and highlight the suf-
fering of civilians (Seo and Ebrahim, 2016).
Social media provides a platform to dissemi-
nate instant communications to a potentially
large audience and, given the format of the
medium, it can exert a more powerful emo-
tional response with the use of video material
446 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
as opposed to simply text. The reasoning and
logic used can also be selective or faulty in
order to meet the political objectives of the
propaganda, as explained by Taylor (2003:
1–16) and Shabo (2008: 5). There are also
wider discussions on the role of Western
governments in Syria that are periodically
appearing in the public information space.
Periodically, a number of articles appear in
mainstream mass media sources, which shed
some critical light on aspects of the involve-
ment of Western governments in Syria. These
articles normally fall short of questioning
whether or not there should be involvement,
but rather question the exact nature of a lim-
ited range of activities. One such article from
2016 detailed the British government helping
rebel groups fighting in Syria to develop and
produce communications: ‘In both the foreign
and domestic campaigns, the government’s
role is often concealed. Messages are put out
under the banner of apparently independent
groups – community organisations in the UK,
and armed groups in Syria’ (Cobain et  al.,
2016). But rather than criticise this role, it
was justified along the lines of the main offi-
cial (Government and Ministry of Defence in
particular) narratives – promoting moderate
values of the revolution to turn public opinion
against the Assad government and ISIS. A
story that was more critical of the official ver-
sion of events appeared over one year later,
when the BBC programme Panorama alleged
that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund
may have allowed funds intended for poverty
reduction to be directed to an extremist group
in Syria (Osamor, 2017). Unlike the previ-
ously mentioned article, this opinion article
identified a problem and proposed a solution.
Norton-Taylor (2015) characterises Syria
as a ‘geopolitical earthquake’. The reasons
for doing so are made clear in his Guardian
article. He states that the world was wit-
nessing a significant turning point in global
affairs through events in Syria. Stating that
a ‘weary’ West led by the US was following
well-rehearsed causes, and that Russia had
put them on the back foot with ‘Putin’s deci-
sive intervention in Syria’ (Norton-Taylor,
2015). This implies that geopolitics are at
work in a local/regional and global scale. A
situation such as this one has implications
for the quality and reliability of information
flows, based on Payne’s (2005) characterisa-
tion of media as being an instrument of war.
A stinging criticism of Western media cover-
age of Iraq and Syria was given by Cockburn
(2017) from the Independent, who stated that
the level of fabricated news and on-sided
reporting in the news agenda on Syria has
not been witnessed since the First World War.
An underlying reason for the situation was
proposed: ‘The real reason that reporting of
the Syrian conflict has been so inadequate is
that Western news organisations have almost
entirely outsourced their coverage to the
rebel side’ (Cockburn, 2017).
The effects of mass media reporting on the
Syrian conflict have also been the topic of dis-
cussion. A March 2018 article in the Atlantic
declared that the CNN effect had died in
Syria. The CNN effect of the 1990s refers to
the notion that vivid coverage of humanitar-
ian crisis by 24-hour news networks influ-
enced government decisions to use military
force.4 United Nations expert Richard Gowan
suggested that one reason for the death of
the CNN effect was ‘the effect of unverified
social media posts and slick state propa-
ganda on a civil war wrapped in a proxy war
inside a great-power war’ that has resulted
in a deluge of information of dubious qual-
ity (Friedman, 2018). Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting (FAIR – a media watcher based
in the United States) does not refer to main-
stream Western media coverage of the Syrian
conflict as propaganda, though it is extremely
critical of the quality of news, and it notes the
various inconsistencies in the narratives and
framing: ‘Anglo-American press coverage of
the Syrian situation has grossly misled read-
ers about their governments’ role in the catas-
trophe, and has urged audiences to accept
greater Western military intervention in the
country without examining the implications
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare
of such a move’ (Shupak, 2018). Different
actors and interests are attempting to com-
pete in an increasingly crowded information
marketplace on the Syrian conflict, which
is often couched in opposing sets of norms,
values and visions. The ability to persuade
and influence the cognitive sphere via sym-
bolic representations of the physical sphere
through the information sphere is seen as the
path to increasing the operational capacity
and power of the winners.
The dominant frames in Anglo-US media
already existed well before the Douma inci-
dent, where Assad was the villain and ‘armed
opposition’ were the heroes, and the United
States and UK positioned themselves as
saviours and Russia and Iran as spoilers. A
highly subjectively simplified projected real-
ity of good versus evil was prevalent in the
mainstream press, which supported official
government positions on the policy of regime
change (Simons, 2016a, 2018; Zollmann,
2017b). The audience had also been subjected
to the false logic that if a chemical weapons
attack were to occur, the Syrian government
would be the likely culprit (Simons, 2016b).
CASE STUDY: WESTERN MEDIA
COVERAGE OF THE SYRIAN CONFLICT
AT KEY POINTS
Method
The approaches to textual analysis shall
include content analysis (quantifications of
different elements in text), argumentation
analysis (the structure of argumentation
used) and the qualitative analysis of ideas in
the content (with a focus on propaganda)
(Boréus and Bergström, 2017: 7–9). The
combination of these approaches is expected
to yield results on the ontology (what exists)
and epistemology (knowledge and how we
‘know’ things) of reactions to mass-mediated
textual depictions of the Douma event within
the context of the Syrian conflict. The objects
447
of study include power, people, policy,
oppression and freedom, war and peace and
so forth (Boréus and Bergström, 2017: 1–2).
The mass media texts then contextualise the
relationships according to perceived and pro-
jected power in the constructed social world
order of mankind, such as justice and injus-
tice, powerful and powerless, legitimate and
illegitimate, worthy and unworthy. The anal-
ysis of the framing of the empirical material
of this case study will follow the method of
Entman (2004: 5):
• Defining effects or conditions as problematic;
• Identifying causes;
• Conveying a moral judgement;
• Endorsing remedies and improvements.
The case study involves analysing media
reports and coverage from the first four days
of the April 2018 chemical weapons event in
Douma, Syria. This four-day window is too
short a period to launch and conclude an
official investigation into the event, let alone
to conclusively and objectively assign blame
on any guilty party. But, this period is critical
in terms of propaganda and communicating
one’s version of events through the informa-
tion sphere in order to shape opinion and
perception in the cognitive sphere. In order to
do this, in such a short space of time, propa-
ganda seems to be the most effective means
to quickly prime and mobilise the audience
through the use of emotion, rather than
rational logic. It should be noted that UK
public opinion was firmly against any mili-
tary intervention at the time of the incident
by a ratio of two to one (Curtis, 2018), and
the US polls indicated 50% of respondents
approved of the missile strikes (Reinhart,
2018).
In terms of the newspapers chosen
for analysis, we chose the Guardian, the
Independent (UK), the Washington Post and
the Washington Examiner (United States) –
leading mainstream newspapers in two of the
three countries that launched military strikes
against Syria (United States, UK and France)
448 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
in the wake of the events in Douma. The rea-
son for choosing these particular newspapers
is because they are influential, well-estab-
lished publications with a large circulation;
plus, all of the chosen newspapers have no
paywall on content (providing open access
for both researcher and other readers). This
means these newspapers are able to reach
many people globally and therefore are a
more likely medium of communication for
governmental views on the issue (owing to
these papers being able to contact and speak
to officials, who understand the communi-
cation potential of the outlets). However, as
only four newspapers in two countries over
a four-day period are being investigated by
the author, the results should be considered as
being indicative and not generalizable.
Case Study and Sample
Background
The Office for the Prevention of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) reported an ‘alleged inci-
dent’ involving the use of toxic chemicals as
a weapon in Douma, Syria at 16:00 on 7 April
2018. Casualties from the incident varied
from 40–70 deaths and hundreds of injuries,
resulting from exposure to a toxic substance.
The initial reports on the nature of the sub-
stance were mixed and unclear, with some
allegations of sarin, with others stating chlo-
rine and further reports suggesting a mixture
of these chemicals. On-line postings were
used extensively by various parties to influ-
ence opinions and perceptions of the event. A
blame game ensued where the ‘armed oppo-
sition’ accused the Syrian government of
carrying out the attack, and the Syrian gov-
ernment blamed Jaysh al Islam of fabricating
the incident in order to incriminate the Syrian
government and military (OPCW, 2018: 3).
Thus, from the very moment of awareness of
the incident, different subjective and politi-
cised accounts of the event in the physical
sphere were communicated through the infor-
mation sphere. The role of the OPCW is
stated as being an independent observer that
investigates such events, not an observer that
apportions blame (OPCW, 2018: 4). OPCW
has been operating in Syria for a number of
years in this capacity.
Since 2015, the OPCW has held a mandate
to investigate such reported incidents in the
country. On 10 April, clearance and the nec-
essary formalities were concluded between
the OPCW and the Syrian government,
which permitted a team of investigators to
be dispatched; an advanced team was sent on
12 April, a follow-up team the next day and
the full team by 15 April. The team began its
investigation work from 18 April at the site
of the alleged attack, but they encountered
unexploded munitions and small arms fire.
This delayed the visit to the first site until
21 April (OPCW, 2018). The OPCW reported
the analysis results of the sampling:
The results of analysis of the prioritised samples
submitted to the designated laboratories were
received by the FFM team on 22 May 2018. No
organophosphorus nerve agents or their degrada-
tion products were detected, either in the environ-
mental samples or in plasma samples from the
alleged casualties. Various chlorinated organic
chemicals were found in samples from Locations 2
and 4, along with residues of explosive (OPCW,
2018: 10).
The interim results of the OPCW, which were
released in July 2018 (three months after the
alleged incident) cast significant doubt on the
framing used by mainstream Western politi-
cians and mass media. The significance of the
lessons from this event, where mass media
reported from 7 April (the day of the event)
to 10 April (the day arrangements were made
for an OPCW team to visit the site), show that
the conclusions in the media and political cir-
cles were already reached before any techni-
cal investigation had even been initiated. This
raises questions as to the exact nature and
basis of the ‘evidence’ to support the claims
made in the information sphere.
In July 2018, a manual search was con-
ducted on the search engines of the four
newspapers analysed – the Guardian, the
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare 449

Table 26.1  Article sample

Country Media outlet Article sample count Total
7 April 8 April 9 April 10 April

UK Guardian 1 5 4 6 16
Independent 1 3 6 6 16
United States Washington Post 1 4 12 8 25
Washington Examiner 0 6 15 6 27
84

Independent, the Washington Post and the
Washington Examiner. The search was for
content that matched the criterion mentioned
earlier: related to the events of 7 April 2018
in Douma and the next three days follow-
ing the chemical incident. Each search was
physically sorted by the author into relevant
and irrelevant articles. Table 26.1 summa-
rises the results of this search.
Selected Anglo-United States
Media Coverage of Douma
The first newspaper to be analysed for con-
tent on the events of Douma and the immedi-
ate aftermath was the Guardian (UK). There
was only one article that was published on
the first day of the Douma event. This article
notified of a ‘suspected chemical attack’ on
the rebel-held part of the area (Guardian,
2018). Although the use of language indi-
cates a certain level of uncertainty that the
event happened, there was simultaneously an
accusative tone. This was clearly evident in
an editorial that appeared on 8 April, which
accused Bashar al-Assad of the ‘crime’ and
urged world ‘responsibility’ in a heavily
emotional rhetoric (Guardian, 2018). There
is a heavy use of diametrically opposed sets
of values and norms, where Assad and Putin
are scripted as the super villains, and the
‘rebels’/’opposition’ are the heroes, the vic-
tims are the Syrian people and the possible
saviours are the US-led alliance.
One of the first articles on Douma set
many of the frames that were the foundation
for the telling of this story: the reference to
a ‘suspected chemical attack’ as opposed to
a confirmed attack; a great deal of graphic
and emotionally charged descriptions of the
victims and especially children; references
to previous cases of alleged chemical attacks
that, in hindsight, revealed serious flaws and
errors in the reporting (Simons, 2016b). ‘The
incident was the latest in a string of alleged
chemical attacks on the enclave of eastern
Ghouta’ (Guardian, 2018). The video shown
in the article bore the brand of one of the rebel
groups, which is in-line with Cockburn’s
(2017) criticism of Western mass media ‘out-
sourcing’ to rebel groups. Follow-up articles
maintained the foundation of the selected
news frames and added further information
and ‘evidence’. There were mentions of a
‘toxic gas attack’ and mentions of the pre-
vious events where chlorine and sarin were
used. As a possible connection for a possi-
ble motive: a breakdown in negotiations to
evacuate (term ‘exile’ was used) rebels from
the area. Blame was assigned to the Syrian
government, Russia and Iran. Different
endorsements of condemnation were pub-
lished, including from Pope Francis, but also
from the US State Department who made
the ‘demand for an international response if
confirmed’ (Shaheen 2018)_. They also put
the blame on the Russian government by vir-
tue of the fact that they were supporting the
Syrian government. The UK Foreign Office
was quick to blame Assad as ‘further proof
of Assad’s brutality against innocent civilians
and his backers’ callous disregard for interna-
tional norms’ (Shaheen, 2018). The reporting
450 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
so far has been dedicated to creating the
frames and the ‘demand’ for a response.
This created the context for introducing
possible ‘solutions’ to the crisis situation. A
concerted call for military action was made,
not for any other options to be considered.
‘The response to a 2017 chemical attack was
largely symbolic; this time it could be more
comprehensive’ (Chulov, 2018). Different
military-operation scenarios were considered
along with possible reactions from the Syrian
military and Russia. Britain’s options, and
more specifically those of the May govern-
ment, were discussed, most often in a value/
norm basis as opposed to operational mat-
ters or in the context of international law
(Wintour, 2018). The decision was seemingly
already made for military action; reporting
was an exercise in attempting to emotionally
prime and mobilise the public.
The next newspaper to be analysed was the
Independent (UK). In terms of the blame
game, the Independent is much quicker to
assign the blame and to detail alleged events.
There is still an implied element of uncer-
tainty in the information though, which is
found in the title of the article – ‘Syrian Civil
War: Dozens of civilians killed in chemi-
cal weapons attack’ (rather than prefixing
with ‘alleged’). Different NGOs support
the main frame of the human suffering and
blame elements, in addition to the US State
Department, which is quoted as saying ‘it
is monitoring the situation and that Russia
should be blamed if chemicals were used’.
Specifically, the article mentions that ‘bar-
rel bombs’ containing chemical weapons
were dropped by Syrian military aircraft. A
‘rebel’ military spokesman from Jaish al-
Islam was quoted as blaming the Syrian gov-
ernment (Osbourne, 2018). The blame-game
and human-suffering frames were intensified
on 8 April, when President Donald Trump is
quoted as saying that there may be a ‘big price
to pay’, as well as his character-­assassination
reference of ‘animal Assad’ (Lusher, 2018).
An article went as far as to state that a ‘sarin
barrel bomb’ was used in the ‘chemical
weapon attack’ (Lusher, 2018). Although,
the article also covered Russia’s warning of
the consequences of an intervention being
waged under false pretences. Conflicting
reports were evident, though with a contin-
ued heavy reliance on ‘opposition/rebel’
sources – ‘The pro-opposition Ghouta Media
Centre alleged that a helicopter had dropped
a barrel bomb containing sarin, and another
organisation claimed that a hospital had been
hit by a chlorine bomb’ (Lusher, 2018). Just
as the Guardian published an editorial, the
Independent also ran one that matched the
framing of blame and accountability: Assad
and Russia are to blame and the ‘interna-
tional community’ has the duty to hold them
to account (Independent, 2018).
From 9 April, there was still reporting on
the blame and human suffering, but there
was a perceptible shift and an addition of the
response frame, which was more about what
kind of military action should be undertaken.
An article claimed through a quote that the
pictures of dead children mean nothing to
countries like Russia (Buncombe, 2018),
which is an emotional assertion based on
spurious grounds rather than a concrete and
verified fact. A series of articles discussed
the various military options available, ruling
nothing out, and in a typical example of these
frames built the case of guilt and the ‘need to
act’ based upon the assertions and assump-
tions of interested parties. Interestingly, this
particular article uses the same term of refer-
ence as the Guardian of ‘alleged’. A revealing
quote, which alludes to possible geopolitical
elements can be found in another article, too:
‘Western allies have looked to increase pres-
sure on the Kremlin for its relationship with
Mr Assad, as calls increase for co-ordinated
international action over the alleged chemi-
cal attack’ (Wilts, 2018). The date of 10 April
witnessed articles consolidating the case for
war, such as Tony Blair’s statement that there
had to be military intervention because with-
out it there would be negative consequences
(Kentish, 2018). The general tone of the arti-
cles on 10 April projects consensus among
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare
Western leaders of the necessity for military
intervention in Syria. No mention is made of
the deception used to initiate the Iraq War in
2003 or the disastrous consequences that fol-
lowed the Libya intervention in 2011, which
was lamented in a House of Commons report
(House of Commons, 2016).
Washington Post (United States) was the
third newspaper to have its content on the
Douma event from 7–10 April examined and
analysed. The first brief report on 7 April
quoted rebel sources stating that the Syrian
government had dropped a barrel bomb
filled with ‘poisonous chemicals’. Various
NGOs and rebel sources were quoted as to
the nature and extent of the alleged attack,
and it included the official Syrian govern-
ment denial that was carried by the UK media
(Washington Post, 2018). The article was
relatively short with the briefest of details,
although the frame of the accusations was
now set. From 8 April, the reporting became
much more emotionally based, though still
using the caveats of linguistic uncertainty,
and they began under these circumstances to
introduce the notion of military retaliation for
the alleged attack. ‘Apparent chemical weap-
ons attack’ was the term used to describe the
event in the physical domain (Loveluck and
Cunningham, 2018). Vivid details and video
were used to reinforce the frame of civilian
suffering – that of children in particular. It
was stated specifically that the likely chemi-
cal was chlorine (Loveluck and Cunningham,
2018). Previous actual and alleged chemi-
cal attacks were discussed, which gave the
impression of a historical context that tended
to support the scripted-propaganda frames of
the roles of the different actors.
An opinion article on 9 April criticised
Trump for not using military force on Syria
and connected Trump together with Syria,
Iran and Russia in an emotional and value-
based argument. ‘The result: another gro-
tesque chemical-weapons attack that reveals
the barbarism of the Russian, Iranian and
Syrian regimes — and the moral and intellec-
tual bankruptcy of the Trump regime’ (Boot,
451
2018). The geopolitical dimensions of the
Syrian conflict were apparent in the reporting
too: ‘Russia is expected to stick up for Assad’
(Morello, 2018). Numerous articles appeared
on 9 and 10 April (as was the case with
the UK newspapers) engaging in the blame
game and calling for a stronger military
response than the one the year before in
Idlib. This was most clearly seen in an edito-
rial opinion with the headline ‘A few cruise
missiles from Trump won’t stop Syria’s war
crimes’ (Washington Post, 2018). Other arti-
cles spoke on behalf of Americans, calling for
military action as a ‘humanitarian response’
– ‘Americans feel a moral obligation to help
humanitarian victims (like those in Syria)
with military force’ (Kreps and Maxey, 2018).
One of the final articles to appear chronologi-
cally in the selected period announced the
planned arrival of chemical inspectors in the
area of the alleged attack (Morello, 2018),
even though the frames of guilt and retribu-
tion had already been decided without any
complete technical investigation.
The final newspaper in this chapter to be
examined and analysed for news content on
the April 2018 Douma chemical weapons
event was the Washington Examiner. An
opinion article appeared very early in the
opening coverage of Douma on 8 April; the
author laid the blame with Assad but used
language that suggested less than complete
certainty of the guilty party. ‘Why you can
be almost certain Bashar Assad is responsi-
ble for the Syrian chemical weapons attack’,
and this is based on the presumed content
of intelligence briefings delivered to Trump
(Rogan, 2018). There is a high degree of
assertion and assumption in the logic of this
opinion article in assigning the blame that is
characterised as being ‘almost certain’ some
24 hours after a remotely occurring event
within a conflict that is known for the heavy
use of propaganda and deception. Many arti-
cles on 8 April called for condemnation and
a military response to the alleged event that
occurred the day before. These calls were
often made with the use of emotionally based
452 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
value and norm lobbying – ‘Trump reacts to
“mindless” chemical attack in Syria: “Big
price to pay”, Russia, Iran responsible for
backing “Animal Assad”’ (an example of
scapegoating and character assassination)
(Chaitin, 2018); ‘Lindsey Graham: Trump’s
response to Syria chemical attack a “defin-
ing moment”’ (imploring Trump to use
military action) (Cohen, 2018); ‘Paul Ryan:
“Responsible nations” cannot tolerate Syria
chemical attack’ (an example of bandwagon-
ing propaganda where the speaker uses pathos
to try and rally support by joining the ‘moral
high ground’) (Cohen, 2018). Although the
headlines did not often denote the uncertainty
that other newspapers did, there was still a
use of wording such as ‘reported chemical
attack’ (as opposed to confirmed) (Cohen,
2018). Talking heads in mainstream political
circles are used to trying to consolidate the
framing through the use of ethos, where the
standing of the public figure is used as a con-
firmation of the articles’ framing.
April 9 was a day of reporting that
revolved around the frame of what kind of
military response was needed, as opposed to
a more open debate that could involve some-
thing other than a military option. A typical
example of this type of framing was seen
with an article headlined, ‘The US is draw-
ing up several options for striking Syria after
chemical weapons attack, Pentagon sources
say’ (McIntyre, 2018). One article proved to
be somewhat of an outlier, as it gave voice
to Russia’s denial of any culpability in the
alleged chemical weapons attack (Gehrke,
2018). There was also some evidence of the
use of deflection by the Trump administra-
tion, through blaming President Obama for
handing Trump the ‘mess’ and Trump for
not doing enough in Syria. ‘Vietor’s tweet
followed what officials believe was a poi-
son gas attack near Damascus, Syria, on
Saturday, which claimed the lives of 40 peo-
ple and injured 500 more. The U.S. suspects
the Syrian government to be behind the inci-
dent’ (Lim, 2018). Therefore, between the
lines, even at this stage there is no absolute
certainty as to the nature of the event and who
is responsible. Coverage of Tucker Carlson’s
questioning of the legitimacy of the reported
chemical attack (Leach, 2018) points to the
Washington Examiner providing some space
to contrasting voices.
By 10 April, the frames were already
in place before the OPCW team’s physi-
cal deployment to investigate the claims of
chemical weapons being used. Some content,
an opinion article, even called for the assassi-
nation of President Bashar al-Assad (Rubin,
2018). The US officials continued to try
and promote their own independent ability
to investigate what had happened (Gehrke,
2018), and the possible Russian backlash
against military intervention was downplayed
(Rogan, 2018). The same accusations used in
the other newspapers are used here too, with
many quotations from ‘rebel’ sources, suf-
fering civilians framed with the emphasis on
children as a particularly vulnerable group,
the assigning of blame and the formation of
popular framing that has the effect of creat-
ing the conventional wisdom and orthodoxy
of knowledge on the issue. This information
situation and creation of information domi-
nance made it difficult for alternative views
to be expressed.
CONCLUSION
This chapter represents an exploratory study
into the measure of activity and paths of
influence via propaganda within the context
of the on-going Syrian conflict. It does not
represent a measure of influence of those
activities, which would require an additional
study into the intended and unintended influ-
ence on opinion and perception of specified
target audiences. A total of 84 articles were
found and analysed across the four newspa-
pers during the period of 7–10 April 2018.
All newspapers carried minimal coverage
on 7 April, which was the day the story broke,
but increased their coverage significantly
 Syria: Propaganda as a Tool in the Arsenal of Information Warfare
from the next day. Coverage in the two
UK-based newspapers followed a similar pat-
tern in terms of the quantity and quality of the
coverage of Douma. Both of the Washington
DC-based newspapers peaked the quantity of
coverage on the same day, on 9 April. There
were a number of recurring frames across all
four media outlets – civilian suffering (focus
on children), use of chemical/nerve agents
(chlorine or sarin), villain frame (Syrian
government, Russia and Iran), hero frame
(‘NGOs’ and rebels), guilt frame (Syrian
government and Russia) and need-to-act
frame (call for ‘humanitarian intervention’).
The media framing closely followed the
pattern developed by Entman – defining
effects or conditions as problematic; iden-
tifying causes; conveying a moral judge-
ment; endorsing remedies and improvements
(Entman, 20044: 5). All the media outlets
observed defined the problematic effect/con-
dition, which was the presumed use of chem-
ical weapons in Douma, Syria. The identified
causes that were reported were the assumed
actions of the Syrian government and Russia
in this conflict. The moral judgement is that
the Syrian government, Russia and some-
times Iran too, are assigned the collective
guilt. Without any exception, the media out-
lets all endorsed the use of military force
against the Syrian government as a ‘remedy’
for the situation.
Propaganda was defined in this chapter
as having a persuasive function, intending
to reach a sizeable target audience, being
re­presentative of a specific group’s agenda
and making use of faulty reasoning and/
or emotional appeals (Taylor, 2003: 1–16;
Shabo, 2008: 5). The reporting that was
analysed met all of these basic criteria – the
newspapers have a sizeable and international
readership, there is a very strong persua-
sive element used in the quality of the news
reporting, all of the media outlets carried an
overwhelming message of the need for mili-
tary action against the Syrian government and
the reasoning used displayed emotion and
faulty reasoning: the heavy emotional use of
453
children (in text and video), the faulty logic
of assumed guilt and that bombing Syria fur-
ther would ‘help’ civilians.
All of the media outlets observed quoted
‘rebel’ or ‘opposition forces’ frequently, pub-
lishing the material at face value, which tends
to support Cockburn’s (2017) criticism that
mainstream media has outsourced its report-
ing to the anti-Assad forces. The NGOs that
were often quoted, as a means of ‘independ-
ent’ sources, also have links, such as the
White Helmets that are funded by both the US
and UK governments (UK Parliament, 2016).
Both of these governments were identified
by the Defence Intelligence Agency report
(DIA, 2012) as being active participants in a
proxy war. The representation of the physi-
cal domain in the information domain was
crucial in influencing the cognitive domain.
Significant gaps between the physical reali-
ties and the informational representations
were stark at times.
The emotionally based logic attempts to
use the techniques of bandwagoning and the
call for the international community’s ‘moral
responsibility’, as a means to prime and
mobilise audiences. This is done with a well-
prepared information space that makes use of
heavily scripted propaganda of the primary
actors to establish brands and reputations,
and therefore establish public expectations
(the ‘good’ side, ‘bad’ side and so forth). The
reaching of moral and ethical conclusions,
based on assumption and assertion, before
an actual physical scientific investigation
has begun (let alone concluded) is one of the
tell-tale signs of the tactic of propaganda to
support a not-so-well-hidden political and/or
military agenda. Furthermore, the ‘evidence’
collected and used to build the case against
the Syrian government via ‘rebel’ sources
was proven to be wrong by the OPCW’s
interim report. In reality, there is an align-
ment between the various frames of propa-
ganda and foreign/military policy – to enable
‘our’ policy and its operational aspects, and
to interfere with the opponent’s ability to fol-
low their own choices.
454 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Notes
1  For more details on these domains please refer to
chapter two in Alberts et al., 2001.
2  Media priming is a cognitive psychological con-
cept where coverage of various issues in terms
of in terms of the quantity and quality of the
coverage sends a signal to content consumers in
order for them to subjectively evaluate the given
situation to affect their opinion, perception and
reactions. For more on priming see https://www.
utwente.nl/en/bms/communication-theories/
sorted-by-cluster/Mass-Media/Priming/.
3  Entman (2004: 5) defines his understanding of
framing as ‘selecting and highlighting some fac-
ets of events or issues, and making connections
among them so as to promote a particular inter-
pretation, evaluation, and/or solution’.
4  Although the academic debates on the existence
or not of the CNN effect were somewhat incon-
clusive, the arguments and counter-arguments
can centre on whether mass media outlets are
a power independent actor or a useful tool of
legitimisation.
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Cold War Propaganda in Civil War
Greece, 1946–1949: From State
of Emergency to Normalization
INTRODUCTION
On March 25, 1949, the day of Greece’s
national holiday, US Ambassador Henry
Grady celebrated the closing of the so-called
‘Work and Victory Week’ with a speech pro-
claiming victory over communist propa-
ganda against the Greek civil war regime. He
framed the Cold War battle of propaganda as
a battle between ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’ and
insisted that ‘world-wide knowledge’ of
propaganda ‘technique’ was an indispensable
weapon in that battle (Grady, 1949). He
traced the origins of communist propaganda
back to the practices employed by the totali-
tarian regimes during WWII and described
the current global setting as a transition from
the ‘war of explosives’ to the ‘war of nerves’
(Grady, 1949). This framing was in accord-
ance with the US Cold War discourse on
propaganda as an entirely negative activity
associated with the Soviet Union and com-
munist regimes in general. US propaganda
activities, however, were not labeled as such
27
Zinovia Lialiouti
and were systematically associated in presi-
dential discourse with positive concepts,
such as truth and freedom.
Truman’s ‘Campaign of Truth’ speech
(April 20, 1950) is a typical example of this
type of argumentation:
The cause of freedom is being challenged through-
out the world today by the forces of imperialistic
communism. This is a struggle, above all else, for
the minds of men. Propaganda is one of the most
powerful weapons the Communists have in this
struggle. Deceit, distortion, and lies are systemati-
cally used by them as a matter of deliberate policy.
This propaganda can be overcome by the truth–
plain, simple, unvarnished truth presented by the
newspapers, radio, newsreels, and other sources
that the people trust. (Truman, 1950)
The Greek Civil War was, in many respects,
an important propaganda battle for the two
blocs. In its full development as an armed
conflict from 1946 to 1949, the Greek Civil
War was one of the first moments of liquida-
tion of the emerging Cold War into a hot
conflict (Jones, 1997). Despite the form and
460 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the extent to which the two superpowers
were actually involved in the conflict, both
perceived it as a test case for their appeal to
global public opinion. It was the Greek Civil
War that triggered the formulation of the
Truman Doctrine, one of the founding texts
of the Cold War, which interpreted for the
first time the rivalry between the United
States and the Soviet Union as a confronta-
tion of two distinct and opposed ‘ways of
life’ (Frazier, 1991). Consequently, ideology,
culture and propaganda were core and not
peripheral elements of the Cold War battle-
field. Thus, the various aspects of the civil
war – political, military, social, humanitar-
ian, etc. – became objects of competing
propagandas both in the West and in the East,
as they represented the first, however imper-
fect, confrontation of the two opposing ‘ways
of life’ (Frazier, 1991).
From this starting point, this chapter aims
to present aspects of the anti-communist
propaganda as developed in Greece during
the civil war period (1946–1949), and it is
structured in two sections: the first presents
what is here labeled as the ‘state of emer-
gency propaganda’ in relation to the ‘­liminal’
condition of the Greek state (civil war,
post-war reconstruction endeavors, power
and hegemony struggles); the second high-
lights the transformation of anti-communist
propaganda into a more comprehensive dis-
course, with recourse to a detailed overview
of the joined (orchestrated by Greek and US
­officials) propaganda activities under the title
‘Work and Victory Week’. Finally, the con-
cluding remarks summarize the main argu-
ments and briefly discuss the legacy and the
implications of the trends analyzed in the
chapter.
This contribution addresses propaganda
as an important chapter in the history of the
modern world, inextricably linked to the
understanding of the evolution of the mod-
ern state, mass politics and mass communi-
cation. It shares the view that the negative
connotations associated with the concept of
propaganda prevent a more comprehensive,
analytical approach of its functions and
­features. Thus, an ‘ethically neutral’ perspec-
tive could benefit propaganda studies. This
chapter adopts Welch’s (2003) definition
of propaganda, based on the elaboration by
Philip M. Taylor (2003), according to which
propaganda is ‘the deliberate attempt to influ-
ence public opinion through the transmission
of ideas and values for a specific persuasive
purpose that has been consciously devised
to serve the self-interest of the propagandist,
either directly or indirectly’ (Taylor, 2003: 6;
Welch, 2003: xix). Nevertheless, it stresses
that an overemphasis on the morally neutral
and banal approaches to propaganda, leading
to arguments such as ‘in all political systems
policy must be explained, the public must
be convinced’ (Welch: xviii), entails the risk
of overshadowing the function of manipula-
tion and coercion, the imbalance of power
relationships involved in the process of
propaganda as well as the nature of political
regimes in the context of which propaganda
messages emerge. It should be noted that in
the case of civil war Greece – and in many
other cases, of course – propaganda resources
were exploited in an illiberal public sphere,
and their manipulation was influenced by the
imbalance of power between the two nation-
states and also between the anti-communist
regime and the pro-communist bloc. The
following account is based on the assump-
tion that propaganda is above all ‘a power-
ful tool for perpetuating power relationships’
(Taylor: 9).
This analysis is based on a critical overview
of existing literature and archival material
from US and Greek sources. Anti-communist
propaganda in Cold War Greece can be per-
ceived as an evolving process s­tarting from
a state of emergency and gradually shaping
into relative normalization. A striking exam-
ple of the state-of-emergency phase is the
discourse on the prison camp on the island of
Makronissos (1947–1954).
The factual milestones of this evolving
process are the development of the Greek
Civil War as a military and political conflict
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949
and the formulation of the Truman Doctrine
and the Marshall Plan. The latter was a deci-
sive factor in the transformation of anti-com-
munist propaganda in Greece. A significant
implication was that anti-communist propa-
ganda acquired a more comprehensive and
positive content alongside the negative rep-
resentation of communism. It was systemati-
cally structured on the conceptualization of
communism as a two-fold threat: (a) military
and (b) ideological. In this line of reason-
ing, military victory over communist gueril-
las should be supplemented and secured by
economic development. These two axes of
anti-communist propaganda are most evi-
dently manifested in the so-called ‘Work and
Victory Week’ (March 1949) – a series of
propaganda activities hosted in Greece and
the United States and orchestrated by US and
Greek officials.
In terms of theoretical concerns, the
focus of the analysis is on the transatlantic
aspects of propaganda formulation and, in
particular, on the interaction between US
and Greek propaganda mechanisms. From
this perspective, the Greek case cannot be
adequately interpreted based exclusively
on national context, as it involves obvious
transnational preconditions and implica-
tions. On the other hand, a special task of
the analysis is to assess the means employed
for propaganda purposes based on their his-
torical and cultural grounding. Considering
Lasswell’s conceptualization of propaganda
as ‘the management of collective attitudes
by the manipulation of significant symbols’
(Lasswell, 1927; Lasswell, 1938), the chapter
comments on the symbolic content of propa-
ganda. The second theoretical argument of
the chapter draws upon the interdependence
between ideology and propaganda, at least
for this phase of the Cold War. The issue of
the relationship between ideology and prop-
aganda is directly linked to the question of
the relationship between state and society
as far as the establishment of ideological
consensus is concerned. This research ques-
tion has produced significant contributions
461
and theoretical elaborations, shifting the
focus from top-down to bottom-up perspec-
tives based on conceptualizations seeking to
capture the complexity of that relationship,
e.g. the ‘state-private network’ (Laville and
Wilford 2006; Wilford, 2009; Van Dongen
et al., 2014).
The argument of this chapter is that in
the Greek case, due to several historical and
political factors, the role of the state – the
US and Greek governments – is far more
important than private initiatives in the for-
mulation of Cold War ideology and propa-
ganda (Lialiouti, 2018). It would be fair to
argue that anti-communist propaganda in
Greece was – for the greater part of the Cold
War period – highly centralized and – to a
significant extent – militarized. This is bet-
ter understood if we perceive this historical
period as a process of legitimization for the
emerging social and political order after the
war and the civil conflict, which also involves
aspects of state-building, especially as far as
the role of the US factor is concerned (Voglis,
2014; Rizas, 2008). Anti-communism was an
integral element both in the externally driven
state-building and in the internal struggle
for legitimization and institutional build-
ing. It was also interwoven with the variety
of nationalism that prevailed at the end of
this period. The differentiation between two
phases of propaganda based on the means
employed and the emphasis attributed in
terms of content, serves analytical purposes,
although in essence they overlap to some
extent.
PHASE 1: STATE OF EMERGENCY
PROPAGANDA
The shaping of the anti-communist propa-
ganda in civil war Greece was the product of
national and transnational currents that con-
verged and interacted but also generated
contradictions. The most important elements
of these currents were the evolution of the
462 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
ideology of anticommunism in Greece from
the interwar period to the Civil war and
the  formulation of Western, transatlantic
anticommunism in the context of the anti-
totalitarian paradigm. Alongside were the
political and diplomatic developments that
led to the consolidation of the Cold War, the
renegotiation of Greek national identity after
a turbulent period that involved the country’s
participation in two world wars, two bitter
internal conflicts – the National Schism
(1915–1922) and the Civil War – and the
­collapse of the ‘Megali Idea’: the national
ideology that had prevailed since the
mid  nineteenth century (Skopetea, 1988;
Kremmydas, 2010). This process was inter-
twined with the legitimization of the coun-
try’s institutional, political and social setting
in the postwar period. Anti-communist prop-
aganda had to serve multiple purposes
­stemming from the above currents.
The ideological foundation for civil war
anti-communist propaganda was the ideology
of ‘national mindedness’ ­(‘ethnikofrosyni’),
which crystallized in those years and
became hegemonic throughout the post-
civil-war period (1949–1974). According to
Papadimitriou (2006), the ideological core of
national mindedness consisted of national-
ism, anti-communism, conservatism centered
on the concepts of religion, family, owner-
ship and homeland and pro-Atlanticism,
while the endorsement of the monarchy was
a peripheral element to the belief system and
not a sine qua non for ‘national mindedness’
(Papadimitriou, 2006). In parallel, the notion
that adherence to communist ideology was,
in essence, a traitorous act against the Greek
nation was the ideological precondition for an
antiliberal legislation that allowed the crimi-
nal persecution of communists (or suspected
communists) not on the basis of actions but of
beliefs (Alivizatos, 1981). Consequently, the
identification of communism with national
treason and criminal behavior evolved into
cornerstone themes of propaganda. Civil war
propaganda is inextricably linked to the anti-
liberal institutional and legislative context
that sought to contain the appeal of commu-
nist ideology. The state-of-emergency term
is coined due to the urgencies created by the
civil war as an armed conflict, but also as a
struggle for social and political hegemony
after a period of multi-aspect crisis.
The argument this chapter makes is that
the form, the content and the means of civil
war propaganda were shaped by two decisive
factors: the central role of the Greek state as
a propaganda agent and orchestrator and the
relationship between Greece and the United
States, with a considerable degree of depend-
ence during the Civil War period (Stefanidis,
2004; Lialiouti, 2017). The role of these
two actors, the Greek and US institutions, is
­perceived here as a continuum. This was sus-
tained by an institutional nexus of bilateral
agreements that shaped the context of US aid
to Greece, as well as by the links established
between the military and the intelligence
­personnel in both countries.
As for the US role, the United States, through
various institutional channels, orchestrated
overt and covert propaganda operations. An
important element of continuity can be traced
to the legacy of pro-American propaganda
associated with the United Nations Relief
and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)
endeavor to Greece during WWII (Hionidou,
2013). US benevolence in the form of food
relief to the war-torn country had been the
theme of a well-orchestrated campaign. The
United States Information Service (USIS)
began its operation in 1947 with its head-
quarters in Athens and branches in Salonica
and Patras. It had an original manpower of
14 employees, which would rise to 170 by
1953. During this initial phase, its operation
was administratively interwoven with the
Athens Embassy and with the information
division of the American Mission for Aid to
Greece (AMAG). Consequently, until 1953,
USIS served the propaganda needs and goals
of the Embassy, the AMAG and the Joint
United States Military Aid Group to Greece
(JUSMAGG) (Stefanidis, 2004: 12–13).
The CIA also became actively involved in
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949
propaganda operations on Greek soil, after its
foundation in 1948, starting from the imple-
mentation of psychological-war operations
aiming to counter communist propaganda
that had been designed by the British secret
services before the UK’s withdrawal from
the Greek affairs in early 1947 (Papahelas
1997: 21–2). In the early 1950s, the CIA
would be the model for the foundation of the
Greek intelligence agency (KYP) and would
develop many joint propaganda operations
with its Greek counterpart (Papahelas, 1997:
23; Rizas, 2008: 138).
Concerning the Greek side, Bournazos
(2009) argues that the Civil War is a turn-
ing point for government propaganda in two
respects: ‘on the one hand (it) is intensified
and expanded to a degree unknown till that
time, on the other hand it acquires the form of
counter-propaganda since its principal – if not
exclusive – object was to confront communist
propaganda… the anticommunist struggle
takes the form of a nation-wide rally’. During
this historical phase, Bournazos (2009)
conceptualizes anti-communist propaganda
­ of the royals – and particularly of the Queen –
as a network of multiple ‘nodes’ (monar-
chy, army, police forces, Church, American
Embassy, etc.) that coordinated their actions
and interacted with a wide range of organi-
zations, associations and unions (cultural
­foundations, scouts, volunteer groups, etc.).
Three aspects of the network are worth
commenting upon. First is the ­instrumental
role of the army in disseminating and
enforcing – if necessary – anti-communism.
During the Civil War, the Directorates for
Psychological Operations were founded in
the Hellenic National Defense General Staff
and the Hellenic Army General Staff, and
special emphasis was given to the training
of officers to meet the needs of the propa-
ganda campaign. Moreover, the army created
its own radio stations covering the capital
area and the periphery. In collaboration with
paramilitary groups and the police forces, the
army sought to cement the anti-communist
orientation of the rural population by dissem-
inating propaganda films and print material,
463
organizing public events – often with the par-
ticipation of ‘repented’ communists in towns
and villages – organizing propaganda exhi-
bitions (e.g. the 1948 exhibition in Salonica
under the title ‘Two years of war against the
red fascism’) and surveilling the population.
In order to fully understand the importance
of the army’s activity, one should take into
account the extremely high levels of illit-
eracy (especially in the rural areas) as well
as the poor transportation network and infra-
structure that meant the army vehicles had
privileged access to remote areas. Apart from
targeting the general population, the army
developed several techniques for discourag-
ing, alluring or terrorizing guerilla groups
isolated in remote and mountainous areas
(e.g. planes dropping leaflets propagating the
advances of the national army and the miser-
ies of the guerillas) (Bournazos, 2009: 23–4).
Second, there is the role of ‘militant phi-
lanthropy’ with an emphasis on the royal
family. A special component in the process of
strengthening the Throne was the association
with welfare and social work, especially with
reference to the consequences of the Civil
War. The Queen’s fundraiser evolved into
a powerful and far-reaching structure that
focused primarily on the so-called Civil War
children (Bournazos, 2009: 24–7, 33–4). The
issue of the thousands of children who had
been driven to the Eastern bloc countries by
the communist guerillas, had evolved into
a major propaganda battle between the two
blocs. The anti-communist bloc denounced
the practice of ‘paidomazoma’ (children
removal) and sought to ‘safeguard’ the chil-
dren in the areas affected by the conflict by
moving them to ‘children’s towns’, where
they received special training under firm
supervision (Baerentzen, 1987; Vervenioti,
2005; Hassiotis, 2011). More than 20,000
children were accommodated in 52 children
towns in the Civil War. Aside from the struc-
ture itself, these children and the treatment
they received were an important propaganda
theme: against the violent and cruel behavior
464 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
of the guerillas was the protective hand of the
Throne (Bournazos, 2009).
Third, the social grounding of anti-­
communism served as a means of securing
public resources. As a result of the turbulence
stemming from a 30-year war period in Greek
history (1912–1949), which also involved
a major change in the country’s population
composition (with the inclusion of 1.5 million
refugees from Asia Minor), anti-communist
ideology and propaganda cannot easily be
discerned from social practices. Interacting
with the reorganizing of clientelist and elite
networks and the creation of several new civil
society organizations, the construction of
anti-communist identity was the sine qua non
condition for gaining access to public money
(through aid grants, compensations, etc.) and
public services (Gounaris, 2004).
In the discursive realm, elite and popular
practices converged in the construction of
the communist enemy concept. Following
the scheme of the traitorous, anti-Greek
orientation of communists and exploiting
the supervision of communist parties by the
USSR, the Civil War was framed as a bat-
tle between Greeks and Slavs. The equation
of communism with the Bulgarian/Slavic
intruder became powerful not only during the
civil war but also in the post-civil-war years
(Papadimitriou, 178–87; Panourgia, 2009,
117–23). Selective readings of the history of
ethnic antagonisms in the Balkan area were
incorporated in this stereotyping process.
An important agent in the anti-­communist
propaganda was the Greek Orthodox Church,
alongside several extra-ecclesiastical organi-
zations that denounced the atheist incli-
nation of communists, but also portrayed
them as active enemies of the Christian faith
(Bournazos, 2009, 27–33). Moreover, com-
munism was identified in public discourse
with crime and violence, with lies and decep-
tion and was metaphorically represented as a
sneaky disease (Bournazos, 2009, 18–33).
A most illustrative example of the state-
of-emergency phase in Cold War propaganda
is the case of the Makronissos prison camp:
an inhibited island very close to the shores of
Attica, that served from 1947 to 19541 as a
place of exile and detention. Until 1949, the
population of exiles consisted of soldiers and
army officers that were suspected of nurtur-
ing communist ideology. From the spring of
1949, however, the share of civilians (men
and women) increased significantly; thus,
in the summer of 1949, 7,500 soldiers and
20,000 civilians were held at Makronissos.
The officially declared goal of the prison
camps operating on the island was the ‘reha-
bilitation’ of the prisoners. Following the
conceptualization of communism as disease
and deception, the ‘rehabilitation’ process
would supposedly allow for the ‘recovery’ of
those deceived or contaminated, by employ-
ing physical torture, psychological violence
and propaganda (Voglis and Bournazos
2009).
What is perhaps most striking is the fact
that the Makronissos project was not covered
with silence, but served as a big propaganda
campaign – with an embellished presentation
of its aspects, addressing both the internal and
the foreign audience. In the framing that was
employed for the international campaign, the
emphasis was on the relevance and the poten-
tial imitation of the Greek ‘experiment’ for
the Western bloc in general, as well as on its
compatibility with liberal-democratic institu-
tions as a ‘programme of civic readaptation’.
This mood is captured in the 1949 publica-
tion (Figure 27.1) edited by C. Rodocanachi,
which presents the Makronissos project to
the international community. The iconog-
raphy selected for the book cover aims to
include Makronissos among the moments
of national glory going back to the cultural
heritage of Ancient Greece (Rodocanachi,
1949). Unsurprisingly, the description of the
methods employed at Makronissos could not
be further from the truth. According to the
publication, the program of ‘readaptation’
involved the following:
1) Cordial welcome to the newcomers
2) Friendly treatment to inspire confidence
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949
Figure 27.1  The front-cover of the edition:
Rodocanachi, C. P. (1949), A Great work of
civic readaptation in Greece, Athens, 1949
Source: Digital Museum of Makronissos, ASKI.
3) Residents are informed of the work done to
­influence public opinion in their favour and to
induce everybody to receive them with open
arms, when they return to their town or village
4) Convincing them that they will be granted a
friendly reception wherever they may have to go
5) Creating the impression that it is in the nature
of man to make mistakes and that nothing is
more honourable than acknowledging own’s
errors. This work is done principally in the form of
lectures on national, social and religious subjects.
(Rodocanachi, 1949: 7–8)
As a tangible proof of the ‘readaptation’,
the  Makronisos propaganda insisted on
portraying the affection that the reformed
­ ical establishment the National Resistance, as
population nurtured for the monarchs.
Figure  27.2 is a snapshot from the warm
welcome that the royal couple supposedly
received at Makronisos in March 1949, and it
received wide publicity. The Rodocanachi
leaflet included the photo with the following
465
Figure 27.2  Photo from the visit of the
Royal Couple to Makronissos, published by
the newspaper Kairoi, March 24, 1949
Source: National Library of Greece. The photo headline is
the royal emblem: ‘My strength is the love of the people’.
The caption reads: ‘A characteristic snapshot from the
reception that the royal couple received at yesterday
at Makronissos. The men of the battallion in delirious
­enthusiasm grabbed the royals in their arms cheering
for Greece and the National Army and cursing the foreign-
driven communists.
caption: ‘To show their sentiments and patri-
otic redemption, these once active commu-
nists actually chaired their royal visitors and
the Minister of War (Rodocanachi, 1949: 1).
A major task for anti-communist propa-
ganda was the disassociation of the Communist
party from the National Resistance Movement
(1941–1944). The National Liberation
Front (EAM) that was created by the Greek
Communist Party (KKE) in 1941 in Nazi-
occupied Athens became the largest resistance
group during the occupation and contributed,
to an extent, to the national prestige of the
KKE. However, for the anti-communist polit-
the founding myth of post-war Greece, posed
an obvious challenge. The difficulties in the
elimination of the ties to the KKE, as well as
the emerging alliances of the Cold War, led
to a ­certain ‘amnesia’ in public discourse
concerning the occupation and the resistance
466 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
(Fleischer, 2009: 508–53; Paschaloudi, 2010).
It would be fair to argue that this ‘amnesia’
differentiated official from popular memory
of WWII (Lialiouti, 2016). This differentia-
tion, among other things, can be associated
with a specific propaganda practice involving
the public denunciation of communist ideol-
ogy through signed letters of repentance that
were widely reproduced. The anti-communist
state sought to massively obtain such letters
of ­repentance, by employing physical- and
­psychological-violence targeting, in particu-
lar of the exiled population.
PHASE 2: THE NORMALIZATION
PROCESS
Work and Victory Week as a
Case Study
After the proclamation of the Truman
Doctrine, the Greek problem was perceived
by US officials as a ‘test case’ for US leader-
ship of the Free World. In its discursive
­formulation and in terms of policy planning,
the doctrine involved both economic and
military goals in an evolving balance. For
the period 1947–1949, military goals pre-
vailed in the US agenda; since 1949, the goal
of economic reconstruction gained promi-
nence (Maier, 1978; Jones, 1992). Among
the ideological implications of the doctrine
was the conceptualization of the communist
threat as twofold: military and ideological
(Botsiou, 2009). Thus, any US response to
that threat should also maintain this double
orientation. In response to the communist
vision, the US promise to the post-war world
was captured by the slogan ‘peace and pros-
perity’ (Paterson, 1988: 18–9; Botsiou,
2009).
The slogan ‘Work and Victory’, which
was coined to term the propaganda activi-
ties organized in the last phase of the Greek
Civil War, echoes this ideological mood.
The naming was an idea of Lucretia Grady,
wife of the American Ambassador to Greece,
who had also captured the idea for an event
that would involve several activities taking
place in the United States and in Greece.
The choice of words implied that the Greek
nation was fighting communism ­ militarily
and through its productive reconstruction.
Lucretia Grady was also very actively
involved in the Work and Victory Week both
publicly and behind the scenes. However,
the American Ambassador wanted the cel-
ebration to appear as a ‘spontaneous initia-
tive’ of the Greek side to alert global public
opinion on the sufferings of civil war Greece.
Henry Grady himself assured the Secretary
of State that the project would emphasize
‘Greek spontaneity’ and that the appearance
of US officials would be kept to a minimum
(Grady, 1949). Nevertheless, the ambassado-
rial ­couple had a key role in orchestrating
Work and Victory Week.
The planning and implementation of
the activities was based on the collabora-
tion between the Greek Government, US
Embassy and prominent members of the
Greek–American community. An important
aspect of this collaboration was the contacts
between the Gradys and Spyros Skouras,
president of 20th Century Fox and one of
the most prominent members of the Greek–
American community, with personal ties to
the White House.
Skouras was recruited to help with the prep-
arations of the activities in the United States,
but also to provide filming and to ensure US
and word-wide coverage of the event. Much
of the content for the press and radio cover-
age for Work and Victory in the United States
was provided by the Gradys, while Skouras
provided the Gradys with a film crew to cover
activities in Greece, following the guidelines
of the ambassadorial couple (TPL, 1949a).
As far as Greek ceremonial practices are
concerned, the festivities were very different
from the later post-civil-war public rituals
and celebrations, in that they were oriented
both to the global and to the national public
opinion, and they were also different in their
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949
temporal orientation: Work and Victory Week
was oriented to the present and to the future,
while post-civil-war festivities addressed
the past (Antoniou, 2013). Another impor-
tant remark involves the convergence in the
discursive practices employed by US and
Greek agents; the Greek version of the anti-
totalitarian, anti-communist discourse, the
so-called ‘national-mindedness’, was struc-
tured upon similar conceptual and rhetorical
patterns.
The organizers reserved a special place
for the Church in Work and Victory Week.
The incorporation of religion in the pro-
gram was the result of systematic contacts
and requests. As early as February, Henry
Grady informed the State Department that
the Greek Orthodox Church was willing
to give for philanthropy all its revenues on
March 20, the first day of Work and Victory
Week, and would ask Orthodox Churches all
over the world to do the same. Moreover, it
would ask Greek citizens to skip a meal on
that day and to offer the equivalent amount of
money to the cause. The Bishop of Gibraltar
and the Archbishop of Canterbury would
ask their parishes to declare March 25 as a
day of prayer. Protestant congregations were
asked to make a special reference to Work
and Victory in their sermons on March 25, on
the basis that the rally was ‘a symbol of the
telling blow being struck in all free countries
for the support of a common cause’ (TPL,
1949a).
Lucretia Grady – who was a catholic  –
convinced the Catholic Archbishop in Athens
to ask the Pope for a public endorsement
of Work and Victory (TPL, 1949a). A simi-
lar request was addressed to the Catholic
Archbishop of New York by Henry Grady. In
his letter to the Archbishop, Grady described
‘Work and Victory’ as ‘a morale b­uilding
effort to spur the Greeks on to greater
endeavour to end this terrible aggression of
the Communists, backed by the Russian sat-
ellite countries’ (TPL, 1949b).
On the eve of the week, Dean Acheson
informed the US Embassy in Athens that
467
the official Greek delegation would be
received by the President and the First Lady
in the White House (TPL, 1949c). President
Truman himself gave a message praising
the initiative. In Washington, DC, the Greek
Ambassador marked the opening of Work and
Victory (March 20) in a special ceremony at
the Greek Orthodox Church of Aghia Sofia in
Washington, claiming that ‘victory over the
dark forces of oppression’ had already been
achieved (TPL, 1949d: 3).
On March 22, the so-called Greek
‘Gratitude Committee’ arrived in the United
States. The following day, the committee
gave a press conference on Bedloes island,
which received extensive coverage from the
US press, and its members made several TV
appearances during their stay. Moreover,
the Committee participated in several social
events alongside US and Greek officials.
Perhaps the most prestigious was the sympo-
sium hosted in New York by organizations of
the diaspora, with most participants promis-
ing material and moral support to the Greek
cause. The next day, a big parade took place
on 5th Avenue with members of the Greek
Armed Forces, the Royal Guard (Evzones)
and women in traditional costumes. Skouras
praised the Gradys for their ‘magnificent
selection’ of the Evzones. It was reported
that one million people watched the parade,
among whom was Winston Churchill and
Bernard Baruch (TPL, 1949g). After a short
visit to Boston, the committee arrived in
Washington DC, where they were received
by the President, the First Lady and Vice-
President Alben Barkley. The President
expressed his sympathy for the sufferings of
the Greek people and his admiration for their
‘courage’. Finally, the men of the Armed
Forces and the Royal Guard participated in
the parade for Army Day in DC (April 9)
(TPL, 1949e).
In his correspondence with Gradys,
Skouras appeared certain that the tour of the
Gratitude Committee in the United States
was decisive in making the American people
understand that the Greeks are ‘fighting no
468 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
civil war but for freedom (and) integrity (of)
western civilization’ (TPL, 1949f). Skouras’
role was instrumental in securing this under-
standing. He made personal contacts with the
editors of the most important US newspapers
to provide publicity for Work and Victory
and a favorable presentation of the Greek
affair, while he gave several radio interviews
stressing that Greece was ‘engaged in no
­ (day of remembrance for the Greek War of
local “cold” war, but in an all-out full-scale
war against communism’ (TPL, 1949e).
Similar contacts with US journalists, like
Elizabeth Wayston and Dorothy Thompson,
were also made by Henry and Lucretia Grady
to assure positive coverage by the US press
(TPL, 1949g).
The following account of Work and
Victory by Elizabeth Wayston is revealing of
the impact of those contacts:
Greece’s Week of ‘Work and Victory’, in March,
was a mammoth piece of organization planned
and carried out as evidence to the world of the
Greek people’s determination to restore their land
to peace and economic plenty… It was not a
holiday week. Workers in factories, everywhere,
­ public (Kairoi, 1949). The common double-
continued working. It was an enthusiastic, yet
sober week of recognition that victory is possible
only through work, and that peace can be sus-
tained after the victory only through continued
work. It was a period, as well, when more than
seventy women’s organizations banded together
with a common purpose. It was also a time when
the common people of the realm of labor walked
with their Ministers who had set their goal for
them… It was not only a manifestation by Greeks
for Greeks, but also a manifestation that served as
an example to the world that no force can destroy
freedom, or the principles of human rights, so long
as a people believe in that freedom.2
In the weeks preceding the official ceremo-
nies, Greek ministers and other officials
campaigned throughout Greece to prepare
for the event, but also to stir public support.
They were usually followed by Lucretia
Grady, who often chose to give public
speeches. In one of these public appearances,
she made it clear to the Greek public that her
initiative was purely polemic, stating that the
idea came to her from the fact that she could
not fight on the front herself (Speech at
Patras, 12/3/1949) (Kairoi, 1949). Lucretia
Grady also had many engagements during
Work and Victory, participating daily in offi-
cial ceremonies, but also meeting with
women organizations, charity and educa-
tional foundations and factory workers.
As Work and Victory coincided with
the Greek national holiday of March 25
Independence), there was a systematic effort
to reinterpret the meaning of the national
holiday in relation to the anti-communist
­
struggle. An article in the newspaper Kairoi
argued that Work and Victory contributed in
‘widening’ and attributing a ‘­contemporary
meaning’ to the anniversary and that ‘the
excellent initiative of Mrs Grady gives us the
opportunity to show the world that the Greek
nation not only fights and wins a war unprec-
edented in global history, but also labors in
every aspect of national energy for the coun-
try’s recovery’ (Melas, 1949). The double
meaning of the festivities was also stressed by
Archbishop Damaskinos in his message to the
edged goal of military defeat of communism
and productive restructuring was reproduced
not only in the discursive framing – with col-
umnists underlying that ‘the same hands grasp
for the plow and the machine gun’ (Melas,
1949) – but also in the iconography. The
frontpage of newspaper Kairoi (Figure 27.3),
where a soldier, a farmer and a worker appear
in unity, is revealing for the ideological con-
structions associated with Work and Victory.
Among the propaganda priorities in
Work and Victory was the legitimization of
the emerging institutional status quo that
could safeguard the anti-communist con-
sensus with a special place reserved for the
monarchy. After a series of political adven-
tures that challenged her survival, the Greek
­monarchy sought to secure its role and maxi-
mize her public presence since 1946. As was
also evident during Work and Victory, the
symbols and rituals that were vested upon
the royal couple aimed to present the mon-
archs as the ‘heads of the national family’
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949 469

Figure 27.3  Kairoi frontpage, March 20, 1949

Source: National Library of Greece.

in the context of the renegotiation of Greek
national identity  after the war and the Civil
War (Karakasidou, 2000).
It is also worth commenting on the geo-
graphical coverage of Work and Victory.
Apart from the symbolical gravity of the
Greek capital, the related activities were
intensified in northern Greece (Naoussa,
Veroia, Alexandroupolis, etc.), which was the
last front of the Civil War. Work and Victory
Week was organized into themes, with each
day being dedicated to a social group or
470 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
institution (farmers, workers, youth, etc.),
aiming to highlight a collaborative spirit in
their co-existence.
The first day of the celebrations was dedi-
cated to the Church and began with a liturgy
at the Orthodox Athens Cathedral – with
the presence of the royal couple, govern-
ment ministers, the ambassadorial couple,
General Van Fleet, etc. – and also at the
Catholic Cathedral. It is revealing of the
impact of anti-communism in the negotia-
tion of national identity that Greek Catholics
were described at the time in press reports as
­patriots who fulfilled their national ‘duty’ and
honored their ‘struggling’ homeland. On the
same day, an exhibition on the ‘reformative’
achievements of the ‘Makronissos Battalion’
was inaugurated at Zappeion (Kairoi, 1949).
The second day was designated as ‘agricul-
tural day’ and was meant to ‘demonstrate in
the most official way the contribution of the
agrarian class to the task of national recon-
struction and her gratitude to the national
forces that inflict the final blow against ban-
ditry’ (Kairoi, 1949). US and Greek officials
praised farmers as the ‘nation’s backbone’.
The third day was ‘Labor and Industry Day’
and involved symbolic gestures that alluded
to the friendly and collaborative relation-
ship between workers and employers; the
workers’ families were invited for a tour of
the factories, and they all lunched together
with the industrialists. Visits to factories
throughout the country were made by gov-
ernment ministers and by Mrs Grady, who
even danced to Greek folk music at the
emblematic Papastratos tobacco industry in
Piraeus. The General Confederation of Greek
Workers supported Worker’s Day, urging the
unions to participate in the activities and to
‘affirm the gratitude of the working class
towards the national army who sheds his
blood for the crush of the foreigners serving
banditry’ (Kairoi, 1949). The confederation
also hosted a reception for members of the
armed forces and sent a statue of an industrial
worker standing next to a fighting soldier, as
a gift to President Truman (Kairoi, 1949).
The fourth day of Work and Victory was
dedicated to the Greek youth, with emphasis
on the beneficial role of the ‘national-minded’
youth and on the role of the monarchy (most
notably the Queen) in sustaining this orienta-
tion. The youth was at the center of a mor-
alistic discourse structured upon the fear of
‘criminal’ or ‘delinquent’ behavior, with
these terms also implying the ideological
appeal of communism.
The question of control and surveillance
over youth was even more critical due to the
social implications of the war and the Civil
War, which involved a significant number
of orphaned or displaced children (Avdela,
2013). Thus, Work and Victory staged chil-
dren and adolescents in working in public-
utility projects and offering volunteer work,
to demonstrate that the anti-communist
state excelled in the moral education of the
youth and secured its productive and benevo-
lent role in society. In this context, students
participated in blood donations for soldiers
wounded in the civil strife, while children
from the Queen’s children’s towns paraded in
the capital. On Youth Day, the royal couple
visited the island of Markonisos to inspect
the prison camps and was supposedly enthu-
siastically received by the exiles. A key place
in Work and Victory was occupied by the
association ‘Elliniki Merimna’ (Greek Care),
which had operated since 1946 under the
Queen’s auspices. On March 22, Greek Care
organized a public lecture on the ‘sanctity of
labor’, while on Youth Day the association
had children from children’s towns and stu-
dents of night schools repair a road to dem-
onstrate the utility of the training it provided.
The fifth day of the celebrations (March 24)
was named ‘Day of International Solidarity’
during which emphasis was placed – almost
exclusively – on Greek–American ties
and, of course, to the effect of the Marshall
Plan on Greece. The highlight of the day
was the inauguration of the ‘Exhibition
on the Reconstruction’, otherwise called
‘Exhibition on the Survival of the Greek
People’, with the presence of the monarchs.
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949 471

Figure 27.4  Snapshot from “Agricultural Day” published at Kairoi, 22/3/1949

Source: National Library of Greece. The caption reads: EXPLOITATION OF THE GREEK LAND: Immense crowds examine with
admiration and gratitude the agricultural machines (tractors, sowing machines etc.) exposed at Syntagma Square which the
United States provide to Agrarian Greece to reclaim the land and the sweat of her children

While the exhibition provided information
on the aid granted to Greece by the allies, its
center of gravity was the Truman Doctrine
and the Marshall Plan. In his opening speech,
the Minister of Foreign Affairs argued that
the aim of the Marshall Plan was not only the
country’s economic recovery but also the res-
toration of ‘spiritual balance’, stressing that
Europe’s spiritual ­decadence after the war
was more dangerous than economic chaos
(TPL, 1949h).
The final day of the week, which coincided
with the Greek national holiday, was dedi-
cated to the ‘glory of the warrior’ (Kairoi,
1949). The participation of US marines in
the big military parade that took place in
Athens was praised by the nationally minded
press (Kairoi, 1949). This final day of the
week was meant to reaffirm national unity –
with the exclusion of communists – and the
peaceful coexistence of all social classes.
In his speech, Henry Grady celebrated the
closing of Work and Victory as a manifesta-
tion of the ‘rebirth of the Greek spirit’ and
associated the national holiday not only
with past but also with upcoming victory
(Grady, 1949).
To conclude, Work and Victory is an inter-
esting case of convergence between propa-
ganda tactics and ideology at the transitional
phase that marks the ending of the Civil War.
An important element in the assessment of
its structure and content as a propaganda
­activity is its presupposition of two differ-
ent ­audiences: a national and a foreign one.
In terms of content, it represents an effort
to challenge communism both negatively
and positively. The positively framed anti-­
communism propaganda was structured upon
the concepts of productivity, work ethic,
volunteerism and social peace under the
­
­auspices of a paternalistic monarchy.
472 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
CONCLUSION
To the great disappointment of US cultural-
diplomacy officials, the Marshall Plan, popu-
larly known as American Aid, had lost much
of its prestige among the Greeks by the late
1950s, with only a minority stating in opin-
ion polls that it had benefited the country to
a great extent. Moreover, anti-American
trends would develop to a generalized
­anti-Americanism after the collapse of the
military regime (1967–1974) (Lialiouti 2017;
Lialiouti 2015). Could these outcomes be
attributed to US foreign policy and propa-
ganda failures? In many respects, yes.
However, recent political developments in
the country associated with the economic
crisis (2010–2018) provoked some surprising
transformations in the US image, alongside a
positive perception of the Obama presidency
(2009–2017). In the context of a highly
polarized political debate, emerging Euro-
skepticism and anti-German attitudes due to
public discomfort with the austerity policies,
the myth of the American Aid as an uncondi-
tional rescue endeavor reappeared in public
discourse attesting for the lasting impact of
aspects of pro-American propaganda. On the
other hand, political and cultural anti-­
Americanism seem to hold their strength as
interpretive schemes in Greek political cul-
ture. How are these currents trends related to
the issues explored in this chapter?
A tentative answer to the above ques-
tion involves the following. US propaganda
was structured upon a somewhat misleading
understanding of pro-communist trends in
post-war Greece. It failed to contextualize
them by taking into account the role of the
communist party in the resistance movement
during WWII and thus the memory practices
associated with the post-war negotiation of
Greek national identity. Moreover, it failed
to interpret opposition to the post-civil war
establishment as a quest for political and
social modernization. The implementation of
propaganda depended upon military and par-
amilitary networks as well as on extremely
conservative institutions, such as the monar-
chy, which prevented the identification of the
US image with progressive and modernizing
elements. US propaganda was somewhat
trapped in the aid issue and themes revolving
around material goods, thus failing to pro-
mote a more comprehensive account of US
culture. Moreover, the aid theme functioned
as a constant reminder of the inequality in
bilateral relations.
Nevertheless, anti-communist propaganda
conducted in civil war Greece can be studied
as an aspect of transatlantic history because
of the interdependence between Greek and
US agents in its design and implementa-
tion, but also because of the conceptual and
ideological links between the ruling classes
in the two countries at the emergence of the
Cold War. Moreover, the study of propa-
ganda as addressed in this chapter sheds light
on aspects of social and political history. In
this respect, propaganda is examined in the
broader political, ideological and social con-
text because this allows for a comprehensive
understanding not only of its defined goals
but its functions in a given time and place.
In the Greek case, anti-communist propa-
ganda is understood as part of the processes
taking place at a liminal moment of Greek
history involving aspects of state-building,
national-identity construction and the ques-
tion of establishing a social and political
hegemony. Under this prism, it is argued that
anti-­
communist propaganda of the period
1946–1949 can be broken down into a state-
of-emergency phase and a phase of normali-
zation. During the first phase, the emphasis
is placed on the enemy-construction propa-
ganda, while the second phase involves efforts
to present a positive and comprehensive
social vision in response to communist ide-
ology. Nevertheless, during the entire period,
anti-communist propaganda was mainly the
product of utterly conservative milieus (army
and police forces, Church and ecclesiastical
organizations, monarchy, etc.). This develop-
ment, alongside the relative backwardness of
the mass media industry in Greece, defined
 COLD WAR PROPAGANDA IN CIVIL WAR GREECE, 1946–1949
the form of propaganda. Finally, despite
its  transatlantic influences, anti-communist
propaganda in civil war Greece cannot be
understood independently from the features
of Greek post-war nationalism.
Notes
1  The majority of the political prisoners of
Makronissos were removed in 1951. Soldiers
­ Rethymnon: University of Crete.
that were considered vulnerable to left ideology
were being kept until 1954. (Bournazos, 1997).
2  An undated copy of the article is included in
the folder Henry F. Grady Papers, Box 3, Folder
Greece ‘Work and Victory Week’.
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Propaganda and Populist
Communication in Bolivia,
Ecuador and Venezuela
Daniel Aguirre and Caroline Avila
INTRODUCTION
Populist communication in Latin American
offers illustrative examples and concepts for
a broader understanding of propaganda in
our present times. Populism and propaganda
are controversial terms with several compet-
ing definitions dependent on geographic
location, language usage and custom.
Generally, citizens and politicians alike
reflect upon both critically. Furthermore, a
term that is often associated with populism
and propaganda in the region is demagogu-
ery and is generally identifiable in politics
via speech acts and subsequent policies. The
strongest conceptual linkages in the region
are most visible among populism and dema-
goguery, whereas propaganda and dema-
goguery are not as closely associated in Latin
American thought. The semantics of it all is
salient when taking into account that, from a
communication standpoint, propaganda in
the Spanish language remains conceptually
entangled with the practice of commercial
28
advertising and marketing, rather than a
sponsored, one-way public information cam-
paign directed toward citizens. Contentious
political systems and the president’s role in
public affairs as structurally extensive or per-
vasive (termed by political scientists as
hyperpresidentialism) offer another compar-
ative entry point for analysis. In other words,
populist politics and communication can
equate to a variety of propaganda that can
travel, aiding in understanding other contexts –
including recent ones in Europe and the
United States.
This chapter refers to the legacy of populist
communication within the Latin American
region with the purpose of integrating it
deliberately into the study of propaganda. It
argues that a corpus of existing research on
populism in Latin America – albeit mostly
in Spanish – can inform current understand-
ings and notions of propaganda. To do so,
it offers a populist communication frame-
work per recent events from the region,
namely in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 477
In essence, the chapter’s primary aim is to
synthesize Latin American thought on pop-
ulism and situate it within propaganda stud-
ies. Consequently, the chapter is divided into
two sections. The first one is a historical
background of populism in Latin America.
In the second one, all three cases are pre-
sented as evidence that should justify situ-
ating populism within propaganda studies
from a regional perspective. Moreover, given
the cases examined, the authors propose in
the second section a framework that can help
illustrate the nexus between populist com-
munication and propaganda beyond Latin
America. In the conclusion, we summarize
the chapter’s main points, but also envision
future pathways for those interested in study-
ing or pursuing further research on Latin
American propaganda.
HISTORICAL AND CONCEPTUAL
ASPECTS OF POPULISM IN LATIN
AMERICA
Latin American political history is filled with
governments categorized as populist, to the
extent that within the literature three waves
of populist governments are identified.
Between the decades of 1930 and 1960, the
governments of Perón in Argentina, Vargas in
Brazil and Velasco in Ecuador are oft-cited
cases of classical populism. Arguably, pop-
ulism emerged as a response to the differ-
ences generated by migration from the
countryside to the city, industrialization and
other factors that accentuated existing social
inequities that continue to plague the region
to this day (Weyland, 2001). Authoritarian
military governments during the mid-1960s
and early 1970s interrupted this process, yet
with the return of democracy and free elec-
tions in most of the region, populism
reemerged in the 1980s and 1990s with the
governments of Alan García and Fujimori in
Perú, Menem in Argentina and Bucaram in
Ecuador. This second wave of populism is
labeled ‘neo-populism’ due to its affinity
toward neoliberal economic policies. During
the late 1990s and the first decade of the
2000s, analyses classified nationalist rulers
of the left as anti-neoliberal. Hence, Hugo
Chávez, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, as
media savvy populists of a radical and
nationalist nature, are considered part of this
recent wave (de la Torre, 2010; Hermet,
2003). In other words, the third wave of pop-
ulism is classified as a radical one, and a
manifestation of Latin American populism
that coincides with rapid changes regarding
media and technology.
For explanations of the reasons behind the
resurgence of populism, Laclau (2005) points
out that populism requires the embodiment of
someone who unifies and represents popular
demands. Thus, ‘popular will’ can support
the rise of that someone based on charismatic
traits that they can demonstrate to the peo-
ple. As a process of symbolic representation,
the emergence of populist leaders impelled
by their charisma enables a first affront on
political institutions in each country1. This
symbolic representation is, in essence, part
of communication processes and is present in
the literature as a prominent aspect of Latin
American populism. Concretely, aspects of
said processes include the personalization
of the charismatic leader, a Manichean and
polarizing discursive style, direct appeals
to the people bypassing intermediaries, the
capacity to mobilize the masses, and mul-
tiple public appearances (Conaghan and
de la Torre, 2008; de la Torre 2007, 2010;
Freidenberg, 2007, 2011). In sum, and as
emphasized in this chapter, populist gov-
ernments are recognized for their prolific
use of communication in a variety of forms
(Waisbord 2014b).
Generally speaking, in Latin America,
populist leaders are able to succeed given the
fragility of political institutions and media
systems that become vulnerable to govern-
ment interference and market-induced pres-
sures. Populist governments, from Perón to
Chávez, are characterized by the presence of
478 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
caudillos (strongmen) that stand out for their
extensive and perceptive use of the media. If,
in the past, radio and balcony speeches were
used in classical populism, in neo-populism
and in radical populism2, the development of
media technology, television and the Internet
allowed for newer forms of messaging by
populist leaders (de la Torre, 2008).
Populism is a concept plagued with contro-
versy and scholars have yet to agree on a sin-
gle definition (de la Torre and Arnson, 2013).
On the one hand, some refer to it from a
structuralist perspective, or as an unintended
consequence of the modernization of Latin
American societies (Germani, 1964; Shamis,
2013). Another approximation is from a
political strategy view, described as leaders
seeking to compete and succeed politically –
that is, in order to gain and expand power.
Hence, the populist leader depends on direct
and unmediated support from a large portion
of the population. The range of this power is
evidenced through electoral processes, ref-
erendums, mass demonstrations, and public
opinion polls (Jansen, 2015; Weyland, 2001).
Within this same political strategy approxi-
mation, the rhetorical aspect of populism is
key, such as divisive language, identifica-
tion with the people and accusations against
enemies (Freidenberg, 2007; Hawkins,
2009). Additionally, an economics-driven
and normative view considers populism
(mainly classical and radical) as an irrespon-
sible economic management policy choice
characterized by overspending and subse-
quent hyperinflation. These said practices
were replaced by neoliberal economic poli-
cies adopted by populist governments in the
1990s, generally politically right leaning and
receptive to free-market policies (Mudde and
Rovira, 2017; Weyland, 2003).
Rovira Kaltwasser (2015) suggests work-
ing on a minimalist and ideology-centric
concept for comparative analyses on pop-
ulism to explain the emergence of populisms
both in Europe and in the Americas. He pro-
poses considering an ideological approxima-
tion based on the concept introduced by Cas
Mudde (2004). Mudde defines populism as
an ideology that conceives a society sepa-
rated into two homogeneous and antagonistic
camps, ‘the true people’ versus ‘the corrupt
elite’, where politics is the expression of the
will of the people. de la Torre and Arnson
(2013) agree with Mudde in that some of
the main components of populism – whether
it is considered a form of government, a rhe-
torical style, or a political representation –
gravitate toward establishing a divide between
‘the people’ and ‘the oligarchy’. This sort
of ‘political frontier’ is what Laclau (2005)
states is necessary in order to ‘construct a
people’ in populism.
In this context, personalized and charis-
matic leadership becomes a driver of pop-
ulism (Mudde 2004) since direct linkages
between the leader and the masses can gen-
erally overshadow even the most institution-
alized intermediation (political parties and
media) – something that has been funda-
mental in the emergence of populisms, par-
ticularly in Latin America (de la Torre and
Arnson, 2013; Knight, 1998). In other words,
the marginalization, polarization and/or cap-
turing of media organizations benefits popu-
list emergence and consolidation.
Furthermore, Mazzoleni (2003) proposes
for European cases the need to evaluate the
role of the media in the emergence of pop-
ulisms and, in a similar vein, Krämer (2014)
theoretically defines and analyzes populist
media. In addition, other studies focus on
the contents of the speech acts of populist
party leaders found in their public activities
and media coverage (Cranmer, 2011; Jagers
and Walgrave, 2007). In Latin America, stud-
ies on populist communication have focused
mainly on examining electoral marketing
campaigns (Valdés, 2007), discourse content
analysis (Méndez et al., 2008) and evidencing
tensions in reference to media and its cover-
age (Kitzberger, 2009; Waisbord, 2014b).
Ironically for Latin American populism,
the evolution of political communication in
the region means recognizing practices influ-
enced by Western democracies, which has
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 479
created a mixed format for communications
management (de la Torre and Conaghan,
2009). For instance, the competition between
media and politicians to capture an audience
or to determine the agenda has become part
of populist communication implemented
oftentimes in consultation with political com-
munication strategists from, or trained in, the
United States. Examples of commonly used
tactics influenced by the Americanization of
politics include press conferences, organi-
zation of events, news campaigns, adver-
tisements or joint broadcasts to transmit
messages, all part of the offerings of com-
munication divisions within public admin-
istrations and relied upon by populist rulers
(Waisbord, 2014b).
To some extent, it seems that the role of
political communication in populist govern-
ments does not vary from the experiences
of the governments in Western democra-
cies described in the literature. As Waisbord
(2014b) notes, the common denominator
coalesces in the promise to give ‘a voice to
those without a voice’, which implies – echoing
the words of Laclau – to ratify its quality as
an ‘empty signifier’ and as a link through the
symbolic representation process. The highly
ideological discourse of revolution and social
justice is a consequence of the call to the peo-
ple and the anti-elitist rhetoric of populism.
The ruler, as the supreme authority, seizes
the word and assumes the power, anointed
by the people or constituents, to interpret the
truth (Valdés, 2007). Thus, in Latin American
populist governments, the proximity with
the voter and direct communication without
partisan or journalistic intermediation is sig-
nificant. In other words, the leader speaks
directly to his ‘constituents’, embodying the
voice of the people, in search of legitimacy
and as a form of accountability (Kitzberger,
2009).
Kitzberger (2009) notes that populist gov-
ernments of the 21st century, such as Chávez
in Venezuela, Correa in Ecuador and Morales
in Bolivia, share common traits in their com-
munication styles:
1 Public appearances that include a highly ideo-
logical discourse about the media identified as
opposition political actors linked to the privi-
leged class. In the case of populist governments
of a nationalist and leftist nature, they identify
an opposition elite embodied in certain media
outlets who are part of that political frontier that
demands populist rhetoric and therefore consti-
tutes the enemy of the people.
2 Deployment of a variety of direct forms of mes-
saging that combines traditional forms of com-
munication and use of newer media technology
resources.
3 Establishment of regulations on media own-
ership, moving towards a more state-owned
system (Kitzberger, 2009: 5). This leads to perma-
nent confrontation of these leaders with certain
sectors of the media.
From this list, it is worth underscoring that
one of the main features refers to direct com-
munication with the people, which allows
populist leaders to set the political agenda by
circumventing intermediaries (media). The
use of nationwide joint broadcasts (cadena
nacional), frequent public appearances, trips
to communities and weekly radio and televi-
sion programs are some of the resources used
with the intention of avoiding journalists’
‘interference’, correcting alleged lies origi-
nated from the media and imposing a popu-
list agenda. In effect, the ‘saturation of the
media sphere with the presidential voice
defines populist communication’ (Waisbord,
2014b: 173).
However, the imposition of a populist
logic is also a consequence of the specifics
of media-government relations, altering the
way information is produced, accessed and
processed by society, falling in line with
the evolution of political communication
as described by other studies (Bennet and
Manheim, 2006; Mazzoleni, 2010). The gov-
ernments of the most traditional and institu-
tionalized Western democracies often prefer
a strong relationship management approach
with media organizations, applying theories
that originate from public relations. On the
other hand, governments such as Venezuela,
480 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Ecuador and Bolivia have, as a common
denominator, intense confrontation with
traditional media, which they finger point
as political actors that represent the elite
opposition. By reducing the debate in binary
terms, a good versus evil rhetoric, populists
in their messaging justify the imposition of
other channels, mainly those favorable to, or
owned by, the state (Kitzberger, 2012).
As a means to maintain pressure against
elites and simultaneously fulfill their role of
‘giving voice to those without a voice’, the
governments of Chávez in Venezuela, Correa
in Ecuador and Morales in Bolivia enacted
laws to regulate media and allow via spe-
cific constitutional provisions the right to
intervene in the development of the media
system. Through the creation of public and
community media outlets that counterbal-
ance a private/commercial system, this prac-
tice has become prominent and a model often
found in the third wave of populism (Avila,
2013; Waisbord, 2014a). Moreover, creating
or co-opting media outlets, in effect, often-
times proves strategic to populist objectives,
seeking to literally ‘crowd-out’ competing
voices within the country.
LATIN AMERICAN POPULIST
COMMUNICATION AND
PROPAGANDA: TOWARD A
SYNTHESIZED FRAMEWORK
In recognizing similarities and differences
among Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Venezuelan
populist governments, and comparing com-
munication outputs as propaganda, one can
observe a specific phenomenon with distinc-
tive characteristics. Although the charismatic
and personalistic style is a discernable fea-
ture, along with the advisement of profes-
sional communication experts, a strategic
and organized management of communica-
tion is common via the consultation of public
opinion polls, public relations tools and
political marketing, indistinct of each
particular political context within all three
countries. In populist communicative prac-
tices, utilizing these tools enables the task of
constructing ‘the people’s will’ and generally
results in social polarization. As described
before, key elements, such as the messianic
discourse, the exaltation of the charismatic
leader and the ‘saturation of the media sphere
with the presidential voice’, are used with the
objective to reaffirm the ability to exercise
power based on popular support and mobili-
zation (Weyland, 2001).
Taking into consideration the literature
on populism, political communication and
government communication as a whole, a
conceptual shift toward propaganda means
translating populism’s concepts into a syn-
thesized framework. We have denominated
our framework a populist communication
framework. Our belief is that this framework
helps explicate propaganda in Latin America,
as populism and propaganda overlap con-
ceptually (see Table 28.1). Arguably, a main
overlapping term in this regard that bridges
both bodies of work – in our view – is dema-
goguery. In effect, demagoguery is the miss-
ing link lost in translation between populism
and propaganda. Hence, we commence the
synthesis with our approximation to this term.
Demagoguery, when drilled down for a
workable definition, entails examining what
is denominated as a civil society and the
specifics of its socio-political subcultures in
dialogical relation to political leadership. A
demagogue does not emerge in a vacuum.
Subcultures within a society bring to power
demagogic or populist leaders fueled by long-
standing grievances such as economic and
political inequalities generally exacerbated
by crises. To this point, Goldzwig (1989: 211)
provides a perspective that is useful for our
understanding toward populist communica-
tion as a framework of propaganda, particu-
larly on a rhetorical level.
The emotionally or economically marginalized are
apt to react favorably to the ‘demagogic’ rhetor
who voices their frustration and alienation and
who invokes a public persona that embodies those
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 481
social tensions and symbolically casts them out.
Without consensus renegotiation as a goal, these
rhetors are almost exclusively engaged with the
pre-rational and pre-dialogical concerns serving as
preconditions for functional entrance into a demo-
cratic society. As polemicist-prophet, one of the
agitator’s main functions in society is to name the
Great No; to place it on public display through
the unending resources of language. If this causes
societal discomfiture, it is because society sees
through a glass darkly; in the confrontationalist,
society may even discover the dim outlines of itself.
Taking the rhetorical ‘route’ to understand
populist communication as akin to propa-
ganda, the evidence regarding leaders in the
region embodying subcultures’ grievances is
numerous and can be explained thematically
via the stagnant economic development of
several countries within Latin America. The
economic development explanation, as seen
through populist leaders’ speech acts, offers
a first layer of understanding in our proposed
framework. Leaders such as Argentina’s Juan
Domingo and Eva Perón are exemplars of
populist communications in a crisis-ridden
Argentina of the late 1940s and most of the
1950s. From the Peróns’ experience, populist
communication via in-person or mediated
speech acts (radio broadcasts) refer content-
wise and strategy-wise to leadership rhetoric
that emphasizes and exploits divisions within
the population (among subcultures), aim-
ing electorally to gain power and/or expand
power within political institutions by acti-
vating well-known grievances and offering
solutions which are often grandiose. While,
in general, rhetorically divisive strategies
target local elites, what is also a common
denominator in populist communication in
the region is the otherization process of US
hegemony. Generally denounced as imperi-
alism and compounded when allegedly con-
spiring with local elites, otherization in other
words deploys rhetorically divisive mecha-
nisms, establishing them vs. us dynamics (i.e.
elites, United States vs. the less privileged).
Another important dimension to under-
standing propaganda in Latin America
from a populist communication framework
encompasses considering the relationship
between political and media systems as they
interact within a logic of symbolic meaning
production. We term this dimension radically
intervened modes of meaning production,
alluding to a historical materialist tradition –
namely Marxist thought applied to public
information and media organizations. The
influential work on media and political sys-
tems by Hallin and Mancini (2004), and sub-
sequent criticism by de Albuquerque (2012),
offer relevant notions to the pressures and
relations underpinning the communicative
outputs of media organizations when deal-
ing with political actors and forces. Within
this dimension, evidence is visible regarding
competition between state-owned media and
privately owned media, state-co-opted media
and overall precariousness of media systems,
and are scenario configurations that on the
ground become prevalent as populist gov-
ernments attempt to expand or consolidate
power to signify public affairs. Arguably,
media systems become vulnerable, especially
upon entering these mentioned scenarios as
populist governments enact restrictive media
legislature, create regulatory entities, estab-
lish new media outlets or simply take over
bankrupt media organizations via co-option
or indirect acquisitions. Cases during the last
two decades of media law enactment and
intentional media intervention, in Ecuador,
Bolivia and Venezuela, as described later
in the chapter, provide evidence of the rel-
evancy of this level of analysis.
Deploying Rhetorical Divisive
Mechanisms during Referendums
The cases of Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela
provide evidence to illustrate the use of a
divisive rhetoric within a populist communi-
cation framework as articulated by Evo
Morales, Rafael Correa and Hugo Chávez,
the former president of Venezuela. In general
terms, all three leaders have been labeled
populist and came into power electorally,
482 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Table 28.1  A Populist Communication Framework for Comparative Propaganda Analysis

Levels Rhetorical Divisiveness Radical Intervention of Media Articulated Populist/Propagandist
Production Sensitivities

Leader Populist/Propagandist Direct
Messaging to the People
Systems Adversarial and Elite
Controlled Media
Institutional Crowding Out and Direct Appeals to Publics’ Long-Held
Marginalizing via Populist/ Grievances
Propagandist Prerogatives
Blurring of State and Private Populist/Propagandist Messaging
Information Enterprises; Hybrid or Post-Media Systems
Partisan Media, Political
Parallelism, Co-optation and
Media System Vulnerabilities

Source: Daniel Aguirre and Caroline Ávila

utilizing antagonistic speeches targeted to
what has been mentioned before as an
‘otherization’ divide between the disenfran-
chised masses vs. privileged elites. In addi-
tion, elites are expanded to foreign influence,
namely US interests in coordination with
local elites. In order to provide a fair com-
parison of all three countries we examine
portions of speeches per the news coverage
of referendums held in each country. Since
each referendum selected aimed to reform
each country’s constitution, it seems rele-
vant to compare discourse focused on this
type of event as all three leaders attempted
to get the vote out and evaluated voting
outcomes.
During the first two years (2007–2009)
of President Rafael Correa’s administration,
Ecuador experienced significant electoral
processes that enabled the consolidation of
his political leadership, which was scarcely
known prior to his election into office. Correa
emerged as a product of Ecuadorians’ disap-
pointment with the political system, specifi-
cally in respect to the lack of new political
leadership, increased corruption and overall
instability that country faced during the pre-
vious decade. Correa’s leitmotif while cam-
paigning in 2006 was ‘change’, specifically
via the establishment of a Constitutional
Assembly (a body) that would lead the crea-
tion of a new constitution. A referendum
that was held in April 2007 was approved
with large support by Ecuadorians, thus
allowing the Constitutional Assembly to
form. By the end of 2007, Correa’s coali-
tion, Alianza País, possessed a majority
within the Constitutional Assembly, thus
enabling the drafting of the new constitution
in record time. By September 2008, 63.9%
of the voting population approved that new
constitution.
The 2008 referendum, moreover, became a
significant milestone in Correa’s presidency.
In effect, the administration’s interest was to
expand his project, denominated Revolución
Ciudadana or Citizen’s Revolution in
English. At a rhetorical level, aspects related
to antagonism and speaking for the people
are present. As reported by the Washington
Post (Partlow, J., and Küffner, S., 2008), for
instance:
‘Today Ecuador has decided on a new nation. The
old structures are defeated’, Correa told cheering
supporters in the coastal city of Guayaquil. ‘This
confirms the citizens’ revolution’. (Partlow, J., and
Küffner, S., 2008, par. 3)
The victory, Correa said, gives him the opportunity
to effect rapid social change in pursuit of his vision
of alleviating poverty and weakening the tradi-
tional elite as he implements what he calls ‘21st-
century socialism’. (Partlow, J., and Küffner, S.
(2008: par. 4)
These electoral victories enabled Correa to
consolidate his political project and, in addi-
tion, the new constitution expanded presi-
dential powers, giving Correa opportunities
to intervene legally in different spheres of
Ecuadorian society,
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 483
Relatedly, in 2015, the Ecuadorian
Congress approved a constitutional reform
that allowed for presidential reelection and
other authorities as of 2021. These radi-
cal changes were a characteristic in popu-
list governments providing opportunities
to confront political opposition through
direct communication and public appeal.
The approval of the reform, supported by
the Correa administration, generated reac-
tions to it from political opposition and most
Ecuadorians. Nevertheless, by means of his
personal Twitter account, Correa referred to
the reform as documented by The Guardian.
We will continue governing for the common good
with total democratic legitimacy (…) They [the
opposition] want us to go back to the old country
dominated by the usurpation of popular represen-
tation, immobilise us, impede us from governing
(…) We may make mistakes but in Ecuador, the
Ecuadorian people are in charge (Collyns, 2015:
par. 5–7).
In Chavez’s Venezuela, a key referendum was
held with term limits as the centerpiece of a
call for reform. Similarly, in the Venezuelan
case, Chavez’s bid for indefinite reelection
was successful (54.4% voting in favor). As
reported by The New York Times (Romero,
S., 2009), evidence demonstrating a populist
approach when interacting with supporters,
and direct appeals in classical and radical
populist form, is identifiable.
At the risk of polarizing Venezuela’s deeply divided
society further, the victory could also strengthen
Mr. Chávez’s current mandate as he reacts to a
sharp fall in the price of oil, the export commodity
that has financed his broadly popular poverty-
reduction projects. (par. 5)
Even as he appears on national television from
the balcony of Miraflores Palace before a cheer-
ing crowd of supporters, moments after electoral
officials announced the results; a palpable fear
was setting in among opposition that this former
army officer would become their president for
life. (par. 6)
‘I am a soldier for the people’, an ebullient
Mr. Chávez exclaimed. ‘I will obey the people’s
mandate’. (par. 7)
About eight years after the Venezuelan ref-
erendum under Chávez, in February 2016 in
Bolivia, President Evo Morales called for a
similar public vote regarding changing ree-
lection limits. However, unlike Chávez, the
outcome was not favorable to Morales who
sought a fourth term in office. Yet his polar-
izing rhetoric was also noticeable as reported
by The Guardian (Collyns, D. and Watts, J.
(2016 par. 8):
Morales said earlier that whatever the result he
would not abandon his ‘struggle’ and blamed his
disappointing showing on an opposition ‘dirty
war’ on social media. (par. 7, 24)
We’re anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist, anti-imperial-
ist; we’ve been formed that way. This struggle will
continue whether the yes or the no wins. It will
never be abandoned. ( par.7)
‘The president – who won landslides in each of his
previous three elections – grudgingly conceded
defeat with more than 99% of the results con-
firmed, but vowed to fight on. ‘We lost a democratic
battle but not the war’, he told a news conference,
blaming his defeat on an ‘external conspiracy’ and
dirty tactics by the opposition’. (par. 5)
In addition to the quotations provided by The
Guardian on Morales’ declaration in refer-
ence to the outcome of the 2016 referendum,
it is also worth underscoring the relational
aspect mentioned before, in other words: the
embodiment of the people’s will in the fol-
lowing statement as also reported by The
Guardian (Collyns, D. and Watts, J., 2016:
par. 10).
Speaking in the president’s palace in La Paz,
Morales claims his latest move to stay in office is a
response to popular pressure. ‘Before I promised
to stop, but now the communities obliged me to
modify the constitution’, he says. ‘I have to
respond to the people. It is not the power of the
Evo; it is the power of the people’.
As seen in all three cases, the populist com-
munication of all three presidents prior, dur-
ing and days after each referendum offer
evidence of common patterns of rhetorical
divisiveness. Indeed, these examples contain
484 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the embodiment of the people’s voice, antag-
onizing local opposition and confronting a
system considered in the words of Morales:
neoliberal, capitalist and imperialist; allud-
ing to foreign interests, mainly the United
States.
The search for an enemy is a classic
resource of populism since it reduces politi-
cal debate into a friend vs. foe logic. The
oversimplification of content is necessary
for persuading others through speech acts,
both unmediated and mediated communi-
cation. While appealing to the friend-foe
rhetoric can be found in almost any form of
political regimes, in populist ones its use is
indispensable, thus making it a key central
trait of propaganda. Whereas other forms of
political regimes can allow a diverse range
of voices within its communication strate-
gies, the populist approximation insists on
binary conceptualizations. Moreover, it gen-
erally aims to sully the name of its adver-
saries, ideally negating opposition, which
in the Latin American case means labelling
them as neoliberal, Yankee imperialists, cor-
rupt press and decaying political parties (or
partidocracia).
The rhetorical divisive dimension, as part of
populist approximation from Latin America
to propaganda thought, offers a first level
of analysis to begin to understand compara-
tively other experiences found elsewhere. In
the case of Bolivia, Morales became elec-
torally the embodiment of the people’s will,
specifically those of indigenous origin ena-
bled his political platform to proceed and
expand from a rhetoric of decolonization
of Bolivian society (Loayza Bueno, 2011).
In the Ecuadorian case, Correa appeals to
the masses and mobilizes them to support
his proposals through recurrent referen-
dums. The rhetoric of division facilitates this
purpose by activating the people through
a polarization strategy as a form of propa-
ganda. Lastly, prior to Chávez in Venezuela,
the party elite established electoral agree-
ments in order to alternate power in the coun-
try, thus making political parties easy targets
for Chávez when speaking to Venezuelans.
Common aspects seen in all three countries
at the rhetorical level are evident, as attack-
ing elites and those associated with them can
be useful in gaining and consolidating power.
In addition, embodying the people’s will are
those phrases in public discourses that equate
to messianic solutions to long-held griev-
ances. The significance of the rhetoric is wor-
thy of further analysis and applied research
within propaganda studies can benefit the
messaging aspect of populism emanating
from presidents in fragile democratic politi-
cal systems.
Radical Intervention of Media
Production – Blurring the Lines
between Political and Media
Systems
When Hallin and Mancini (2004) introduced
their work on media systems, they included,
among other elements, the personalized plu-
ralist model as a means to synthesize what
they termed political parallelism,3 found
among media and political parties. Within
this model, media systems in Italy, Spain
and France are explained. However, de
Albuquerque (2012) brought into question
whether the model considered political
cleavages or the lack thereof into the model
vis-à-vis political parallelism. Thus, de
Albuquerque argued that when political par-
ties are weak, the so-called ‘intermediation
of politics’ falls primarily on media organi-
zations following their own logics and inter-
ests. Given this predicament, he suggested
incorporating a moderator model of media
when media act as political agents.
In the Latin American context of fragile
democratic institutions and weak party sys-
tems, media organizations take on the moder-
ator role usually led by political parties, thus
becoming protagonist actors in the political
system. This challenges media-political party
dynamics and in part explains conflictive
relations between media and political leaders,
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 485
particularly in governments of the radical
populist variety. Eventually, as witnessed
and documented over time, the conflict-rid-
den, adversarial logics between government
and media organizations become evident at
a structural level, as media systems in popu-
list governments are captured in a variety
of ways. Thus, populists are able to engage
in propaganda activities in less competitive
media environments or, worse, within coer-
cive ones.
The annual global press-freedom reports
published by Freedom House, provide a first
indication of system-level competing govern-
ments and media organization spheres. When
observing South American country ranks
geographically from Venezuela to Chile, the
Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Venezuelan cases
over more than a decade have demonstrated
a decline in press freedom (see Figure 28.1).
Key junctures in legislation, presidential
intervention, and acquisition of media organ-
izations become visible to casual observers.
During 2007–2017, Venezuela’s low ranking
is striking, as expected, within a range of 160
to 176. The lowest year rank for Venezuela
Figure 28.1  Time-series press-freedom rank in South America
was 2015 and is attributable to a series of
actions related to media law (ley resorte)
that gave President Nicolas Maduro powers
to take over television and radio broadcasts.
In 2014, Maduro interrupted broadcasts
103 times according to the 2015 Freedom
of the Press Report. Furthermore, the sale of
Venezuela’s main newspaper, El Universal,
was also a low point in press freedom as
with the sale the newspaper’s critical stance
was softened. Moreover, according to the
Maduro administration, CNN was engaging
in a propaganda war and it thus threatened to
expel the cable news channel’s staff. In terms
of Bolivia and Ecuador ranks, both begin to
fall below a South American average from
2010 to 2017 (86 rank). Stunningly, Ecuador
had the largest drop over time (-48), whereas
Bolivia’s press-freedom rank drops gradually
until 2016, where the decline is the sharpest
between 2016 and 2017 (-20).
In the case of Bolivia, the arrival of Evo
Morales into power heralded hope and antici-
pation within the country and – perhaps more
so – internationally. Bolivian politics has
historically divided the population between
486 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
a minority of European ancestry and a vast
majority of indigenous origin. In effect, about
6.9 million (69% of the total population) self-
identify with an indigenous group according
to a 2012 census report.4 Thus, individuals
claiming an indigenous identification give
evidence to the relevance of this segment of
society (Loayza Bueno, 2011a, 2011b). Yet,
political office remained something unat-
tainable to indigenous leaders, especially
the presidency. Moreover, indigenous popu-
lations were, by in large, marginalized in
many spheres of Bolivian society and were
often part of the most historically impover-
ished section of the country. It did not sur-
prise many that Evo Morales, a leader of the
Coca leaf growers’ union in the department
of Cochabamba and later leader of a political
movement (MAS), would become an attrac-
tive candidate for the presidency of Bolivia.
Growing turmoil in Bolivia due to an internal
crisis related to its natural gas reserves would
provide an opportunity for Evo Morales to
become known on a national stage and com-
pete for the presidential bid in 2005. In many
regards, Evo Morales’ rise is attributable to
the popularity he enjoyed in various sectors of
Bolivian society but mostly in the indigenous
population of the country. Evo Morales gar-
nered media attention both from the Bolivian
news media and international media. Once
in power, Evo Morales’ favorable coverage
began to decline and in response, an already
precarious media system gradually (Fuentes,
2014) and directly experienced the pressures
of a populist government and propaganda
dynamics at play (Molina, 2014; Peñaranda,
2014).
In the Ecuadorian case, tensions and pres-
sures faced by media organizations unfolded
into an all-out confrontation with the entire
media system that, at the beginning of
Correa’s presidency, was mainly privately
owned. The relations between government
and media shifted from being cooperative and
of good faith (in the vein of public relations’
excellence theory), toward one of confronta-
tion or contingency. Correa labeled media
organizations as enemies that represented ‘de
facto powers’ to justify the necessity of rebal-
ancing the content produced on public affairs.
Consequently, Rafael Correa established
in Ecuador a public media system with the
opening of the television station, Ecuador
TV. In addition, Correa restructured the pub-
lic radio station, Radio Pública, and later
his administration acquired the newspaper
Diario El Telégrafo. Additionally, Correa’s
administration seized media properties of an
important financial and banking group. The
conglomerate lost two of the largest TV sta-
tions, TC Televisión and GamaTV. A number
of magazines, radio stations and cable TV
channels were also part of the confiscation.5
As a result, the media organizations that were
seized became directly aligned with Correa’s
government and message. Hence, with the
public media outlets established by Correa
and the once-private Isaías media properties,
the Correa administration was able to wield
a larger voice in the Ecuadorian media sys-
tem as the president aimed to influence pub-
lic opinion via saturation or crowding out of
opposition voices.
In the Venezuelan case, a media presidency
(Cañizález 2014: 170) was established dur-
ing Chávez’s time in office (1999–2013) and
arguably remains ongoing under President
Nicolás Maduro after his predecessor’s
demise in 2013. With a combination of
presidential actions, legislature and media
harassment, under Chávez (and Maduro)
Venezuela is an example of a media hegem-
ony (Cañizález, 2014: 172) characterized by
the structural underpinnings of populist com-
munication as biased and consequently akin
to systemic propaganda. A turning point that
speaks to attacks toward independent media
with opposing views was the non-renewal
of the broadcast license of RCTV in 2007.
Chávez’s decision to not renew the broadcast
license was justified in his words, given that
the TV station favored the US government
2002 coup that ousted him from the presi-
dency for three days. While the RCTV case
is a watershed regarding state intervention
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 487
within a media system in the region, other
forms of action become visible during the
Chávez administration such as coercive ways
to limit free speech, obstruct access to infor-
mation, directly via presidential pressure and
indirectly by non-compliance with guidelines
provided by the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights, etc. In addition, by over-
taking the airwaves in nationwide joint
broadcasts each Sunday that would air from
11 a.m. until about 5 p.m., the program titled
Aló Presidente (or Hello President), became
another space through which Chávez would
monopolize the discourse on Venezuelan
public affairs and systematically attack polit-
ical opposition.
The pervasiveness of the degree of radi-
cally intervened modes of media produc-
tion in the Venezuelan case during Chávez’s
period is documented by press-freedom
reports, which help understand the atomiza-
tion of media organizations within Venezuela
and the emergence of new media outlets
that amplify the propaganda messaging that
Chávez directly articulated and was later
channeled by pro-government media. In such
an environment, examples of new media
organizations such as Telesur (2005) and
TVes (2007) were created under the auspices
of the Chávez administration.
Relevant milestones regarding the decline
of Venezuela’s independent media are worth
exploring to further understand the extent
of the fragmentation (and perhaps annihi-
lation) of diverse views in its media sys-
tem. Colombian newspaper La República
(Montes, S., 2018) highlights some of the
worst milestones of both Chávez and Maduro
administrations, indicating that more than
60 media organizations were closed between
1998 and 2018. The newspaper reported that
independent TV channels in 1998 were esti-
mated to be about 88% of the whole media
system, in contrast, by 2014 it decreased to
46%. Other examples of media shutdowns or
takeovers include 32 radio stations and two
TV stations were intervened during 2009;
due to printing restrictions, 22 newspapers
stopped publishing; and in 2017 Maduro
ordered the closing of 49 media organiza-
tions. Furthermore, a media law was passed
in November 2017 targeting journalists,
threatening freedom of expression with
arrests leading to 20 years of imprisonment if
the news reporting instigates hate or violence
(Committee to Protect Journalists, 2017).
Lately, the extent in which control over
content regarding Venzuela’s economic and
political crisis under Maduro has reached
unprecedented, even international, lev-
els. Specifically, the well-known journalist
Jorge Ramos6 and his team from Univision –
a US-based Spanish-language media – right
after an interview with President Maduro,
were held hostage in the Presidential Palace
on February 25, 2019 in Caracas to later be
deported back to the United States. As noted
earlier, Venezuela, under Chávez and Maduro,
views CNN as a media organization backed
by US interests and with the recent down-
turn in Venezuelan society, Ramos’ coverage
of food shortages in the country provoking
Maduro to counter his questioning, evidences
message control anticipating further interna-
tional backlash toward his administration.
Arguably, the Ramos’ hostage situation and
monitoring/censoring of foreign correspond-
ents’ reporting in Venezuela refers to inter-
ventions in media production.
CONCLUSION
Latin American populism provides propa-
ganda studies with specific concepts that can
prove useful to its study and research. While
most publications on Latin American pop-
ulism are found only in Spanish, theorization
and the applicability of concepts from a com-
munication standpoint intersect at the center
of propaganda. The chapter examined recent
cases of populism in Bolivia, Ecuador and
Venezuela and from those contexts, an ana-
lytical framework is offered. The framework
is comprised of two levels, one rhetorical and
488 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the other structural. At the rhetorical level, all
three cases provide evidence that the otheri-
zation/vilification of political and economic
elites becomes part of a political communica-
tion strategy that can reap benefits for the
populist leader as a propagandist. At the
structural level, directly or indirectly disman-
tling media organizations with the purpose of
monopolizing the treatment of public affairs
in the public discourse meant new media
legislation, acquisition or shutdowns of
major news organizations and harassment
and intimidation of critical voices within the
press corps. This chapter focused on a period
where digital media tools were incipient;
however, it envisions old practices and newer
ones within a ‘hybridized’ system (Chadwick,
2017).
The digital age that encompasses utilizing
web technologies and strategically imple-
ments social media campaigns, following
examples from presidential elections in the
United States such as Howard Dean and
Barack Obama, has become the norm in Latin
America during recent years. Furthermore,
the darkest aspect of political communication
via digital means has also become part of the
politician’s and/or government’s toolbox, as
seen in the election of US president Donald J.
Trump, (Tharoor, I. (2017). Alternative facts,
or the post-truth phenomenon, is hardly new
(Snow, 2019); what is, however, is the recent
shift from users’ naive suspension of disbe-
lief of content found on social media, mainly
due to the evidence of Russian hacking and
targeted social media adverts during key
moments in the 2016 US presidential elec-
tion. Presently higher levels of scrutiny on
the contents of political material found on the
web are becoming common, and users/voters
are now more aware and critical of distorted
information supported by computational
algorithms within digital platforms.
For populists in Latin America, the digital
realm is also a new terrain to position, voice
views and attack opponents without neces-
sarily engaging in a dialogue with the general
population (Waisbord and Amado, 2017).
Attuned with trends of public affairs prac-
tices, social media platforms such as Twitter
and Whatsapp are also relevant spaces for
propaganda, whether utilizing a generic insti-
tutional account or speaking via a personal
account. The Venezuelan case is perhaps the
most prolific one to observe regarding social
media use for direct communication, but
Correa in Ecuador was another exemplary
case for understanding politics, populist
communication as propaganda via Twitter.
Morales stands out as a latecomer to Twitter
in 2016, but his personal account’s expo-
nential growth is worth scrutinizing, given
the well-known deceptive tactics recognized
today regarding artificial interactive features
found on social media (i.e. bots, purchasing
followers, and likes). The social media aspect
regarding populism is still a moving target,
yet evidence such as those mentioned in the
U.S. case, and for Venezuela, Ecuador and
Bolivia, indicate that research and thought on
digital propaganda is a terrain requiring fur-
ther exploration.
Yet, notably, the region’s experience with
populism offers empirical argumentation
for informing the study of propaganda on a
global scale. Indeed, the future will require
understanding how populist communica-
tion as propaganda translates into the digital
sphere, and some of the strategies described
in this text and synthesized in the proposed
framework provide analytical tools to better
understand a resurgent phenomenon. Future
pathways might point to reconciling old with
emerging practices, such as making sense
of computational propaganda. However, the
seemingly enduring rhetorical and structural
features of populism appear to be constants
that transcend legacy or new media logics.
Thus, the relevancy of populist communica-
tion for propaganda studies might mean that
evidence from Latin American history on
the phenomena might contribute to schol-
arly debate and provide prescriptive proposi-
tions on to how address its troubling effect
on societies. Consequently, the urgency of
understanding propaganda from a populist
 Propaganda and Populist Communication in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela 489
communication framework entails address-
ing the basic fundamentals and values of
democratic societies, especially when inten-
tionally polarized by leaders. Ultimately, the
long-term effects speak to delegitimizing
democratic processes and institutions and
become worrisome as divisions are artifi-
cially established to win elections and further
expand and consolidate power over time.
Notes
1  The discourse of corrupt politicians, political
parties and political system are the first to be
attacked by populist leaders.
2  The term neo-populism was used to identify
populist governments of the 1990s with a strong
neoliberal influence (Weyland 2001). Radical
populism identifies populist governments of the
XXI century (de la Torre, 2007).
3  ‘Political parallelism refers to a pattern or relation-
ship where the structure of the political parties is
somewhat reflected by the media organizations’
(de Albuquerque, 2018).
4  Most recent official demographic information
can be accessed via http://datos.ine.gob.bo/binb
ol/RpWebEngine.exe/Portal?BASE=CPV2012CO
M&lang=ESP
5  The Isaias group was involved in one of the dark-
est political and economic chapters of Ecuador´s
recent history. It lost a significant number of com-
panies, including some of its media properties
due to debts owed to the Ecuadorian state.
6  Similarly, Jorge Ramos was involved in an incident
in 2015 with then presidential candidate Donald
Trump during a press conference when Ramos
questioned Trump on his views on immigration,
eventually being kicked out after a series of difficult
exchanges with Trump.
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Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda
Performance 2000–2018:
Stagecraft as Statecraft
This chapter analyses the evolution of
Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine since
he first became Russian president in 2000. It
charts the changing functions, messages and
methods of the Kremlin’s propaganda appa-
ratus during Putin’s 18-year tenure at the
apex of Russian politics. The chapter analy-
ses both Putin’s domestic and foreign propa-
ganda operations. It argues that Putin’s
domestic support is predicated on his success
in the international arena. Although promul-
gated through different mediums and aimed
at different audiences, Putin’s domestic and
international propaganda practices are mutu-
ally reinforcing and interdependent.
Vladimir Putin is a master political per-
former, but one forced to rely on an increas-
ingly narrow repertoire as his audience
dwindles. Stagecraft is at the heart of his state-
craft at home and abroad. Putin’s propaganda
performances have become more dramatic
over time (Goscilo, 2013). Plucked from
the shadows of Russia’s security services
to serve as Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in
29
Tina Burrett
August 1999, Putin entered the national polit-
ical stage as a virtual unknown. Helped by
his friends in the Russian media, Putin used
his anonymity to craft a public persona with
broad appeal that in March 2000 won him
the presidency (Zassoursky, 2004; Gessen,
2012). His background as a security operative
allowed Putin to present himself as a Russian
patriot, attractive to conservative nationalists.
But, equally, his decision to quit the KGB in
the twilight days of the Soviet Union to work
for the pro-democracy mayor of Leningrad
enhanced his support among Russian liber-
als. Putin’s promise to eradicate Chechen ter-
rorism resonated across ideological and class
divides. His own propaganda success con-
vinced the new president that to achieve his
ambitions to restore the power and prestige
of the state, the media must be brought back
under Kremlin control. Using a variety of
legal and illegal methods, during his first two
presidential terms from 2000 to 2008, Putin
wrestled Russia’s main media outlets away
from their private owners (Burrett, 2011).
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 493
In the process, he lost the support of liberal
opinion at home and abroad.
Since winning a third presidential term
in 2012, following a four-year interlude as
prime minister while his protégé Dmitry
Medvedev served as president, Putin has
come to rely on provincial, conservative vot-
ers. As a consequence, his propaganda has
taken an increasingly nationalist turn, empha-
sising traditional symbols such as the mili-
tary and Orthodox Church (Hutchings and
Rulyov 2008). Rather than seeking to woo
young, urban liberals as he did at the start of
his presidency, Putin’s propaganda machine
now casts them as a fifth column, in league
with Russia’s enemies abroad (Krastev and
Holmes, 2012: 44).
In the foreign policy sphere, Putin came
to office believing Russia’s international
status would be best enhanced through inte-
gration with the West. But beginning with
the ‘colour revolutions’ that brought to
power pro-Western governments in Georgia
(2003) and Ukraine (2004) – the latter
with assistance from US NGOs – Putin
became convinced that Russia would not
be accepted into the Western club on equal
terms (Sakwa, 2017). His cautious opti-
mism regarding Western relations turned
into suspicion and later hostility – changes
reflected in Russia’s international propa-
ganda practices (Gusinsky and Tsygankov,
2018; Suslov, 2018).
Many features of Putin’s propaganda oper-
ations today were present from the start of
his presidency. From the beginning, Putin’s
Kremlin promoted the president’s personal
image as a means of maintaining public sup-
port. At the same time as lauding Putin’s
leadership, the Kremlin and its accomplices
in the Russian media character-assassinated
his critics (Burrett, 2011; Zassoursky, 2004).
After successfully clearing the stage of com-
peting performers, maintaining public inter-
est in the show has become the Kremlin’s
primary propaganda challenge. To sustain
interest in Russia’s stage-managed elections,
the Kremlin resorts to play fighting with fake
opponents (Financial Times, 2018). Surprise
is also a vital element of Putin’s stagecraft.
Domestically, his surprise interventions in
Ukraine and Syria were PR masterstrokes,
stoking patriotic passions and drawing atten-
tion away from everyday hardships while at
the same time serving Russia’s geopoliti-
cal interests (Laruelle, 2016; Suslov, 2015;
Teper, 2016). Maintaining the illusion of a
strong state and secure society in the face of
frequent terrorist attacks, creaking public ser-
vices and rampant corruption is another key
propaganda objective dating from the start of
Putin’s presidency.
Changes in communication technologies
have pushed Putin’s propaganda machine
away from its initial dependence on national
television into other mediums, includ-
ing social media (Vartanova et  al., 2016).
Developments in online communications
since Putin first took office in 2000 provide
his administration with greater access to
overseas audiences. The Kremlin has used
online platforms to overtly and covertly dis-
seminate its propaganda to foreign audiences,
especially as relations with the West declined
over the 2008 Russian-Georgian war and
Russia’s 2014 annexing of Crimea. Russian
meddling in US and European elections – a
strategy mixing leaks, hacks and misinforma-
tion – is a further source of tension. Russia’s
state-controlled media denounce Western
accusations of Russian political interference
as evidence of Russophobia (Burrett 2018).
The changes in Putin’s propaganda opera-
tions between 2000 and 2018 are summarised
in Table 29.1.
The chapter that follows has two parts. The
first section examines Putin’s domestic prop-
aganda since 2000. This section begins by
analysing the propaganda methods and mes-
sages Putin employed to attain and consoli-
date power. It then discusses the PR tactics
used to legitimate Putin’s notional transfer
of the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev in
2008 and media framing of Putin’s return to
the Kremlin in 2012. The section concludes
with analysis of Putin’s campaign for a fourth
494 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Table 29.1  Putin’s Propaganda Operations in 2000 and 2018 Compared

Propaganda 2000 Propaganda 2018

Putin’s Domestic Image Youthful, fit, energetic Macho man of action

Target Domestic Audience
Domestic Mediums
Target International Audience
International Mediums
Presentation of USA
Presentation of China
Pro-business
Patriotic
Soviet nostalgia
Cautiously pro-West
Bulwark against Communists
Fighting Chechen terrorism
Pro-business lobby
Moderate nationalists
Anti-Communists
National state television
State & state-friendly press
Western elites & leaders
Russian diaspora in former Soviet
states
Limited influence
Interviews with BBC, Guardian
Multilingual television broadcast in
former Soviet states
Russia’s integration with the West
Shared concerns, e.g. terrorism
Division with Russia over Kosovo
Illegal immigrants threaten jobs
Territorial encroachment
Security threat
Defender against foreign enemies &
fifth column
Support for security services
Embodiment of strong state
Only viable national leader
Support for Orthodox Church
Fighting global terrorism
Rural & small town conservatives
Anti-globalisers
State television
Official websites & social media
News websites
Non-attributed social media
European & US voters
International Russian diaspora
Russian Today (now RT)
Official websites & social media
Non-attributed social media
Leaking hacked information
Civil society organisations
Multilingual television broadcast in
former Soviet states
Russophobic
Seeking Russia’s containment
Hypocrisy over election meddling
Weak democracy
Divided, degenerate society
Conflict with Russia over Ukraine &
Syria
Shared values
Political and economic partner
Building multipolar order

presidential term in 2018. The second sec-
tion analyses the Kremlin’s internationally
targeted propaganda since 2000. It traces
the downward trajectory of Russia’s rela-
tions with the West and the corresponding
improvement in its diplomatic ties with other
parts of the world, most notably with China
(Sakwa, 2017). It further analyses how the
Russian media frame changing diplomatic
relations for domestic audiences and, lat-
terly, the Kremlin’s attempts to frame over-
seas audiences’ perceptions of international
affairs. Finally, the section examines Russian
propaganda efforts to influence the internal
politics of other states.
Although Russia’s current media envi-
ronment retains more pluralism than is
often credited by Western observers, bring-
ing key communication channels under
Kremlin control has been essential to build-
ing Putin’s propaganda machine (Becker,
2004; Koltsova, 2006; Oates, 2006). Putin’s
moves to curtail media freedom are docu-
mented throughout this chapter. The findings
presented in the chapter draw on analysis
of Russian media content and on interviews
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 495
with journalists working in the Moscow-
based media. Survey data is also used to
examine the impact of Putin’s propaganda on
Russian public opinion.
DOMESTIC PROPAGANDA
Vladimir Putin first became Russian presi-
dent following Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resig-
nation on New Year’s Eve 1999. As prime
minister, Putin became acting president,
positioning him to win the March 2000 presi-
dential election. Putin’s popularity was
boosted by his successful direction of the
second war in Chechnya, which began with
the Chechen invasion of Dagestan on
7 August 1999. It was the outbreak of war
that prompted Yeltsin to promote the little-
known Putin – then head of the Security
Council – to the role of prime minister. As
prime minister, Putin was able to capitalise
on the patriotic emotions engendered by the
Chechen conflict. Jingoistic coverage of the
war on state-owned television helped Putin
build his public image as a shrewd com-
mander and strong leader (Zassoursky, 2004).
Prior to his appointment as premier, Putin
was a relatively unknown figure outside the
political elite. When he took office as prime
minister in August 1999, only two percent of
Russian voters identified him as their choice
to replace Yeltsin (VCIOM, 1999). But
Putin’s obscurity was an advantage, allowing
him to create his public persona from scratch.
Television coverage showing Putin planning
tough action against Chechen terrorists,
inspecting troops and taking part in martial
arts competitions transformed him from a
rather colourless state security officer into the
strong leader Russians desired (Belin, 2000).
Basing his 2000 presidential campaign on the
ambiguous slogan ‘Great Russia’, Putin was
able to satisfy the competing expectations
and interests of diverse domestic constituen-
cies. In the 2000 and 2004 presidential elec-
tions, Putin won by a wide margin, gaining
support from neoliberals, post-Soviet com-
munists and Russian nationalists alike.
His own meteoric rise taught Putin the
power of the media over public opinion;
such a powerful tool could not be left in
the hands of Russia’s oligarchs. During
the Yeltsin era the oligarchs had used their
media control to extort favours from the
president. Although media-owning oligarchs
Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky
backed Putin’s 2000 presidential campaign,
after the election they quickly proved unreli-
able partners. The first test of Putin’s leader-
ship, and of the loyalty of the media barons
to his administration, came with the sinking
of the Kursk submarine in August 2000. As
it became apparent that offers of interna-
tional assistance had been accepted too late
to save the stranded sailors, media indigna-
tion became focused on Putin. To his annoy-
ance, news reports in the Berezovsky and
Gusinsky media were especially critical of
the President (Author’s interview with for-
mer NTV presenter Vladimir Kara-Murza,
September 2003).
The Kursk disaster allowed Putin’s oppo-
nents to question his election promises to
restore Russia’s national pride and interna-
tional standing (Sakwa, 2004: 83). Negative
media coverage threatened to undermine the
president’s authority over Russia’s politi-
cal and economic elites by weakening the
public support on which it was based. Legal
loopholes and the oligarchs’ murky financial
dealings provided Putin with tools to restruc-
ture the media sector. Prosecutions were
launched against Berezovsky and Gusinsky,
forcing both into exile. In their place, the
media became financially beholden to enti-
ties close to the Kremlin, with negative
consequences for press freedom (Author’s
interview with former NTV Director
Yevgeny Kiselyov, September 2003). By
the end of Putin’s first presidential term in
March 2004, all of Russia’s main television
channels, and much of its print media, had
been brought under either direct or indirect
state control (Burrett, 2011).
496 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
As well as placing Russia’s most popu-
lar news providers under Kremlin influ-
ence, Putin introduced legal and regulatory
changes that further stifled independent
reporting. The Kremlin branded coverage
of the war in Chechnya as unpatriotic, while
criticism of the president was condemned
for endangering national security (Ryabov,
2004: 189). In September 2000, Putin intro-
duced the ‘Information Security Doctrine’.
Identifying Russia’s negative international
image as a national security concern, the
doctrine contained strategies for improv-
ing public diplomacy, including the idea
of establishing a state-funded English-
language news channel. Under the terms of
the doctrine, freedom of information was
subordinated to the needs of national secu-
rity and to the preservation of Russian moral
values. The doctrine endowed state bodies
with new powers to keep certain types of
information out of the news, including some
economic and environmental issues as well
as the expected military and security topics
(Panfilov, 2005: 10).
In 2002, Putin’s government amended
the law ‘On Elections’ making it harder for
journalists to ask candidates probing ques-
tions (Lambroschini, 2003). To reduce unfa-
vourable media coverage of the Chechen
war, the Kremlin tightened rules governing
the accreditation required to report from
the province and set up a designated press
service to provide journalists with positive
information from the front. Putin has further
limited his exposure to unwanted question-
ing by avoiding unscripted press conferences
and interviews. At every election since 2000,
Putin has refused to take part in televised
presidential debates with rival candidates,
declaring himself too busy with his duties
(EIM, 2000: 38). Putin prefers set-piece
interviews to communicate with voters. Most
important in this regard is his annual tel-
evised Q&A Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,
a cross between a town hall meeting and
interview format carefully choreographed to
look spontaneous (Schuler, 2015: 142).
Although Putin’s critics at home and
abroad condemned his changes to Russia’s
media laws and ownership structures, the
majority of Russians supported his reforms.
Following their information wars with Yeltsin
and with each other in the 1990s, media own-
ers Gusinsky and Berezovsky were deeply
unpopular with ordinary Russians. The oli-
garchs’ dubious financial dealings helped
Putin convince the public that their crooked
behaviour, rather than media freedom, was
the target of the state’s legal proceedings.
In this endeavour, Putin was helped by the
portrayal of the oligarchs on RTR, the only
national television channel that remained
fully state owned following the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991. On Putin’s watch
RTR, now called Rossiya, has become the
state’s most powerful domestic propaganda
tool. At the start of Putin’s presidency, the
propaganda perpetrated by the channel’s
flagship news programme, Vesti, was often
subtle. Vesti’s commentators, for example,
rarely directly attacked Putin’s opponents,
preferring to invite third party ‘experts’ to
the programme to do it for them. Vesti and its
Sunday edition, Vesti Nedeli, remain impor-
tant weapons in Putin’s propaganda arsenal.
But today, compelled by competition from
sensationalist reporting online and by pal-
pable public Putin-fatigue, Vesti’s style is
increasingly brash and its claims evermore
extreme (The Economist, 2013).
Putin spent his first eight years in office
neutering political and media opposition to
his administration. As the end of his second
term approached, competition to replace him
was effectively restricted to within his own
ruling group.1 In particular, rivalries between
different clans within the silovik – members
or veterans of the security services – caused
a nasty and protracted turf war (Gulko, 2007:
32). The Kremlin’s control over television
kept news of the ‘siloviki war’ off the air-
waves. But, although television was not the
site of the siloviki’s battle, it was through this
medium that Putin reasserted his authority to
quash the destabilising effects of their war
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 497
and to build support for his chosen successor
Dmitry Medvedev (Whitmore, 2007).
The biggest obstacle facing the Putin-
Medvedev tandem in the March 2008 presi-
dential election was voter apathy. Medvedev
needed to win significant voter backing to
assert his authority over the siloviki. Turnout
would be crucial. But with the election loom-
ing, there was no obvious threat facing Russia
to rally voters behind Putin’s preferred candi-
date. To mobilise support for Medvedev, the
Kremlin created a new ‘enemy’: domestic
and international forces bent on overturn-
ing Putin’s legacy (Lipman, 2007). State-
controlled television was used to vilify those
who staged public demonstrations against
Putin’s government ahead of parliamentary
elections in December 2007. Protestors were
described as ‘radical opposition’, ‘aggressive
extremists’ and as ‘ultra-right and ultra-left
radicals’. Only minor broadcasters and the
print media reported on the police beating
and arresting protestors (Borodina, 2007).
At campaign rallies Putin warned cheering
crowds to watch out for Russia’s enemies.
The president accused Western governments
of backing ‘destructive forces’ within Russia
that ‘scavenge like jackals for money at for-
eign embassies’ (Abdullaev, 2007). Aided by
state-controlled media, Putin created a vivid
picture of Russia as a besieged fortress with
a treacherous enemy within its gates. Higher
than usual turnout in the 2007 parliamen-
tary vote suggests this tactic played well.
But mobilising hatred is a quick fix with
long-term consequences. By invoking anger
against internal enemies – real or imagined –
Putin exacerbated already deep social divi-
sions and distrust.
Just days after the parliamentary vote,
Putin announced Medvedev as his chosen
presidential successor. The following day,
Medvedev returned the compliment by ask-
ing Putin to serve as his prime minister.
Without Putin by his side, it was doubtful that
the siloviki would rally behind the relatively
liberal Medvedev. State-controlled television
was quickly engaged to reassure elite and
mass audiences alike that this change in pres-
ident would really be no change at all. Putin’s
patronage was the key theme of Medvedev’s
campaign for the presidency. Like his men-
tor, Medvedev dodged participation in the
presidential debates. The relatively unknown
frontrunner’s policies were never probed.
Instead, state-controlled television showed an
energetic Medvedev jetting around the coun-
try, drinking tea with pensioners and cradling
babies in gleaming new maternity centres
(Arnold, 2007). The strategy succeeded and
Medvedev was duly elected with 71 percent
of the vote.
Following the 2008 global financial crisis –
which hit the resource-dependent Russian
economy harder than most – public sup-
port for the Putin-Medvedev duo began to
decline (Osipov, 2012). In response, Putin’s
PR rhetoric stepped up its focus on nation-
alist themes. Putin’s on-going campaign to
reinvigorate Russian citizens’ sense of patri-
otism is anchored around three main pillars:
pride in the state, glorification of the mili-
tary, and respect for the Russian Orthodox
Church. Past military achievements are
used to promote patriotism across Russia’s
diverse citizenry, especially Soviet victory in
WW2. Official ceremonies to mark national
military holidays and anniversaries have
become major media events in Putin’s Russia
(Hutchings and Rulyov, 2008; Hutchings,
2008). To maximise his patriotic capital,
Putin chose Russia’s annual holiday com-
memorating victory in WW2 to make his first
visit to Crimea after the peninsula joined the
Russian Federation in March 2014 (Luhn and
Walker, 2014).
Putin has similarly used the Russian
Orthodox Church (ROC) as a platform for
building support for the Russian state and
to promote Russia’s position in other former
Soviet states (Admiraal, 2009). On Putin’s
watch, the ROC has increased its visibility
in schools, the military and at national cel-
ebrations. In his Christmas address in 2000,
Putin declared Orthodoxy as the ‘unbend-
ing spiritual core of the entire people and
498 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
state’ (Malykhina, 2014: 53). If Orthodoxy
is the nominal state religion, then everyone
within the state – and many outside it – can
be considered Russian. Closely identifying
‘Orthodoxy’ with ‘Russian’ allows Putin to
justify interference in the ‘near abroad’ –
especially in Belarus and Ukraine that share
the Orthodox faith (Admiraal, 2009: 209).
Promoting the ROC therefore serves both
Putin’s domestic propaganda and foreign
policy objectives.
Putin’s nationalist rhetoric since 2008 also
includes attacks against alleged internal and
external enemies of the state. His re-election
for a third term in March 2012 was met by
major public demonstrations. Putin labelled
his domestic detractors as a privileged elite,
disconnected from the concerns of the major-
ity of Russians outside Moscow. The best-
educated elements of the population were
portrayed as traitors, perhaps in the pay of the
United States (Krastev and Holmes, 2012:
44). Similarly, in a speech in January 2015,
Putin asserted that pro-Russian separatists
in Eastern Ukraine were not just fighting the
Ukrainian army but also a NATO-sponsored
‘foreign legion’ (Sperling, 2016: 17). The
100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0 64
64 65
60.0
50.0
40.0 35 35 34
30.0
20.0
10.0
0.0
Approve
Figure 29.1  Putin Approval and Disapproval Ratings September 2013-September 2014 (%)
Source: www.russiavotes.org.
Ukraine crisis gave Putin the perfect opportu-
nity to ignite nationalist sentiments on which
to build a new base of anti-Western support
for his leadership (Treisman, 2014). Putin’s
Ukraine strategy worked as intended. Thanks
to his role as the embodiment of an interna-
tionally resurgent Russia, Putin has managed
to improve his popularity during one of the
worst economic crises in recent Russian his-
tory. Despite tumbling oil prices and Western-
led sanctions that sent Russia’s economy into
recession in 2014, Putin’s approval rating
hovered around 80 percent (Figure 29. 1).
Putin’s dalliance in Ukraine is perhaps the
best example of the importance of foreign
policy achievements to the successful func-
tioning of his domestic propaganda machine.
The Kremlin’s influence over Russian
television guarantees Putin’s foreign adven-
turism maximum exposure. Despite the
Internet’s growing presence, television
remains the most important medium of politi-
cal communication in contemporary Russia.
An August 2018 survey by the Levada Center
found that 73 percent of Russians consult
television news more than any other infor-
mation source. Television news is trusted
83 82 86
80 86
69
30
16 13 15
18 14
Disapprove
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 499
by 49 percent of Russians, while only 24
percent trust online publications and 15 per-
cent social media (Levada Center, 2018).
Among the young and middle-aged, how-
ever, the Internet is making significant pro-
gress. Following the 2011 protests against
election fraud that were largely coordinated
online, Putin’s propaganda team stepped up
their own online operations. Special sites
have been established to promote Putin and
his policies, including Kremlin.ru, the presi-
dent’s official site, but also unofficial sites
like Vladimirvladimirovich.ru. The Kremlin
has also set up news sites to control the mes-
sages disseminated to Russian voters, includ-
ing Strana.ru, Vz.ru and Rian.ru (Belousov,
2012, p. 58). The heart of the Kremlin’s online
operations is the Internet Research Agency
(IRA) troll factory that was unleashed on the
US 2016 elections. But before the IRA was
unleashed overseas, it perfected its arsenal of
disinformation tactics on Russian audiences
(Polyankova, 2018).
The IRA was instrumental to the Kremlin’s
campaign to re-elect Putin for a fourth term
in March 2018. Along with state-controlled
media, the IRA was engaged in a well-
financed and coordinated get-out-the-vote
campaign. As in every presidential election
since 2000, ensuring high turnout to legiti-
mate his mandate was Putin’s main propa-
ganda objective. The Kremlin deployed
tactics honed over two decades of informa-
tion manipulation to entice Russians to the
polls. Russian television warned voters that
high turnout was the only thing protecting the
nation from annihilation by the West. Social
media accounts spread rumours of Western
government plans to interfere in the election
while state news agencies alleged that more
than a dozen countries had attempted cyber
attacks against Russia (Polyankova, 2018).
Unattributed videos promoting the election
popped up on YouTube. In one, well-known
actor Sergei Burunov plays a character wak-
ing up after a Communist victory to find an
adopted gay man in his kitchen. In another,
an attractive woman breaks off her steamy
encounter with a man in a nightclub after
he confesses he failed to vote (Baryshnikov,
2018). The controversial videos got voters
talking about an otherwise dull campaign.
Straight out of the Kremlin playbook,
Putin’s 2018 presidential rivals were sub-
jected to negative PR and harassment. State
media accused Communist candidate Pavel
Grudinin of stashing US$1 million in a Swiss
bank account. Supporters of liberal Ksenia
Sobchak were arrested for defaming the
president by spraying ‘Against Putin’ on a
frozen river (Sharkov, 2018). The daughter of
Putin’s late mentor and St. Petersburg mayor
Anatoly, Sobchak was accused of being a
Kremlin stooge fielded to encourage liberal
voters to come to the polls despite calls for
a boycott from other prominent Putin oppo-
nents (Financial Times, 2018). To further
undermine their appeal, the Russian par-
liament accused those campaigning for a
boycott of receiving funds from foreign gov-
ernments (Interfax, 2018).
Again, deploying a tried-and-tested tactic,
as election day approached, Putin pressed
voters’ patriotic buttons with boasts of a
powerful new nuclear-capable underwater
drone that would give Russia an edge over
Western powers he accused of attempting
to ‘contain Russia’ (Wesolowsky, 2018). To
further enflame patriotic passions, on the eve
of voting state television broadcast a feature
film about events in Crimea in 2014, the plot
centring on a love story between a Russian
boy and Ukrainian girl (Tass, 2018). The
Kremlin’s propaganda machine achieved
its desired results with turnout reaching a
respectable 67.5 percent and Putin winning
76 percent of votes cast.
INTERNATIONAL PROPAGANDA
Anti-Western propaganda was at the heart of
Putin’s winning message in Russia’s 2018
election. But in 2000, Putin came into office
hoping to integrate with the West. At that
500 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
time, Russia’s new president believed that
modernisation, economic growth and inter-
national revival were all best served by
integration into Western-led institutions.
Improving Russia’s global image by counter-
ing negative Western media stereotypes was
a key element of Putin’s strategy (Simons,
2014). Following the attacks on the United
States on 11 September 2001, Putin offered
Washington broad support for anti-terrorist
operations in Afghanistan. Putin successfully
wooed US President George W. Bush, who
famously claimed to have looked into his
Russian counterpart’s soul and found him
‘straightforward and trustworthy’ (Baker,
2013). At home, Kremlin propagandists used
his bromance with Bush to herald Putin’s
growing global stature and his restoration of
Russia’s international prestige. By March
2003, Russian voters considered foreign
policy the area in which Putin had made the
most progress as president, adding to his
high approval ratings that averaged around
70 percent (Public Opinion Foundation,
2003).
Russia’s integration with the West was
deployed as a propaganda tool to excuse
Putin’s domestic policy failures, as well as to
praise his foreign policy successes. The 9/11
terrorist attacks gave Putin an opportunity to
link Chechen terrorism at home to the global
war on terror. Russian television coverage of
the horrific hostage taking by Chechen ter-
rorists at a school in Beslan in September
2004, for example, stressed the international
dimension of the crisis. On Rossiya, Deputy
Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov
declared, ‘we know this is international ter-
rorism, wherever it happens—Ingushetia,
Ossetia or Chechnya’ (Burrett, 2011: 341).
Messages of condolence and support from
foreign leaders and international organisa-
tions were used to add weight and credibility
to claims that this was a global war.
Following the Beslan tragedy, the Kremlin
moved to expand its control over minor
media such as small-audience television
channels and, increasingly, the print media
(Lipman, 2006). Minor independent broad-
caster Ren-TV did not hold back on report-
ing shocking facts and figures from Beslan.
Contradicting the messages given on state-
controlled channels, Ren-TV’s reporting
stressed that the tragedy should not be viewed
in geopolitical terms but within the frame-
work of the political situation in Russia. Less
than a year later, pressure from the Kremlin
brought Ren-TV under new ownership, with
links to the state (Coalson, 2008).
Even before the end of Putin’s first term,
Russian opposition to the US-led war in Iraq
began to drive a wedge between Moscow and
Washington. US support for Ukraine’s 2004
‘orange revolution’, which saw Putin’s pre-
ferred candidate Viktor Yanukovich beaten
by pro-West Viktor Yushchenko, further
deepened tensions. Yanukovich’s defeat was
also a loss for Putin. The Russian president’s
biggest mistake in the Ukrainian election was
not that he backed the wrong person, but the
fact that he backed anyone at all. By involving
himself in the election as a combatant, Putin
seriously damaged Russia’s image overseas
and, in particular, its relations with Ukraine
and the West. The reasons for Putin’s incau-
tious behaviour are rooted in a misunder-
standing of the Ukrainian situation, caused in
part by the peculiarities of the Russian media
system. None of Russia’s main media outlets
questioned Putin’s involvement in Ukraine’s
democratic process. Taking their lead from
the Kremlin, Russian journalists spoke con-
fidently of eventual victory for Yanukovich.
In so doing, the media reinforced the authori-
ties’ own mistaken assumption. Its control
over state-broadcasters allowed the Kremlin
to use television to campaign for Yanukovich,
just as it campaigned for Putin. Only, unlike
their Russian counterparts, Ukrainian voters
had access to a pluralist media and a genuine
choice of candidate.
Reeling from its loss of influence in
Ukraine, in 2005 the Russian government
established the English-language news
network Russia Today (now RT) to pre-
sent its own spin on international events.
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 501
The founding of RT was the first signal of
Putin’s new information approach to for-
eign policy. Henceforth, the Kremlin would
actively seek to influence foreign audiences,
countering one version of the truth with
another. From the outset, RT’s overarch-
ing narrative has been of the West’s decline
(Dowling, 2017). Owing to its blatant prop-
aganda agenda, in the US, RT America has
been obliged to register as a foreign agent. In
Britain, media regulators have reprimanded
RT UK a dozen times for a lack of balance
(Smith and Ward, 2017). The channel’s mix
of genuine news stories and fringe conspir-
acy theories has made it a hit on social media
where it forms part of the Kremlin’s wider
disinformation apparatus.
The death knell of Putin’s strategy of
integration with the West was struck by his
speech at the Munich Security conference
in February 2007. In his speech, Putin railed
against the United States for ‘forcing its will
on the world’, condemning the concept of a
unipolar world and accusing Washington of
undermining global security. Putin’s speech
was designed to position him as leader of
a global anti-American resistance, a senti-
ment growing in states such as China, Iran
and North Korea since the US invasion of
Iraq in 2003. The speech was also intended to
cement Putin’s domestic legacy as a strong,
patriotic leader in the lead up to the 2008
election at which he was scheduled to leave
the presidency (Yasmann, 2007). Deployment
of US missile defences in Poland and the
Czech Republic in 2007, US recognition of
Kosovo’s independence in 2008 and a NATO
commitment to eventual membership for
Georgia and Ukraine the same year together
convinced Putin that the West did not respect
Russia as an equal power.
In the context of deteriorating relations
with the West over multiple issues – including
the 2008 Russo-Georgian war – Putin pivoted
to Asia. The West’s relative economic
decline – accelerated by the 2008 global
financial crisis – provided additional impetus
for Putin to strengthen his ties with China,
India and other emerging political and
economic centres (Tsygankov, 2009: 348).
In pursuit of a strategic partnership with
Beijing, in 2008 Putin settled Russia’s
last remaining border dispute with China.
Bilateral trade has grown enormously from
US$21 billion in 2004 to US$95 billion
by 2014 (Valdai Club, 2016). The growing
importance of ties to Beijing was matched
by a change in Moscow’s propaganda
messaging. A fraught history and fears
of Chinese territorial encroachment in its
sparsely populated Far East have fuelled
Russian public hostility to China – a mentality
previously encouraged by the Kremlin.
Russian state-media stoked xenophobic
attitudes toward Chinese immigrants,
deliberately exaggerating the numbers of
those illegally crossing the border, as a
distraction from Russia’s real problems
(Repnikova and Balzer, 2009: 9–10). But
as Russia’s dependence on Chinese trade,
investment and loans has grown following
Western sanctions against Moscow over
Crimea, media talk of a ‘yellow peril’ has
disappeared (Hille, 2016). This change in
media rhetoric appears to have influenced
public attitudes. In April 2014, 57 percent
of Russians reported feeling that China was
not a threat to Russia, while 19 percent felt it
was a threat. This is a remarkable turnaround
from October 2009, when 39 percent
believed China was a not a threat, compared
to 44 percent believing it was (Figure 29. 2).
Russia’s pivot to Asia has also extended
to Japan. In light of growing bilateral trade
and substantial Japanese FDI, the Russian
media has dropped its aggressive postur-
ing over Moscow’s Kuril Islands dispute
with Tokyo (Burrett, 2014).2 The Kremlin’s
more positive propaganda presentation of
Japan has borne diplomatic fruit. Although
under pressure from Washington, Tokyo has
imposed sanctions on Moscow along with
the rest of the G7, Japanese leaders have kept
their statements on Crimea to a minimum.
Despite the sanctions, in December 2017,
Japan accepted a visit by Russia’s Chief
502 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
60
50
41 39
40
36 37
30
20
10
0
Mar -06 Feb -07
Threat
Figure 29.2  Is the Rise of China a Threat to Russia’s Interests?
Source: ‘Otnosheniya mezhdu Rossiyey i Kitayem [Relations Between China and Russia]’ 2014, Public Opinion Foundation,
viewed 6 July 2018, <http://fom.ru/Mir/11460>.
of the General Staff of the Armed Forces
Valery Gerasimov, author of the controver-
sial ‘Gerasimov doctrine’ – a security theory
focused on non-military means of achieving
geopolitical goals (Brown, 2017; Gerasimov,
2013). Emphasizing the importance of infor-
mational, economic and political methods
of defeating one’s opponents, in the West,
Gerasimov’s theories are widely believed to
have inspired Moscow’s interference in the
2016 US presidential election (Plekhanov,
2017).
Following Russia’s 2014 annexing of
Crimea, Putin has abandoned any pretence
at playing by diplomatic or democratic
rules. Increasingly, Russia’s internationally-
focused propaganda aims to create discord
by targeting Western hegemony in the global
system. In relation to Crimea, for example,
Russia manipulated residual anti-colonial
resentments in India, Brazil and South
Africa to convince all three countries not to
back Western-led sanctions against Moscow
(Pomerantsev, 2014: 23). In a televised
57
44
39
19
Oct -09 Apr -14
No Threat
speech to the Valdai Club in October 2014,
Putin accused the United States of imposing a
‘unilateral diktat’ on the rest of the world and
shifted blame for the Ukraine crisis onto the
West. Over his long tenure in office, Putin’s
grudging respect for the West has mutated
into just a grudge. Russia’s current rulers see
the pillars of the post-cold war order – human
rights, democracy and the rule of law – as a
Western ploy for undermining the legiti-
macy of Putinism (Gusinsky and Tsygankov,
2018). As the Putin regime’s popularity has
declined at home, it is increasingly willing to
take risks abroad to prove it is still among the
world’s great powers.
Putin’s gloves-off foreign policy has coin-
cided with advances in digital technolo­
gies. Cyber operations are the Kremlin’s
prime weapons in its war with the West,
perceived in terms of a ‘clash of civiliza-
tions’ (Huntington, 1996). By manipulat-
ing their media spaces, the Kremlin aims
to turn Western countries’ openness against
them. The Kremlin’s strategy leverages the
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 503
anonymity and immediacy of online technol-
ogies to divide and disorientate its adversar-
ies. In its clash with the West, Russia’s leaders
see their authoritarianism as an advantage.
Control of the domestic media allows the
Putin regime to bolster national unity and
state power at home while stoking divisions
abroad. Almost two decades of experience in
manipulating the information fed to Russian
audiences has honed the techniques Kremlin
propagandists now deploy internationally.
Leaks from within the Kremlin’s online
propaganda agency suggest that the over-
whelming majority of its approximately 900
employees remain focused on the domestic
information space (Rusyaeva and Zakharov,
2017). The current Russian regime’s primary
objective is its own survival, a purpose pur-
sued with renewed urgency as Putin enters
his fourth and likely final presidential term.
The Kremlin’s international propaganda is
aimed at the same objective. It seeks to desta-
bilise Western societies and the alliances
between them to reduce the West’s ability
to orchestrate regime change in Russia. But
the problem with chaos strategies is that they
tend to provoke counter measures. In 2015,
the EU set up the East StratCom Taskforce
to counter Russian disinformation campaigns
in Georgia, Ukraine and other former Soviet
states on the Union’s periphery (Smith, 2017:
4). In Eastern Europe, the Kremlin deploys
a propaganda strategy that leverages shared
elements of the post-Soviet experience to
erode trust in democratic institutions and to
exploit fears of US abandonment. To conduct
these campaigns, Russia uses a mix of state-
funded multilingual television, Kremlin-
backed news sites, Russian-sponsored civil
society organisations and a sophisticated
social media operation that includes non-
attributable comments on webpages, troll and
bot Facebook accounts and fake hashtags and
Twitter campaigns. Using its social media
accounts at crucial moments, such as dur-
ing the Ukraine revolution in 2014, Russia
can flood news websites with tens of thou-
sands of comments a day. The Kremlin has
also sought to manipulate the relatively large
Russian-language populations in the former
communist bloc who descend from Soviet-era
immigrants but who have been denied citizen-
ship in their host countries. Especially in the
Baltic States, the Kremlin uses its dominance
of regional broadcast media to disseminate
pro-Russian propaganda. Russian-speaking
social media activists residing in the Baltics
also create and distribute their own pro-Rus-
sia content without direct support from the
Russian state (Helmus et al., 2018: ix–xii).
Western Europe is also subject to Russia’s
propaganda efforts. In France, Emanuel
Macron’s presidential campaign databases
were the target of hundreds of cyber attacks
originating in Russia. Centre-right candidate
Francois Fillon was markedly more pro-Rus-
sia than eventual winner Macron (Breeden
et  al., 2017). In the UK, 13,000 Twitterbot
accounts were active during the 2016 EU
referendum campaign and were deactivated
after the ballot (Booth et al., 2017). Russia’s
Internet Research Agency paid for advertise-
ments related to Brexit on Facebook (Cellan-
Jones, 2017). Britain became the target of a
huge Russian disinformation campaign fol-
lowing the poisoning of former Russian spy
Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury
in March 2018 – an attack pinned on Moscow
by Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian tele­
vision presented the case as a grand anti-
Russian plot aimed at provoking a scandal
ahead of Russia’s imminent presidential
election. Kremlin-backed media also claimed
that the incident was a British-initiated plot to
divert attention from Brexit (Dearden, 2018).
Russian interference in the 2016 US
presidential election, including possi-
ble ties between the Trump campaign
and the Kremlin, was subject to official
investigation. But Russia began escalat-
ing its propaganda war against the United
States several years before the election. In
February 2014, the leaked audio of a phone
conversation between America’s Europe
Secretary Victoria Nuland and Washington’s
ambassador to Kiev, in which the former
504 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
used undiplomatic language about the EU,
appeared on YouTube. In the midst of her
failed efforts to cajole her European coun-
terparts to do more to avert revolution in
Ukraine, Nuland exclaimed ‘F—K the EU’
in exasperation (Glasser, 2018). The Kiev
Post first reported the video, leading the
Russian media to speculate that the leak
came from sources within Ukraine (Miller,
2014; RT, 2014). US suspicion, however, fell
on Moscow as a link to the video was quickly
posted to Twitter by an aide to Russia’s
deputy prime minister (Higgins and Baker,
2014). Whether or not the leak came from
Moscow, Russia’s media make frequent ref-
erence to the video as evidence of US med-
dling in Ukraine’s political affairs (Sputnik,
2017). US intelligence agencies knew
from 2015 that the Democratic National
Committee email servers had been hacked;
the emails were later leaked by websites
known to be Russian conduits on the eve of
the 2016 Democratic National convention
nominating Hillary Clinton as the party’s
presidential candidate. President Obama’s
failure to take countermeasures following
these incidents may have encouraged Russia
to step up its election interference. Analysis
of Russian television reporting on the US
election suggests the Kremlin’s aim was to
discredit American democracy more than to
tip the scales in favour of one candidate over
another. The Kremlin sought to show that the
US system was not as clean as Washington
maintained as a way of legitimating Russia’s
own flawed electoral system. The Putin
administration’s propaganda support for
Donald Trump was more a means than an
end (Burrett, 2018). Social media was the
Kremlin’s main tool for reaching US vot-
ers. In September 2017, Facebook revealed
that Russian-influenced political advertising
had reached 126 million Americans. Over
1,000 videos aiming to enflame disunity
among US citizens were posted on YouTube
(Isaac and Wakabayashi, 2017). On Twitter,
Russian propaganda efforts relied on auto-
mation, with 36,746 Russia-linked accounts
generating and disseminating election-
related content (United States Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence, 2017: 9). At
home, state media portrayed US accusations
of Russian election interference as yet more
evidence of American hypocrisy, paranoia
and Russophobia. Polls show that Russians
do not like America. American’s bombing of
Serbia in the 1990s and its doctrine of regime
change in the 2000s have left Russians deeply
distrustful of Washington (Mickiewicz,
2014). In April 2018, 83 percent of Russians
believed the United States was unfriendly
toward Russia (Public Opinion Foundation,
2018). Meddling in US politics benefits the
Russian state, not only by sowing discord
within American society, but also by rein-
forcing domestic narratives of the Putin
regime’s vital role in defending Russia’s
interests against hostile foreign powers.
Furthermore, by playing on Russians’ resent-
ment toward the United States, the Kremlin
deflects domestic anger over the economic
distress caused by Western sanctions.
CONCLUSION
Putin’s domestic and international propa-
ganda performances have been interdepend-
ent since the outset of his presidency. Initially,
Putin’s propaganda machine proved adept at
both creating and meeting public expecta-
tions of his leadership, not least in restoring
Russia’s position as an important player on
the international stage. Putin’s popularity at
home, in turn, increased his stature among
world leaders. Later, however, as gaps
appeared between reality in Russia and what
was promised, Putin increasingly drew on
dramatic gestures and nationalist rhetoric to
distract voters from his shortcomings. The
propaganda dividends of Putin’s surprise inter-
ventions in Ukraine (2014) and Syria (2015)
boosted his flagging domestic support – but at
the expense of Russia’s economic stability
and diplomatic relations.
 Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda Performance 2000–2018: Stagecraft as Statecraft 505
Since the start of his presidency, innova-
tions in communications technologies have
allowed Putin to disseminate his propaganda
through a growing range of platforms to
reach a worldwide audience. But Russia’s
meddling in overseas elections leaves Putin
increasingly isolated and dependent on a
narrow range of allies. As the West wises
up to Putin’s act, Russia may be left a
mere bit player in the story of China’s rise.
Domestically, Putin’s propaganda operation
is sophisticated and its mediums of deliv-
ery pervasive. By 2018, Reporters Without
Borders ranked Russia 148 out of 180 for
media freedom (Reporters Sans Frontières,
n.d.). The Kremlin’s control of Russia’s
media landscape and a lack of viable politi-
cal alternatives means Putin’s eventual suc-
cessor will likely hail from within the current
regime. Unless foreign governments step
up their countermeasures, Russia’s current
propaganda activities will persist beyond a
change in lead actor. Lessons from Germany,
where government preparations appear to
have deterred expected Russian interference
in the September 2017 federal elections,
offer security pointers to other states. As
early as spring 2017, the German govern-
ment sent clear and consistent messages to
Moscow through multiple channels stating
that attempts at interference would be met by
punitive actions (Beuth et al., 2017). German
political parties pledged not to use leaked
information for campaign advantage, while
media organisations set up fact-checking
teams to verify the authenticity of mate-
rial (Schwirtz, 2017). Germany’s Federal
Returning Officer established a Twitter
account to allow swift clarifications of poten-
tial fake news (Brattberg and Maurer, 2018).
Perhaps most importantly, German politics is
not as polarised as in the United States, where
partisan enmity provides fertile ground for
Russian efforts to create confusion and dis-
cord. Putin’s domestic propaganda is predi-
cated on his ability to score foreign policy
victories over an internally and internation-
ally divided West.
Even if Putin continues to put in a good
performance on the world stage, however,
appealing to domestic voters will become
increasingly challenging as changes in tech-
nology and consumption habits fragment
audiences. In line with global trends, Russian
media theorists expect domestic audiences
to splinter as they seek out niche content,
delivered across a range of new mediums,
including mobile devices and smart TV. The
consumption of news content through social
media is also expected to grow as access
to Wi-Fi and broadband expands across
Russia’s regions (Hess, 2014; Kachkaeva
and Kiriya, 2012; Vartanova et  al., 2016).
At the same time, it is anticipated that audi-
ence share for traditional television will
shrink. Future research should focus on how
audiences’ changing behaviour impacts the
nature and success of the Kremlin’s infor-
mation strategies. Attention should also
focus on changes in Russia’s newsrooms,
as audiences’ preferences for niche content
encourages the recruitment of non-media
professionals into journalism. The increas-
ing role of online information aggregators,
big data processing and user-made content in
Russian election campaigns are other areas
deserving greater research.
As the Putin era comes to an end, how
his potential successors from within the
ruling regime seek to appeal to voters will
become an increasingly important avenue for
research. A great deal of academic attention
is given to how Putin and his government
use the media to communicate with Russian
voters. More attention should also be given
to the information strategies deployed
by Putin’s domestic political opponents.
Russian international propaganda operations
are also subject to intensive investigation.
Equal attention should be afforded to for-
eign governments’ efforts to target Russian
audiences. Putin has kept the spotlight on his
leadership for nearly two decades. It is likely
he still has a few more surprises to deliver
before he exits the domestic and world politi-
cal stage for good.
506 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Notes
1  Russia’s constitution mandates that the president
can serve no more than two terms consecutively.
2  In Japan, the four disputed islands, currently
under Russian sovereignty, are called the North-
ern Territories.
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Trumpaganda1: The War on
Facts, Press, and Democracy
INTRODUCTION
Propaganda in its original sense, as an organ-
ization established in the 17th century by the
Catholic church with an objective to spread
its doctrine, is not much more controversial
or different in its aims than modern corpo-
rate communications departments or public
relations agencies. As a form of communi-
cation, propaganda aims to exert influence
in the service of particularistic interests.
However, through many historical instances
of unscrupulous uses to systematically
misinform and deceive, propaganda gained
a vicious reputation and a bad name.
Professionals in the public relations and
advertising industries distanced themselves
from the negative connotations of the term
by claiming to serve good causes and to pro-
vide correct information (Bernays, 1928).
Similarly, social science academics gradu-
ally abandoned the term propaganda for
more sophisticated and nuanced concepts of
‘persuasion’, ‘public opinion’, and ‘strategic
30
Mira Sotirovic
communication’ that recognize the specific
conditions of its effectiveness and overall
limits to uniformly and directly shape
people’s minds.
Modern political campaigns, which rou-
tinely employ classic techniques of propa-
ganda to manage their candidates’ images
and ‘sell’ their messages, substitute the word
propaganda with the more respectable word
‘marketing’ in promoting their activities.
Oddly, they often stand accused of ‘spin’,
but rarely of propaganda. The avoidance of
the word propaganda in both professional
and academic contexts relegated it to little
more than a tired political slur that could
be applied to any opinion with which one
disagrees (Schumpeter, 1996). Its absence,
however, may have contributed to neglect-
ing the appreciation of the social conditions
conducive to misuses of propaganda and for
creating a situation when propaganda is most
effective – when it is subtle, hidden, camou-
flaged by other forms of communication and
undetected.
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
One of the most significant achieve-
ments of propaganda of the 20th century
may be in persuading us that democracies
are free from propaganda in the absence of
overt coercion. Instead, the freedom to per-
suade and suggest is proclaimed as the very
essence of the democratic process (Bernays,
1947), notwithstanding the ancient associa-
tions of persuasion with fallacy and modern
connotations of trickery and falseness. In
effect, propaganda has been equated with
techniques of mass persuasion and defined
as ‘mass suggestion or influence through the
manipulation of symbols and the psychology
of the individual’ (Pratkanis and Aronson,
1992: 11). Not all persuasion is propaganda
though. Propaganda works by distraction,
distortion, and exaggeration. Propaganda
suppresses reason or rational will (Stanley,
2015) by triggering emotions and appealing
to prejudice. As a ‘mechanism by which ideas
are disseminated’ (Bernays, 2005: 48) with
every new mass medium, propaganda has the
potential to reach more people and operate
on a finer-grained but even grander scale. Its
works are aided by the proliferations of the
media platforms for opinion expression that
further blur differences between deliberate
deception, catchy self-promotion, clickbaity
infotainment, and reliable information.
The biggest challenge in studying propa-
ganda still remains to be distinguishing it
from other forms of communication (Fellows,
1957). Education may be on the opposite
side of the communication spectrum by the
feature of reliance on facts, logic, and open-
ended conclusions, but even ‘“education” for
one person may be “propaganda” for another’
(Smith, 2010). Individuals bring their own
preconceptions and biases to everything
they perceive and particularly to those issues
on which they have a strong point of view
(Kahneman et al., 1982). In that vein, factual
news reports for journalists are fake news
for Trump and his administration. Trump’s
labeling of the mainstream news media as
‘fake news’ is easily recognized as the clas-
sic propaganda technique of ‘name calling’
511
(Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1938)
and an ‘ad hominem’ attack to deflect atten-
tion from the message argument. Trump used
the label to discredit media’s critical report-
ing of him, but the phrase actually captures
the essence of propaganda. Propaganda is
communication of misinformation disguised
as credible information. Propaganda mas-
queraded as news robs it of credibility and
subverts its purpose of providing an accu-
rate account of reality. Accurate information
is a necessary condition for knowledge and
truth, and the foundation of decision making
in democracy. The news media in democracy
are the main source of knowledge, after com-
pleting formal education, that helps citizens
realize their interests and the interests of
their community. Suppression of information,
propagation of misinformation, and under-
mining the news media weaken democracy
to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
The best way to combat propaganda in a
democracy is through analyses that reveal how
much truth is in it (Institute for Propaganda
Analysis, 1938). This chapter examines
President Trump and his administration’s ‘run-
ning war’ with the mainstream news media
and its implications for American democracy
and a free press. Whereas Trump’s insults and
violation of the norms of presidential behav-
ior attract a lot of attention in the news media,
it is his assaults on facts and propagation of
falsities that are truly damaging to people’s
lives. This chapter goes beyond discussing
the classic rhetorical devices to emphasize
the news media roles in supplying citizens
with essential facts and implications of issues
affecting their welfare. When the news media
fail in those roles, they themselves become
channels for specific propagandas (Institute
for Propaganda Analysis, 1938).
BRILLIANT CAMPAIGN
At a July 16, 2018 press conference with
Russian President Vladimir Putin, American
512 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
President Donald Trump (2018) said in
response to questions about the indictment of
12 Russian intelligence officers for cyberat-
tacks intended to interfere in the presidential
contest:
That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton
easily. And, frankly, we beat her – and I’m not
even saying from the standpoint – we won that
race. And it’s a shame that there could even be a
little bit of a cloud over it. People know that,
people understand it. But the main thing – and we
discussed this also – zero collusion. We ran a
­brilliant campaign, and that’s why I’m President.
Trump’s ‘brilliant’ campaign started in the
basement of his Trump Tower building in
Manhattan, with a speech promising ‘we
are going to make our country great again’
(Diamond, 2015) in reminiscence of the
Ronald Reagan 1980 presidential campaign
slogan ‘Let’s Make America Great Again’.
He came to the stage surrounded by eight
American flags after descending from the
golden escalator. The opulence of the sur-
roundings was a punctuation mark in a speech
in which Trump pointed out his wealth and
successful business career as qualifications
for being president. In the ‘eccentric’ speech
(Neate, 2015), Trump attacked Mexican
immigrants, claiming them to consist of many
criminals and rapists, and promised to build a
great wall along the US southern border. He
blamed Barack Obama for letting the country
collapse to the level of a third world country
and declared scrapping Obamacare and cut-
ting spending on education as his presidential
priorities. The news reports provided a full
taste of the type of candidate ‘who shoots
from the hip and does not care for a script’
Trump represented (Diamond, 2015).
Ironically, it was the general election
opponent of ‘the First Twitter president
of the United States’ (Pilkington, 2018),
Hillary Clinton, who officially launched
her campaign for president by a Twitter
announcement and a two minute and 18 sec-
ond ad-like polished video posted on social
media (Velencia, 2015). The video featured
about a dozen ordinary people and families
talking about restarting their lives. The news
media quoted Clinton saying in the video
she wanted to be the champion of everyday
Americans who have fought their way back
from tough economic times but for whom the
deck is still stacked in favor of those at the
top. Reports also included a litany of scan-
dals starting from her role in helping Bill
Clinton overcome charges of draft dodging
and womanizing in his 1992 presidential
election campaign, to using a private server
and email for official business as secretary
of state and permanently deleting those she
considered personal (Fox News, 2015). The
harshest response to Clinton’s proclaimed
commitment to middle class and working
Americans came from Bernie Sanders, her
primary election opponent, who attacked
Clinton for her connections to Wall Street
and support of trade deals that hurt American
workers. These charges complimented
Trump’s ‘crooked’ Hillary name calling
and Republican primary candidates’ nar-
rative of Clinton as representing the worst
of Washington machine politics while also
masquerading as a voice of the people. The
image of Clinton as an elitist, disingenuous
candidate who disdained working people was
complete when Clinton gave Trump a politi-
cal gift by saying at a New York City fund-
raiser that half of Trump’s supporters belong
in a ‘basket of deplorables’. Clinton’s gaffe
sparked a media frenzy and Twitter storm just
two months before election day.
Trump won the election by the electoral
college vote, and lost by almost 2.9 million
popular votes after 303 rallies and speeches
(vs. Clinton’s 278), 15 debates including three
between the presidential candidates, 22 press
conferences (25 for Clinton), $93  million
spent on television ads (vs. $253 spent by
Clinton) (Smith and Kreutz, 2016), and
35,244 Tweets (vs. 9,887 Clinton’s) (Keegan,
2017). Aggregation of national polls showed
him having a lead of 0.9 percentage points
at only one time throughout the whole gen-
eral campaign, in late July, on the heels of the
release of almost 20,000 hacked DNC emails.
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
Can a single gaffe decide the race? Frank
Luntz, the famed Republican wordsmith
who created phrases such as ‘death tax’ and
‘illegal aliens’ tweeted shortly after Clinton’s
comments flashed on social media: ‘If Trump
continues his upward climb in polls and wins
on November 8th, tonight will be seen as the
turning point of the race’ (Luntz, 2016).
NEWS MEDIA COVERAGE OF
ELECTION CAMPAIGNS
In one of the most important studies in politi-
cal communication history, The People’s
Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1948: 1), American
presidential campaigns were called ‘a large-
scale experiment in political propaganda and
public opinion’. During this experiment,
campaign managers, party workers and parti-
san leaders of opinion (the newspaper editor,
the columnist, the freelance writer and the
syndicated cartoonist, the radio ­commentator,
and the local sage) unleashed propaganda ‘to
control or inform, constrain or tease potential
voters into the appropriate decision’
(Lazarsfeld et al., 1948: 120). The mass com-
munication media, filled with reports on
conventions and candidates’ speeches, maga-
zine articles, and front-page newspaper sto-
ries on elections, were merely considered
distributors of campaign political propa-
ganda. These days most journalists would
reject such a close association of their roles
with propaganda, citing the professional
model of journalism with its emphasis on
objectivity. This model developed partly in
reaction to WWI journalism, characterized as
being willing to publish propaganda as facts,
accept censorship, and failing to hold power
to account (Greenslade, 2014). Despite jour-
nalistic aspirations for objectivity, polls show
that about 40% think they are performing
very poorly, whereas 56% of Americans
think that media are performing very well or
acceptably in their role of providing objec-
tive news reports (Knight Foundation, 2018).
513
Similarly, critical views of news media per-
formance are expressed in the perceptions of
almost half of Americans that there is a ‘a
great deal’ of political bias in news coverage.
In the last decade, the percentage of
Americans who see a great deal of political
bias increased by 14 percentage points. This
trend is primarily driven by party identifica-
tion, with 67% of Republicans who see a
great deal of political bias and only 26% of
Democrats, suggesting confirmation and pro-
jection biases rather than an intrinsic media
bias. Nevertheless, it weakens the position of
news media as an institution whose legiti-
macy in democracy rests on the support of its
citizens.
The central role of news media in demo­
cracy is not disputed though. More than 80%
of Americans believe that the news media
are critical or important to our democracy.
Their most important role in making sure
Americans have the knowledge they need
to be informed about public affairs is on full
display during election campaigns. A large
majority of Americans (78%) learned about
the 2016 presidential election from televi-
sion news, local, cable, network and comedy
shows (Gottfied et al., 2016). Unfortunately,
what they were most likely to learn was about
candidates’ standings in polls and about vari-
ous controversies and scandals because the
bulk of media coverage was focused on those
two topics (Patterson, 2016). The horserace
and controversies have traditionally been
the dominant themes of election coverage –
the 2016 election was no exception with
42% of stories that were about who was win-
ning and 17% of stories about controversies.
Candidates’ policy stands were covered in
only one out of ten campaign stories. In turn,
research has shown that what perceptions
people develop and what information they
learn from their use of media coverage con-
tent is crucial for understanding their elec-
toral behavior (Sotirovic and McLeod, 2008).
Presidential campaigns also have been
described as ‘national conversations’, and
‘exercises in the creation, recreation, and
514 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
transmission of “significant symbols”’
(Denton, 2017: x). One of the factors identi-
fied as contributing to Trump’s victory was
his rhetoric (Kirk and Martin, 2017): simple
and direct messages that contained epithets
that the more ‘politically correct’ politicians
Trump was running against typically avoided.
The words and symbols that ‘make us mad
or glad’ (Institute for Propaganda Analysis,
1938: 111) are the main weapons of propa-
ganda. Trump appealed to his supporters
with phrases such as ‘lock her up’, ‘drain the
swamp’, ‘build the wall’, ‘rigged system’,
‘fake news’, and ‘America first’. Propaganda
symbols feed preexisting prejudice, and
Trump’s hallmark ‘fake news’ phrase would
not have whipped up his supporters to the
same degree if conservative politicians and
commentators were not cultivating mistrust
and hostility toward the mainstream news
media and turning Republican voters against
them for decades earlier. Trump sounded genu-
ine with his brash and uncompromising state-
ments about issues his supporters already
felt passionate about (Friedersdorf, 2015).
He trashed the rules of civic decorum by
insulting hundreds of people in his speeches,
including the rivals within his own party. The
cable news media in particular fed on every
juicy bite Trump threw them during his ral-
lies, and every offensive tweet was flashed
on the screen and repeated incessantly.
Trump received twice as much news cover-
age as Clinton did, indicating by the frequen-
cies his name was mentioned on a selection
of national cable channels, national net-
works, and their affiliates (2016 Campaign
Television Tracker, 2018). However, given
that the tone of news coverage of both Trump
and Clinton was overwhelmingly negative,
almost by a ratio of five to one (Shorenstein
Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy,
2016), one would expect that Clinton would
have benefited from the heavy negative atten-
tion that the news media paid to Trump. In
hindsight, the media coverage of Trump
seemed to prove the proverbial saying that
there is no such thing as bad publicity.
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES’ RHETORIC
Televised debates are one of the regular
­features of presidential campaigns. The first
Clinton-Trump debate was the most watched
presidential debate ever (Associated Press,
2016) with 84 million Americans tuning in.
Their third and final debate had the third
largest audience ever of 71.6 million viewers,
topped only by the 1980 debate between
Carter and Reagan. The first debate was also
the second most watched TV broadcast in the
United States, exceeded only by the Super
Bowl and its post-game show. Debates tradi-
tionally attract large audiences because of the
conflict and unpredictability of a face-off in
which the true character and issue positions
are revealed unfiltered by reporters’ immedi-
ate interpretations and analyses. Despite
some spontaneous exchanges, candidates
mostly deliver their carefully prepared and
rehearsed remarks and try to drill in several
essential points in response to anticipated
questions from reporters. Democratic and
Republican candidates in their primary
debates tend to favor different issues, with
Democrats typically prioritizing health care,
jobs, gun control, education, ground troops,
and criminal justice, whereas Republicans
are most often discussing topics of the
Islamic State, immigration, taxes, military
power, Iran, and anti-Washington sentiments
(Keller and Yourish, 2016). Democrats and
Republicans also seem to speak different
languages when discussing the same topics.
For example, Democrats refer to ‘compre-
hensive health reform’, ‘estate taxes’,
‘undocumented workers’, and ‘tax breaks for
the wealthy’, while Republicans talk about a
‘Washington takeover of health care’, ‘death
taxes’, ‘illegal aliens’, and ‘tax reform’
(Thomson, 2016).
In presidential debates, both party can-
didates are asked to answer the same ques-
tions chosen by the reporters in roughly
the same amount of time, somewhat limit-
ing their ability to set their own agenda and
avoid certain issues. Under these relatively
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
controlled circumstances, there were marked
differences between how Clinton and Trump
spoke during their three debates in terms of
a number of linguistic characteristics. Trump
used shorter sentences (11 words on aver-
age) and used fewer complex, polysyllabic,
words (8%) than Clinton whose sentences
consisted of 15 words and 10% of complex
words on average. These statistics indicate
that Trump’s answers were easier to under-
stand than Clinton’s. He spoke at the level
appropriate for fifth graders, whereas Clinton
spoke on the level understood by an aver-
age student in seventh grade (Readability
Test Tool, 2018). Different patterns in the
use of words indicated various psychologi-
cal processes and states such as affect, cog-
nition and drives. Trump used more words
that indicated negative emotions, anger, dif-
ferentiation between ideas and people, and
danger than Clinton (Sotirovic and Benson,
2018). Despite moderators who firmly stuck
to their questions, demanded answers from
both candidates, and enforced time limita-
tions, Trump spoke about 14% more than
Clinton, indicated by the number of words.
Term frequency–inverse document frequency
(TF-IDF)2 analyses of the words used by
Trump and Clinton revealed that although
talking about the same topics, the two can-
didates projected different world views,
priorities, and personas. Trump was much
more aggressive than Clinton in presenting
his views by consistently contrasting them to
what ‘Hillary’ does or says. Among Trump’s
most important words were adjectives and
adverbs such as ‘tremendous’ and ‘great-
est’ whereas for Clinton things were ‘clear’.
Among issues, Trump’s standout statements
included those containing the words ‘inner’
cities and ‘NAFTA’, whereas Clinton’s
emphasis was on ‘affordable’ health care
and ‘nuclear’ weapons. Trump talked about
his endorsements, whereas Clinton ‘hoped’
she ‘will be able to earn your vote’ and that
‘people out there understand’. Trump’s per-
formance was of a skilled publicist to whom
propaganda rhetorical devices identified by
515
the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1938)
are the currency of the trade.3 All politi-
cians use glittering generalities (Institute for
Propaganda Analysis, 1938), a propaganda
device by which the propagandist identifies
his program with virtue by use of ‘virtue
words’ that appeal to their base, but Clinton’s
long history in political life exposed her less
artful moments. During the first Presidential
Debate that featured a segment on racial
relationships, Trump called Clinton out for
comments she made two decades earlier in
discussing crime. She called kids in gangs
‘super predators that should be brought to
heel’. She was confronted over those com-
ments by a black student, Ashley Williams,
at a fundraiser in Charleston, NC, who
demanded an apology to black people. The
moment was symbolic of Clinton’s inability
to mobilize a demographic that was crucial in
pushing Obama to his victory.
TRUMP’S TWITTER
Almost half of Americans learned about the
election from social media, mostly from
Facebook (37%). Only 9% of those who
learned about the election from social media
learned from Twitter. Twitter, however,
became the sensation of the 2016 presidential
election because Trump’s bombastic rhetoric
was like catnip for campaign reporters.
Propagated in the news, his tweets have
reached a broader public than just his 13 mil-
lion followers (Hendricks and Schill, 2017)
who were about 3 million stronger than
Clinton’s by election day. Although Clinton
tweeted about as much as Trump, Trump’s
tweets were getting more attention as indi-
cated by the almost four times larger number
of retweets (Pew Research Center, 2016).
Trump’s own retweeting reaffirmed his anti-
establishment campaign message because, in
almost 80% of cases, his retweets were of the
general public rather than famous people in
the news media, government and other
516 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
organizations. In contrast, 80% of the time
Clinton retweeted her own campaign ­slogans.
The effect of Trump’s tweets beyond the
energizing and consolidating of his base is
not clear given that the mainstream news
media often treated them with incredulity
and as a bad joke of the day, but they did
function as five-second advertisements that
gave Trump control over his messages and an
opportunity to attack anyone who opposed
him. Free mentions of his tweets have been
calculated to earn Trump $4.96 billion in free
media, about 50% more than Clinton earned
for her tweets (Media Quant, 2016). As
Trump used Twitter as primarily a marketing
and promotional tool (Gunn, 2017), his
tweets contained relatively few references
to issues. In comparison to the use of his
campaign slogan ‘make America great again’,
which appeared in his tweets 320 times,
‘illegal immigration’ was mentioned 52 times,
followed by ‘the border’ (34), ‘radical
Islam’ (19), ‘foreign policy’ (15), ‘the wall’
(15), ‘the economy’ (13), ‘border security’
(12), ‘national security’ (11), and ‘repeal
Obamacare’ (10). Cognitive linguist George
Lakoff (2018) wrote that ‘Trump uses social
media as a weapon to control the news cycle.
It works like a charm. His tweets are tactical
rather than substantive’.
Trump’s tweets during the election cam-
paign are most noteworthy for insults hurled
at his opponents. A New York Times reporter
found that 11% of all Trump’s tweets were
insults of some kind and, among them, about
one third were directed at ‘crooked Hillary’,
‘little Marco’, ‘low-energy Jeb’, and ‘lying
Ted’ (Quealy, 2016). Trump’s tweets also
often attacked journalists and media organi-
zations that published anything critical of him
and for ‘attempting to destroy Donald Trump
with lies’ (Trump, 2015). By the end of his
campaign the so-called ‘dishonest and biased
mainstream media’ CNN and New York Times
bore the brunt of Trump’s ire. However, it was
only after his election victory, on December
10, 2016, that Trump first used the phrase
‘fake news’ in a tweet and it was in reference
to CNN (Trump, 2016). The phrase was just a
zingier reiteration of a long-standing conserv-
ative establishment complaint of mainstream
news media as a ‘propaganda machine’
(Trump, 2018) with entrenched liberal bias.
According to Factbase (2018), CNN, Russia,
and NBC are among the most common topics
associated with ‘fake news’ phrases in every-
thing that Trump said since that time. ‘Fake
news’ became Trump’s signature phrase
when he used it 16 times in his January 11,
2017 White House press conference. He told
CNN reporter Jim Acosta ‘You are fake news.
Go ahead’. What he designated ‘Fake news’
was the CNN media organization’s seem-
ingly inaccurate, mistaken identity reporting
on his private lawyer, Michael Cohen’s visit
to Prague.
Fake news is defined by Science maga-
zine writers (Lazer et  al., 2018: 2) as ‘fab-
ricated information that mimics news media
content in form but not in organizational
process or intent’. In July 2016, a story with
a headline ‘Pope Francis Shocks World,
Endorses Donald Trump for President,
Releases Statement’ that appeared in the
Facebook newsfeed registered more than
960,000 comments, shares, and reactions
(Ritchie, 2016). Soon after, more stories with
explosive claims appeared, such as ‘Donald
Trump sent his own plane to transport 200
stranded marines’ and ‘WikiLeaks confirms
Hillary sold weapons to ISIS’, all damaging
to Clinton and helpful to Trump’s campaign,
generating millions in Facebook engage-
ments. A Buzzfeed investigation found
that all those stories originated on a net-
work of web sites with legitimate-sounding
news domains such as WTOE5News.com,
kspm33.com, ­ mckenziepost.com, ky6news.
com, and km8news.com that together have
published more than 750 fake news articles
(Silverman, 2016). None of the sites listed an
owner of the company, but Buzzfeed found
that many were registered in the Macedonian
town of Veles. Some Veles residents were
making money via ads attached to the stories
that produced a lot of Facebook traffic.
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
The fake news stories propagated through
Facebook may not have affected the outcome
of the election given that only a minority
of US adults (27%) were exposed to them.
Fake-news made up only 3% of the overall
news use, although their effects could have
been disproportionately large within smaller
groups crucial for Trump’s victory (Guess
et al., 2018). The more important effect may
have been the sense of confusion they left
among Americans about the basic facts of
current issues and events and doubts in their
confidence to recognize fake news and iden-
tify trustworthy information. About 64% of
US adults said fabricated news stories cause
a great deal of confusion and about 60%
were less than very confident in their ability
to recognize fake news (Barthel et al., 2016).
Trump’s labeling of ‘fake news’ of every-
thing that he dislikes, from inconvenient facts
to critical reporting, likely added to the diffi-
culties the public had to stay well-informed.
A Knight Foundation study found that almost
60% of Americans think that the increase in
information available today makes it harder
to be well-informed because people have to
sort through a lot of information to determine
what is true or important (Knight Foundation,
2018).
WAR ON THE MEDIA CAMPAIGN
Trump has remained an avid user of Twitter
after the election, sending on average seven
tweets every day (Trump Twitter Archive,
2018). His favorite Twitter topics are about
fake news (174), Fox News or Sean Hannity
(164), Making America Great Again (100),
Russia (98), Clinton (76), Obamacare (73),
deals (67), Obama (58), The New York Times
(37), CNN (33), NBC (31), and the NFL
(23). While these topics show what is on top
of Trump’s mind, the New York Times’ com-
plete list of ‘the 487 people, places, and
things Donald Trump has insulted on Twitter’
(Lee and Quealy, 2018) indicates what Trump
517
prioritizes and who his true enemies are.
Trump’s favorite insults since the
beginning of his campaign have been
‘fake news’, ‘crooked’, ‘witch hunt’, ‘weak’,
‘the worst’, ‘disaster’, ‘very dishonest’,
‘rigged’, ‘failing’, ‘totally biased’, ‘bad judg-
ment’, ‘joke’, and ‘terrible’. The post-election
‘enemy’ list (Table 30.1) is topped by the
‘mainstream media’, ‘Democrats’, and the
new target of Trump’s anger, ‘allegations of
collusion between Russia and members of the
Trump campaign’. The New York Times,
Hillary Clinton, and CNN remained among
Trump’s main detractors, but James Comey
replaced his primary election opponents, Cruz,
Bush and Rubio. Trump’s attention to
Obamacare intensified, and among the new
targets are members of Robert Mueller’s team,
the FBI, and the US immigration policies.
Among all of Trump’s insults, 37% are directed
to media organizations and journalists.
Trump’s attacks on the news media can
be viewed as an attempt to erode public trust
and establish the Trump administration as a
source of truth (Lakoff, 2018). Ironically, a
closer examination of Trump’s tweets accus-
ing the mainstream media of being ‘fake’,
‘dishonest’, ‘corrupt’, ‘phony’, or ‘biased’,
revealed that those accusations are false, and
that ‘he was himself propagating mis- and
disinformation’ (Ross and Rivers, 2018).
In  other words, Trump is misrepresenting
media reports to spread his own version of
reality, and many times what Trump decries
as ‘fake news’ turns out to be true (Kessler
and Kelly, 2018).
Trump’s attacks on the news media came at
a low point in a historical trend of decline in
American’s trust and confidence in the mass
media, among other social institutions, since
its Watergate peak in 1976 from 72% to its
low of about 40% starting in the mid-2000s
(Swift, 2017). During the 2016 election cam-
paign, Republicans’ already traditionally
lower trust in media, fueled by conserva-
tive rhetoric complaining of a liberal media
bias, dropped to a historical low of 14% and
remained at that level through 2017. However,
518 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Table 30.1  People and things Trump insulted on Twitter more than 10 times
People and things Number of insults since election

The ‘mainstream’ media 350

Democrats 167
Allegations of collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign 132
The New York Times 107
Hillary Clinton 72
CNN 62
James Comey 60
Obamacare 42
The Washington Post 40
NBC News 33
Chuck Schumer 24
Bob Corker 23
Members of Robert Mueller’s team 22
Barack Obama 17
Doug Jones 17
FBI 17
Jon Ossoff 15
ABC News 14
Jeff Flake 14
US immigration policies 14
Andrew McCabe 13
National Football League 12
Frederica Wilson 11
NBC 11
Richard Blumenthal 11

Democrats’ trust and confidence in the news
media rose to its highest levels (72%) since
2005. Independents also had a rebound to
levels similar to that in 2014. The deep par-
tisan divide is also evident in the polls that
asked Americans whether they trust more the
national media or President Trump’s White
House to tell the truth. In mid-2017, 66%
of Democrats sided with the national media
whereas 65% of Republicans sided with
President Trump’s White House in a Morning
Consult/ Politico poll (Yokley, 2018). By
mid 2018, about the same percentage of
Democrats trusted national media and six
percentage points more Republicans trusted
Trump. Among independents, the percentage
of those who said they do not know whom
to trust more increased by five percentage
points to 44%. The effect of Trump’s daily
assaults on mainstream news media since
his election seems to be mainly a reinforce-
ment among Republicans, increased confu-
sion among Independents, and no change
among Democrats. The broader implications
of firing up his most loyal supporters may be
increased partisan polarization, and further
extremization of the Republican party.
Trumps’ fake news cries may have even
more serious consequences beyond the
United States, especially in countries that
have weaker constitutional free speech pro-
tections and fewer independent judiciaries.
The phrase was used in 2017 by more than
20 political leaders worldwide, in authoritar-
ian regimes and even in European democra-
cies (e.g. Cambodia, China, Egypt, France,
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY 519

Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Kuwait, FACTS MATTER

Libya, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines,
Poland, Russia, Singapore, Somalia, Syria, Politics may be considered a bloody sport
Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela), where there is no place for thin-skinned
to repress critical reporting and intimidate people who cannot take an insult, but access
journalists (Lees, 2018). These leaders are to accurate information along with the free-
emboldened by the knowledge that there dom of opinion expression are bloodlines of
will be little condemnation or repercussions effective democracy. While delegitimizing
for their rhetoric because the leader of the the mainstream media’s central role in insur-
free world is also serving as a commander ing the free exchange of information that is
in chief in the war on the news media. When ‘accurate, fair and thorough’ (Society of
they say ‘fake news’, it is not just a figure Professional Journalists, 2014), in 558 days
of speech used to dismiss, deny, or malign. of his presidency, Trump has made 4,229 false
In 2018, 28 journalists around the world or misleading claims – 7.6 per day (Kessler
were imprisoned on charges of false news, et al., 2018). Most of them are on the topic of
more than three times as many as in 2016. immigration (12.7%) (Table 30.2), and they
Egypt jailed most of them at 19, followed by are made in the context of various remarks
Cameroon with four, Rwanda with three and (31.9%) (Table 30.3). Trump’s claims that
China and Morocco with one each (Beiser, represent an alternative reality are obstacles
2018). They represent only 11% of all 251 to the creation of public knowledge about
journalists who were jailed in relation to important issues as a foundation of debates
their work, mostly on charges of belonging that lead to the formation of coherent opinion
to or aiding groups that states consider terror- and optimal public policies. The lack of public
ist organizations. On the list of these coun- knowledge silences citizen voices, and dis-
tries where politicians used the phrase ‘fake cussions driven by high levels of misinfor-
news’ are some with the highest number of mation create distorted representations of
journalists murdered since 1992 when the public opinion that bias individuals’ stands on
Committee to Protect Journalists began keep-
ing records: Philippines, Somalia, Russia,
Turkey and Syria. In the name of fighting Table 30.2  Topics of Trump’s false and
fake news, a number of countries, includ- misleading claims
ing European democracies such as Sweden, Topics %
Ireland and the Czech Republic, are pre-
immigration 12.7
paring or passing laws that in the countries
foreign policy 12.0
already known for restricting free speech –
economy 10.2
such as Singapore, Turkey, Belarus – can be
trade 10.2
used to further silence opposition groups and
jobs 10.1
dissenting voices (Henley, 2018). Trump’s
Russia 8.9
indifference toward the plight of journalists
taxes 7.9
was shockingly evident in his reaction to
health care 6.8
the killing of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal
terrorism 5.7
Khashoggi when he dismissed reports from
biographical records 3.0
US intelligence agencies that implicated the
election 2.8
Saudi Crown Prince and refused to punish
environment 2.6
the country (Reichmann, 2018). The reaction
crime 1.5
signaled to the world that protecting freedom
guns 0.7
of speech is not an American priority any
education 0.1
longer.
520 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Table 30.3  Sources of Trump’s false or
misleading claims
Sources % your doctor’ (Robertson, 2013). In the four
remarks 31.9
Twitter 20.7
interview 14.3
prepared speeches 12.8
campaign rally 12.7
Facebook 9.3
news conference 6.4
statements 6.1
leaked transcripts 5.3
public policies toward the views of the spon-
sors of the misinformation campaign.
By August 2018, Trump made 288 false and
misleading claims about health care since he
became President. The repeal of Obamacare
has been among Trump’s top ten election
campaign promises and executive priorities
(Qiu, 2016). Obamacare was among the issues
Trump most often tweeted about, among the
subjects that Trump insulted most often, and
among the topics he made false claims about
most often. Trump’s agenda was reflected in
the news coverage. Health care was the sec-
ond most often covered domestic issue after
immigration in news about Trump and his
administration during the first 100 days of
his presidency (Mitchell and Weisel, 2017).
In the 2018 Congressional elections, the cost
of health care emerged as the most important
issue for the largest percentage of Americans
(40%) (Vandermaas-Peeler, 2018). The issue
of the health care reform law, or Obamacare,
illustrates how diffusion and learning of accu-
rate information is essential for the processes
through which citizens in democracy form
their opinions about important social issues.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act commonly called the ‘Affordable Care
Act (ACA)’, or ‘Obamacare’, was passed
in March 2010 without a single Republican
vote, and in six years after its enactment,
Republicans in Congress voted 62 times
(Riotta, 2017) to fully or partially repeal
it because, in their view, the law is ‘a job
killer’, ‘insurance premiums will go up’, and
‘the government is coming between you and
years after its passage, the opposition to the
ACA law spent a staggering $445 million for
880,000 negative ads, or 15 times more than
what was spent on promoting it (Johnson,
2014). Obamacare became the central focus
of advertising in the 2014 Congressional elec-
tions campaigns with 85% of all anti-Obama
ads also being anti-Obamacare ads. Health
care was the top issue mentioned in televi-
sion ads for 2018 US House races with 61%
of pro-Democratic airings and 38% of pro-
Republican airings (Wesleyan Media Project,
2018). In the eight years since the law passed,
public support for the law reached its lowest
point in 2013 with only 33% of Americans
having a favorable opinion of it. The Kaiser
Health Tracking Poll registered for the first
time in February of 2018 a slim majority of
Americans (54%) with favorable opinions
of it despite the eight-year-long propaganda
campaign that forecasted the collapse of the
health law and the Trump administration’s
strategy to undermine it (Pear, 2017),
Most curious is that in the eight years since
the law passed, the percentage of the public
that knew that the ACA provides financial
help (i.e. subsidies) to low-and moderate-
income Americans who do not get coverage
through an employer declined by six per-
centage points while awareness that the law
prohibits insurers from denying coverage to
those with pre-existing conditions declined
by four percentage points. These declines in
knowledge challenge the assumption that in
a democracy knowledge is cumulative and
might improve over time because citizens
have more opportunities to acquire infor-
mation. Instead, it seems that cross-currents
of propaganda may obstruct accumulation
of knowledge and open it up to erosion.
Knowledge about provisions in the health
care law is the most important determinant of
support for the law after political party affili-
ation, with Republicans having significantly
lower levels of knowledge than Democrats.4
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
Left and right might be drifting further apart
in their support of the health care law based
on how the health care debate is being framed
in their preferred news sources. In 2017,
when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget
Office (CBO) said that the House Republican
repeal bill would cause 23 million people to
lose coverage, Fox News focused on attack-
ing the CBO, Democrats, and media. They
repeatedly used Trump’s ‘talking point’ that
‘Obamacare is failing’ (Chang, 2017). News
outlets with right-leaning audiences cited
fewer types of sources in their reporting,
offered more positive evaluations of President
Trump and his administration, and were less
likely to challenge something the president
said compared to other outlets (Mitchell and
Weisel, 2017).
It is tempting to allocate the blame for low
levels of knowledge to the lack of motiva-
tion and competence of audiences regarding
public affairs and their general hostility to
public institutions. Alternatively, low levels
of knowledge may be the function of weak-
nesses in the media coverage of social issues
and policies in general which focuses more
on conflict and struggles between supporters
and opponents at the expense of substantive
information of what policies do to citizens’
lives. News outlets, across the platforms and
the ideological spectrum, frame their cover-
age of issues around character and leader-
ship rather than policy (Mitchell and Weisel,
2017). Social media may also have contrib-
uted to restricting knowledge, especially in
feeding preconceptions and spreading rumors
and misinformation. Political information
therefore does not necessarily contribute to
knowledge and may instead confuse audi-
ences and impede learning.
The importance of party affiliation in
the opinion of the ACA highlights the
role of party propaganda, which may also
fuel selective exposure to news that con-
firm pre-existing positions of the audience
members. The selectivity in choice of news
sources may be more consequential than ever
before because of a deeply polarized media
521
landscape. The segmentation in news media
is typically assessed by partisan or ideologi-
cal preferences for particular news media
outlets based on perception of their objectiv-
ity or trustworthiness. Among those who can
name an objective news source, the major-
ity of Republicans (60%) name Fox News
whereas Democrats name CNN (21%) and
NPR (15%). Independents name Fox News
(16%), CNN (11%) and NPR (12%). In terms
of actual news consumption, a similar pattern
emerges with those members of the audi-
ence who self-identify as left leaning, using
a variety of the most popular news sources
such as national TV networks, CNN, and
The New York Times. However, those on the
right rely almost exclusively on Fox News,
its cable network, Fox News Channel (FNC),
and Breitbart News (Reuters Institute Digital
News Report 2017, 2017).
About half of the right-leaning audiences
watch Fox News Channel but only 9% of
those who identify with the left watch FNC.
The audiences of the New York Times are
the mirror image of Fox News audiences
with only 7% identifying with the right and
about 50% with left. Most Americans say
they rely on a mix of liberal and conservative
news sources, but about 25% admit to get-
ting news from only one perspective (Knight
Foundation, 2018). In the project that mapped
preferences for news media outlets based on
social media network of links, two poles of
the media landscape emerged (Faris et  al.,
2017). On the partisan left, the Huffington
Post, MSNBC, and Vox are most prominent,
whereas on the right, Breitbart, Fox News,
the Daily Caller, and the New York Post are
popular across platforms. ABC News, The
Hill, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg
are treated by social media as centrist and
less influential. The greater distance between
two poles provides the space for politicians
and Trump to attack the media establishment
without risking alienating their supporters.
Trump’s calling the media ‘fake’ at his rally
rants became a cue for the crowd to chant
‘CNN sucks’. By encouraging his supporters
522 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
to direct their anger toward the institution
whose role is to hold the power accountable,
Trump is engaging in a form of informa-
tion warfare that creates alternative realities
and false enemies to distract from learning
about real problems that plague him and his
administration.
WAG THE DOG
Americans generally acknowledge the
importance of the news media’s goal to hold
leaders in politics, business, and other insti-
tutions accountable for their actions, almost
as much as their role in keeping them
informed about public affairs. About 83% of
Americans think that the news media role in
holding the powerful accountable is critical
or very important, although they disagree on
how well they perform in that role. As a func-
tion of their watchdog role over government
and government officials, the news media
have had contentions relationships with pre-
vious American administrations. When
Nixon compiled a list of his enemies in the
press, he had them audited; he also mounted
a campaign to revoke the license of a televi-
sion station owned by the Washington Post
(Mattimore, 2018). In addition to other
names, Trump called the mainstream media
the ‘enemy of the American people’. The
Washington Post reported that, in a July 2018
meeting with Trump, New York Times’ pub-
lisher A. G. Sulzberger told Trump that
although the phrase ‘fake news’ is untrue and
harmful, he is more concerned about his
labeling journalists ‘the enemy of the people’,
and warned him that ‘this inflammatory lan-
guage is contributing to a rise in threats
against journalists and will lead to violence’.
The story about the meeting was reported in
most major news outlets as part of a pattern
in Trump’s presidency in which ‘the media
spend too much time talking about them-
selves and covering issues they think are
important to them or that they want the
American public to focus on’ (Conway,
2017). The work or statements by the news
media themselves trigger about 20% of sto-
ries about the Trump administration. The
news media are increasingly violating one of
the most fundamental rules given to begin-
ning journalism students: do not become a
part of the story. These news media-driven
stories become fodder for the Trump support-
ers who believe that much of the media is
‘out to get him’ and has discarded any pre-
tense of fairness and objectivity. They also
take resources away from covering issues
that are perhaps more important to most
Americans. If Trump’s attacks on media are
indeed strategic, to divert, distract and divide,
the strategy is working. There is little atten-
tion in the media to the Trump administra-
tion’s suppression of information it considers
inconvenient and about issues that are
affected by that practice. The nonprofit con-
sumer advocacy organization Public Citizen
lists instances of defunding programs that
collect evidence, stopping studies whose
results may run contrary to corporate and
extremist interests at the expense of public
safety, censoring climate change informa-
tion, making it harder to find out whether
workers have been injured or killed on the
job, cutting data from an annual crime report,
and watering down the rules for collecting
statistics on for-profit colleges (Zibel, 2018).
When Trump called the mainstream news
media ‘the enemy of the American people’, a
phrase used in Stalinist regimes as equivalent
to giving a death verdict to citizens with any
independent thought, Arizona Senator John
McCain commented, ‘That’s how dictators get
started’ (Democracy Now, 2017). Autocratic
leaders repress the independent media to
exert total control over their countries’ politi-
cal and economic life, deny their own citizens
opportunity to improve their circumstances,
and maintain their monopoly on power
(Repucci and Walker, 2005). In February
2017, Sean Spicer, the White House Press
Secretary at the time, barred several news
organizations from an off-camera briefing,
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
and in July 2018, a CNN correspondent was
told she could not attend Trump’s open-
media event in the Rose Garden because of
her questioning of the president earlier in the
day (Rucker et  al., 2018). Despite privately
discussing with aides revoking credentials
and denying access to upcoming events and
other retaliations against individual journal-
ists, as president, Trump has not stripped any
news organization of its credentials at the
White House. Reporters have been thrown
out of Trump’s presidential campaign rallies
(Mayo, 2016), and the president continues to
use the anti-news media vitriol to rile up his
supporters at rallies to the level that report-
ers covering them worry about being attacked
(Timmons, 2018).
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at
Yale, describes Trump’s rhetorical tactics as
‘authoritarian propaganda’ (2016) in which a
group of people (in this case the news media)
is the cause of all the problems in the world and
the solution to all those problems is equally
simple – elect the leader who will eliminate
the group. Trump’s authoritarian tendencies
have been noted in his demands that the US
Postal Service double the rate charged to
Amazon as a vendetta against what he calls
the ‘Amazon Washington Post’ and suggested
that networks’ licenses should be challenged
for the broadcasting of fake news. These ten-
dencies evoke realities of managed democra-
cies such as Russia that perfected techniques
of state-sanctioned propaganda achieved by
the news media operations characterized by
a ‘rejection of balance or objectivity, flaws
in media law, self-censorship, government
interference and harassment of media outlets,
the lack of journalistic professionalism, and
an atmosphere of violence against journal-
ists (Oates, 2007: 1279). Trump’s efforts to
undermine the credibility of the free news
media to attain unchecked power, to create
alternate reality, and to spread chaos and con-
fusion in the public sphere seem ripped from
the Russian propaganda playbook. They also
resemble actions by leaders of Turkey and
Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Victor
523
Orban, who silenced the independent and
critical news media by imposing financial
pressures and fines that either forced them
out of business or into the hands of their
allies (Kingsley, 2018). So far, Trump has not
been able to enact his wishes, and Congress
has not tried to change the First Amendment
or pass new libel laws. However, Trump is
leaving his mark on courts by appointing a
record number of judges (Gramlich, 2018),
and the climate he created can influence state
legislatures to undermine some of the jour-
nalistic protections.
CONCLUSION
Trump’s election victory has been widely
described as incredible, unexpected, improb-
able and unlikely. Just ten days before the
2016 presidential election, only 36% of voters
thought that as a president Trump would dis-
play good judgment in crises or was honest
and trustworthy compared to 50% and 32%
respectively who thought the same character-
istics apply to Clinton (Newport and Smith,
2016). Trump’s image among voters clearly
cannot explain his victory, and there has been
little change in Americans’ views of Trump
since 2016 (Newport, 2018). What explains
the success of Trump’s propaganda? Among
the reasons for Trump’s victory was his mes-
sage of retrograde change (to past conditions
when America was great) that mobilized
anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim,
anti-Obama, anti-globalization, and anti-
Washington sentiments (Jacobson, 2017).
His message that was delivered in crass
|rhetoric exploited the news media’s appetite
for the colorful quote that would restart a
news cycle. Every Trump tweet was treated as
a breaking news story and every insult made
for the screaming headline. By the end of his
campaign, most Americans remembered
reading, seeing or hearing about Clinton’s
emails (Newport and Dugan, 2016).
News about the FBI investigation of Clinton’s
524 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
email helped keep the scandal in the public
eye, and Trump found a way to dominate the
public’s mind by a continuous stream of con-
troversial statements. The news media were
also accused of balancing many of Trump’s
scandals – including accusations of sexual
harassment, his refusal to provide his tax
returns, his ties to Putin – with Clinton’s
email use. For example, ABC News chief
political analyst Matthew Dowd tweeted:
‘Either you care both about Trump being a
sexual predator & Clinton emails, or u care
about neither. But don’t talk about one with-
out the other’ (Wemple, 2016). So-called ‘he
said she said’ reporting may have developed a
sense of equivalence in candidates’ bad
behavior (Kerr, 2016). Balancing is a basic
technique used by journalists to convey an
impression of objectivity in their reporting.
Objectivity in journalism has been one of the
most both glorified and contested principles
(American Press Institute, 2019). However,
neither collecting facts and throwing them
together nor neutrality by balancing is suffi-
cient to reveal the truth. Acknowledging
objectivity as a goal rather than achievement,
sorting through competing claims, identify-
ing and explaining the underlying assump-
tions, and making judgments about what
audiences need to know to understand issues
and events may be essential steps in redefin-
ing the concept of objectivity and rebuilding
journalistic credibility (Cunningham, 2003).
In the digital age, when both facts and opin-
ions are plentiful and easily accessible,
greater depth and context are sorely missing
(Harkin, 2019).
Since the 2016 election, the news media
have found new preoccupations with defend-
ing themselves against Trump’s intensified
attacks on the messenger and engaging in
counterpropaganda. Unwittingly, the news
media are again complicit in distracting audi-
ences from finding the truth by focusing on
what Trump says rather than on what busi-
ness and financial interests that propelled
him to his victory do to benefit citizens’ lives.
Trump and his administration continue to lie
and misinform the public about their poli-
cies, but the coverage of those policies in the
news media continues to be sparse and lack-
ing in specifics. As a result, the public may
lack necessary knowledge to make informed
decisions about important issues. Trump and
his administration’s lies are more diligently
exposed through the proliferation of various
fact checking services, but it is questionable
as to how much the oft-repeated lies can be
corrected once they enter public conscious-
ness (Fazio et  al., 2015). Mostly affiliated
with the mainstream media, the fact-check-
ing industry has the same credibility problem
as its sponsoring organizations. Conservative
publications allege partisan bias and use
negative modifiers to describe fact-checking
such as non-factual, whereas liberal pub-
lications use them to highlight candidate’s
track record, and label them as Pulitzer
Prize-winning, independent, and nonpartisan
(Iannucci and Adair, 2017).
Low and declining levels of public knowl-
edge, and the conflation between knowledge
and opinion in the form of ‘alternative’ facts,
are much more serious threats to the health
of democracy than Trump’s authoritarian
tendencies that are ultimately kept in check
with the constitutional protections of press
rights. Journalists believe that their most
important roles are to report things as they
are (98%), to educate the audience (93%),
to provide information people need to make
political decisions (89%), and to monitor and
scrutinize political leaders (86%) (Worlds
of Journalism Study, 2016), and their pri-
orities closely match public’s views. Their
work is often constrained by profit impera-
tives of news organizations and demands of
commercialism (Pickard, 2018). The local
TV and newspapers industry revenues that
mostly come from advertising are in decline
(Barthel, 2017) which causes cutbacks in
staff and newsroom operations. Newsroom
employment declined by 23% between 2008
and 2017, with the largest decline in the news-
paper sector (45%) (Grieco, 2018). Faced
with shrinking resources, editors are most
 TRUMPAGANDA: THE WAR ON FACTS, PRESS, AND DEMOCRACY
likely to eliminate or reduce costly and time-
consuming investigative projects that have been
traditionally directed toward exposing govern-
ment corruption, illegal business practices,
and other wrongdoings. The New York Times
announced in 2017 that it was restructuring its
copy-editing operations and reducing layers
of editing and copy-editing staff. In response,
more than 450 employees staged a newsroom
walkout (Bloomgarden-Smoke, 2017) in sup-
port of copy editors who check facts, gram-
mar and style, and who are seen as reporters’
safety nets. More errors in the news reporting
makes news media more vulnerable to accusa-
tions of ‘fake news’. About 35% of Americans
think that journalists reporting stories before
they check all their facts and sources to be sure
they are accurate always represent ‘fake news’
(Knight Foundation, 2018). The root cause of
many news media weaknesses and failures is
structural in nature, and those structures give
opportunity for propaganda to exploit and grow.
Notes
1 I thank Dr. Nancy Snow for suggesting the term
“Trumpaganda’’.
2  TF-IDF indicates the frequency of a word adjusted
for how rarely it is used across a collection of doc-
uments, or corpus. It measures how important a
word is to a document in a corpus. If the word
occurs commonly and equally across documents
in the corpus, it is not important.
3  The Institute for Propaganda Analysis identified
seven common propaganda devices called ‘name
calling’, ‘glittering generalities’, ‘transfer’, ‘testimo-
nial’, ‘plain folks’, ‘card stacking’, and ‘band wagon’.
4  The results are based on Kaiser Family Foundation
Health Tracking Poll conducted March 6 to 12,
2017. The strong positive relationships between
levels of knowledge and support for the law per-
sists after the person’s party identification, age,
gender, education, and income are accounted for.
Knowledge accounts for 7% of variation in the
ACA opinions beyond demographics, a statistically
significant amount, but the opinion of the ACA is
largely driven by political party affiliation (82%).
The importance of party affiliation in the opinion of
the ACA highlights the role of party propaganda.
Republicans are likely to have lower levels of knowl-
edge about the ACA compared to Democrats.
525
Women and more educated people are more likely
to have favorable opinions of the ACA, whereas
high income, older people, and Republicans are
more likely to have unfavorable opinions of the
ACA.The results are based on multiple regression
analyses that are not shown but are available upon
request. After simultaneously controlling for all six
variables in regression equation, only the effects of
Party ID and knowledge remained significant.
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corporatepresidency.org/inconvenient/

LeaveEU: Dark Money,
Dark Ads and Data Crimes
INTRODUCTION
In the UK’s referendum on membership of
the European Union (EU) on 23rd June
2016, a small majority (52%) of eligible
voters voted to leave, confounding expecta-
tions of most pollsters and political com-
mentators. It was a dirty fight. Public
inquiries, academic research and journalists
raised concerns about the strategic use of
misleading and provocative racist messag-
ing, data misuse and improper and unde-
clared funding by the official ‘Vote Leave’
(VL) and unofficial ‘Leave.EU’ (L.EU)
campaigns. This was accompanied by a
worrying rise in hate crime (de Freytas-
Tamura, 2017) including a Far-right terror-
ist attack, mobilization of the far right
within the Brexit movement also paralleled
and provided momentum for similar right-
wing populist movements taking place in
the United States and Europe. Attempts to
explain these events largely focus on leave
voters: public opinion, voting behaviour and
31
Emma L Briant
demographics. But the centrality of high-
profile, extreme-right figures, their relation-
ship to wealthy international elites, their
interrelated propaganda and economic strat-
egies which aimed to influence Britain’s
economic policy and relationship with
Europe by leveraging anti-immigration and
racist or nativist narratives and the failure of
mainstream politicians and media to ade-
quately challenge their rise need fuller
examination. Far-right figures, enabled by
those seeking greater economic liberaliza-
tion, obtained more mainstream platforms
and made their priorities an important public
issue in Britain amid mainstream policy-
makers’ convergent interests and compla-
cency. This chapter will give important
background on economic and socio-­political
drivers underlying the Brexit vote and ana-
lyse how Far-right-led L.EU campaign strat-
egy success was underpinned by free market
elites and aided by the services of a ­company
linked to white nationalist Steve Bannon:
Cambridge Analytica (CA). The chapter,
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
after a brief explanation of the economic
and socio-political backdrop, examines
underlying motivations behind campaign
leaders and their rule breaking, alliances
and misleading, coldly calculated, anti-
immigrant messaging to achieve the leave
result by mobilizing racism. This draws on
documents and academic interviews con-
ducted with executives from L.EU and CA
which I submitted as evidence to the UK
Parliament’s Fake News Inquiry (Briant,
2018a, 2018b, 2018c).
The author was requested to write a
chapter on Far-right propaganda and chose
to examine its role within the context of
‘Brexit’. The far right were only really on
one side of the ‘Brexit’ referendum. A full
comparative examination of propaganda
by both Remain and Leave campaigns is
not this chapter’s intent and would be out-
side its scope. Far-right involvement was
primarily channelled through L.EU, which
is therefore its central focus. However, this
research revealed common financial inter-
ests between key figures involved in L.EU
and those behind the mainstream Vote Leave
campaign along with strong parallels in
themes and strategies of propaganda, which
is relevant to understanding L.EU. The chap-
ter argues that financial drivers were central
in understanding both campaigns’ motives
for anti-immigration propaganda. It argues
that the public mythmaking, manipulation,
fearmongering and deceits which advanced
ethno-nationalist ideology via the L.EU
campaign were driven by similar patterns
of economic self-interest and free market
ideologies seeking a tax environment which
favours the wealthy. The author rejects dry,
detached academic language in this chap-
ter as it is felt that this would hedge away
from the important facts presented: that the
Leave campaigns committed criminal acts
and actively, serially and demonstrably lied;
and that, thus, Britain’s exit from Europe,
the most significant event shaping Britain’s
future since World War Two, was achieved
using illicit means.
533
AUSTERITY AND MIGRANT
SCAPEGOATS
Europe was hit hard by the global recession
in 2008, particularly Greece, Spain and
Portugal. The significance of that financial
crisis in shaping the landscape for Brexit is
notable. While many economists emphasized
a need for Keynesian responses (Stiglitz,
2008; Whitham, 2017; Wolf, 2008), the UK
Conservative-led Coalition implemented
austerity cuts instead. Despite unprecedented
transfer to the wealthiest citizens and bonuses
to the banks (Bennett, 2014), the OECD
solutions to what was characterized as a
‘growing welfare burden’ were imposing
new financial regimes based in neo-liberal
economics targeting society’s poorest, who
were blamed for impeding the global recov-
ery. Austerity compounded the effects of
globalization, which exacerbated regional
disparities in wealth and productivity within
OECD countries during a time when the gap
between the rich and poor increased (The
Economist, 2017).
From 2013, increasing numbers of refu-
gees fleeing Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan
were risking dangers to travel across the
Mediterranean, leading to repeated high-
profile tragedies as overcrowded boats cap-
sized. The refugee crisis reached 63.91M
forced migrants including refugees and asy-
lum seekers by 2015 according to UNHCR -
catastrophic proportions, though the major-
ity of refugees (around 80%) still remained
in developing countries (Beauchamp, 2017).
Categories of migrants are frequently con-
flated in the mass media and differences
are poorly understood by the public (Philo
et al., 2013). In Blinder and Richards’ (2019)
public opinion surveys, between 2001 and
2016, ‘immigration’ is repeatedly reported
as Britain’s ‘most important issue’. EU-born
individuals were only 5.7% of the popula-
tion in the UK in 2017 (comprising 8.5%
of the British workforce) (Vargas-Silva,
2018), migration became a central issue
but one widely misunderstood. While some
534 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
indicators show hostility softening, 58% in
2017 continued to want immigration reduced
(Blinder and Richards, 2019).
After the financial crisis, resentment from
austerity cuts was channelled toward the
weakest in society and on BBC broadcast
news, discussions of the deficit in 2009 were
dominated by political and financial elites
retrenching austerity policies despite their
limited record of success during recessions
(Berry, 2016) and evidence they exacerbate
inequality and associated social problems
(Thomas et al., 2010; Wilkinson and Pickett,
2010). Unpopular deep cuts to public spend-
ing were implemented using stigmatizing
rhetoric to mark out a deserving and unde-
serving poor, the latter including migrants
and other marginalized groups (Afoko and
Vockins, 2013; Briant et  al., 2013; Philo
et al., 2013). In Bad News for Refugees (Philo
et al., 2013), we found that in 2011, despite
the fact asylum to the UK had actually fallen
and remained stable since 2002, press and
broadcast media still portrayed those coming
to Britain fleeing conflict with hostility, as a
threat needing more ‘control’. Media cover-
age was relentlessly negative to refugees and
lacking essential global context: Britain’s
responsibility for the foreign policy and eco-
nomic drivers of migration and refugee hard-
ships and positive stories were rare or absent
(Philo et  al., 2013: 121–130). Scapegoats
were underscored with misleading statistics
and disaster language such as ‘flooding in’
(Philo et al., 2013). While local reporting was
more accurate and less hostile (Philo et al
2013), it was declining in the regions where
leave won (Seaton, 2016). Berry et al. (2016)
compared 2014–2015 press coverage of the
refugee crisis from Spain, Italy, Germany,
Sweden and the UK and found British
coverage the most hostile. This is despite
Britain being less directly impacted, tak-
ing comparatively low numbers of refugees
(Nardelli and Arnett, 2015). The portrayal of
refugees as a burden on Britain, likely influ-
enced by the economic crisis, was a height-
ened theme in our 2011 press sample (Philo
et  al., 2013: 109). The theme of migrant
‘burden’ reflected the agenda-setting role of
Government voices and pressure groups and
echoes the City of London framing of the
problem of the financial crisis with austerity
cuts as solution (Berry, 2013, 2016; Manning,
2013, Philo, 2012). During this period of
extraordinary economic hardship, the Far-
right UK Independence Party (UKIP) sup-
port increased dramatically (Fetzer, 2018).
Support for Far-right populists in addition
to economic insecurity reacts ‘against cul-
tural changes that threaten the worldview of
once-predominant sectors of the population’
by harnessing racism (Inglehart and Norris,
2016). UKIP’s power was its founder Nigel
Farage’s ‘bloke you can have a pint with’
faux everyman authenticity, making Far-right
extremists more acceptable for TV.
Academic literature suggests that leave
supporting areas and voters were those most
acutely affected by austerity – areas with
weaker economic structure, deprivation, lim-
ited employment prospects and lower levels
of educational attainment, income and life
satisfaction, combined with ageing demo-
graphics (Becker et al., 2017; Goodwin and
Heath, 2016; Hobolt, 2016). Examining the
impact of austerity on support for UKIP and
leave voting, Fetzer (2018: 1) found that
‘the EU referendum could have resulted in a
Remain victory had it not been for a range
of austerity-induced welfare reforms’ which
‘activated existing economic grievances’
and grew UKIP ‘in areas with significant
exposure to specific benefit cuts, after these
became effective’ and worsened inequality
(Fetzer, 2018: 3). Clarke et al., (2017) show
that sovereignty and immigration control
arguments were already embedded in public
opinion, and people they characterize as ‘left
behind’ perceived Brexit as less risky and
themselves as having less to lose.
Both Leave and Remain had similar levels
of knowledge of the EU and were more likely
to possess more knowledge ideologically
convenient to their view (Carl et  al., 2019).
However, there are low levels of overall public
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
knowledge of migration; in 2015 British peo-
ple were shown to have the lowest average
knowledge of the EU out of all 28 member
states (Hix, 2015). Importantly, ‘news con-
sumption is more unequally distributed in the
UK than income is – this is true offline, and
even more so online’ (Kalogeropoulos and
Kleis Nielsen, 2018). Echo chambers exist
across all social media to varying degrees
(Nikolov et  al., 2018: 17) but lower social-
economic-level online media users use sig-
nificantly fewer online sources on average
(Kalogeropoulos and Kleis Nielsen, 2018).
Media misrepresentation of an issue is par-
ticularly important if such coverage is shap-
ing, rather than reflecting, public opinion
given the small margin of the Leave vote and
adverse societal costs. Murphy and Devine
(2018) show that over time (2004–2017),
‘media coverage drives party support for
UKIP’ but no evidence that it was popular
support that increased their media cover-
age. Far-right propaganda campaigns aim
to capture mainstream media and political
discourse; Ellinas (2010: 32–3) states that
their ‘movements might be doomed to politi-
cal irrelevance and relegated to the margins
of political discourse’ without the media.
Immigration long received misleading and
overwhelmingly hostile mainstream media
coverage in the UK driven by an over-reliance
on politicians’ and official voices and right-
wing pressure groups during a period of eco-
nomic strain (Berry et al., 2016; Murphy and
Devine, 2018; Philo et  al., 2013). Multiple
studies (e.g., Davey and Ebner, 2017 and
Phillips, 2018) have shown that Far-right
groups launder hate speech through main-
stream journalism, hijacking coverage and
exploiting predictable patterns of reporting.
Phillips (2018: 7) found:
just by showing up for work and doing their jobs
as assigned, journalists covering the Far-right
fringe … played directly into these groups’ public
relations interests.
Mainstream media over-reporting of UKIP
as compared to other similar sized parties
535
of the left and right raised leader Nigel
Farage’s profile ahead of the referendum
(Goodwin and Ford, 2013; Soussi, 2014;
Stevenson, 2014).
Particularly after 9/11, anti-immigration
arguments became prominent in UK media
as well policy debates of EU expansion,
counter-terror wars, the economic crisis and
the resulting migration flows and humani-
tarian crises, helping increase the strength
of UKIP. Fekete (2018) shows how the dis-
course of Far-right groups has converged
with those of mainstream parliamentary poli-
ticians, highlighting a relationship between
violent racist acts and the rhetoric of the
right-wing press. She argues that, from intel-
ligence operations and covert policing to
austerity policies, racialized insecurities have
been used to enable the progressive collusion
and violence of the state. After the Financial
crisis, governments placed the burden of
economic cuts on the poorest in society, sys-
tematically taking advantage of well-worn
scapegoats such as migrants. While media
impacts on public opinion are important, as
right-wing media and campaigns drive fears
of immigration, they also press demands for
action and ‘control’ from more ‘moderate’
politicians. Policymakers across the political
spectrum can be sensitive to such pressure –
despite evidence that these demands persist
when immigration levels decline (Philo et al.,
2013).
THE SWEETENERS
Competing interests behind this pressure
also demand examination.1 Right-wing poli-
ticians and private elites’ efforts to make
Eurosceptic and anti-immigration arguments
more mainstream preceded the referendum.
Yet it is important how those seeking free
market-oriented policy stances set agendas
and made anti-EU and anti-immigration
arguments more convenient, or profitable,
even among politicians less convinced by
536 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Euroscepticism. The significant Eurosceptic
influencer Michael Ashcroft (Conservative
Party Treasurer 1998–2001, Deputy
Chairman 2005–10) is one of the biggest
donors to the Conservative Party in the UK
and financially supported Cameron’s Prime
Ministerial campaign, before pressuring his
Coalition to move policies on Europe, wel-
fare, taxation and education to the right
(Oborne, 2012). With a net worth of $1.7Bn,
he remained resident in Belize for tax pur-
poses and sought to ensure Conservative
politicians benefited from maintaining a
friendly tax environment. Ashcroft is skilled
not only in the fields of business, finance and
politics, but also in the process of moving
money from companies in ways that obscure
donations. As he implemented austerity poli-
cies, Prime Minister David Cameron (2011)
was happy to use anti-immigration rhetoric
(declaring that ‘For too long, immigration
has been too high’, blaming immigrants for
failing to integrate and damaging communi-
ties). Confident of pressuring the EU into
giving Britain an advantageous position, and
expecting a Remain win, Cameron
announced the referendum in 2013. Current
Prime Minister Theresa May, though she
argued for Remain, as Home Secretary, took
stances against migrants and refugees, adopt-
ing the ‘hostile environment’ policy and
ultimately took the country toward Brexit
(Kirkup, 2012).
Ellinas (2010) argues Far-right strength
depends both on how much space main-
stream parties allow them and how the
media respond – particularly whether they
confer them legitimacy. I would argue both
are influenced by how successfully extreme
influencers are able to economically capture
mainstream politics. Even L.EU faux ‘every-
man’ populists like Farage and funder Arron
Banks sought above all else to enhance their
economic power, using immigration and rac-
ism as a tool. A referendum ensures unholy
alliances of elites, with varied motivations –
working an issue-driven campaign necessi-
tates unusual operational alliances between
politicians of left, centre and right. While
the interests of key Conservative Party elites
were central in VL and L.EU, politicians
across the political spectrum endorsed leave.
VL – the official Leave campaign – were
primarily right-wing Conservative leaders
including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove,
Liam Fox and Daniel Hannan and a lone
UKIP MP, Douglas Carswell. A few Labour
MPs, including Kate Hoey, Gisela Stuart and
Frank Field, were also part of the campaign.
While some leaders were ideological ‘believ-
ers’ in Far-right nationalisms, the referendum
created circumstances for their interests to
coincide with those of enablers: ideological
or pragmatic attempts to further extend free
trade, roll back the state and benefit from
self-interested economic advancement, to a
greater or lesser extent all endorsing or com-
plicit in deeply divisive tactics to sway the
vote to leave.
Efforts to create a political environment
conducive to ‘Brexit’ not only extended aus-
terity policies but also reinforced the elites’
economic foundations. For example, the
US sugar industry lobbies for free trade and
Euroscepticism. Tate and Lyle, owned by
American Sugar Refining (ASR), was one
of the biggest Leave supporting companies,
it enjoys ‘indulgent tax benefits offered by
[Michael] Ashcroft’s Bank of Belize’ (Cohen,
2000). The L.EU campaign was fronted by
Nigel Farage and founded by Arron Banks,
Andy Wigmore (then a trade emissary for
the Belize High Commission in London) and
Richard Tice during a meeting with Ashcroft
in Belize in July 2015. ASR hoped Brexit
would remove EU protections afforded to its
rival British Sugar, so Tate and Lyle finan-
cially sponsored the Conservative Party con-
ference in 2016. David Davis MP, previously
Senior Executive for Tate and Lyle, became
a Leave campaigner and then Brexit secre-
tary in Theresa May’s cabinet between 2016
and 2018. The UK has no tariffs on Belizean
sugar so Brexit benefits American Sugar and
Conservative Party members, not Belizean
farmers. Furthermore, Arron Banks’ father
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
was awarded an OBE in 2002 for running
African sugar plantations (The Guardian,
2002), and Gerry Gunster, L.EU strategist,
has strong PR and lobbying business rela-
tionships to the US sugar industry.
Steve Bannon met Farage in 2013, becom-
ing friends as he extended Breitbart News
(white nationalist news network) across the
United States and Europe and drove new digi-
tal analytics company CA. CA’s largest share-
holder was American billionaire Robert Mercer
(also a major funder of Breitbart News). Their
ambitions were a global political movement,
seeking CA to work not just with L.EU, but
also Aternative fur Deutchland and the Front
National. Arron Banks obscures his finances
(Harding, 2016); he ploughed £1M into UKIP
in 2014 (Cadwalladr and Jukes, 2018) but
questions remain over whether he exaggerated
personal wealth and obtained his £9m L.EU
donation from foreign sources. He repeatedly
met with Russian officials about investments
(Cadwalladr and Jukes, 8th July 2018) and
passed Trump Team phone numbers to Russian
Ambassador Yakovenko (Merrick, 2018).
Show Banks attempting to raise what could
have potentially been illegal US funding for
L.EU. Banks has denied any foreign funding
went to the LeaveEU campaign (Geoghegan,
17 November 2018).2 There are presently two
investigations by the National Crime Agency
(which investigates serious and organized
crime), three by the Met police, multiple by
the Information Commissioner’s Office, the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the
Serious Fraud Office examining Arron Banks
and ties to Russia. The Conservative Party itself
has received £3M from Russian-linked oli-
garchs since 2010 (Busby, 2018) and there have
been suggestions that this has influenced policy
and advice (Freedland, 2014). Prime Minister
Theresa May, whose election was supported by
Ashcroft (Bowers, 2016a), avoided questions
from MPs about ‘whether she or any other min-
ister had ever declined a request from the secu-
rity services to conduct an investigation’ into
Banks’s money and relationship with Russia
while Home Secretary (Sabbagh, 2018).
537
Following my evidence, the Electoral
Commission (EC) investigated a possible
L.EU undeclared receipt of services from
CA. Banks was seeking funding from ‘anti-
Globalist’ Americans: ‘come up with a strat-
egy for fund raising in the states and engaging
companies and special interest groups that
might be affected by TTIP’ (Briant, 2018c).
Former investment banker Bannon is not just
an ideological strategist, he has a ‘reported
net worth of about $50m (£40m)’ from media
and real estate (Lewis and Rankin, 2018).
While he downplayed his role in Brexit
(Glancy, 2018), US influence was integral,
and Bannon was included in L.EU plan-
ning early, in October 2015 (Briant, 2018c).
Ashcroft stood also to benefit from Trump’s
change of business environment in the United
States – when he was blacklisted by US tax
authorities in 2015, the value of deposits at
his Belize Bank International shrank by 75%
in six months (Bowers, 2016b). With CA’s
help, Leave.EU and the Trump campaigns
parallel strategies reshaped the tax environ-
ment markedly. Brexit helped CA initially
drive its own business; as CEO of CA’s par-
ent company SCL Group, Nigel Oakes told
me business partner Alexander Nix boasted
about Brexit because ‘this is what has encour-
aged people to still come to us’ – capitalizing
on the ‘dirty tricks’ image to get unethical
contracts (Briant, 16th April 2018a).
Ashcroft’s polling system by May 2015
had surveyed more than 252,000 Britons
(Hartman, 2015) and L.EU’s team had signifi-
cant insight into potentialities of data for both
propaganda and financial purposes. On elec-
tion day, Sky News showed a YouGov poll
predicting the win for remain while former
commodities broker Nigel Farage gave a con-
cession statement. He denied Bloomberg’s
claim he had ‘information suggesting his
side had actually won’. But Farage’s pollster,
advisor and friend Damian Lyons-Lowe’s
company, Survation (used by L.EU), sold
data showing leave won, placing multiple
clients (Farage friends) in a position to short
sell – at least 12 hedge funds made ‘hundreds
538 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
of millions of dollars’ (Simpson et al, 2018).
Pollsters sold hedge funds ‘critical, advance
information’ not available publicly, placing
them in a position to ‘earn fortunes by short
selling the British pound’, a matter being
investigated by the FCA (FT.com, 2018).
Arron Banks has told parliament ‘We did
not use Cambridge Analytica’ (Banks &
Wigmore, 12 June 2018). While the Electoral
Commission fined LeaveEU £70k for elec-
toral law breaches, they found no evidence of
LeaveEU received donations or paid-for ser-
vices from CA for the referendum campaign
and concluded CA only did ‘initial scoping
work’ (Weaver, & Waterson, 11 May 2018).
The Met police said they would take no fur-
ther action for spending offences, despite
LeaveEU law-breaking, because they had
‘insufficient evidence’ to investigate further
questions (Pegg, 13 September 2019). Britain
is left seeking explanation for questions not
fully answered, which I argue here require
further investigation.
Further financial motivations emerged in an
interview with L.EU Communication Director
Andy Wigmore – he and Banks used Brexit to
Figure 31.1  Taken in the Goddard-Gunster Boardroom ‘Celebration of the 45th Presidential
Inauguration with Nigel Farage’ event was ‘Sponsored by LeaveEU’
build enhanced analytics in the insurance indus-
try. Banks’ Eldon Insurance employees deployed
CA’s L.EU twin-pronged plan using insurance
company staff (Interview: Wigmore, 4th October
2017). This they later denied. Claiming they
couldn’t do CA’s artificial intelligence because
they didn’t have an ‘official campaign’ designa-
tion, Wigmore said CA’s AI, requires:
electoral roll data which you can then use […]
Because Cambridge Analytica artificial intelligence
requires data – if you don’t have it, you can’t do it.
(Interview: Wigmore, 2017)
But L.EU had obtained hundreds of UK
Electoral Registers (Geoghegan and
Corderoy, 2018). Wigmore also boasted
you have a lot of data when you’re an insurer. And
that data is, it’s, there’s layers and layers and layers.
You know, you have, um, ah, lifestyle data, of
course you do. You have, um, credit check data
which of course you do. All that data you put that
together, the way you can actually then make risk
against an individual is incredibly strong. (Interview:
Wigmore/Briant, 2017).
Communities affected by Brexit are also
‘high risk’ for insurance, so ‘complementary
workstreams’ allowed Banks to develop
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
algorithms evaluating risk for insurance, then
adapt this effort for a new US Health
Insurance venture, ‘Big Data Dolphins’:
So that in artificial intelligence terms is the holy
grail in insurance. So that was a by-product of
what we discovered [during Brexit], brilliantly. And
that’s all about data. That is all about data. So um,
that was- that was the upshot. So we’ve set this up
in Mississippi. It’s been going for nine months,
we’ve been testing for twelve months now, testing
all the insurance against it and it’s extraordinary.
(Interview: Wigmore, 4th October 2017)
Insurance was central from the beginning of
CA discussions (Briant, 2018c). The ICO
(2018: 5) faced obstructiveness in investigating
whether British data was moved to Mississippi.3
L.EU were fined for data crimes related to the
insurance company, the ICO said they had a
‘disturbing disregard for voters’ personal pri-
vacy,’ yet later reduced an already small fine
from £135,000 to £120,000 (BBC Politics, 1
February 2019). AI insurance proved to be so
lucrative the fine is laughable: ‘Massive.
Massive. Our loss ratios have dropped by about
13–14 per cent. And in- in insurance terms
that’s millions of pounds. Millions’ (Interview:
Wigmore, 4th October 2017). Ultimately
Brexit could ‘break-up’ the NHS (the biggest
global market for pharmaceuticals); May
refused to rule out its inclusion in US trade
deals (Embury-Dennis, 2018). A weakened,
privatized, post-Brexit NHS could bring lucra-
tive markets for insurance companies.
THE CAMPAIGN
This story wouldn’t move the vote. Austerity
laid cultural foundations for handy scapegoats
that could be deployed by L.EU architects,
who fetishized manipulation tools, power and
influence, in abstraction. Andy Wigmore, for
example, drew a parallel to the Brexit cam-
paign from Goebbels’ propaganda strategy
which he thought had value in a ‘pure market-
ing sense’, if you can forget about the Genocide:
‘the propaganda machine of the …Nazis for
instance, if you take away all the hideous horror,
all that kind of stuff, it was very clever, the way
539
they managed to do what they did. In its pure
marketing sense you – oh ok! You can see the logic
of how they presented things and the imagery’
(Interview: Wigmore, 4th October 2017)
Scholars often argue that ‘fake news’ or
propaganda is not new (Bernal, 2018; Coles,
2018; McNair, 2017). More recent is the
application of big data behind a cold, racially
driven strategy targeting extreme messages at
personalities who would find them most trig-
gering. Many companies use ‘psychographic’
targeting based on personality tests, but it is
crucial what tests are applied, with what data,
in what ways to obtain what effect? CA’s
parent company SCL Group had roots in the
defense industry developing expertise in
applying Human Intelligence to information
warfare (Interview: Oakes, 24th November
2017). The ICO (2018: 39) ­concluded that:
Dr Kogan and his company GSR were able to har-
vest the data of up to 87 million people worldwide,
without their knowledge… A subset of this data
was later shared with other organizations, including
CA. We found that the personal information of at
least one million UK users was among the harvested
data and consequently put at risk of further misuse.
Aleksandr Kogan worked on Russian
government grants during this period with
business partner Joseph Chancellor, who later
worked for Facebook. Kogan researched the
utilities of ‘dark triad’ pathologies such as
psychopathy for messaging. Their app
‘thisisyourdigitallife’ obtained data
fundamental to developing CA and SCL
Group tools and training algorithms. Facebook
failed to prevent such abuse and repeatedly
facilitated it. Its claims to be addressing
foreign interference, trolls and fake content
(Pietri, 2018; Frier, 2018) were shallow and
short-lived, and Facebook hired Republican
firm ‘Definers’ to actively aid anti-Semitic
attacks on George Soros after his criticism of
the company (Facebook, 2018b). The ICO are
still investigating AggregateIQ, the Canadian
data company who spent $2m on Brexit-
related ads for VL. Chris Vickery (2018)
highlighted a possible database link between
Aggregate IQ, the company who worked for
540 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
VL, and an individual in Russia who may
have ties to Russian mafia.4
CA were introduced to L.EU by their
Vice-President Steve Bannon and produced
a strategy during what Arron Banks called
‘stage 1’ of L.EU’s two part campaign.5 L.EU
Communication Director Andy Wigmore’s
statements have been inconsistent, but he
told me ‘we copied it’ (Interview: Wigmore,
4th October 2017) and L.EU strategist Gerry
Gunster6 confirmed that CA ‘were involved
early on, they sort of gave a bit of a backbone
on how to do behavioral targeting and micro-
targeting…’, and ‘they provided some back-
bone for how to do [psychographic targeting]
and then a lot of it was just kind of handed over
to the campaign staff’ (Interview: Gunster, 4th
October 2017).7 L.EU increasingly copied
Bannon’s tactics, Wigmore admitted that, ‘in
July, August [2016] we were actually monitor-
ing Trump’; he said: ‘we started sending out
some of the most outrageously provocative
tweets and they were all immigration-led’. He
also said: ‘when it comes to the bad stuff we
totally took the Trump rule book and tried to
apply it here’… ‘It was literally who are we
gonna pick on today?’ (Stourton, 2016). CEO
of CA parent company SCL Group, Nigel
Oakes glowed about how the Trump campaign
had the ‘balls’ to leverage a Muslim ‘artificial
enemy’ similar to Hitler’s propaganda against
Jews (Briant, 16th April 2018a). Wigmore said
they copied Trump tactics to drive mainstream
media publicity. Negative or not, amplifica-
tion was all that mattered:
AW: The only way we were going to get – make a
noise, was to follow the Trump Doctrine which
was, the more outrageous we are, the more atten-
tion we get and the more attention we get, the
more outrageous we’ll be. And that’s exactly what
we did. So our tiles were provocative and they
were designed to be provocative and they got the
attention. The amount of bollockings that we got.
EB: So you were copying Trump campaign?
AW: Completely, completely, completely.
(Interview: Wigmore, 4th October 2017)
Klein and Muis (2018) observe that the form
that Far-right mobilization takes is ‘shaped
by political opportunities’. Examining
Facebook, their comparative study shows
that the presence of an offline Far-right party,
such as UKIP, leads to that party addressing
the political establishment and shaping its
online discourse around these objectives.
Pressure is placed the public, but also on
centrist policymakers by media invocations
of what ‘public opinion’ is calling for, when
in fact the dominance of this narrative may
have resulted from mainstream media cap-
ture. Policymakers themselves are indirectly
targeted by such messaging (Patrick, 2018).
PARALLELS: VOTE LEAVE AND
LEAVEEU
Cultural and economic anxiety were both
important and deliberate Leave campaign
levers.8 Virdee and McGeever (2018) note
that the Leave campaign leveraged a politi-
cized ‘Englishness’ through parallel visions:
firstly, an ‘imperial longing to restore
Britain’s place in the world as primus inter
pares that occludes any coming to terms with
the corrosive legacies of colonial conquest
and racist subjugation’. Secondly, the ‘narra-
tive of island retreat from a “globalizing”
world’ that is not recognized as ‘British’
(Virdee and McGeever, 2018: 1802). A full
comparison of VL and L.EU is beyond the
chapter’s scope, however, there were impor-
tant commonalities, both in rule-breaking
and messaging themes. Arguments were
often made, to legitimate the VL campaign,
that it emphasized economic arguments or
sovereignty, not racism. But these claims are
hollow, one TV ad aired in May and June
used imagery centring on hospitals over-
crowded by foreign patients elbowing an
elderly person away. The ad claimed the
NHS was at ‘breaking point’. It illustrated
influxes of millions of migrants from Balkan
countries and Turkey (not an EU member)
using arrows (Facebook, 3rd June 2016), a
graphic reminiscent of imagery used to
­represent British homeland defence against
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
Nazi invasion in the popular 1970’s patriotic
series, ‘Dad’s Army’ (Jit-a-bugs productions
first animation, 24th May 2008). Threatening
militaristic graphics and their message
appealed to white older British and more
socially conservative audiences, audiences
L.EU also sought to reach.
Content analysis reveals 61 of a total 201
still images of Facebook Ads and videos
shared by VL overtly reference immigra-
tion (or border control) (Facebook, 27th July
2018). Other themes such as ‘£350 million
a week for the NHS’ were also prominent.
Immigration was a more central theme than
even the VL slogan ‘Take back control’ –
‘control’, mentioned a mere 46 times in this
sample (Facebook, 2018a). The term ‘con-
trol’ is often present in mainstream media
debates of immigration that emphasize
threat (See Philo et al., 2013). VL Campaign
Director Dominic Cummings later stated,
‘Would we have won without immigration?
No’ (Cummings, 2017). He stated the ‘num-
ber of ‘impressions’ served by VL digital
communications was ‘1.5 billion of which
Facebook was about 1B’ and their distribu-
tion occurred largely in the final days of the
campaign, likely including dark ads.9
A similar sample of 60 screengrabs10 of
static ads were taken from the L.EU site
Figure 31.2  Graph showing VL Daily Total Facebook Ad Impressions
Source: Dominic Cummings’ Evidence (9th January 2017)
541
posted during 23rd May to 23rd June 2016, 13
of these static screengrabs discussed immi-
gration, 11 mentioned ‘control’ and one was
a critique of George Soros. They included the
UKIP ‘breaking point’ billboard, a racial-
ized image depicting Syrian refugees which
implied they were marching toward the UK
(LeaveEU, 16th June 2016)
Fake news shared by L.EU (2016) included
a video montage which presents decontextu-
alized violent clips from European protests
and riots giving a sense of chaos, leading to
the final video centrepiece: a doctored video
originally from Tahrir Square in June 30th
2013 (Daily News Egypt, 2013), mis-labelled
to induce fear of Europe as ‘Migrants drag
women into subway in Germany’ (first iden-
tified by Anti-Leave blog ‘BrexitBalls.com’,
5th November 2018). Racism was largely
overt and substantial overlaps occur, with
themes in L.EU such as with the ‘breaking
point’ language also used in a VL video.
CASE STUDY: JO COX
A week before the referendum, on 16th June
2016, Thomas Mair, who had links to Far-
right groups, brutally murdered Labour MP
542 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Jo Cox. It is hard to know why individuals
progress to extreme Far-right beliefs, or from
these to violence. Far-right radicalization
occurs in different ways, however, internet
communities have undoubtedly played an
important role and, as is argued on the web-
site Bellingcat, ‘new converts inevitably go
online to deepen their beliefs’ – encountering
more acceptable and normalized Far-right
voices before moving to for example, 4chan
or YouTube ideologue Sargon of Akkad
(Evans, 2018). Often in contrast with other
forms of terrorism, Far-right terrorists are
explained away as mentally ill in the media
or political discourse. Stampnitzky (2018)
argues this ‘is broadly rejected by experts on
political violence – so why does it persist?
When the perpetrator is right-wing, it dis-
tances those politics from violence. When
they are ‘other’, it serves to delegitimate any
politics they may have at all’.. Considering
the increase in hate crimes ‘of nearly 30 per-
cent and the largest year-to-year rise in the
five years’ during the Brexit campaign, it is
prescient to examine Leave campaign tactics
(de Freytas-Tamura, 2017).
Andy Wigmore explained that L.EU could
see their strategy was having a negative
impact and ‘created a wave of hatred and um,
racism and all this right movement, empow-
ering all those things’. When Jo Cox MP was
stabbed, he saw parallels with the spread of
emboldened racism in the US:
[Nigel Farage] said, right, if we keep immigration
at the top of the debate, his instinct said we would
win. And the reason why we polled so much
because we were so unsure constantly if we were
doing the right thing, particularly when you have
horrific incidents like Jo Cox. And you think wahhh
that’s too much. And then the blame from the
media: immigration, you’ve created a … wave of
hatred and um, racism and all this right move-
ment, empowering – all those things, which, you
know, Trump’s experienced as well. We were very
wahhh, maybe we have gone too far. (Interview:
Wigmore/Briant, 4th October 2017).
However, this question did not, for L.EU,
become a question of ethics and morality,
personal responsibility, or indeed national
security:
The only thing we can do to test that is take a look
how, what the reaction… The London here is a
very different country to the rest of the country.
So, out there in the places where, where, you
know, people were – had different …reasons to
the London – the Jo Cox thing was sad, dreadful,
but it didn’t change their views. There was no shift
on the dial as they call it. […] So everything was
going well up to that point. Even Nigel thought
that was it, we’ve lost. And, um. The breaking
point poster which remember we cooked up, he
put up. Again, everything we did was tested’.
(Interview: Wigmore/Briant, 4th October 2017).
The interview shows that although L.EU rec-
ognized the negative social impact of their
campaign, their actions were to assess only
whether it was impacting their popularity
with supporters, whether the message was
‘working’ – mobilizing supporters. All that
mattered was effectiveness by this metric,
knowledge that they were having a negative
impact on the country’s domestic security by
emboldening racists and the Far-right and
stirring up tensions was dismissed. Displaying
similar coldness, VL breached an agreement
to suspend campaigning during the period
out of respect following Jo Cox’s death, con-
tinuing their own racist campaign (Cadwalladr
and Helm, 2018).
L.EU sought to engage emotions, not facts,
with the most provocative content and manip-
ulative methods they could harness. They fur-
ther sought to make the emotions they created
seem spontaneous and pre-­ existing in the
population. Their interests lay in deflecting
away from the actions they took to create and
excite those emotions to a level where sup-
pressed racism and implicit bias turned into
explicit and expressed racism. An argument
which arose several times in interviews was
that public desire was given voice through the
campaign, giving voters what they already
wanted. This framing allowed L.EU to cre-
ate and reinforce – despite dark money11 and
manipulative methods – the illusion of con-
sent, of a fairly won campaign embodying
 LeaveEU: Dark Money, Dark Ads and Data Crimes
democratic will. But evidence from Murphy
and Devine (2018) shows such campaigns,
and the media amplification of them, drives
Far-right membership rather than echoing
public sentiment.
CONCLUSION
In combination with unaddressed economic
inequality, new environmental pressures
heighten the scarcity of resources, existing
resentments and continuing conflict into our
future, not to mention resulting disease,
health and poverty-related emergencies.
Climate change and its accompanying envi-
ronmental disasters are compounding the
effects of irresponsible foreign policies of
our past, of colonialism, economic exploita-
tion, corruption and proxy wars. These
­disasters – our actions – are only expected to
worsen the unprecedented forced migration
we see. Steve Bannon is now funding ‘The
Movement’ – a European operation launched
in London to provide nativist and ultra-­
conservative European parties ‘free access to
specialized polling data, analytics, social
media advice and help with candidate selec-
tion’ (Lewis and Rankin, 2018). As the refu-
gee crisis deepens, we are faced with the
future threat of economic crises in the UK
and EU resulting from Brexit, which the Far-
right could further exploit to drive their
agenda. Government responses are retrench-
ing counter-extremist propaganda and
Facebook ad buys as loss of ‘media control’
is lamented (McTague, 2018). Freedman
argues that in responding, however, the Far-
right itself is less important than the condi-
tions for Far-right populism’s success.
Freedman suggests a redistributive policy
model to address inequality and media policy
failures including concentrated ownership,
weak regulation of tech companies, failure to
protect and nurture the fourth estate and
independent public service media. We must
challenge the economic environment that
543
underpins this current media environment
which has been ‘captured by corporate and
state elites’ (Freedman, 2018: 12). The focus
must be not just exposing online propaganda
but tackling corruption behind it, ensuring
policy and civil society initiatives make
funding, lobbying and ads more transparent,
and introduce truly punitive deterrents for
electoral law breaches.
Notes
1  Although, a full analysis of funding relationships
and conflicts of interest are beyond the scope of
this chapter, some central themes and issues are
illustrated here.
2 There were multiple investigations into “http://l.
eu/”L.EU by different entities, the ICO found
them guilty of data misuse and they were fined
(Pegg, 2018).
3  This author was a fact witness in the case Fair
Vote Project vs Big Data Dolphins (6th June 2018)
in which Fair Vote sought to ensure any UK data
moved to the United States was not deleted.
4  45,000 Tweets were posted by Russian Inter-
net Research Agency accounts on Brexit ‘in 48
hours…in an apparently co-ordinated attempt to
sow discord’ (Mostrous et al., 2017).
5  Several investigations have been exploring
whether services were provided by CA in 2015
and undeclared by L.EU – this would be illegal
and has been denied by both parties. Alexander
Nix testified that CA never did any work, ‘paid
or unpaid’, for Leave.EU, and that ‘we were not
involved in the referendum’. (Satariano, 2018).
6  The UK’s Electoral Commission are fining L.EU for
not declaring services received by Gerry Gunster.
7  I revealed a chain of emails (Briant, 2018c) show-
ing early planning and CA Business Development
Director Brittany Kaiser told in testimony about
working with L.EU (Kaiser, 2018). Kaiser had not
known when I told her that Andy Wigmore con-
tinued to deploy the strategy CA designed for
them when they lost the designation and parted
ways with CA. They took the plan and an invoice
was issued for working on UKIP data, the first
stage of CA’s Leave.EU proposal – Arron Banks
gave UKIP money to pay for it but they didn’t pass
it to CA (Cadwalladr, 2018).
8  Inglehart and Norris (2016: 30) note that cultural
and economic ‘changes may reinforce each other
in part—but the evidence in this study suggests
that it would be a mistake to attribute the rise of
populism7 directly to economic inequality alone’.
544 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
 9  Dark advertising is a type of online advertising
visible only to the advert’s publisher and the
intended target group, it remains ‘hidden’ to
­others not only to an opposing campaign, but
also to researchers and others who might benefit
from transparency and accountability.
10  Both samples of screengrabs include static videos,
this study did not include fuller analysis of video
content.
11  The phrase ‘Dark Money’ often is used to refer
to legal or illegal methods of funding campaigns
that obscure the donors or find ways around
campaign spending limits for example non-profit
organizations can be used legally to make unlim-
ited donations in the US: https://www.investope-
dia.com/terms/d/dark-money.asp
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ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring
Propaganda Promises
INTRODUCTION
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has
lost considerable influence, as well as terri-
tory in the physical realm, but continues to
wage a propaganda war online. Official
propaganda stemming from ISIS has been
paramount in leveraging support for the ter-
rorist organization from around the world
(Ingram, 2017). In early 2015, ISIS started
disseminating propaganda targeting a female
audience. Following this strategic move,
women from around the world mobilized in
support of the terrorist organization, leaving
their countries of origin to join the group in
the Levant. This phenomenon has been given
noteworthy attention in mainstream media,
regrettably often resulting in a reproduction
of simplified and gendered understandings of
female radicalization and recruitment. The
notion of female ISIS-supporters as ‘jihadi
brides’, motivated to join the terrorist organi-
zation solely for romantic reasons, reflect
these biases (Ingram, 2017: 3).
32
L o u i s a Ta r r a s - W a h l b e r g
This gendered understanding of female
ISIS-recruitment also stems from an aca-
demic focus on the social media output of
ISIS female supporters. Research on the
topic of female ISIS-affiliation has been
dominated by studies analyzing social media
accounts belonging to Western women living
in ISIS-controlled territories (Hoyle et  al.,
2015). As decentralized sources producing
and reproducing information on life in the so-
called Caliphate, these social media accounts
create an output of ‘un-official’ propaganda
shaping views on life under ISIS-rule.
This chapter shifts the dominating focus
on social media to concentrating on ISIS
official propaganda. It explores how ISIS has
sought to attract female recruits by looking
for the promises made to women in the key
magazine Dabiq and its subsequent replace-
ment Rumiyah. It also briefly touches on the
development of the material over time. It
argues that seven distinct promises can be
found in this vast material that help explain
female radicalization and the attraction of
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
ISIS: Religious duty, state building, belong-
ing, sisterhood, adventure, romance, and
influence are promises given to women.
These can be understood as pull factors that
seek to attract women to join ISIS. The role
of women as combatants for ISIS has been
a much-discussed topic (Hoyle et  al., 2015;
Rafiq and Malik, 2015; Saltman and Smith,
2015). Though there is little evidence in the
analyzed material supporting the notion of
women as actual fighters for ISIS, late propa-
ganda indicates a shift might be underway.
Studying official ISIS-propaganda target-
ing women can increase our understanding of
the promises made and help us devise gender-
specific preventive efforts to counter female
radicalization. Such efforts can in the end
help limit affiliation with ISIS and similar
groups. Understanding the role of women in
ISIS is also key from a security perspective.
It can help determine the threat of women
who return to their countries of origin.
PRIOR RESEARCH
Violent extremism can be defined as move-
ments, ideologies or people that reject demo-
cratic social order and support the use of
ideological violence to further a certain cause
(Official Reports of the Swedish Government,
2014: 20–1). It is a broader concept than terror-
ism and encompasses various ideological
movements striving to change the foundation of
society. Violent extremism includes direct acts
of violence but also the support of them through
financial means, verbal backing or other types
of endorsements. Violent Islamic extremism
narrows the scope to violence furthering the
cause of a social order built on Islamic beliefs
and Sharı̄’ah laws (Official Reports of the
Swedish Government, 2014: 22).
Research on violent extremist and terrorist
organizations has long been focusing on male
actors, while studies focusing on women are
rare (Stump and Dixit, 2013: 56). Existing
research has often concentrated on women
551
as passive bystanders and targets of such vio-
lence (Rafiq and Malik, 2015: 14). Important
contributions investigating women as active
agents have been made by Mia Bloom (2011),
Yoram Schweitzer (2006), Anne Speckhard
(2008), Rafia Zakaria (2015) and Naureen
Chowdhury Fink et al. (2013). They explore
the roles of women in various terrorist groups
including violent Islamic extremism.
Academic research on ISIS has also
focused primarily on male, so-called foreign
fighters, individuals leaving their countries
of origin to engage in war-making abroad
(Hoyle et  al., 2015: 8). Research on ISIS
female members is limited. Many studies are
based on secondary source material, mostly
building on empirics derived from social
media accounts tied to female ISIS-migrants.
As noted by Laura Huey (2015: 5), compre-
hensive studies on how official propaganda
attracts women are lacking.
In Becoming Mulan? Female Western
Migrants to ISIS, Hoyle et  al., (2015) pro-
vide pioneering insights into female ISIS-
migrants’ lives by examining their reasons for
migrating and their lives in ISIS-controlled
territories. The report is based on a selection
of social media accounts tied to 12 individu-
als and concludes that these women are not
fighters but participants in the state-­building
efforts of ISIS through motherhood and
recruitment activities (2015: 32).
In Till Martyrdom Do Us Part – Gender
and the ISIS Phenomenon, Erin Marie
Saltman and Melanie Smith (2015) expand
on Hoyle et al’s research by using a selection
of more than 100 social media accounts tied
to Western female ISIS-migrants. Saltman
and Smith explore who is being radicalized
to join ISIS, why women decide to migrate
and how the process can be interrupted. Their
conclusion is that there is significant diversity
among women being radicalized, that their
reasons for migration include various push
and pull factors. Their responsibilities within
ISIS are being a good wife, bearing children
and recruiting other women via social media
platforms.
552 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
In Caliphates: Women and the Appeal of
Islamic State, Haras Rafiq and Nikita Malik
(2015) discuss the appeal ISIS has to women
by using material derived from social media
and official propaganda. The mix makes it
difficult to distinguish official ISIS-discourse
from that of its followers. Rafiq and Malik’s
(2015:38) conclusion is that there are four
main promises made to women: empower-
ment, deliverance, participation and piety.
Existing research has been important in
detailing so-called push and pull factors that
influence women in particular. By study-
ing official propaganda, we can get a better
understanding of what ISIS asks of women
and how it attempts to attract them. The
following section explores the process of
radicalization along with the push and pull
factors that drive the process forward. These
will provide a framework for analyzing what
promises official ISIS propaganda is giving
women.
RADICALIZATION
Radicalization is defined by Neumann
(2008:3) as a process leading a person or a
group of people to support or wield ideologi-
cally motivated violence to further a specific
cause. This is a contested definition (Kühle
and Lindekilde, 2010: 22). The main debates
concern the contextual dependency of being
radical, the actual starting point of radicaliza-
tion and what level – the personal, the
­collective or the societal – is most important
in driving radicalization (Ranstorp and
Hyllengren, 2013).
Researchers have brought experiences
from many fields such as political science,
sociology, psychology, religion, law and
criminology to the theory. This has resulted
in a multitude of frameworks illustrating
the process, describing why some individu-
als turn to violent groups, as transformative.
The process consists of several steps that
include multiple factors increasing the risk
of radicalization (Ranstorp and Hyllengren,
2013: 80–2; Säkerhetspolisen, 2010: 33–4).
In essence, a radical person takes a simpli-
fied stance where absolute ideological and
religious truths divide the world into a black
and white reality of good and evil. Socializing
a person into such thinking is called a radi-
calization process (Ranstorp and Hyllengren,
2013: 59). The spark and maintenance of
this process is dependent on external human
influence, which is most efficient when made
in the real world but is also available online
(Swedish Security Services, 2010:36-8, 40-1).
The Internet has revolutionized radicalization
by shrinking space, allowing for contacts to be
made regardless of nationality and borders. A
marketplace exists for individuals sympathiz-
ing with the same ideologies. They can make
new friends and exchange one-sided propa-
ganda information in support of a specific
cause (Swedish Security Services, 2015: 46).
This propaganda rarely has the power by itself
to radicalize or recruit individuals to an organ-
ization but plays the crucial role of an incuba-
tor. It catalyzes the process of radicalization
and consolidates already existing sympathies,
creating more active supporters (Rafiq and
Malik, 2015:39–40; Schori Liang, 2015:  2;
Winter, 2015: 15).
The underlying reasons for engaging in
violent Islamic extremism are complex,
occurring on both an individual and collective
level. Research by Ranstorp and Hyllengren
(2013:80) highlights the necessity to study
the phenomenon of radicalization through
four perspectives:
1 The interplay between different types of griev-
ances that push people to engage in extremist
groups and how these groups have been por-
trayed on the local level.
2 The way in which social dynamics, ideology, media
and narratives are used to mobilize, indoctrinate
and pull individuals towards extremist groups.
3 The capabilities and resources available to
extremist groups to market their organizations.
4 The underlying motives for individuals to join
groups or networks and the reasons that drive
extremists to commit acts of violence.
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
The process of radicalization is therefore
contextually dependent on various internal
and external factors: an individual’s social
psychological traits and the dynamics of the
violent extremist group itself, for example.
Researchers have contributed a long list of
factors that drive the process of radicalization
forward with individual, social, political and
ideological dimensions. Whereas some
researchers have focused on macro and
mezzo-level factors, such as social alienation
or foreign political events, others have
employed social psychological theories to
identify a wide range of micro level factors
influencing radicalization (Horgan, 2008
82–3). In reality, these levels interact, and
their relative importance vary from person to
person. Radicalization is, in essence, depend-
ent on deep interference between push and
pull factors.
Push and Pull Towards
Radicalization
Individuals who have traveled to ISIS terri-
tory in support of the organization have gone
through a process where they gradually come
to sympathize with the message. Research on
factors driving radicalization underlines the
interface between individual psychological
features, social and political factors, ideo-
logical and religious dimensions, cultural
identity, traumatic experiences and group
dynamics. These factors act in a cumulative
process at the micro, mezzo and macro levels
simultaneously. They are usually divided into
push and pull factors.
Push factors make individuals more
susceptible to extremist propaganda and
relate to the person’s individual and social
situation which can increase the risk of
radicalization. They often spring from pro-
found dissatisfaction relating to personal
or political circumstances. Pull factors
draw individuals by incentives (Swedish
Security Services, 2010:34-5; Ranstorp and
Hyllengren, 2013: 86). Pull factors increase
553
the traction of a specific group such as ISIS.
Attractive offers can inspire individuals to
join, commit acts of violence or provide
other types of support (Swedish Security
Services, 2010: 34).
Push and pull factors should be considered
as risk factors or circumstances necessary for
the process of radicalization (See Figure 32.1).
There is a need for interaction among these
factors to initiate the process of radicaliza-
tion (Sageman, 2004: 135). Scholars wel-
come more research on push and pull factors
to enable an increased understanding of how
the process of radicalization affects people.
What particular push and pull factor
cause the transition from frustration into
supporting or using violence? In the 2015
report, Saltman and Smith present specific
push and pull factors inspiring women to
migrate to ISIS-held territories. The fac-
tors are based on how women described
their reasons for migrating in their social
media accounts. Three push factors identi-
fied through social media are: (1) a feel-
ing of being socially or culturally isolated,
questioning ones belonging or identity;
(2) feeling that the Muslim community is
under persecution; and (3) experiencing
anger or sadness over international inac-
tion to the perceived persecution. The
identified pull factors are: (1) the religious
duty of building a utopian Caliphate; (2)
the draw of belonging and sisterhood; and
(3) the romantic adventure of life in ISIS-
held territories.
In this chapter the three pull factors defined
by Saltman and Smith (2015) will be used as
a framework for an analysis of ISIS official
propaganda. They will be broken down and
operationalized in accordance with the graph
below and complemented by the additional
pull factor of influence and violence. Images
circulating in social media have depicted
women carrying automatic weapons and
participating in gun drills (Huey, 2015: 3;
Saltman and Smith, 2015: 1). How does ISIS
official propaganda view the role of women
in armed jihad?
554 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Religious duty and
Belonging and
building of the
sisterhood
Caliphate
Religious duty Belonging
State builder Sisterhood
Figure 32.1  Push and Pull Factors Towards Radicalisation
THE PROPAGANDA
In its inception ISIS set up a tightly run and
highly centralized communications strategy
managed by an information ministry
(Winter, 2015: 12–3). Great effort was put
into attaining state like legitimacy. For
example, the logotype of the ISIS news
agency al-Hayat Media Center resembles
that of Al Jazeera.
High quality videos, images, speeches
and radio shows were distributed from a
large number of official news agencies such
as al-Hayat Media Center (video content),
al-Furqan (news content) and al-Bayan
radio content (Schori Liang, 2015: 5–6;
Zelin, 2015: 89). An additional media wing
named the al-Zora Foundation was created
in October 2014 dedicated to producing con-
tent directly targeting women. Videos and
YouTube posts in Arabic quickly attracted
large crowds. In a couple of months, the al-
Zora Foundation had gained over 3,200 fol-
lowers on Twitter.
The centralized, state-provided propaganda
was highly dependent on its many followers.
ISIS has become well known for its decen-
tralized communications strategy. Thousands
of followers have become independent media
wings by posting online messages, creating
online groups, producing their own content
and reposting official propaganda. Social
media channels have been widely recognized
as important. Members tied to ISIS have used
The romantic
Influence and
adventure of
violence
joining ISIS
Romance Influence
Adventure Violence
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Ask.FM,
thereby attracting new followers.
ISIS’ official propaganda outlets are
not very well known to the general pub-
lic but research by Schori Liang (2015)
and Gustafsson (2015) confirm their great
importance in leveraging support for the
organization and activating followers.
Propaganda rarely radicalizes or recruits
by itself but instead works as a catalyst of
radicalization and consolidation. Two of
ISIS’ core official propaganda tools in have
been the online-publications of Dabiq and
Rumiyah.
The online magazine Dabiq, produced by
ISIS’ media wing al-Hayat Media Center,
was first issued in July 2014, declaring the
official view of the organization (Gambhir,
2014). The central role of this publication
becomes evident at the first glance. Great
effort has been put into composing this
thorough and extensive magazine contain-
ing well-edited texts and high definition
illustrations. Its title refers to a small town
in the Northern parts of Aleppo, Syria, of
particular importance to ISIS grand strat-
egy. A well-known Hadith – a recount
claiming to cite the prophet Muhammad
from the Quran – describes ‘Armageddon
Dabiq’ as a place for a future clash between
Muslims and ‘Rome’, generally interpreted
as the West. In all, 15 issues of Dabiq were
produced in several languages for a global
audience.
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
When ISIS started losing control over
the city of Dabiq, it quickly discontinued
the publication in August 2016. Dabiq was
replaced by Rumiyah, which appeared one
month later. Rumiyah means ‘Rome’ in
Arabic and refers to the same prophetic fore-
telling as Dabiq, that of the fall of the West.
Just like Dabiq, this magazine was translated
into several languages, but it signaled a shift
in ISIS’s strategy. Rumiyah takes the battle
against the enemies of ISIS beyond Dabiq
and the Middle East into Europe (Mahzam,
2017: 8). A total of 13 issues was published
of Rumiyah before the magazine was discon-
tinued in September 2017 and no replace-
ment has appeared.
As communications channels, Dabiq and
Rumiyah served three main objectives span-
ning military, political and religious dimen-
sions (Schori Liang, 2015: 4). The magazines
report on the military victories achieved by
ISIS, life within its territory and its religious
teachings. Whereas Dabiq repeatedly encour-
aged Muslims to make hijrah (Gambhir,
2014), migration to the Caliphate, Rumiyah
incites attacks on foreign ground. Under the
headline of ‘Just Terror Tactics’, ISIS dissemi-
nates step-by-step instructions on how to carry
out mortal attacks with different weapons such
as knives and trucks (Mahzam, 2017: 9).
High profile ISIS-propaganda indicates
war on two levels: on the ground and in the
digital space. Shocking the world in 2014, the
terrorist group produced enormous amounts
of high-quality official propaganda in mul-
tiple formats. Only after losing the claimed
capital of Raqqa in July 2017 did a noticeable
decline in media output occur. In November
of the same year, for the first time since 2014,
an unprecedented 24-hour official propaganda
hiatus occurred (BBC Monitoring, 2017).
While its output is unlikely to return to pre-
vious heights, ISIS propaganda production
and activities are not over. Maintaining the
reputation of a tech savvy terrorist organiza-
tion remains of great importance. The loss of
its Caliphate make its propaganda presence
online more important.
555
METHODOLOGY
The following analysis is based on a qualitative
text analysis of all issues of the English editions
of Dabiq and Rumiyah, still available online.
This material consists of more than 1,500 pages.
The analysis identifies and examines ISIS offi-
cial propaganda aimed at women specifically by
employing Saltman and Smith’s pull factors
derived from social media. What emerges in this
primary source research material is a number of
promises pertaining to women.
THE PROMISES
When investigating the promises made to
women in official ISIS-propaganda, it becomes
apparent that women grew ­increasingly impor-
tant as a target group for the terrorist organiza-
tion. In the analyzed material women were
initially only addressed as members of the
bigger Muslim community. Writings such as
‘all Muslims’ were used often but women
were seldom addressed directly (Example:
Dabiq, 2014c: 43; Dabiq, 2014b: 4; Dabiq,
2014a: 3).
In the seventh issue of Dabiq, a change
occurred. The magazine included a section
titled To Our Sisters, containing an interview
with Umm Bashı̄r al-Muhajirāh, the widow
of Amedy Coulibaly who participated in
the terrorist attacks in Paris in January 2015
(Umm Bashı̄r al-Muhajirāh, 2015: 50). To
Our Sister later changed its name to From
Our Sisters and reoccurred in every Dabiq
magazine. Rumiyah continued with a seg-
ment titled Sisters. Marriage, the taking of
female slaves, family life, female migration
and contraception are topics discussed in the
section for women.
The promises tell us what ISIS expects of
women as well as what role they play within
the organization. Promises are seldom explicit.
The texts rather deliver more implicit prom-
ises embedded in, and dependent on, the con-
text of the material. These are often expressed
556 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
in complex, emotional and sometimes lyrical
language. As they are riddled with Arabic
words and religious terminology referencing
the Quran, a brief wordlist is provided below.
WORDLIST
Dārulkufr – land of infidels.
Duā – religious act of supplication.
Dunyā – this world as opposed to the hereafter.
Hijrah – migration.
Iman – faith.
Jannah – Islamic concept of paradise.
Jihād – term referring to the religious duty of Muslims
to maintain their religion. Can be interpreted as
an internal or an external battle.
Khilāfah – Caliphate.
Kufr – heretics.
Mahram – male guardian.
Muhājirat – female migrant, plural.
Muhājirah – female migrant, singular.
Muhājirin – male or female migrant, singular.
Mujāhid – holy warrior in armed jihād, singular.
Mujāhidı̄n – holy warrior in armed jihād, plural.
Mushrı̄k – person practicing polytheism/worship of
other Gods than Allah.
Shahid – martyr who died fulfilling religious com-
mandments.
Sharı̄’ah – body of Islamic law based on the Quran.
Shirk – idolatry or polytheism.
Shuhadā –Islamic confession of faith.
Sunnah – verbally transmitted teachings, records,
deeds and sayings of the prophet Muhammad.
Takbı̄r – commonly used prayer (Allah Akbar).
Ummah – supranational community of Muslim.
Uqab banner – ‘the banner of the eagle’ originally
flown by the prophet Muhammad now used by
multiple violent Islamic extremist groups as flag,
among them ISIS.
FULFILL YOUR RELIGIOUS DUTY
THROUGH HIJARAH
Early official ISIS propaganda promised the
possibility of fulfilling one’s religious duty
by making hijrah – migrating to the so-called
Islamic State. The deed of migration is por-
trayed as an obligation for all pious Muslims
throughout many editions of Dabiq. In an
article by Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh,
women are portrayed as the ‘twin halves’ of
men when it comes to the subject of migra-
tion. There is no difference between the sexes
in relation to the duty of hijrah. The female
author Al-Muhajirāh writes: ‘This ruling [of
migration] is an obligation upon women just
as it is upon men’ (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 33). Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh warns women of the risks of
remaining in Western countries:
So everyone who lives amongst the mushrikı̄n
while being able to perform hijrah and not being
able to establish his religion, then he is wronging
himself and committing sin. […]’Whoever gathers
and lives with the mushrik, then he is like him.
(Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 33)
It is, according to ISIS rhetoric, impossible to
live as pious and righteous Muslims in Western
countries. They are ridden with sin and good
Muslims are thereby alleged to be ‘polluted’
by values that go against the will of Allah.
Women living in the West have abandoned
their God and their natural given roles, instead
trying to emulate men. The only salvation from
this moral deterioration is turning to Islam.
And as the fitrah [human nature] continues to be
desecrated day by day in the West and more and
more women abandon motherhood, wifehood,
chastity, femininity, and heterosexuality, the true
woman in the West has become an endangered
creature. The Western way of life a female adopts
brings with it so many dangers and deviances,
threatening her very own soul. […] The solution is
laid before the Western woman. It is nothing but
Islam, the religion of the fitrah. (Umm Khalid al-
Finlandiyyah, 2016: 25)
ISIS propaganda holds that women in the
West wearing religious clothing such as the
hijab or the burqa are vulnerable to discrimi-
nation. Migrating to ISIS-held territories is
presented as the sole solution to this prob-
lem. Women who comply with the demand
of making hijrah, thereby fulfilling their
religious duty, will be heavily rewarded with
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
the grace of God both in this life and in the
hereafter. Often highlighted is the fact that
the rewards will be in accordance with the
sacrifices made (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2015e: 22). Those that fail to
fulfill their religious duty will face severe
punishment. ISIS depicts these individuals as
a disgrace for all Muslims collectively.
The promise of fulfilling one’s religious
duty, and thereby receiving in this life and
the afterlife the rewards for so doing, is
most prominent in Dabiq’s earlier issues but
does also occur in early editions of Rumiyah
(Rumiyah 2, 2016a: 3). This magazine later
seems to shift focus to the religious duty
of remaining in the so-called Islamic State,
motivating women to endure despite the hard
living conditions (Rumiyah 2, 2016b: 30).
BECOME AN IMPORTANT STATE
BUILDER
ISIS official propaganda further promises
women an important role in its state-building
ambitions. Here women have three main
functions that are portrayed as key for the
state’s survival. The first state-building role,
most prominent in early propaganda, is that of
employment. Women are offered the possibil-
ity to become doctors, nurses or teachers in a
new state. An article about the welfare system
of the Islamic State describes the merits of
studying at a new medical school in Raqqa:
The teaching staff consists exclusively of degree
holders. Entrance is open to both females and
males, with a dedicated school building, hospital,
and female teaching staff for the female students.
To support the students in their efforts the Islamic
State does not charge any fees and provides the
students with all that is necessary in terms of food,
clothing, housing, transport, and books. For fur-
ther encouragement high-achievers are granted
rewards. (Dabiq, 2015:26)
As highlighted in Dabiq, women can make a
real difference while receiving everything
needed by migrating to ISIS-held territories:
557
This should be received as a wake-up call for the
many Muslim students in the lands of kufr who
claim to study medicine to “benefit and support
the Muslim Ummah”, but then remain in those
lands, chasing after worldly pleasures instead of
performing hijrah to the Islamic State – and this
despite hijrah being an undeniable Islamic obliga-
tion, in addition to the fact that hijrah was and still
is relatively easy. The Islamic State offers every-
thing that you need to live and work here, so what
are you waiting for? (Dabiq, 2015: 26)
Second, women are also, through motherhood,
seen as key actors in nursing the next genera-
tion of fighters, often referred to as ‘lion cubs’.
Women ‘produce’ the next generation of men
of whom the survival of the state depends on
(Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015a: 44).
The importance of this role is highlighted
throughout both Dabiq and Rumiyah:
Islam encourages bearing children for numerous
reasons. Perhaps the most significant of these is to
increase the Muslim population so as to strengthen
the Ummah. […] By increasing the number of
Muslims kufr is terrified and the religion further
triumphs. (Rumiyah 5, 2017: 34)
The possibility to bear children in the Islamic
State is portrayed not only as a duty but
also as a great possibility. One passage in
Rumiyah states:
Every woman whom Allah has granted the bless-
ing of giving birth in the Islamic State should take
advantage of this tremendous grace – which Allah
has not granted to many other women – and
painstakingly endeavor to raise her children in a
manner that pleases her Lord and brings benefit to
her ummah. (Rumiyah 9, 2017: 18)
Women are thus given the responsibility of
furthering the cause of ISIS into the next
generation. The importance of not spoiling
heritage and lineage is often touched upon
(Rumiyah 2, 2016b: 30). A Finnish convert
living in ISIS-territory gives an account in
Dabiq, testimony of the benefits of raising
children in the Islamic State:
When you’re in Dar al-Kufr (the lands of disbelief)
you’re exposing yourself and your children to so much
filth and corruption. You make it easy for Satan to
558 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
lead you astray. Here you’re living a pure life, and your
children are being raised with plenty of good influ-
ence around them. They don’t need to be ashamed
of their religion. They are free to be proud of it and
are given the proper creed right from the start. (Umm
Khalid al-Finlandiyyah, Dabiq, July 2016, 39)
Providing a good upbringing for the children
of the Islamic State in accordance with the
organization’s interpretation of the religion
rather than that of secularism and infidelity
is key. For so doing, ISIS promises help to
the mothers in this venture through kinder-
gartens, training camps and Sharı̄’ah institu-
tions (Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajir āh, 2015a:
45). Rumiyah even goes so far as to provide
a ‘parental guide’ highlighting mothers’
teaching responsibilities with these three
key principles: who is your lord, what is
your religion and who is your prophet?
Crucial is also trivializing the worldly life
and embellishing the hereafter (Rumiyah 9,
2017: 19).
The third and final role for women as state
builders is that of the wife. The significance
given to this supporting role is emphasized
in an article published in Rumiyah: ‘Let us
be as those women who knew their role and
fulfilled them, for being supportive of your
muajāhid husband is one of your key roles
in the land of jihad, my dear sister, and the
importance of it cannot be overemphasized’
(Rumiyah 11, 2017: 14). The importance of
wifehood is underlined in Dabiq where its
merits are equated to that of jihād:
Please listen. Indeed you are in jihād when you
await the return of your husband patiently, antici-
pating Allah’s reward, and making du’ā’ for him
and those with him to attain victory and consolida-
tion. You are in jihād when you uphold your loyalty
to him in his absence. You are in jihād when you
teach his children the difference between the truth
and falsehood, between right and wrong. (Umm
Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015a: 41)
Women also have a key role in supporting
their husbands in their fighting for the sur-
vival of the so-called Caliphate. In a brief
interview in Dabiq with Umm Bası̄r al-
Muhajira, the widow of Amedy Coulibaly
who attacked a Jewish supermarket in Paris
in 2015, this becomes clear:
My sisters, be bases of support and safety for your
husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons. Be advisors
to them. They should find comfort and peace with
you. Do not make things difficult for them.
Facilitate all matters for them. Be strong and brave.
[…] Know that the Companions (radiyallāhu
‘anhum) did not spread Islam in these vast lands
except with their righteous wives behind them.
(U.B. al-Muhajirāh, Dabiq, February 2015, 50)
Throughout the ISIS propaganda, women are
given important state-building roles. In the
early days of the Caliphate the roles that were
promised were multiple, including that of a
working woman. As the Caliphate crumbled,
more traditional female roles such as wife-
hood and motherhood were emphasized.
Fulfilling these would result in divine rewards.
EXPERIENCE TRUE BELONGING
According to the ISIS propaganda, women
joiners to ISIS will experience true and
meaningful belonging. The Islamic State is
described as a safe haven void of discrimina-
tion on the basis of skin color, ethnicity or
nationality. Dabiq underscores that the diver-
sity of Muslims within ISIS-held territory
unifies the organization in the spirit of
religion:
[T]he rate of hijrah magnified and now every day
there are not only muhājirı̄n to the land of Islam
but also muhājirāt who were sick of living amongst
kufr and its people. As soon as the sun of their
awaited state rose, they rushed to it alone and in
groups from the eastern and western extents of the
Earth. Their colors and tongues are different, but
their hearts are united upon “there is no god but
Allah”. (Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 33)
In building the Caliphate, ISIS aimed at cre-
ating a sense of belonging and unity in a
large, diverse and geographically dispersed
group of people. Belonging is an important
and necessary ingredient in building a new
nation and attracting new citizens. Those that
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
feel lost or discriminated against in Western
communities are offered a homeland where
all Muslims are treated well and equally. The
promise of belonging was most prominent in
early propaganda, disappearing as the terri-
tory dissolved.
GET TO KNOW REAL SISTERHOOD
Women that live in ISIS-controlled territory,
according to its propaganda, will experience
sisterhood and friendship that widely sur-
passes blood bands. The published articles
targeting women open at times in a very
inclusive manner, this one from Rumiyah:
My beloved sisters with whom I am on a journey
to Allah, let us purify our intentions and rectify our
deeds, as it seems that ahead of us await times of
intense trials and extreme hardships, and times of
severe battles between iman and kufr[.] (Rumiyah
11, 2017: 13)
Another example of sisterhood is brought up
in an article in Rumiyah discussing the great
sin of ‘backbiting’ your closest circle: ‘Every
Muslim woman should remember that any
disagreement of her Muslim brother or sister,
even with a mere gesture, is prohibited slan-
der, which is one of the greatest sins’(Rumiyah
7, 2017: 31). The importance of always
siding with your fellow ISIS-sisters is also
described in an article discussing the positive
aspects of polygyny, the taking of up to four
wives (Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajir āh,
2015e). Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh high-
lights that women need to embrace the taking
of more than one wife as it benefits them as
a group. Polygyny is presented as insurance
for women and children alike. ‘Sisters’ living
in ISIS-controlled territories are frequently
widowed due to the participation of their
husbands in armed struggle. The author calls
for altruism by saying ‘Let every sister just
put herself in the shoes of a wife of a shahid
and sacrifice some of the selfishness that is
part of our nature’ (Umm Sumayyah
559
al-Muhajirāh, 2015e: 22). This selflessness is
supposed to be interpreted as an act of sister-
hood that benefits the weak and lonely. In the
end it ensures that no ‘sister’ is left outside of
the community. Sisterhood and selfless deeds
are, according to ISIS propaganda, heavily
rewarded. Good sisters increase their rewards
in the present life as well as in the afterlife
(Ibid.). Being a shahid’s widow results in
increased status and glory for ISIS women. It
also works as an assurance for a new mar-
riage to be arranged which, in turn, means
security to the ‘sisters’.
LEAD AN ADVENTUROUS LIFE
Women joining the Islamic State are also
promised an exciting adventure. The journey
to the Caliphate is highlighted as a possibility
to experience something extraordinary. The
promise of adventure is often portrayed
through vivid recounts of the journeys made
by women to ISIS-held territories. Official
propaganda discusses the courageous women
found among those migrating to Syria and
Iraq. This is evident in an article in Dabiq by
author Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh who
interprets all the women she met on her jour-
ney to the Caliphate as a life-changing expe-
rience of joy but also adventure:
[Women go] through the hardship of a long jour-
ney that is also exciting and full of memories.
While we would discuss the stories of hijrah, we
would all agree upon a feeling that overtakes every
muhājirah during her journey. It is as if we leave
from darkness to light, from caves of darkness to a
welcoming green land. Rather, by Allah, it is as if
we are resurrected, from death to life! (Umm
Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 35)
A prominent feature is that of meeting new
people. Only the brave manage to make the
trip, and are generously rewarded:
On the path towards Jannah, there is no place for
the fearful and for cowards! And even if I were to
forget everything, I would never forget the
moment our feet treaded upon the good lands of
560 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Islam and the moment our eyes saw the Uqāb
banner fluttering high. […]The first checkpoint we
saw, the first image of the State’s soldiers far from
the Internet and TV screens – those dusty and
ragged in their flesh and blood – we saw them
here with our eyes while tears from our eyes
poured forth generously and our tongues pro-
nounced the takbı̄r silently. (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 36)
The promise of adventure is more noticeable
in early propaganda where the calls for hijarah
were frequently made. With Rumyiah in 2016
there exists explicit promises of adventure.
EXPERIENCE TRUE ROMANCE
The promise of romance is rare in official
ISIS-propaganda. When mentioned, it is in
relation to the issue of marriage where
women assume the key role of supporting
their husbands (Example: Umm Bashı̄r
al-Muhajirāh, 2015). Women joining ISIS
get access to righteous men that provide a
rise in status. ISIS aims at attracting women
without male companions:
Here I want to say with the loudest voice to the
sick-hearted who have slandered the honor of
the chaste sisters, a woman’s hijrah from
dārulkufr is obligatory whether or not she has a
mahram, if she is able to find a relatively safe way
and fears Allah regarding herself. She should not
wait for anyone but should escape with her reli-
gion and reach the land where Islam and its
people are honored. (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2015c: 35)
According to ISIS-ideology, living within the
boundaries of marriage and respecting men is
key. Official propaganda, however, openly
encourages women living with men who do
not follow ISIS’ interpretation of Islam
to abandon them (Umm Sumayyah al-
Muhajirāh, 2015d: 47). Hijrah can present
new possibilities. Official propaganda prom-
ises great rewards to those that leave behind
their ‘infidel’ spouses and migrate to ISIS-
held territories:
[If] you fear your Lord and His anger, and abandon
this apostate husband in obedience to Him, then
He will replace him with something better and will
provide for you from where you do not expect.
(Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015d: 45)
The passages relating to romance are tied
to the concept of marriage and family life.
Women are, according to ISIS, dependent
on their husbands and the concept of dating
is nonexistent. This is bluntly conveyed in
Rumiyah:
A woman is always in need of a husband who will
look after her and tend to her affairs, and any
woman who says otherwise is opposing the fitrah
upon which Allah created her. No one around her
can fill the place of a husband, neither her father,
nor her brother, nor the closest of her relatives.
(Rumiyah 4, 2016: 33)
Rumiyah further emphasizes that the space
for sisterhood is limited by the fact that the
default place for women is at home, also in
relation to friends and family (Rumiyah 12,
2017: 36).
INCREASED INFLUENCE
Women joining ISIS are promised increased
influence and restitution both in the Caliphate
and in world politics. This is highlighted in
both Dabiq and Rumiyah. ISIS claims that
Muslims have been humiliated slaves to the
West for centuries. Without a state of their
own, scattered in the lands of infidels, they
have been marginalized due to their faith.
This becomes evident in an article in Dabiq
justifying ISIS forcing Yazidi women, taken
as slaves, to convert into Islam. Doing so
seems to elevate the status of the Muslim
women:
[I] and those with me at home [in the Caliphate]
prostrated to Allah in gratitude on the day the first
slave-girl entered our home. Yes, we thanked our
Lord for having let us live to the day we saw kufr
humiliated and its banner destroyed. Here we are
today, and after centuries, reviving a prophetic
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
Sunnah, which both the Arab and non-Arab ene-
mies of Allah had buried. By Allah, we brought it
back by the edge of the sword, and we did not do
so through pacifism, negotiations, democracy, or
elections. (Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh, 2015b: 47)
Women also help to increase ISIS’s influ-
ence. Through childbearing and birth giving
they instill fear in the adversary. An article in
Rumiyah states:
[W]ith the birth of every newborn Muslim, a thorn
is planted into the throat of kufr and a dagger is
stabbed into flank of shirk. Nor do these women
realize that by increasing the number of Muslims,
the despicable are suffocated and the banners of
the kuffar are lowered, just as the voices of the
righteous are raised. (Rumiyah 5, 2017: 35)
The promise of influence in world politics is
central in ISIS official propaganda. The idea
of a Caliphate, founded through jihād, is
described as an essential tool for regaining
honor, power and influence with Muslims
worldwide. Muslim women are promised
influence by subjugating women from other
religions. Siding with ISIS provides a safe
road to success and fortune, both in this life
and in the hereafter.
WHAT ABOUT VIOLENCE?
Violence has been used by multiple Islamic
extremist organizations to attract male fol-
lowers (Swedish Security Services, 2010:
43–4). In ISIS official propaganda targeting
women there is little evidence of this. Women
are exempted from the obligation of physical
jihād. An article published in Dabiq empha-
sizes other priorities more suitable for
women:
My Muslim sister, indeed you are a mujāhidah, and
if the weapon of the men is the assault rifle and
the explosive belt, then know that the weapon of
the women is good behavior and knowledge.
Because you will enter fierce battles between truth
and falsehood. (Umm Sumayyah al-Muhajirāh,
2015a: 44)
561
Official propaganda instead stresses that a
woman’s role is to engage in religious studies.
This has, according to Dabiq, caused tension
among women wanting to enjoy the same
rewards of jihād as men (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2015a: 41). Al-Muhajirāh
stresses that women play an instrumental,
although non-combative, role in the waging of
jihād as mothers of future ISIS-fighters (Ibid.).
Another supporting function, through commit-
ment and financing, is highlighted in Rumiyah:
Belief in Allah and waging jihad for His cause with
wealth and soul are emphazised here, and jihad
using one’s wealth is mentioned fist because
wealth is used initially in order to prepare equip-
ment and arm the troops, and because jihad using
ones physical self (soul) has exemptions – those
who are excused from fighting – and the woman
is exempt therefrom. (Rumiyah 1, 2016: 18)
This support provided by women in the
waging of war comes with great rewards:
Though the Muslim women may miss out on much
goodness in waging jihad with the sword, due to
Allah’s favouring men therein, the great gate of
jihad with wealth is left wide open for the women
who will make deals with their lord, deals that will
never end poorly. (Rumiyah 1, 2016: 20)
That women are barred from fighting for
ISIS in Syria and Iraq does not mean that
their use of violence in other settings is con-
demned. In a recount of the San Bernardino
attacks in California in December 2015, ISIS
praises the perpetrators, a husband and
a wife:
Thus, the Khilāfah’s call for the Muslims to strike
the crusaders in their own lands was answered
once more, but on this particular occasion the
attack was unique. The mujāhid involved did not
suffice with embarking upon the noble path of
jihād alone. Rather, he conducted the operation
together with his wife, with the two thereby aiding
one another in righteousness and taqwā. […] May
Allah accept the sacrifices of our noble brother
Syed Rizwan Farook and his blessed wife, accept
them among the shuhadā’, and use their deeds as
a means to awaken more Muslims in America,
Europe, and Australia. (Umm Sumayyah
al-Muhajirāh, 2016: 4)
562 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Similar celebrations are made in Rumiyah
where three women carrying out an attack in
Mombasa, Kenya are praised for their actions
(Rumiyah 2, 2016a: 3–4).
AN UNPRECEDENTED SHIFT
There had been occasional reports on ISIS-
women as fighters, suicide bombers and
snipers, along with images in social media of
women bearing arms. Women had also been
engaged in terror plots such as the one
thwarted in Paris in September 2016 (De
Leede et. al 2017: 28–9). The vast majority
of all terror attacks and plots, however, have
been planned and carried out by men. In
early October 2017, reports surfaced that an
unprecedented call to women had been made
in ISIS official propaganda (Katz, 2017). In
‘The Duty of Women in Waging Jihad against
the Enemy’ published in the ISIS weekly
Arabic newsletter al-Naba, women were
invited to participate in the physical jihad and
prepare themselves as mujahidat, female
holy warriors:
Today, in the context of this war against the Islamic
state, and with all that is experienced of hardship
and pain, it is mandatory for the Muslim women to
fulfill their duty from all aspects in supporting the
mujahideen in this battle, by preparing themselves
as mujahidat in the cause of Allah, and readying to
sacrifice themselves to defend the religion of Allah
the Most High and Mighty[.] (Katz, 2017)
ISIS’ call for female physical jihad contra-
dicts prior statements and goes against earlier
established practices. In February 2018 the
call for engagement in al-Naba was followed
by the release of the first-ever official ISIS
video showcasing women fighting on the
frontlines alongside men. The video, released
in both Arabic and English, moved ISIS’ posi-
tion on female participation in jihad towards a
more ‘liberal’ stance (Dearden, 2018).
The statement in al-Naba and the video
released marks the first time that ISIS itself
openly acknowledges women’s contributions
and calls on them to participate in war
(Dearden, 2018). Analysts have attributed
this key change to the fact that ISIS is in
decline, drawing on its final resources. The
change in stance came at a time when ISIS
was losing ever more territory and personnel
(Dearden, 2017). The ISIS call on women to
participate in armed jihad could have impli-
cations on European security. As the roles
of ISIS female supporters widens, security
services around the world should be weary
of gender biases. ISIS now views women as
more than mothers and wives.
CONCLUSION
How has ISIS used propaganda to attract
women? By scrutinizing official propaganda
in the magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah, a
number of promises made to women have
been mapped. Women are offered the possi-
bility to fulfill their religious duty, to become
important state builders, to experience in-
depth belonging and sisterhood and to some
extent also romance and adventure. They are
also promised great influence. Early official
propaganda does not make promises to
women of exerting violence in ISIS-held ter-
ritories, but it does not condemn such acts on
foreign soil. There used to be little evidence
to support the notion of women participating
in violent action, but a worrying shift seems
to be under way.
Fulfilling the role as a female ISIS-
supporter, living under ISIS rule, offers divine
benefits. Women who please God by advanc-
ing ISIS’ strict interpretation of Islam are
rewarded, in this life and in the hereafter. The
promises mapped seem to create a powerful
pulling force, that could partly explain how
ISIS has managed to attract an unprecedented
number of women. The way that ISIS con-
tinually shifts focus in Dabiq and Rumiyah
underlines the fact that the communicated
material is nothing but propaganda: one sided
information in support of a specific cause.
 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises
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 ISIS Female Recruits: The Alluring Propaganda Promises 565

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 33
IS’s Strategic
Communication Tactics
Charlie Winter and Craig Whiteside

INTRODUCTION manpower to propaganda-based influence

The Islamic State is widely considered to be
a revolutionary innovator when it comes to
its use of influence operations, both on and
off the battlefield. This reputation is well
founded. Indeed, to a large extent, it was its
adept use of information that enabled it to
commandeer the reins of global jihadism
from its like-minded rival, al-Qa’idah. From
the psychological campaigns that preceded
its 2014 Mosul offensive to the blissful
promises of utopia that followed it, commu-
nication has almost always been central to its
insurgent doctrine. In years to come, it is
likely to become even more important as a
tool for curating its post-territorial legacy,
smoothing the transition from covert insur-
gency to overt proto-state and back again.
Evidently, this is an organisation that con-
siders the information domain to be a deci-
sive battlespace in its struggle to build a state,
and, based on this calculation, it has devoted
an unprecedented amount of resources and
operations. While this has been discussed at
length by academics, think-tank analysts, and
journalists alike, to date, there has been a per-
sistent focus on the thematic side of the equa-
tion and almost no inquiry as to their actual
methodology – particularly in the offline
domain. In other words, we have learned a lot
about ‘what’ the group is doing but not about
‘how’ and ‘why’ it is doing it.
Bridging this gap in the knowledge, this
chapter draws on the Islamic State’s recent
and not-so-recent history, tracking the evo-
lution of its media production and deploy-
ment activities over the last 15 years. Getting
beyond a uniquely thematic approach –
which, while useful, has been done many
times before (Milton, 2016; Winter, 2018;
Zelin, 2015) – we focus our attention on the
tactics the group uses to engage in strategic
communication.
After a brief literature review and expla-
nation of our sources, the chapter proceeds
in two sections: the first examines how the
 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics
movement designed its messaging campaigns
between 2003 and 2018 by identifying the
principles that underpin its engagement in
outreach; and the second explores how it dis-
seminated this message, assessing how the
reach and targeting of its propaganda has
developed since its inception. Our analysis
shows that, while its influence operations as
a whole are unprecedented, their constituent
parts are actually highly conventional and
could easily have been predicted.
Before proceeding, a note on our terms of
reference: as we consider the Islamic State
and all of its previous manifestations since
2003 – this includes, in consecutive order:
Tawhid w-al-Jihad, al-Qa’idah in the Land of
the Two Rivers (better known as al-Qa’idah
in Iraq), the Islamic State of Iraq, the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant, and finally the
Islamic State – to be part of the same jihadist
‘family’, we prefer to refer it as the ‘Islamic
State Movement’ (ISM). This captures the
idea that the organisation as we see it in 2018
did not emerge from a vacuum – rather, it is
the result of a continuous evolution dating
back decades.
LITERATURE REVIEW
While the ISM has long been on the radar of
academics and think-tank experts, it was
most heavily scrutinised in the wake of its
advances across Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Broadly speaking, the ISM literature falls
into four thematic clusters, with accounts
focusing on: (a) its organisational history and
ideology; (b) its doctrine for insurgency;
(c) its use of terrorism abroad; and (d) its
strategic communication activities. In the
next few paragraphs, we identify the con-
tours of the last of these clusters, which is
itself split into three: studies using quantita-
tive methods to examine its online sympa-
thiser communities and networks; studies
using content analysis to decipher specific
propaganda genres and media products; and
567
studies using thematic analysis to make sense
of its theo-political brand.
The first cluster, which focuses on map-
ping social networks and dynamics, is char-
acterised by work from the likes of Carter
et  al. (2014), Klausen (2014), Berger and
Morgan (2015), and Conway et  al. (2017).
Each of these studies explores the ISM’s
online ecosystem through the lens of big data,
and their authors broadly agree that the ISM
sympathiser community is as nebulous as it is
subject to change. Qualitative investigations
from Amarasingam (2015) and Stalinsky and
Sosnow (2017) demonstrate that it is at once
hierarchical and diffuse, reliant on a strong
sense of communal identity.
The second cluster consists of close explo-
rations into individual propaganda genres or
products. Chouliaraki and Kissas (2018), for
example, take an aesthetic approach towards
the appearance of violence in the ISM’s video
propaganda, whereas the likes of Macnair and
Frank (2017) use thematic analysis to deci-
pher cultural meaning in films produced by
its Al Hayat Media Center. In each case, they
are struck by editorial and visual motifs that
directly reflect Western media conventions, an
observation also made by Winkler et al. (2016)
in their analysis of Dabiq, the State’s English-
language magazine. For his part, Ingram
(2016, 2017, 2018) has provided a series of
valuable contributions to this portion of the
literature, among them: an in-depth content
analysis of Dabiq as a standalone product; a
comparative study between it and al-Qa’idah
in the Arabian Peninsula’s Inspire magazine;
and an evaluation of how it and its successor,
Rumiyah, evolved between 2014 and 2017.
The third cluster comprises archival explo-
rations of the ISM brand. Zelin’s (2015) was
the first account to empirically evaluate the
movement’s jihadist promise; using a one-
week snapshot of its official output collected
from Twitter in May 2015, he sets out the
parameters of its appeal and demonstrates
that it is neither as monochromatic nor as
brutal as much media coverage at the time
suggested. These findings were reiterated by
568 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Winter (2015, 2017), who, in his analyses of
official media products from 2015 and 2017,
comes to a comparable set of conclusions,
illustrating that the group’s propaganda
usually falls into one of three thematic cat-
egories when considered in aggregate: civil-
ian life, military activities, and victimhood.
Milton (2016) also examines official visual
media products, focusing in particular on
the 20 months between January 2015 and
August 2016. He again finds that its strate-
gic narrative comprises more than warfare
and brutality, also noting that its communi-
cation capabilities were squeezed between
2014 and 2016, a finding corroborated by
Conway et  al. (2017), Winter (2018), and
BBC Monitoring (2017).
As the above shows, explorations of the
ISM’s recent outreach activities abound, but
investigations into its past efforts are few
and far between – aside, that is, from the
likes of Rogan (2005), Kimmage (2008) and
Whiteside (2016). This has left us with a
piecemeal understanding of how and why the
caliphate idea resonated – and continues to
resonate – among jihadists in Syria, Iraq, and
beyond. Seeking to correct this imbalance in
the knowledge, the following pages connect
the dots between the ISM of yesteryear and
the group as it appears today.
SOURCES
We principally rely on primary sources for
what follows. This is for two reasons: first,
secondary source accounts examining the
ISM’s communications are often hindered by
partial access to data and therefore end up
being skewed. This issue is especially salient
in the context of media reportage. Second,
and more importantly, the organisation has
itself offered unparalleled textual insights into
how it thinks about propaganda – especially
in-theatre, a sphere of its operations that is
otherwise obscured by the fog of war – so it is
prudent to make (critical) use of them.
Based on these considerations, we, below,
use a longitudinal sample of seminal Islamic
State propaganda texts as a window into its
influence activism. All primary materials
dating from 2014 onwards were archived by
the first author from the movement’s official
online dissemination channels. Depending on
the period in question, data was collected from
Twitter (2014–2015) and Telegram (2015–
2018). Materials from before 2014 were
either collected from the US Government’s
Open Source Center or obtained from an
archive of captured documents maintained
by the US Military Academy’s Combating
Terrorism Center.
DESIGNING THE CAMPAIGN
Shifting Strategic Narrative
Since its inception in 2003, the ISM has
aggressively and expertly asserted itself on
the information battlefield, deploying a vari-
ety of influence efforts to win popularity
both locally and globally. In the early years,
its propaganda was almost uniquely focused
on gaining name recognition; this primarily
took the form of high visibility terrorist acts
and other military activities (Benson, 2004).
Indeed, soon after its emergence, the group
became notorious for rough-cut footage of
sniper operations, car bombings, and execu-
tions – be they of enemy combatants, civilian
aid-workers, or journalists (Newman, 2004).
By 2006, it felt strong enough to experi-
ment with a nascent form of institutional-
ised governance as well – in a statement
published at the beginning of 2007, the ISM
inaugurated its first civilian cabinet complete
with a Ministry for Public Diplomacy and
a Ministry of Information, something that
hinted at an early inclination for the devel-
opment of influence-focused management
expertise (al-Juburi, 2007). This proto-state
initiative prompted a violent backlash among
tribal groups that were not enthusiastic about
 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics
living under a jihadist administration (Hafez,
2007). Hence, the years that followed were
witness to a systematic propaganda campaign
– incorporating both media and deed – that
was geared towards communicating the idea
that the Islamic State of Iraq, which had been
founded in late 2006 and largely rejected in
2007, would ‘remain’ no matter what (al-
Baghdadi, 2007). Ultimately, the campaign
was successful in convincing Iraqis that the
ISM did indeed have a future in Iraq, an out-
come facilitated by the advent of increased
sectarian tensions between its Sunni and
Shi’i populations (Fishman, 2016).
By 2013, the ISM’s growing activities
had finally begun to live up to its proto-state
branding. With Syria’s disintegration into civil
war, the group had started to engage in more
than governance lip service and, because of
this, the breadth of its propaganda operations
could expand beyond military and terroristic
violence to also convey information about
its experiments into civilian administration.
By 2015, the ISM had reached its zenith and
utopian images of quotidian existence in its
recently proclaimed caliphate dominated its
media, with more than 50 percent of its videos
and photo-stories depicting an idealised image
of civilian life, focusing on anything from
municipal services and social welfare distribu-
tion to education and wildlife (Winter, 2015).
This was not, however, a permanent state
of affairs. Indeed, as the coalition and its allies
advanced against the group in Syria and Iraq,
it recalibrated its approach. By early 2017, its
communicative clout had dramatically dimin-
ished, both in terms of media productivity and
narrative complexity, and nearly all of its mate-
rials had begun to revolve around militarism.
In other words, the ISM had to a large extent
returned to its roots, once again framing itself
as a fighting force first and a proto-state second.
Persistent Strategic Priorities
To make sense of this evolution, it serves to
look to the group’s own literature – specifically,
569
a 2010 speech by, then second in command of
the ISM, Abu Hamzah al-Muhajir, and a field-
guide for in-theatre media operatives released
by its official publishing house in 2015.
Abu Hamzah, as the ISM’s Minister of
Defence and, later, Prime Minister, was the
immediate subordinate of (and putative co-
leader with) the ISM’s amir between 2006
and 2010, Abu ‘Umar al-Baghdadi. A mem-
ber of the movement since its inception in
2003, Abu Hamzah complemented Abu
Umar’s role as political leader of the group
by handling its day-to-day administrative
affairs (al-’Utaybi, 2013).
During his incumbency, Abu Hamzah
issued detailed guidance to a number of the
ISM’s civilian and military departments, usu-
ally in the form of audio statements. One such
speech was ‘To those entrusted with the mes-
sage’, a 35-minute audio text published in
2010 by the al-Fajr Media Centre (al-Muhajir,
2010). Emerging more than four years before
the ISM’s rise to global infamy as the Islamic
State, the statement was – and continues to
be – a communication blueprint for the group,
comprising 14 guidelines for optimising its
overarching media architecture. Each is set
out, in consecutive order, below:
• First, ISM media should engage in aggressive
psychological campaigns with a view to ‘sow[ing]
terror in the hearts of [the] enemy using every-
thing permitted by shari’ah for this purpose’. This
‘everything’ includes video propaganda, which
hints at an underlying strategic logic behind the
ISM’s frequent depiction of extreme brutality.
• Second, ISM media must go on the ideological
offensive by ‘defaming the image of infidels,
exposing their immorality, and describing every
defect they have’.
• Third, ISM must always deflect ‘enemy’ propa-
ganda. To this end, media operatives should
‘follow up on the books, reports, and analysis
that the West publishes’.
• Fourth, ISM media should protect the community
against countervailing theological trends. Hence,
its media operatives are beholden to keep track
of global theological discussions, especially those
taking place among rival organisations, by moni-
toring ‘the publications of groups of falsehood
570 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
and evil imams and expos[ing] their contradic-
tions, violations, and grave sins’.
• Fifth, ISM media must be technologically sophis-
ticated. Abu Hamzah held that technological
innovation is central to the development of
effective propaganda and he thus advised that
media workers should prepare ‘training courses
to teach all media techniques via the [I]nternet
and divide these courses into levels’. They should
also consider sending ‘youth to take scientific
crash courses’ on media production.
• Sixth, ISM media must be international, with
operatives ‘establish[ing] communication and
dialogue with those who sympathize with and
support [the ISM,] especially those in the coun-
tries that in some way or another enjoy freedom
of the press and media, or countries where the
World Wide Web cannot be easily controlled’.
• Seventh, ISM media should be regular and con-
sistent. Muhajir specifically noted that media
operatives ‘should prepare a daily video news
bulletin that focuses on updates, and analyse
events, especially those related to the mujahidin’,
which should be broadcast ‘every morning to
cover all the events taken from the day before’.
• Eighth, ISM media campaigns must be built upon
evidence-based foundations about what does
and does not work. He advised that scientific
studies on conflict communication – that is,
‘every useful item’ as well as its ‘sources’ –
should be read and integrated across the influ-
ence spectrum.
• Ninth, ISM media should involve, at least to
a limited extent, Internet-based subterfuge,
with operatives ‘establish[ing] moderate Islamic
forums’ with a view to ‘deceiving the infidels’.
• Tenth, ISM media must work to win over ‘scholars
and knowledge-seekers’ before ‘call[ing] them to
perform their duty to respond to the deviations of
those who are deviants and delinquents’, while
also ‘show[ing] the extent of the deviant creeds
of nationalism and democracy’.
• Eleventh, ISM media must be secure. Its opera-
tives must hone their cyber capabilities –
­offensive and defensive – on the one hand being
‘careful about the issue of piracy [hacking]’ while
also ‘encourag[ing] all those who have the talent
to perform duties of piracy’. ISM-affiliated hack-
ers, Abu Hamzah held, should be provided ‘with
instructions on all they can do to increase their
capabilities’ and be ‘support[ed] with all possible
means to destroy the sites of the enemy, raid the
posts of the enemy’s military, their security, and
their political foundations’.
• Twelfth, ISM media should be consistent. Echoing
the point above about regularity, Abu Hamzah
called upon media operatives to produce regular
in-depth reports on its insurgency, specifically ‘a
memorandum of proposals and guidance [pub-
lished] on a monthly basis for the mujahidin and
the commanders of jihad’. This regularity would
‘function as a bridge between the ummah and
its leaders’.
• Thirteenth, ISM media should always account for
audience reception. To this end, media operatives
must ‘register all reactions that arise from all the
mujahidin and the leaders of jihad and what they
say and do, especially the reactions coming from
the enemy’. These reactions must be meticulously
reviewed with a view to ‘recognis[ing] their
positive and negative points, in order to be able
to improve performance, solve mistakes, and
increase the level of our performance’.
• Fourteenth, and finally, ISM media must be built
off of ‘organized and authenticated teamwork’,
such that all related efforts, no matter how
complex, can be ‘carried out in accordance with
security conditions’.
In the years since 2010, it has been eminently
apparent that the ISM’s media operatives were
listening – and are continuing to listen – to
Abu Hamzah’s principles. Indeed, even a cur-
sory glance at its recent influence efforts
yields multiple examples of his ideas being
operationalized almost word-for-word: the
execution videos in which Mohammed ‘Jihadi
John’ Emwazi took centre stage were proto-
typical attempts to ‘sow terror’ among its
adversaries; intellectual attacks against ‘the
image of infidels’ continue to be ubiquitous
across its materials; and the regular inclusion
of excerpts from mainstream news coverage
about the ISM in its own coverage are testa-
ment to the time that ISM media operatives
spend monitoring ‘enemy’ discourse – the list
goes on.
Further evidence for the internalisation of
Abu Hamzah’s information doctrine is found
in ‘Media operative, you are also a Muslim
warrior’, a field-guide for ISM propagandists
that was published offline in 2015 and online
 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics
in April 2016 (al-Himmah Library, 2016;
Winter, 2017). Developing and reiterating the
above ideas, it too addresses media opera-
tives, contending that ‘the Islamic ummah
today is waiting for you to lead it by its hands
to the shari’ah and rid it of the inferiority and
injustice from which it suffers’. Media opera-
tives are told that it is their job to ‘open [the
global Sunni Muslim community’s] eyes’ as
to their organisation’s ‘creed, methodology,
and intentions’. This way, they can ‘paint
a brighter picture’ of jihad, one that better
appeals to would-be supporters of the group.
Closely echoing Abu Hamzah, the document
notes that media operatives must defend
against ‘the frenzied media campaign’ and
‘deceptive ways’ of the enemy. To this end,
reiterating his advice, they are told to ‘expose
the deviances of secularists and hypocrites,
responding to those who dishearten, alarm or
discourage the Muslims [and] call for toler-
ance and coexistence with the unbelievers’.
Finally, and again restating Abu Hamzah’s
code, the guidelines hold that media opera-
tives should wage war in and through the
information space, in which propaganda can,
in certain circumstances, ‘actually be more
potent than atomic bombs’.
From the narrative of utopia to its polem-
ics against unsympathetic religious scholars,
rival jihadist groups, and adversary govern-
ments, the ISM’s influence campaigns have
been unparalleled in their execution. However,
as set out in documents like these – which are
but a drop in the ocean of the materials that are
out there – their strategic genius could perhaps
have been anticipated.
DEPLOYING THE CAMPAIGN
In November 2016, one of the ISM’s
encrypted social media accounts published a
video shot in northern Syria (Aleppo Province
Media Office, 2016a). While the bulk of it
focused on martyrdom commemoration, the
opening sequence focused on the evolution
571
of the ISM’s offline influence networks over
the course of the last decade. It opens with a
balaclava-wearing media worker skulking
surreptitiously through a darkened ally before
casting to the floor a compact disk bearing
the title ‘Video releases of the Islamic State’.
A caption in the bottom-right corner of the
video frame denotes that this was how media
outreach was undertaken ‘in the year 1427
after Hijrah’. Immediately afterwards, the
figure ‘1427’ begins to roll upwards, as if on
fruit-machine, until it reads ‘1438’ – that is,
in the Islamic calendar, the present day – the
accompanying footage transporting the
viewer through time up to late 2016. As cam-
eras pan across a ‘typical’ scene of media
outreach a decade later – viewers are shown
a packed open-air cinema complete with red
faux-leather seating and an overhead projec-
tor – the audience is treated to a celebration
of the ISM’s revolutionised approach towards
influence deployment.
This brief vignette captures the transition
of the ISM’s communication operations from
crude and secretive to overt and sophisti-
cated, an evolution that we briefly unpack in
the following pages.
From Local to Global…
The ISM media department has operated
continuously since its formation in 2004,
seamlessly navigating five name changes
with no gap in production (Whiteside, 2016:
9).1 Its presence has been integral and
unflinching in spite of the many political
evolutions that the movement went through,
and it has always calibrated its wares towards
both local and global audiences. This
approach can be tracked straight back to
1980s Afghanistan, the first modern-day
expeditionary jihad. Imitating the practices
they saw in their early battlefield experiences
there, the early leaders of the ISM media
department focused their attention on the
local, offline level, developing clandestine
networks for the mass production and
572 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
distribution of handbills and video CDs
(Whiteside, 2016: 12).2 At the same time,
they experimented with the online sphere,
posting their first statement to jihadist web-
sites in 2004 (al-Zarqawi, 2004). By 2007
they were posting almost 1000 online state-
ments a year (Kimmage, 2008). Due to mili-
tary and political setbacks, though, this level
of productivity was set to decline.
The end of 2009 found the group reinvent-
ing itself and experimenting with new media
techniques in support of a future comeback.
The release of some of its key veterans from
prison that year seems to have reinvigorated
its design and deployment tacticians, and
there was an observable improvement in its
narrative style (Whiteside, 2016: 16–8). This
trend only accelerated when, in 2011, the
US military left Iraq and neighbouring Syria
slipped into civil war, two developments
that, although they were entirely external to
the ISM, gave its influence strategists room
to breathe and further globalise their brand.
Hence, while they still prioritised influence
efforts at the local level, hoping to win the
allegiance of resistance networks in Iraq and
now Syria, their approach underwent a quali-
tative shift toward globalisation, something
that enabled them to focus on the acquisition
of the foreign fighters now flowing towards
the Syrian conflict.3 Capturing this human
resource soon became a priority for the ISM,
and the newly global emphasis of its influ-
ence operations that followed served as a sig-
nificant pull factor.
And Back Again
The above dynamics, coupled with the rapid
deterioration of the situation in Syria, meant
that the ISM was soon able to control popula-
tions much larger than it ever could in Iraq in
the 2000s. Indeed, by 2013, its proto-state
project had become a very real endeavour,
something that ushered in a raft of new situa-
tional exigencies for the group and prompted
it to once again prioritise the local information
theatre. This period was characterised by
countless influence innovations, many of
which specifically revolved around the issue
of media deployment.
The most crucial of its physical innova-
tions were the nuqtah i’lamiyyah (literally,
‘media point’), the Office for Proselytisation
and Mosques, and the Ministry for Education.
Regarding the first of these, a March 2016
article in the ISM’s official newspaper,
Naba’, provides some revealing insights.
Established in places that were ‘lacking in
communications mechanisms’, media points
were intended to ‘present the media in all of
its forms to the ordinary people’ and serve
as a ‘coupling link’ between the ISM as an
organization and its civilian constituents
(Naba’, 2016: 12–3). At one and the same
time, they delivered news updates on the war
effort and projected the utopian caliphate
narrative. Wherever they were, they screened
propaganda films while also serving as satel-
lite publishing houses, radio listening points,
and digital distribution centres. Importantly,
they were not limited to towns and cities –
mobile kiosks were also rigged up so that the
ISM’s audio-visual output could reach even
the remotest areas of Iraq and Syria.
In Raqqah, which acted as the central
nervous system of the caliphate until 2017,
activists that had lived there under the ISM
asserted to the authors that there were ‘many
[media points] in the city and its environs’.
According to the aforementioned Naba’
article, each kiosk, of which there were 25
in Raqqah in March 2016, ‘provide[d] a full
media archive in a number of languages, from
English, French and Kurdish to Turkish, Farsi
and Bangla, and so one’. The same article
also claimed that the group had as many as
60 media points in Nineveh Province – with
more than 20 in the city of Mosul alone – and
a further 39 in Dijlah Province.
This initiative was complemented by
the ISM’s Centre for Proselytisation and
Mosques, a proto-state-wide outreach unit
that was dedicated to in-theatre recruit-
ment operations. Devoted to enlisting both
 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics
civilians and soldiers to the group’s ideol-
ogy, the centre operated doggedly in Iraq and
Syria between 2013 and 2018. The scope and
sophistication of its activities were encapsu-
lated in a May 2016 video from Syria which
documented one of its many enlistment drives
(Aleppo Province Media Office, 2016b).
First, a group of its officials are shown dis-
tributing handbills in mudbrick villages.
Next, there is an account of its da’wah and
shari’ah courses: young boys are depicted
being coached in tahfidh – that is, learning
the Qur’an by rote – as well as being taught
how to write. The narrator explains that, on
top of these seminaries, there are similar
courses on offer for women and girls, some-
thing that had, he claims, resulted in mothers
signing their own children up to volunteer for
military operations. The campaign is shown
to conclude with a sight familiar to the ISM,
a da’wah caravan party at which villagers
are shown rapturously pledging allegiance
to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before tucking into
boiled sweets and bursting into song.
The above was just one example of the
Centre’s in-theatre recruitment drives – as
many other propaganda videos and photo-
graph reports attest, they occurred continu-
ously across the ISM’s territories between
2013 and 2018. Moreover, they were not just
confined to outreach in rural villages – rather,
they ran to the very heart of the organisation’s
mosque administration, too. Indeed, through
the Centre, the Islamic State weaponised reli-
gious institutions across Syria and Iraq, using
them to peddle a unified strategic narrative of
warfare and utopia.
Finally, and running in parallel to these
efforts, was the Ministry for Education,
which presided over public schooling. After
its sweeping victories of 2014, the ISM com-
mandeered the pedagogical infrastructure
that was already in place – teachers were re-
educated or, failing that, cast off, and entire
curriculums were revised (Somerville and
Dalati, 2017). When the schools eventually
reopened, they worked to internalise ISM
norms – alongside a revisionist history of
573
Islam and ‘Islamic’ geography, arithmetic
was taught with reference to AK-47s and
hand grenades (Engel, 2016). Candidates for
shibl (‘cub’) camps were cultivated here, too
(Almohammad, 2018). Upon selection, they
would be dispatched to boarding facilities
in rural areas, provided with weapons train-
ing, and subjected to intensive ideological
coaching, a cocktail of measures that turned
many of them into the ISM’s most committed
fighters.
The group’s approach towards the deploy-
ment of in-theatre influence operations was
highly sophisticated between 2013 and 2018,
but it did not emerge from a vacuum. Rather,
these efforts were a scaled-up continuation
of what it had been doing clandestinely in
Iraq for years. Indeed, just as had been the
case during the first ten years of its existence,
the ISM was merely leveraging pre-existing
social structures alongside a set of its own.
CONCLUSION
Johnson’s (2017, xxxii–iii) research into the
Afghan Taliban’s influence operations
between 2004 and 2011 found that they were
more effective than those of NATO/ISAF and
the Afghan government because they were
‘precise, focused, and localized, recognizing
political and social cleavages in Afghanistan’.
Their efforts took the form of ‘night letters’,
poetic chants, poetry, DVDs, periodicals, and
text messages. While the Taliban does have an
online social media presence – a fact largely
ignored by analysts due the perception that its
insurgency is an internal struggle – it is clear
that its principal focus is at the local, offline
level. Over the last two decades, this micro-
targeted approach paid significant dividends to
the group, enabling it to lastingly undermine
the centralized government and its sponsors.
The case of the ISM is similar, at least
in the offline, local context. However, its
in-theatre influence efforts were supple-
mented – perhaps even outshone – by its
574 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
aggressive global campaign, something that
has obscured this fact and meant that ana-
lysts rarely recognise that its leadership has
long maintained a careful balance between
influence at the international level and influ-
ence at the local level.
To be sure, its international activism is
intuitive: the ISM is fighting a different war
to that being fought by the Afghan Taliban.
The very character of its conflict in Iraq and
Syria, as well as its global aspirations in
Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle
East, presents it with very different exigen-
cies. Whatever the case, the ISM’s response
has been more than adequate. Indeed, it is
unquestionable that its synergised local and
global influence campaigns have secured
it, possibly temporarily, the allegiance of a
broader spectrum of supporters than any of
its jihadist predecessors and rivals had ever
managed before.
With the above in mind, it is justified to
state that its approach towards influence
operations is unprecedented; however – and
critically – it did not emerge out of a vac-
uum. Rather, everything the world witnessed
in Iraq and Syria between 2013 and 2018
stemmed from the movement’s past experi-
ence of the need to focus on local political
dynamics. From 2003 onwards, this panned
out in Iraq, and it has since panned out in
Syria, too, from late 2011 to date. The rise
of the ISM caliphate in Syria and Iraq was
a vindication of its integrated local policy
approach and in-theatre propaganda cam-
paigns, which, together, were successful
in defeating rivals and establishing local-
ised brand dominance. Once this had been
achieved, the ISM’s leadership replicated its
campaign at the global level, something in
which it had been succeeding until its territo-
rial collapse in 2017.
In years to come, there is no certainty that
the movement will be able remain the world’s
preeminent jihadist organisation. This is for
two reasons. First, its principal rival, al-
Qa’idah, has learned and adapted from its
approach towards influence warfare and,
with great tenacity, itself begun to refocus
its attention on local dynamics in places like
Syria and Yemen. Second, the territorial col-
lapse of the ISM caliphate has already dented
its legitimacy, undermining the perceived
justification for its international demands
for allegiance. As its ‘golden years’, that is,
2014 to 2016, fade into distant memory, the
ISM will likely struggle to return to anything
like its former level of prominence – unless,
that is, its international terrorist capabilities
are realised, or it manages to replicate its
one-time domination of local dynamics in-
theatre, matching this with a corresponding
influence campaign that exploits and expands
the many socio-political cracks that already
lie between its global adversaries.
Notes
1  For example, Abu Maysara al-’Iraqi went from being
the Tawhid wa-l-Jihad’s spokesman to Al-Qa’idah
in Iraq and later Mujahidin Shura Council without
a pause, just as Abu Muhammad al-’Adnani went
from being spokesman for the Islamic State of Iraq
to ISIS and finally the Islamic State.
2  In 2007, the US military uncovered large media
centres entirely devoted to editing and mass-
producing hundreds of propaganda products a
day, including handbills for mosque distribution,
video clips for personal phones and computers,
and long-form videos for posting on invitation-
only websites.
3  See, for example, the al-Furqan Foundation video,
‘Messages from the Land of Epics 13,’ which was
distributed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant
in December 2013. Among other things, it fea-
tured messages for the people of Sinai and main-
land Egypt from an Islamic Court judge in Aleppo
Province and a foreign fighter in Iraq conducting
a suicide operation.
REFERENCES
Primary Sources
al-Baghdadi, A.’U., 2007. Harvest of the years
for the state of the muwahhidin (monothe-
ists). Furqan Foundation.
 IS’s Strategic Communication Tactics
Al-Himmah Library. 2016. Anonymous. Media
operative, you are a mujahid, too..
al-Juburi, M., 2007. The establishment of the
first Islamic administration of the Islamic
State of Iraq. Furqan Foundation.
al-Muhajir, A.H., 2010. To those entrusted with
the message. Furqan Foundation.
al-’Utaybi, A.S., 2013. Letter to al-Qa’idah
leadership (dated April-May 2007). Ana al-
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Benson, P., 2004. CIA: Zarqawi tape ‘probably
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Conway, M., Khawaja, M., Lakhani, S., Reffin,
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The Evolution of Terrorist
Propaganda in Cyberspace
INTRODUCTION
This chapter reviews the use of online plat-
forms for terrorist propaganda and the prolif-
eration of online terrorist propaganda over
the years. Terrorism, from its early days,
relied on the use of mass media to spread
fear, to launch propaganda campaigns and to
recruit sympathizers and fighters.
Technological advances in communication
technologies provided terrorists with the
opportunity to produce media-oriented spec-
tacles of terror. However, terrorist attempts to
use the mainstream mass media were often
blocked by the media’s gatekeepers and reg-
ulations. Thus, the move to cyberspace was
inevitable. The Internet, the most open and
free channel of communication, provided ter-
rorist propaganda with the ideal platform.
The section When Terrorism Met the Internet
describes the advantages of the Internet for
terrorist propaganda and the emergence of
terrorist websites while the following sec-
tion, Terrorist Migration to Social Media,
34
Gabriel Weimann
focuses on a later stage when terrorists real-
ized the communicative advantages of social
media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
YouTube and others. Terrorist use of social
media poses several potentially serious
threats to national security as well as to civil
liberties, as described in the section The
Perils of Terrorists in Social Media. The use
of audience segmentation and profiling of
target groups and individuals, referred to as
narrowcasting, has become an important
tactic in online terrorist propaganda. The sec-
tion on Narrowcasting describes how terror-
ists focus on specific segments of the public,
including children, women, diaspora com-
munities and more. The growing awareness
of terrorist abuse of online platforms led to
counter measures, detailed in the section
Countering Online Terrorism. As described,
there are three forms of counter measures:
the first one combines approaches that are
aimed at reducing the supply of terrorist con-
tent online (e.g., removing terrorist content
from the Net). The second involves reducing
578 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
the demand for radicalization and violent
extremist messages by directly challenging
the extremist narratives and by promoting
awareness and education of young people.
The third way is to exploit terrorists’ online
communications to gain intelligence and
gather evidence in the most comprehensive
and systematic fashion possible. However,
terrorists learned how to respond to most of
these efforts and apply sophisticated counter
measures to avoid identification or removal
of material. One of these measures was the
transition to the Dark Net, described in the
section Going Darker: The Appeal of the
Dark Net. Recent studies reveal how terror-
ists and extremists are creating growing
numbers of safe havens on the Dark Net to
plot future attacks, raise funds and recruit
new followers. Terrorists are now using the
Dark Net also as a reservoir of propaganda:
the removal of extremist and terrorist content
from the surface web increases the risk that
material of terrorist organizations may be
lost. Much of this material later resurfaces on
the Dark Net. Finally, looking at the future,
the Conclusion section presents two venues
for countering terrorist propaganda: the
­content-based approach and the technology-
based approach. The content-based perspec-
tive relies on countering terrorist narratives
while the technology-based approach sug-
gests greater public-private co-operation in
the design of future communication
platforms.
MEDIA AND TERRORISM: THE
THEATER OF TERROR
From its early days, terrorism has combined
propaganda, communication and psychol-
ogy. Specifically, the word ‘terror’ comes
from the Latin word ‘terrere’ that means ‘to
frighten’ or ‘to scare’. The first use of large-
scale terrorism was during the popular phase
of the French Revolution. The period from
June 1793 to July 1794 in France is known as
the Reign of Terror, or simply ‘the Terror’,
due to the upheaval following the overthrow
of the monarchy. This threw the nation into
chaos and the government into frenzied para-
noia. The Revolutionary Tribunal sentenced
thousands to the guillotine. Estimates of the
death toll range between 16,000 and 40,000.
The executions were conducted before large
audiences and were accompanied by sensa-
tional publicity thus spreading the intended
fear.
Modern terrorists have become exposed
to new opportunities for launching propa-
ganda campaigns as a result of technological
advances in communication technologies.
They replaced the public executions in
Parisian squares with spectacular violent pro-
ductions performed on the global stages of
the mass media and online platforms. Several
academicians and journalists have noticed
the emergence of media-oriented terrorism.
Laqueur said that ‘the media are the terror-
ist’s best friends, the terrorists’ act by itself
is nothing, publicity is all’ (Laqueur, 1976:
104), while Nacos noted that, ‘getting the
attention of the mass media, the public, and
decision makers is the raison d’etre behind
modern terrorism’s increasingly shocking
violence’ (Nacos, 1994: 8). In 2005, Ayman
al-Zawahiri, then al-Qaeda’s second-in-­
command, wrote to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq at the time: ‘We
are in a battle, and more than half of this
battle is taking place in the battlefield of the
media’.1 More recently, an ex-Islamic State
(ISIS) operator described his organization,
known for its focus on propaganda, as:
It is a whole army of media personnel. The media
people are more important than the soldiers. Their
monthly income is higher. They have better cars.
They have the power to encourage those inside to
fight and the power to bring more recruits to the
Islamic State.2
The emergence of media-oriented terrorism
led several communication and terrorism
scholars to re-conceptualize modern terror-
ism within the framework of symbolic
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
communication theory. As Jenkins (1975: 4)
concluded in his analysis of international
terrorism:
Terrorist attacks are often carefully choreographed
to attract the attention of the electronic media and
the international press. Taking and holding hos-
tages increases the drama. The hostages them-
selves often mean nothing to the terrorists.
Terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at
the actual victims. Terrorism is a theater.
Several terrorist organizations realized the
potential of mass-mediated terrorism in terms
of effectively reaching huge audiences.
Weimann and Winn (1994) examined 6,714
incidents of international terrorism from the
late 1960s to the early 1990s. The analysis
revealed a significant increase in terrorist
acts that apply media-oriented considerations
(in choice of victims, location, timing, form
of action, contact with media, etc.). No
wonder that Bell (1978: 89) argued, ‘It has
become more alluring for the frantic few to
appear on the world stage of television than
remain obscure guerrillas of the bush’. It is
clear that media-wise terrorists were plan-
ning their actions with the media as a major
consideration. They select targets, location
and timing, according to media preferences,
trying to satisfy the media criteria for news-
worthiness, the media timetables and dead-
lines and media access. They prepare visuals
for the media, such as video clips of their
actions, taped interviews and declarations
from perpetrators, films, press releases or
VNRs (video news releases). Modern terror-
ists are feeding the media, directly and indi-
rectly, with their propaganda material, often
disguised as news items.
ISIS’s propaganda has been described as
the most sophisticated and effective terror-
ist campaign. According to Aly et al. (2016),
the ISIS media strategy combined five nar-
ratives: (1) mercy (as opposed to brutality);
(2) victimhood (for example, collateral dam-
age blamed on the enemy); (3) war or military
gains; (4) belonging (appealing to especially
foreign recruits with friendship, security and
579
a sense of belonging); and (5) utopianism,
that is, not just talking about the caliphate
but enacting it. Thus, ISIS’s propaganda was
intended to appeal to a broad audience, not
only bloodthirsty fighters, which helps to
explain its recruitment success. In their study
of ‘terrorist theming’, Kinney et  al. (2018)
examined how the propaganda campaigns of
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
and ISIS maintained similar strategies of
signaling global illegitimacy while cultivat-
ing distinct themes of terrorism in an effort
to differentiate themselves from one another.
The findings suggest that terrorist organi-
zations use propaganda to signal distinct
organizational identity, even while broadly
operating under the umbrella identity of
Islamic fundamentalism.
Numerous studies have documented ter-
rorist success in reaching global audiences
through media-oriented strategy and tactics
(e.g., Archetti, 2012; Jenkins, 2003; Nacos,
1994, 2016; Norris et  al., 2003; Schmid,
1989; Tugwell, 2017; Wilkinson, 1997).
Research on media and terrorism in the
post-9/11 era revealed that modern terrorist
organizations are very much aware of stand-
ards and values governing media selection
of news and learned how to exploit these
norms to accomplish their objectives (e.g.,
Papacharissi and Oliveira, 2008). However,
terrorist attempts to channel their propa-
ganda to the mainstream mass media were
often blocked by the media’s gatekeepers.
The emergence of the Internet – the most
liberal, open and free channel of communi-
cation – provided terrorist propaganda with
the ideal platform. The Internet has signifi-
cantly expanded the opportunities for terror-
ists to secure publicity. Until the advent of the
Internet, terrorists’ hopes of winning public-
ity for their causes and activities depended on
attracting the attention of television, radio or
the print media. These traditional media have
‘selection thresholds’ (multistage processes
of editorial selection) that terrorists often
cannot reach. No such thresholds, of course,
exist on the terrorists’ own websites. The fact
580 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
that many terrorists now have direct con-
trol over the content of their message offers
further opportunities to shape how they are
perceived by different target audiences and to
manipulate their own image and the image of
their enemies.
WHEN TERRORISM MET THE
INTERNET
Paradoxically, the very decentralized net-
work of communication that the US security
services created out of fear of the Soviet
Union now serves the interests of the greatest
foe of the West’s security services since the
end of the Cold War: international terror. The
roots of the modern Internet are to be found
in the early 1970s, during the days of the
Cold War, when the US Department of
Defense was concerned about reducing the
vulnerability of its communication networks
to nuclear attack. The Defense Department
decided to decentralize the whole system by
creating an interconnected web of computer
networks. After twenty years of development
and use by academic researchers, the Internet
quickly expanded and changed its character
when it was opened up to commercial and
private users. However, with the enormous
growth in the size and use of the network,
utopian visions of the promise of the Internet
were challenged by the proliferation of por-
nographic and violent content on the web and
by the use of the Internet by extremist organi-
zations of various kinds. Groups with very
different political goals, but united in their
readiness to employ terrorist tactics, started
using the network to distribute their propa-
ganda, to communicate with their supporters,
to foster public awareness of and sympathy
for their causes and even to execute
operations.
The growing presence of modern terrorism
on the Internet is at the nexus of two key trends:
the democratization of communications driven
by user generated content on the Internet, and
the growing awareness of modern terrorists of
the potential of the Internet for their purposes.
Decentralized and providing almost perfect
anonymity, it cannot be subjected to control
or restriction and allows access to anyone
who wants it. Large or small, terrorist groups
started to post their own websites, using this
medium to spread propaganda, raise funds,
seduce, radicalize, recruit and train members,
communicate and conspire, plan and launch
attacks. In 1998, around half of the thirty
organizations designated as ‘Foreign Terrorist
Organizations’ under the US Antiterrorism
and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 main-
tained websites; by 2000, virtually all terrorist
groups had established their presence on the
Internet (Weimann, 2006). The Council on
Foreign Relations concluded its 2009 report
on online terrorism:
Terrorists increasingly are using the Internet as a
means of communication both with each other
and the rest of the world. By now, nearly everyone
has seen at least some images from propaganda
videos published on terrorist sites and rebroadcast
on the world’s news networks… The Internet is a
powerful tool for terrorists, who use online mes-
sage boards and chat rooms to share information,
coordinate attacks, spread propaganda, raise
funds, and recruit.3
Whom do the Internet terrorists target at their
sites? Analyses of the propaganda content of
terrorist websites suggested three different
audiences (Tsfati and Weimann, 2002;
Weimann, 2004; 2006):
• Current and potential supporters: Terrorist often
target their local and overseas supporters with
a site in the local language and will provide
detailed information about their activities and
internal politics of the organization, its allies and
its leaders.
• International public opinion. The international
publics, who are not directly involved in the
conflict but who may have some interest in
the issues involved, are courted with sites in
languages other than the local tongue. Most
sites offer links to versions in several languages.
Judging from the content of many of the sites, it
appears that foreign journalists are also targeted.
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
Press releases are often placed on the websites
in an effort to get the organization’s point of
view into the traditional media. The detailed
background information is also very useful for
international reporters.
• Enemy publics. Some terrorist sites make an
effort to demoralize the enemy by posting execu-
tions of captured enemies, by threatening attacks
and by fostering feelings of guilt about the
enemy’s conduct and motives. In the process,
they also seek to stimulate public debate in their
enemies’ states, to change public opinion, and to
weaken public support for the governing regime.
The proliferation of terrorist websites, forums
and chatrooms caused a growing concern
among governments, security forces and
counterterrorism organizations. Subsequently,
the terrorist sites were challenged by intelli-
gence and law enforcement agencies, counter
terrorism services and civil activists who
attacked them, forcing them to change their
URL frequently or to employ their own fire-
walls and protective measures such as
­password-accessed-only sites. Accessing
these sites became riskier and more difficult.
Consequently, to broaden their reach, Internet-
savvy terrorists have learned to use the newest
online platforms, commonly known as the
‘new media’ or ‘social media’.
TERRORIST MIGRATION TO SOCIAL
MEDIA
Social media depends on communication
technologies such as personal computers and/
or mobile technology and web-based net-
works to create highly interactive platforms
through which individuals and communities
share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-
generated content. Social media differentiates
from traditional/conventional media in many
aspects such as interactivity, reach, frequency,
usability, immediacy and permanence
(Morgan et al., 2012). They are comparatively
inexpensive and easily accessible. They enable
anyone to upload, download or access
581
information in an easy, user-friendly and fast
way. Traditional media, such as radio, televi-
sion or the press, are characterized as ‘one-to-
many’ communication, where the audience
might be virtually limitless, but a small cohort
of established institutions selectively dissemi-
nates information. Social media platforms, by
contrast, allow information consumers to also
act as communicators, yielding a vast expan-
sion in the number of information transmitters
present in the media landscape. This process
resulted in lowering the barriers to enter com-
munication markets by letting in small, dif-
fused sets of communicators and groups who
can easily share with others online news, pic-
tures and videos.
In recent years, these platforms grew in
popularity. By 2018, Facebook had over 2.2
billion active users, YouTube had 1.5 billion
active users, while Facebook Messenger and
WhatsApp follow behind with 1.3 billon users
each. These are the most popular platforms
but are most certainly not the only platforms
that allows users the chance to share their
thoughts, ideas and experience with every-
one. Other outlets include Twitter, Instagram,
QQ, WeChat, Weibu, Tumblr and many more.
Social network penetration worldwide is ever
increasing. In 2017, 71 percent of internet
users were social network users and these
figures are expected to grow. In 2019, it is
estimated that there will be around 2.77 bil-
lion social network users around the globe,
up from 2.46 billion in 2017. The increased
worldwide usage of smartphones and mobile
devices has opened up the possibilities of
mobile social networks with increased fea-
tures such as location-based services. Most
social networks are also available as mobile
social apps, whereas some networks have
been optimized for mobile internet browsing.
These trends were also noticed by terror-
ists, who quickly learned how to harness the
new social media for their purposes:
Today, 90% of terrorist activity on the Internet
takes place using social networking tools, be it
independent bulletin boards, Paltalk, or Yahoo!
eGroups. These forums act as a virtual firewall to
582 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
help safeguard the identities of those who partici-
pate, and they offer subscribers a chance to make
direct contact with terrorist representatives, to ask
questions, and even to contribute and help out the
cyberjihad. (Noguchi and Kohlmann, 2006).
The turn to social media followed. The main
motivation to use Facebook and other social
media was properly outlined by the terrorists
themselves in a Jihadi online forum calling
for a ‘Facebook Invasion’. While the identity
of the writer is unknown, the forum, al-
Faloja, which is password-protected, is a
very popular and effective Jihadi platform.
The posting noted that,
This [Facebook] is a great idea, and better than the
forums. Instead of waiting for people to [come to
you so you can] inform them, you go to them and
teach them! …[I] mean, if you have a group of
5,000 people, with the press of a button you [can]
send them a standardized message. I entreat you,
by God, to begin registering for Facebook as soon
as you [finish] reading this post. Familiarize your-
selves with it. This post is a seed and a beginning,
to be followed by serious efforts to optimize our
Facebook usage. Let’s start distributing Islamic
jihadi publications, posts, articles, and pictures.
Let’s anticipate a reward from the Lord of the
Heavens, dedicate our purpose to God, and help
our colleagues.4
Terrorists have good reasons to use social
media. First, these channels are by far the
most popular with their intended audience,
which allows terrorist organizations to be
part of the mainstream. Second, social media
channels are user-friendly, reliable and free.
Finally, social networking allows terrorists to
reach out to their specific target audiences
and virtually ‘knock on their doors’ – in con-
trast to older models of websites in which
terrorists had to wait for visitors to come to
them. Furthermore, the new social media
have technical advantages for terrorists: shar-
ing, uploading or downloading files and
videos no longer requires fast computers or
any computers for that matter; it no longer
requires sharing sites or savvy members
capable of uploading such videos. Rather,
smart phones and social media accounts are
all that is needed to instantly share material
in real time with tens of thousands of jihad-
ists. Thus, for example, on December 22,
2016, a message from the French-language
media division of the Islamic State (ISIS)
was published via the Telegram (an instant
message application that uses end-to-end
encryption-based technology) channel of
An-Nur Media Center. The post called all
followers to publish and share information in
order to take part in the ‘media war’:
As for you, O supporters of the Caliphate, O
brothers and sisters in Allah, do not wait for the
publications and communiques! Invoke Allah
without whom victories would not be possible.
Publish and share the information, and take com-
mand over the social networks and participate in
the media war.
What makes this post interesting (but not
necessarily unique) is the call for taking
‘command over the social networks’ as
opposed to waiting for publications and com-
muniques to arrive. This is just one example
of the way terrorists and extremists perceive
social media as important (if not vital) tools
to spread their agenda, and they are essential
for their cause like any other asset in the war
they wage.
Increasingly, terrorist groups and their
sympathizers are shifting their online pres-
ence from websites, chatrooms and forums
to social platforms (Ingram, 2017; Klausen,
2015). This shift was acknowledged by Adam
Gadahn, who headed al-Qaeda’s media wing,
Al-Sahab. In a March 1, 2013 interview
with Inspire, the online al-Qaeda magazine,
he noted the importance of American social
media companies, saying:
This is your day, so rise to the challenge and
become a part of history in the making… we must
make every effort to reach out to Muslims both
through new media like Facebook and Twitter…
and we should fully acquaint ourselves with both
the people to whom we are reaching out, as well
as the methodology and cause to which we are
inviting them, so that we are able to hone our
methods, refine our techniques, and spread our
message in an intelligent and educated fashion
accessible to all sectors, sections, levels and fac-
tions of the ummah.
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
In similar vein, Umar Patek, who master-
minded the October 2002 bombing in Bali
that left 202 dead, warned on June 7, 2012
during his trial: ‘…For those who do not
know how to commit jihad, they should
understand that there are several ways of
committing jihad’. He added: ‘This is not the
Stone Age… This is the Internet era, there is
Facebook, Twitter and others’.
Maybe the most significant and effec-
tive terrorist campaign on social media has
been launched by ISIS. The Sunni terrorist
group ISIS, which operated in Syria and Iraq,
launched a multi-platform online campaign
covering the entire range of social media.
ISIS has used social media to seduce, radical-
ize and recruit. In 2014, ISIS opened numer-
ous social media accounts for distributing its
videos, audios and images via various chan-
nels and in many languages, thereby avoiding
online censorship. As part of these intensive
propaganda efforts, it has launched Al-Hayat
Media, a new media branch specifically tar-
geting Western and non-Arabic speaking
audiences. Launched in May 2014, this new
media branch follows ISIS’s general media
strategy of distributing online videos, ‘news’
reports, articles and translated jihadi materi-
als. Its main Twitter account is in German,
but it also publishes materials in English
and French as well as other languages. For
instance, it posted a speech by ISIS spokes-
person Abu Muhammad Al-’Adnani trans-
lated into seven languages (English, Turkish,
Dutch, French, German, Indonesian and
Russian). Following the aggressive ISIS
offensive in Iraq in June 2014, Twitter
closed down many official ISIS and pro-
ISIS accounts, including the main accounts
of Al-Hayat Media, in German, English and
French, but these were soon replaced by new
Twitter accounts. The recruitment of thou-
sands of fighters from European and North
American countries, as revealed in their
active presence in Syria and Iraq, indicates
the success of ISIS’s online campaign.
On Twitter, ISIS was very active and
dynamic. For example, under the hashtag
583
#AllEyesOnIsis, ISIS tried to appeal to
Muslim youth, scare ISIS’s enemies on the
ground and intimidate the rest of the world.
A Twitter campaign entitled ‘One Billion
Muslims to Support the ISIS’ was launched
on June 13, 2014. From the six re-tweets
and four favorites from the initial post, the
campaign has grown to encompass content-
shared hundreds of times an hour. On Twitter,
the hashtag has been shared over 9,500 times
since it was first introduced. Besides Twitter,
the campaign includes video contributions
hosted on YouTube along with activity on the
Facebook social networking site. Among the
Facebook activity devoted to the campaign,
a Facebook ‘causes’ page using the hashtag
had gathered hundreds of ‘likes’ since being
established on June 16, 2014.
THE PERILS OF TERRORISTS IN
SOCIAL MEDIA
A 2010 Department of Homeland Security
report announced that extremists were focus-
ing on Facebook as a way to identify sympa-
thizers and to disseminate instructions (Allen,
2010). Additionally, Katz and Devon (2014)
argued that YouTube ‘has become a signifi-
cant platform for jihadist groups and support-
ers, fostering a thriving subculture of jihadists
who use YouTube to share propaganda, com-
municate with each other, and recruit new
individuals to the jihadist cause’. Later, ter-
rorist groups learned to use new social media,
including Flickr and Instagram (Weimann,
2014, 2015). In his testimony before the US
House of Representatives Committee on
Foreign Affairs, Berger (2015) argued:
Jihadists have figured out how to use social media
to make an impact, even though their numbers are
minuscule in comparison to the overall user base,
with Islamic State, more commonly known as ISIS
or ISIL, leading the way. Its highly organized social
media campaign uses deceptive tactics and shows
a sophisticated understanding of how such net-
works operate.
584 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Terrorist use of social media poses several
potentially serious threats to national secu-
rity as well as to civil liberties. First, social
media allows terrorist groups to control their
psychological campaigns by posting videos,
texts, analysis and commentary. In fact, ‘the
traditional media loses its monopoly on cov-
ering and interpreting these incidents and
gives terrorist groups the ability to convey
their messages directly-an option not gener-
ally provided by conventional media sources’
(Knox, 2014: 300). Although the traditional
media sometimes publishes terrorist mate-
rial, the propaganda is generally part of the
message rather than the message. For terror-
ist propaganda, the open, uncensored and
uncontrolled social media are an ideal
platform.
Second, social media provides terrorist
organizations with a channel to huge audi-
ences on a global scale. Social media is
uniquely dangerous because it allows the
terrorist group to reach individuals and com-
munities who might not otherwise access
such radical contents. This online reach
includes ‘diaspora’ communities, alienated
and frustrated individuals in Western socie-
ties, and individuals who may come across
the propaganda accidentally, for example,
by searching for ‘moderate’ material or by
simply clicking on links posted by friends or
friends of friends. Therefore, social media
‘lowers the barrier of access’ to terror-
ist propaganda and extends its reach to an
unprecedented range.
Thirdly, terrorist groups can use social
media to find and profile individuals who
might be particularly vulnerable to their
propaganda, thus making their recruitment
efforts more effective. A 2012 report issued
by the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime explains:
Terrorist propaganda is often tailored to appeal to
vulnerable and marginalized groups in society. The
process of recruitment and radicalization com-
monly capitalizes on an individual’s sentiments of
injustice, exclusion or humiliation. Propaganda
may be adapted to account for demographic
f­actors, such as age or gender, as well as social or
economic circumstances (United Nations, 2012: 5).
Social media provide almost unlimited infor-
mation available about any given person.
Such information helps the recruiter individ-
ualize his/her efforts. Moreover, the com-
bined selection of certain social media and
profiling their audiences allows for terrorist
use of ‘narrowcasting’.
NARROWCASTING
An emerging trend in online terrorist propa-
ganda, ‘narrowcasting’, is a concept based on
the postmodern idea that mass audiences do
not exist. Narrowcasting refers to the dis-
semination of information (usually via
Internet, radio or television) to a narrow
audience, not to the broader public at-large.
Also called ‘niche marketing’ or ‘target mar-
keting’, narrowcasting involves aiming
media messages at specific segments of the
public, defined by characteristics such as
values, preferences, demographic attributes
or location. Terrorists have learned about this
new concept and now apply it in their cyber-
campaigns. Instead of ‘one-website-for-all’,
Internet-savvy terrorists target specific
­subpopulations, including children, women,
‘lone wolves’, overseas communities, or
diasporas and imprisoned fans and
followers.
The unmistakable growth in the participa-
tion of women and youth in terrorist activity
along with the evident growth in persuasive
online messages targeting these groups may
provide alarming signals of the narrowcast-
ing tactic’s success. Just as marketing com-
panies can view members’ information to
find potential customers and select products
to promote to them, terrorist groups can view
people’s profiles to decide whom to target
and how to approach each individual. Social
media allow terrorists to use this targeting
strategy of narrowcasting more effectively.
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
On social media, messages are tailored
to match the profile of a particular social
group or social category. These methods
enable terrorists to target youth especially.
Counterterrorism expert Anthony Bergin says
that terrorists view these youth-dominated
websites as recruitment tools ‘in the same
way a pedophile might look at those sites to
potentially groom would-be victims’.5 Many
social media users join interest groups, and
these groups enable terrorists to target users
whom they might be able to manipulate.
These users often accept people as ‘friends’
on the social media site whether or not they
know them, thereby giving strangers access
to personal information and photos. Some
people even communicate with the strangers
and establish virtual friendships. Terrorists
can therefore apply the narrowcasting strat-
egy used on the broader Internet to specific
and more personal social networking. They
can tailor their name, accompanying default
image and information on a group message
board to fit the profile of a particular social
group. Interest groups also provide terrorists
with a list of predisposed recruits or sym-
pathizers. In the same way that marketing
groups can view a member’s information to
decide which products to target on their web-
pages, terrorist groups can view people’s pro-
files to decide whom they are going to target
and how they should configure the message.
The use of narrowcasting combined with
social media platforms is evident in the case
of recruiting foreigners to fight for ISIS
in Syria and Iraq. While in the past, jihadi
groups published most of their materials on
traditional media outlets such as websites,
chatrooms and forums, ISIS has pioneered
the use of social media as the main means
for recruitment of foreigners, especially from
North America and Europe. Very often ISIS
uses foreign fighters recruited from a certain
Western country to appeal to potential recruits
from their homeland. Thus, for example, in
a video posted on December 20, 2014 on
the pro-ISIS jihadi forum Alplatformmedia.
com, a masked and armed ISIS fighter calls
585
on Muslims in that country to either make
‘hijra’ (immigrate) to the Caliphate (i.e., the
parts of Syria and Iraq controlled by ISIS) or
to ‘blow up France’ and kill unbelievers by
any means: with a gun, a rock or a knife. The
fighter speaks in French with a North African
accent, and his statements are subtitled in
Arabic.
On October 15, 2014, ISIS, via its
Al-Hayat Media, released a video featuring
several foreign fighters, including a British
national named Abu Abdullah, a French
national named Abdul Wadoud and a German
national named Abu Dauoud. The 9 minute
and 14 second video, entitled, ‘Wait. We
Too Are Waiting’, shows the three men sit-
ting in Dabiq, a town in Aleppo, Syria, and
addressing speeches in their native tongues.
Abu Abdullah boasted that ISIS will kill
every single soldier sent against them and
declared: ‘We will chop off the heads of
the Americans, chop off the heads of the
French, chop off the heads of whoever you
may bring’. Also, remarking on the presence
of foreign fighters, he stated: ‘Know this,
that it is not just one American, it is not just
one European that is here. Know that we are
many and we are many in numbers and we
will take your lives, [Allah willing, Allah
permitting]’. On December 9, 2014, ISIS
released a German chant promoting both
ISIS and allegiance to its leader, Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi. The English-subtitled video
was distributed on Twitter and jihadi social
media, stating: ‘Mujahidin from all over the
whole world are here / Nothing will stop us /
We are fighting for the cause of Allah / Our
State is victorious!’ Footage shows fight-
ers pledging allegiance to Baghdadi. Both
Abdul Wadoud and Abu Dauoud gave similar
messages. Additionally, Abu Dauoud urged
German Muslims to come join the ISIS in the
battlefield, and Abdul Wadoud addressed a
word to French President Francois Hollande,
telling him: ‘We shall take revenge for every
drop of blood spilt as a result of your actions.
Because the Muslims who have arrived from
France (to the Islamic State)’.
586 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
The success of these online recruitment
efforts was impressive: more than 30,000
foreign fighters, 3,000 of them from Western
countries, have joined the war in Syria within
3 years. Many of the Westerners were females
and youngsters. Social media outlets were a
powerful tool for luring these people into these
groups. Many of the recruits may have personal
motives to join ISIS but social media platforms
provided the initial contact, the appeals, the
directions and the final instructions.
COUNTERING ONLINE TERRORISM
So what can be done to counter the online
persuasive propaganda campaigns launched
by terrorist groups? It seems obvious now
that the Internet and online platforms have
evolved into a unique and significant arena in
which terrorist propaganda plays out. Violent
extremists, Jihadists and terrorist groups have
recognized this and become adept at using the
new technology to their advantage. What can
governments and other actors do to counter
their efforts? The virtual war between terror-
ists and counterterrorism forces and agencies
is certainly a vital, dynamic, and ferocious
one. Government agencies and some private
contractors have been fighting back: cracking
terrorist passwords, monitoring suspicious
websites and social media (and cyberattack-
ing others) and planting bogus information.
Interest in countering online terrorism has
also brought together researchers from around
the world and from various disciplines,
including psychology, security, communica-
tions and computer sciences, to develop tools
and techniques to respond to the challenge
(Sinai, 2011).
In a 2014 Los Angeles Times op-ed on
‘Future Terrorists’, Jane Harman, president
and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, argued that ‘we need to
employ the best tools we know of to counter
radicalizing messages and to build bridges to
the vulnerable.… Narratives can inspire people
to do terrible things, or to push back against
those extremist voices’ (Harman, 2014). To
run such a strategy, a political internet cam-
paign against terrorism must use tactics that
have proven to be successful and that have
counterterrorism applications. Finding such
effective tactics was at the heart of discussions
at the January 2011 Riyadh Conference on the
Use of the Internet to Counter the Appeal of
Extremist Violence. Co-hosted by the United
Nations Counterterrorism Implementation
Task Force and the Naif Arab University for
Security Sciences in Riyadh in partnership
with the Center on Global Counterterrorism
Cooperation, the conference brought together
around 150 policymakers, experts and prac-
titioners from the public sector, international
organizations, industries, academia and the
media (United Nations Counterterrorism
Implementation Task Force, 2012). The con-
ference focused on identifying good practices
in using the Internet to undermine the appeal of
terrorism, expose its lack of legitimacy and its
negative impact, and undermine the credibil-
ity of its messengers. Key themes included the
importance of identifying the target audience,
creating effective messages, identifying cred-
ible messengers, and using appropriate media
to reach vulnerable communities. Among the
recommendations were:
• Promote counternarratives through all relevant
media channels.
• Make available a counternarrative whenever a
new extremist message appears on Facebook,
YouTube or similar outlets.
• Consider selective take-down of extremist narra-
tives that have the elements of success.
• Ensure that counternarratives include messages
of empathy/understanding of political and social
conditions facing the target audience, rather
than limiting the counternarrative to lecturing
or retribution.
• Offer an opportunity for engagement in crafting
and delivering counternarratives to young people
who mirror the ‘Internet Brigade’ members of
radical groups.
• Support the establishment of civil society net-
works of interested groups, such as women
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
against violent extremism, parents against suicide
bombers or schools against extremism. (United
Nations Counterterrorism Implementation Task
Force, 2012: 81)
In his review of countermeasures, Neumann
(2013) suggests and examines three ways to
counter terrorism online. The first one com-
bines approaches that are aimed at reducing
the supply of terrorist content online. However,
removing terrorist content from the Internet
and restricting freedom of speech are not only
the least desirable, they are also the least
effective. Instead, he argues, governments
should play a more energetic role in reducing
the demand for radicalization and violent
extremist messages by directly challenging
the extremist narratives and by promoting
awareness and education of young people. In
the short term, the third way is to exploit their
online communications to gain intelligence
and gather evidence in the most comprehen-
sive and systematic fashion possible.
The attempts to reduce terrorist presence
on social media led to growing pressure on
the companies providing these platforms. The
pressure yielded willingness of these compa-
nies to remove certain contents but the efforts
seemed rather limited and futile. For example,
Facebook’s policies prohibit material that sup-
ports or advances terrorism. The company’s
definition of the term, published in April 2018
for the first time, includes a ban on nongov-
ernmental organizations that use violence to
achieve political, religious or ideological aims.
It specifies that such groups include religious
extremists, white supremacists and militant
environmental groups. Indeed, Facebook has
tried to take down pages associated with US
designated terrorist groups. In 2014, within
hours of Bloomberg Businessweek inquir-
ing about pages for Hezbollah, Facebook
removed those for Al-Manar, Hezbollah news
site Al-Ahed and the Islamic Resistance in
Lebanon, a charity associated with Hezbollah.
All three, however, quickly reappeared with
tweaks to make them seem new. At the end
of April 2018, Al-Ahed’s website linked to an
587
Arabic Facebook page with more than 33,000
followers. Content on the page included a
video of masked snipers targeting Israeli
soldiers. Another Al-Ahed Facebook page
had more than 47,000 followers, and one in
English had 5,000.
In April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg declared
to Congress and investors that Facebook’s
artificial intelligence programs are turning
the tide against extremism on his site. Yet,
at least a dozen US-designated terror groups
maintain a presence on Facebook, a review
by Bloomberg Businessweek shows (Silver
and Frier, 2018). That includes Hamas
and Hezbollah in the Middle East, Boko
Haram in West Africa and the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The
terror groups are rallying supporters with
everything from gruesome photos of death
caused by their enemies to quotidian news
about social services they offer. Several can
be found simply by typing their names into
Facebook’s search bar in English or, in some
cases, in Arabic or Spanish. Some of the
groups proudly link to their Facebook pages
on their home websites.
Indeed, within several years, all terrorist
groups added social media such as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and others to their
online platforms (Weimann, 2015). However,
there are some disadvantages and risks
involved: terrorists may be identified online,
their intentions may be revealed and their con-
tents may be removed by social media com-
panies. Consequently, terrorists learned how
to respond to these risks and apply sophisti-
cated counter measures to avoid identification
or removal of material. One of these measures
was the transition to the Dark Net.
GOING DARKER: THE APPEAL OF THE
DARK NET
The terms Deep Web, Deep Net, Invisible
Web or Dark Net refer to the content on the
World Wide Web that is not indexed by
588 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
standard search engines. The deepest layers
of the Deep Web, a segment known as the
Dark Net, contain content that has been
intentionally concealed including illegal and
anti-social information. The Dark Net can be
defined as the portion of the Deep Web that
can only be accessed through specialized
browsers. A recent study found that 57% of
the Dark Net is occupied by illegal content
like pornography, illicit finances, drug hubs,
weapons trafficking, counterfeit currency,
terrorist communication and much more
(Moore and Rid, 2016). Probably the most
notorious example of these activities can be
seen in The Silk Road. In October 2013, the
FBI shut down the first version of this drug
market and arrested its owner Ross William
Ulbricht. The Dark Net has been associated
with the infamous WikiLeaks, as well as
Bitcoin, said to be the currency of the Dark
Net. Of course, dissident political groups,
civil rights activists and investigative journal-
ists in oppressive countries have also been
known to use the Dark Net to communicate
and organize clandestinely.
Terrorists, too, have discovered the advan-
tages of the Dark Net and started using its
secretive platforms (Nastiti, 2016, Weimann,
2018). Although it has long been assumed
that terrorist attacks are coordinated in a
secret network, solid evidence of terror-
ist use of Dark Net platforms has only been
attained in 2013. In August 2013, the US
National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted
encrypted communications between al-
Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri and Nasir
Al-Wuhaysi, the head of Yemen-based al-
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The Institute
for National Security Studies revealed that,
for about a decade, the communication
between leaders of the worldwide al-Qaeda
network was at least partially leveraged on
the Dark Net (Rosner et al., 2013).
Following the November 2015 attacks
in Paris, ISIS has turned to the Dark Net to
spread news and propaganda in an appar-
ent attempt to protect the identities of the
group’s supporters and safeguard its content
from hacktivists. The move comes after hun-
dreds of websites associated with ISIS were
taken down as part of the Operation Paris
(OpParis) campaign launched by the amor-
phous hacker collective Anonymous. ISIS’s
media outlet, Al-Hayat Media Center, posted
a link and explanations on how to get to their
new Dark Net site on a forum associated with
ISIS. The announcement was also distributed
on Telegram, the encrypted communication
application used by the group. Telegram is
an application for sending text and multime-
dia messages on Android, iOS and Windows
devices. Telegram is so confident of its secu-
rity that it twice offered a $300,000 reward to
the first person who could crack its encryp-
tion. The messages shared links to a Tor ser-
vice with a ‘.onion’ address, more commonly
known as a website on the Dark Net. The site
contains an archive of ISIS propaganda mate-
rials, including its documentary-style film,
The Flames of War. The site also includes a
link to the terrorist group’s private messaging
portal on Telegram.
In April 2018, a report, entitled ‘Terror in
the Dark’, summarizes the findings of a study
conducted by the Henry Jackson Society,
revealing the growing use of the Dark Net by
terrorist groups (Malik, 2018). The findings
illustrate how terrorists and extremists are
creating growing numbers of safe havens on
the Dark Net to plot future attacks, raise funds
and recruit new followers. Weimann’s (2018)
report ‘Going Darker? On the Challenges of
Dark Net Terrorism’ reveals how terrorists
are now using the Dark Net as a reservoir of
propaganda: the removal of extremist and ter-
rorist content from the surface web increases
the risk that material of terrorist organiza-
tions may be lost. Much of this material later
resurfaces on the Dark Net. Moreover, ter-
rorists are now using the Dark Net to com-
municate in a safer way than ever before. In
March 2016, the French Interior Minister,
Bernard Cazeneuve argued that the Dark Net
is extensively being used by the terrorists. In
a meeting of the National Assembly, he said
that those who have been responsible for the
 The Evolution of Terrorist Propaganda in Cyberspace
recent terrorist strikes in Europe have been
making use of the deep web and communi-
cating through encrypted messages.
Recently, ISIS and other jihadist groups
have used new online applications that allow
users to broadcast their messages to an
unlimited number of members via encrypted
mobile phone apps such as Telegram. Since
it went live on August 14, 2013, Telegram
has seen major success, both among ordi-
nary users as well as terrorists. But it was not
until its launch of ‘channels’ in September
2015 that the Terrorism Research & Analysis
Consortium (TRAC) began to witness a mas-
sive migration from other social media sites,
most notably Twitter, to Telegram (TRAC,
2015). On September 26, 2015, just four
days after Telegram rolled out channels, ISIS
media operatives on Twitter started advertis-
ing the group’s own channel dubbed Nashir,
which translates to ‘Distributor’ in English.
A recent special report on Telegram revealed
that ‘since September 2015, we have wit-
nessed a significant increase in the use of
the Telegram software (software for sending
encrypted instant messages) by the Islamic
State and al-Qaeda. In March 2016 alone,
700 new channels identified with the Islamic
State were opened’ (Barak, 2016).
While many of the channels have Islamic
State affiliations, there are an increasing
number of channels from other major play-
ers in the global jihadi world: these include
AQAP, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya (ASL) and
Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) and Jaysh al-Islam, both
in Syria. AQAP launched its own Telegram
channel on September 25, 2015 and the
Libyan Ansar al-Shari’ah group created its
channel the following day. According to the
TRAC report, membership growth for each
discrete channel is staggering. Within a
week’s time, one single Islamic State chan-
nel went from 5,000 members to well over
10,000. When asked about it, Telegram’s
CEO Pavel Durov conceded that ISIS indeed
uses Telegram to ensure the security of its
communications, but added: ‘I think that pri-
vacy, ultimately, and our right for privacy is
589
more important than our fear of bad things
happening, like terrorism’.6
CONCLUSION
Terrorists were and will always be reliant on
propaganda. Throughout history, terrorists
used the available media to launch their
propaganda campaigns. The changes in the
communication technologies and media plat-
forms were all followed by changes in media
strategy and tactics of terrorist communica-
tion. From leaflets and printed press to
broadcasting, from theatrical productions to
YouTube videos, from chatrooms to the Dark
Net, media-savvy terrorists learned how to
apply, adopt and operate them all. While the
platforms changed, even more rapidly in
recent years, terrorist campaigns and mes-
sages remained the same. The deadly mix-
ture of psychological warfare, extreme
depiction of violence, demonstration of ideo-
logical and religious devotion, persuasive
rhetoric and charismatic iconic leaders is the
basic formula of the terrorist propaganda
machinery.
Looking at the future, there are two
approaches for countering terrorist propa-
ganda: the content-based approach and the
technology-based approach. The content-
based perspective relies on countering
terrorist narratives. More than an armed
confrontation, the war on terrorism is
being played in the realm of narratives and
it involves ideas, values and images. The
studies on terrorist online propaganda and
radicalization identify the terrorist narra-
tives being strategically deployed by ISIS
or al-Qaeda and their affiliates, Jihadists
and other militant groups. These narratives
are used to fuel extremism and attract new
recruits. In order to develop a strategy and
to identify appropriate tactics to counter
terrorist narratives, it is necessary to gain a
deeper understanding of the role these narra-
tives play in the seduction and persuasion of
590 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
target audiences. Thus, it appears that one of
the most effective ways for Western democ-
racies to counter terrorism propaganda is by
monitoring the emerging terrorist narratives
and launching credible counter-narratives.
As to the technology-based approach, we
have to assume that terrorists will continue
to adopt emerging new communication
platforms. Thus, governments and counter-
terrorism agencies should promote the col-
laboration between the public and private
sectors. Such partnerships have been dis-
cussed in narrow ways in the scholarly liter-
ature with regard to homeland security (such
as emergency management or critical infra-
structure protection). However, as Busch
et al. noted (2012: 1), ‘the scholarly litera-
ture has not yet caught up to the practitioner
understanding of public-private partner-
ships’ prominence in homeland security’.
The public-private partnerships hold great
promise, especially regarding the develop-
ment of future online platforms that will be
pre-designed to minimize the potential for
terrorist use and abuse.
Notes
1  Ayman al-Zawahiri, cited in ‘Al Qaeda letter
called ‘chilling’’, CNN International, October 12,
2005.
2  Abu Abdullah al-Maghribi, ISIS defector, cited
in ‘Inside the surreal world of the Islamic State’s
propaganda machine’, The Washington Post,
November 20, 2015.
3  http://www.cfr.org/terrorism-and-technology/
terrorists-internet/p10005
4  Cited by Department of Homeland Security, ‘Ter-
rorist Use of Social Networking Facebook Case
Study’, in Public Intelligence (December 5, 2010) At:
https://publicintelligence.net/ufouoles-dhs-terro
rist-use-of-social-networking-facebook-case-
study/
5  ‘Facebook Terrorism Investigation,’ The Advertiser
(Adelaide, Australia), April 5, 2008.
6  Cited in the Washington Post, November 19, 2015.
URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
morning-mix/wp/2015/11/19/founder-of-app-
used-by-isis-once-said-we-shouldnt-feel-guilty-
on-wednesday-he-banned-their-accounts/
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 Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures and tables.

9/11, 65, 261–2, 500 al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 578, 588

Amazon, 523
Aaj Tak Live, 228 American Sugar Refining (ASR), 536
Abe, Shinzo, 424, 425, 429, 430, 435, 436 amplification, 90–1
Abe 2.0, 431 analytical propaganda, 130
Abenomics, 433 anarchism, 8, 9, 10
Abrahms, M., 176, 179 Andersen, J., 72
Abu Hamzah, 569, 570, 571 Andropov, Yuri, 200
accessibility, 115 Angkar, 394
action/conversion, 234 anonymity, 114–15, 119
Active Change Foundation (ACF), 361 Anonymous (hacker group), 113
advertising, 139, 233, 250, 350 anthropological imperialism, 375
behavioural advertising, 89 Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning
dark advertising, 541, 543–4n (Grabo), 256–7
negative advertising (see attack videos) anti-colonialism, 377–82, 400
affect, 72–3, 79–80 anti-communist propaganda see Greece: Civil War
affective feedback loop, 78 anti-propagandists, 267–70
Affonco, Denise, 394 see also counterpropaganda
Affordable Care Act (ACA), 520–1 Antúnez, J.C. and Tellidis, I., 360–1
Afghanistan, 38–9, 39–40, 44–5, 48, 340 Aoi, Chiyuki, 429
agenda-setting, 207 Applebaum, A., 296
agitation, 191 Arabic language videos, 325, 326–9, 326, 329
agitative propaganda, 192–3, 352, 355–6, 357–9 Arafat, Yasser, 273, 275
agitators, 197 Arakam Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), 395
Al Shabab, 241–2 Arendt, Hanna, 312
al-Assad, Asma, 131 Argentina, 477
al-Assad, Bashar, 129, 131, 133 Aristotle, 156–7, 159
Alexander II, Tsar, 4, 16 Armstrong, M., 289
al-Finlandiyyah, Umm Khalid, 556, 557–8 art, 194, 198
Al-Hayat Media, 583, 585, 588 Arudo, Debito, 428
Alliance Internationale de la Democratie Asahara, Shoko, 433
Socialiste, 11 Asahi Shimbun, 424, 432, 435
al-Muhajir, Abu Hamzah, 569, 570, 571 Ashcraft, B., 434
al-Muhajirāh, Umm Sumayyah, 556, 557, 558, Ashcroft, Michael, 536, 537
559–60, 561 Askew, Marc, 394
al-Nusra Front, 231 Asquith, Herbert, 267
al-Qaeda, 358, 361 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 371,
aims, narratives and lines of persuasion, 241–2 396–400, 400–1
dark net, 588 Assyriology, 142
media, 578, 579 astroturfing, 309
propaganda videos, 231, 232 atrocity propaganda, 22–3, 56
Saddam Hussein, 359 anti-propagandists, 267–9
Southeast Asia, 395–6 contemporary legacy, 269–70
United States, 261 architects of, 27–8
war with ISIS, 328 concept and theory, 23–6
Alqassam Brigades, 129, 130–1 impact on Australian population, 30–4
alternative narratives, 62, 294–5 international law as, 28–30
Aly, A., 579 Nazis, 34–5
594 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

post-World War II, 35 Betz, David, 48, 50, 52

the ‘rape’ of Belgium, 265–7 Bevin, Ernest, 255
attack videos, 326–9 bias, 306, 513
attention/exposure, 233 cognitive bias, 117
Attlee, Clement, 254, 255, 268 confirmation bias, 56, 64, 75, 76, 77–8,
audience see fake audience; target audiences 260, 292
audience amplification, 90–1 disconfirmation bias, 292
audience engagement see participatory propaganda; media bias, 309–11
user participation bias blind spot, 293–4
audience satisfaction, 77–8 bidirectional asymmetric model, 140–1
see also customer experience bidirectional symmetric model, 141
audience segmentation, 88–90, 342–3 big data, 184–5, 539
see also narrowcasting Bin Ladin, Osama, 327
austerity, 533, 534 biological warfare propaganda, 336, 337–9, 345–6
Australia biopower, 147
atrocity propaganda, 22–3 Bjola, C., 184
architects of, 27–8 Black, Jay, 246
concept and theory, 23–6 Black, Jeremy, 40, 374
impact on population, 30–4 Blair, Tony, xxvi, 450
international law as, 28–30 Blinder, S. and Richards, L., 533, 534
authoritarian propaganda, 523 blogs, 58, 174
authoritarianism, xxv microblogs, 179
Blumer, Herbert, 113
Bad News for Refugees (Philo), 534 Boczkowski, Pablo, 308
Badsey, Stephen, 24 Bogdanov, Alexander, 194
Bakunin, Mikhail, 8, 10, 11, 13 Boiry, P.A., 138
Balfour Declaration, 48 Boko Haram, 230–1, 241–2, 339–40, 345, 587
Bande Noire, 13 Bolivia, 480, 483, 484, 485–6, 485
Bandura, A., 88 Bologna rising, 13
Banks, Aaron, 536, 540 Bolsheviks, 191, 192, 195, 197, 251, 252
Bannon, Steve, 63, 537, 540, 543 Bolt, N., 352
barbarism, 24 Booth, K., 357
Barnett, Michael, 26 Borger, M., 92
BBC, 258, 429–30, 435, 446 Botometer, 118
Becoming Mulan? Female Western Migrants to ISIS bots, 107, 108, 111–13, 503
(Hoyle), 551 Boudreau, B., 45, 46, 52
Begin, Menachem, 279 Bourdieu, P., 148
behavioural advertising, 89 Bournazos, S., 463–4
Belarus, 498 boyd, d., 118
Belgium Boyd-Barrett, Oliver, 311
atrocity propaganda, 24, 25, 26, 56 Bradshaw, S. and Howard, P., 107, 113
architects of, 27–8 Brandtzaeg, P.B., 177, 179–80
Australian atrocity propaganda, 30–4 Brantner, C., 130
international law as, 28–30 Brazil, 477
German invasion, 24, 262–3 Breed, London, 423, 424–5, 427
the ‘rape’ of Belgium, 265–7 Breitbart, 63
Bell, D., 191 Brexit see EU referendum
Bell, J.B., 579 Briant, E.L., 350
Belt and Road Initiative, 409 Briggs, Harold, 385
Benkler, Y., 91, 127 Brigid and the Cub (Turner), 32–3
Berezovsky, Boris, 495 British Malaya, 375–6
Berger, J.M., 583 Brousse, Paul, 11
Berkman, Alexander, 4 Bruce, Mary Grant, 32
Berlusconi, Silvio, 60, 66 Bruntz, George, 23
Bernays, Edward L., 137, 138, 143, 352, 444, 510, 511 Bryce Report, 27, 29, 263–4, 265, 266, 268
Berry, M., 534 Buitenhuis, Peter, 26
Bertelsmann Japan Report, 430 Burkhard, Marat, 109–10
 INDEX 595

Burma, 383 journalists, 519

Busch, N., 590 Mao Zedong, 68
Bush, George, 60 Russia, 501, 502
Bush, George W., 48, 60, 66, 500 sockpuppets, 110
Buzzfeed, 516 in US media, 206
China Digital Times, 417
Cabot, John, 374 Chinese Dream, 405–18
Cairns Post, 34 19th CPC Congress, 410–11
Caliphates: Women and the Appeal of Islamic State current situation and predicament, 413–17
(Rafiq and Malik), 552 development, 406–10
Cambodia, 380–1, 383, 393–4, 398 propaganda to policy, 411–13
Cambridge Analytica, 64, 89 Chomsky, N., 352
Cameron, David, 362, 536 Chouliaraki, L. and Lissas, A., 567
Cameroon, 519 Christianity, 215
Canada, 95–9 Churchill, Winston, 467
Canalejas Méndez, José, 4 Cialdini, R.B., 339
Cánovas del Castillo, Antonio, 4 Cicero, 157
capitalism, 144, 380 cigarette industry, 59
Carlos I, King of Portugal, 4 cinema, 33–4, 113, 198
Carnot, M.F.S., 4 citizen journalism, 92
cartographical imperialism, 374 citizens as content producers, 184
cash loans, 230–1, 339–40, 345 see also user participation
Castells, M., 147 Clarke, Edward, 27
Castro, Fidel, 208 Clarke, H., 534
Catholic Church, 139–40, 372, 467, 470, 510 class-consciousness, 194
Catholic Press, The, 33 climate change, 60
Cazeneuve, Bernard, 588–9 Clinton, Hilary
censorship, 194, 197, 208, 216, 297, 316–17, 416–17 Pizzagate, 65, 76, 77, 303
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Presidential election 2016, 63
Communications (CSCC), 324 fake news, 309
Digital Outreach Team (DOT), 324, media coverage, 514
327–33, 332 participatory propaganda, 94
center of gravity, 224, 232, 237n rhetoric, 515
Chadwick, A., 178, 180 Twitter, 512
character assassination (CA), 189–201 Twitter, 515
in Soviet propaganda, 189, 190–2 CNN, 516
motives and targets, 195–7 CNN effect, 446
role of the media, 197–8 Cockburn, P., 449, 453
strategies, 192–5 co-conspiracy, 66–7
violence, 198–200 see also participatory propaganda; post-truth:
theoretical framework, 189–90 collective reinforcement of
charisma, 148 Code of Athens, 139
Chávez, Hugo, 477, 479, 480, 481, 483, 484, 486–7 code of practice, 317
Chechnya, 495, 496, 500 coercion, 190
chemical weapons attack, 448 cognitive bias, 117
media coverage, 449–2 cognitive clutter, 226
Chen, Adrian, 105–6 cognitive dissonance, 78
Chicago Eight, 17 cognitive domain, 38
children’s books, 32–3 Cold War
China biological weapons propaganda, 337–9
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASE- censorship, 208
AN), 398–9 Greece, 459–73
blogs, 174 normalization process, 466–71
Cambodia, 393 state of emergency propaganda, 461–6
Cold War, 337 Internet, 580
Communist Party, 58–9, 189 propaganda and disinformation, 253–7, 308
computational propaganda, 181 South Korea, 211
596 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA
Soviet propaganda, 196, 286–7
US counterpropaganda, 316
Collyns, D., 483
colonialism, 371, 373–7
see also anti-colonialism; postcolonialism
Columbian Chemicals, 105–6, 112
Columbus, Christopher, 374
comfort women, 423–5, 427, 428
Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC), 424,
438n
commercial propaganda see advertising
Commission on the Responsibility of the
Authors of the War, 267, 270
communication, 52, 141, 143
counterterrorism, 323–33
mediatisation of, 72
political, 166–7, 184–5
populist, 476–89
strategic, 41–2, 144, 566–74
see also strategic narratives
communications technologies, 5, 7
see also information and communication tech-
nologies (ICT)
Communist International (Comintern), 193
Communist Youth League (CYL), 409
computational propaganda, 87–8, 105–19, 167
bots, 107, 108, 111–13, 503
China, 181
content analysis, 183–4
definitions, 107, 183
fake audience, 107
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 106
reflections on next steps, 114–19
sockpuppets, 107, 108–11, 113
trolls, 108–9
see also digital propaganda; viral propaganda
confirmation bias, 56, 64, 75, 76, 77–8, 258, 292
conflictual process problem, 226
Confucianism, 432
confusion, 59
conspiracy theories, 64
constituencies, 146
content analysis, 171–86
big data, 184–5
dark web, 227
limits, 181–3
as a methodological tool, 172–3
new challenges in digital environments, 183–4
in political communication research, 173
in propaganda studies, 173–81, 175–8
social media, 227
conversion, 234
Cook, J. and Lewandowsky, S., 294, 295
Coombs, W.T. and Holladay, S., 146
Corey, Robin, 336–7
Corman, S., 48
Corman, S.R. and Schiefelbein, J.S., 360
corporate propaganda, 138, 148–9
ontology, 142–5
structural dimension, 145–8
see also public relations
corporate strategy, 143–4
Correa, Rafael, 477, 479, 480, 481, 482–3, 484, 486
Cortazzi, Hugh, 427
Costa, Andrea, 13
Couldry, N. and Hepp, A., 72, 73
Council on Foreign Relations, 296
counterpropaganda, 315–16
biological warfare propaganda, 336–9, 345–6
fear appeals, 343–5
peace marketing as, 359–3
see also anti-propagandists
Counterpunch, 311
counter-radicalization, 361
counterterrorism, 586–7
counterterrorism communications, 323–33
Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
Communications (CSCC), 324
Digital Outreach Team (DOT), 324, 325–31, 332
Global Engagement Center (GEC), 324, 325
way forward, 331–3
Cox, Harold, 264
Cox, Jo, 541–3
credibility, 292, 294
Crimea, 40, 289, 305, 306–7, 346
Vladimir Putin, 290, 497, 499, 502
Cuba, 208
Cucek, Michael, 435
cultural revolution, 193, 194
cultural violence, 190
culture, 5, 193, 214, 426, 427, 437–8
Cummings, Dominic, 541
customer experience, 74
see also audience satisfaction
cyber-blurring, 297
Cyvogt, Antoine, 13
Dabiq, 554–5, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561
Daesh see Islamic State (IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh)
Dahlgren, P. and Alvares, C., 74
Daily Herald, 30–1
Daily Mail, 65, 265
Daily Telegraph, 32
Dale, Peter N., 427
d’Ancona, M., 74, 81
dark advertising, 541, 543–4n
dark money, 542, 544n
dark web / dark net, 227, 235, 587–9
Davis, David, 536
Davis, E., 77, 78, 80, 81
Davison, Emily Wilding, 17
Dawkins, Richard, 156, 163
de Albuquerque, A., 481, 484
De Dreu, C., 292
 INDEX 597

Dearlove, Sir Richard, 360 Dowd, Matthew, 524

Death of Death (Kravchinski), 16 Duc, Vu Hoai, 392
debunking, 294–5, 296, 298, 313–14 Duda, Andrzej, 290
deception, 60–1 duplicitous rhetoric, 63
Defeating Communist Insurgency (Thompson), 256 Durov, Pavel, 589
Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), 444, 453
Delmer, Sefton, 253 East StratCom Taskforce, 503
delusion, 64–5 echo chambers, 50, 78, 86, 88–9, 92
demagoguery, 480–1 economic boom, 7
Demartial, Georges, 267–8 economic management, 478
democracy, 48, 50, 87, 114, 184, 388 Economist, 63, 64, 65, 406, 433, 496, 533
democracy index ranking, xxv Economist Intelligence Unit, xxv
demonization, 277 Ecuador, 477, 480, 482–3, 484
Denmark, 166 press freedom, 485, 486
Dennis, CJ, 32 Edelman, M., 351
Dentsu Public Relations, 433 education, 293–4, 414, 511
depth interviews, 227 see also media literacy
Dershowitz, Alan, 433 Edwards, L., 147, 148
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 264 effectiveness see Islamist propaganda effectiveness
Digital Age, 87, 257–8 Egypt, 272, 278, 519
Digital Outreach Team (DOT), 324, 325–31, 332 El Universal, 485
digital propaganda, 171 election propaganda, 207
content analysis, 174–81, 182, 183–4 Elisabeth of Austria, 4
Russia, 502–3 Ellinas, A.A., 535, 536
see also computational propaganda; Ellul, J.
viral propaganda agitation campaigns, 192
disconfirmation bias, 292 conflictual process problem, 226
disinformation, 55–68 ideology, 190
aims, 58–60 integrative propaganda, 352, 363
ancient Greece, 247–8 Japan, 436
code of practice, 296 Marxism-Leninism, 191
definitions, 246 mission statements, 45
Donald Trump, 64–5, 66, 67 propaganda, xxv, 143
history, 56–7 propaganda of integration, 193
impact, 67 sociological propaganda, 49
market for, 57–8 stereotypes, 197
meaning, 65–6 technological society, 372
methodology, 60–4 emancipatory ethics, 356–7
versus propaganda, 247, 248–58 emigration, 7
Cold War, 253–7, 308 see also immigration
in the digital age, 257–8 emotional propaganda, 130–1, 133
interwar period, 250–2 emotions, 74–5, 79–80
World War One, 248–50 endorsement, 292
World War Two, 252–3 engagement, 234
psychology of, 64–5 Engels, Friedrich, 8, 9, 190
Russia, 65–6, 503 Entman, R.M., 443, 447, 453, 456n
Soviet Union, 196–7 epistemological optimism, 157
and truth, 66–7 Erdogan, Recep Tayyip, 523
Wardle’s taxonomy of, 304 Esarey, A. and Qiang, X., 174, 175
see also fake news; false and misleading claims; espionage, 249–50
firehose of falsehood propaganda model; Estado da India trading company, 374
‘information disorder’; lies ethics, 139
division, 59 emancipatory, 356–7
Doob, L.W., xxiv, 45, 52 EU referendum, 64
doubt, 59–60 financial motivations, 537–9
Douma, Syria, 448–2 immigration, 534–5, 536, 540, 541
Döveling, K., 73, 74, 76 Internet Research Agency (IRA), 503, 543n
598 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Jo Cox, 541–3 framing, 306–13

Leave campaign, 63–4, 80–1 Leave.EU, 541
Leave.EU, 532–3, 536, 537, 539–41 Wardle’s taxonomy of, 304
Vote Leave, 536, 540–1 see also disinformation
participatory propaganda, 94–5 Falkland War, xxviii–xxix
United States, 536–7 false and misleading claims, 519–2
Europe, 7 see also disinformation; lies
European Commission, 296 Falsehood in Wartime (Ponsonby), 268–9
European elections, 493 Farage, Nigel, 534, 536, 537–8
European political communication, 166 Faris, R.M., 177, 180
European School of Public Relations, 138 Farwell, James, 295, 296–7
European Union, 314, 317, 503 Fast Company magazine, 160
evidence, 65 Fatah, 274
‘Excellence’ study, 141 fear, 64, 199, 336–7
Experience Age, 73–5, 77–8, 80, 81 fear appeals, 229–30, 339–7
experts, 75 biological warfare propaganda, 345–6
exposure, 233 Boko Haram, 230–1, 339–40
extant fear processing models, 341–2 counterpropaganda, 343–5
Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), 229, 342, effects by audience segment and cultural group,
344 342–3
extant fear processing models, 341–2
Facebook Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), 229
Abe 2.0, 431 mechanism, 340–41
Brexit campaign, 503, 539, 540, 541 nuclear war, 346–7
customised results, 64 Fear-Drive Theory, 340, 341
fake accounts, 115 Fekete, L., 535
fake news, 297, 307, 314–15 Feng, M.X.Y., 410
Infowars, 58 Ferrara, E., 116, 117, 185
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 106 Fetzer, T., 534
ISIS, 126 Fewsmith, J., 408
media literacy, 258 fiction, 65, 66
misinformation, 67 film, 33–4, 198, 252–3, 416–17
news content, 108 filter bubbles, 75–6, 78, 82, 88–9, 292
participatory propaganda case studies, 93–9 Financial Times, 414, 415, 493, 499
Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and firehose of falsehood propaganda model, 290–8
Accountability in Content Moderation, 116 defending against, 293–7
Syrian conflict, 131–3, 174 persuasiveness, 291–3
Syrian conflicts, 129 First World War see World War One
terrorist propaganda, 582, 583, 587 Fischer, Gerhard, 25
US Presidential election 2016, 59, 62, 91, Flammer, P.M., 391
517, 517 flows of affect, 72–3
Cambridge Analytica, 89 focus groups, 227
Russian propaganda, 504 Foreign Policy magazine, 328
users, 117, 127, 128, 131, 581 forewarning, 295–6
visual propaganda, 129 forgery, 61–2
Facebook Messenger, 581 Foucault, Michel, 144, 147
fact-checking, 179–80, 296, 298, 313–14, 315, 524 Fox News, 58, 521
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 446 Foxley, T., 340
fake accounts, 115–16 framing, 130, 206–7, 443, 454n
fake audience fake news, 306–13
bots, 107, 108, 111–13, 503 human interest frames, 130, 133
reflections on next steps, 114–19 Syrian conflict, 444–7
sockpuppets, 107, 108–11, 113 France
fake news, 297, 303–18, 516–17, 518–9, 525 colonialism, 374, 375, 376, 379–80, 380–1
definitions, 304–6 Islamist propaganda, 232
Donald Trump, 311, 511, 514, 516 Presidential election 2016, 503
fight against, 313–18 Presidential election 2017, 297
 INDEX 599

Revolution, 578 Gilead, M., 76, 79

sockpuppets, 110–11 Giles, K., 296
World War One, 262 Gingrich, Newt, 63
Frankfurt, Harry, 305–6 Giuliani, Rudy, 75
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 431 Gladstone, William, 26
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 4 global economic boom, 7
Fraser, Lindley, 24 Global Engagement Center (GEC), 324, 325
Freear, M., 360 Global Times, 411
Freedman, D., 543 global warming, 60
Freedman, L., 47 Godin, Seth, 161
Freedom House, 289, 297, 485 Godwin, William, 9
freedom of information, 496 Goebbels, Joseph, 45, 52, 274, 539
freedom of speech, 296–7 Goldzwig, S.R., 480–1
Freiheit, 14–15 Google, 58, 64, 90, 297, 311
French Revolution, 578 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 200
Friedman, Thomas, 406, 407, 414, 417 Gosset, D., 408
Fukushima, 428, 434 Gove, Michael, 75
governance, informal, 201
Gaber, I., 45.46 Gowan, Richard, 446
Gadahn, Adam, 582 Grabo, Cynthia, 256–7
Galeotti, M., 307 Grady, Henry, 459, 466, 467, 471
Gallo, Charles, 14 Grady, Lucretia, 466, 467, 468, 470
Galtung, J., 190, 199, 351, 355 Graham, A., 415
Gandhi, Mahatma, 355, 362 Gramsci, A., 141, 146, 193
Ganor, B., 160 grand strategy, 23
Gaza conflict ‘Granfalloon technique’, 64
guerrilla warfare, 275–7 Graphic of Australia, 33
Hamas, 281, 283, 284n Graves, Lucas, 306, 315
psychological operations (PSYOP), 274–5, 279–81 Great Britain
viral propaganda, 162 atrocity propaganda, 22–3, 56
visual propaganda, 127–8, 129–31, 174 anti-propagandists, 268–9
Gaza Strip, 272 architects of, 27–8
Gelman, V., 199 concept and theory, 23–6
‘Gentleman German, The’ (Sullivan), 29–30 international law as, 28–30
geopolitics, 184 the ‘rape’ of Belgium, 265–7
George, A.L., 182 Cold War, 254–6
George I, King of Greece, 4 colonialism, 374, 375–6, 380, 384–5, 388–90
Gerasimov doctrine, 307, 502 Russia Today (RT), 501
germ warfare see biological warfare propaganda World War One, 249–50 (see also Great
Germany Britain: atrocity propaganda)
atrocity propaganda, 22–3, 56 World War Two, 252–3
anti-propagandists, 267–9 see also United Kingdom
architects of, 27–8 Great War see World War One
concept and theory, 23–6 Greece
impact on Australian population, 30–4 ancient Greece, 247–8
international law as, 28–30 Civil War, 459–73
invasion of Belgium, 24, 262–3 normalization process, 466–71
Nazi Germany, 34–5 state of emergency propaganda, 461–6
the ‘rape’ of Belgium, 265–7 microblogs, 179
interwar period, 250 Greek Orthodox Church, 464, 467, 470
Nazi Germany, 34–5, 56–7, 128 group membership, 292
Russian propaganda, 505 Grundini, Pavel, 499
Germis, Carsten, 430–1, 432 Grunig, James E., 140, 141
Ghosn, Carlos, 432–3 Guardian, 446, 449–50, 483, 537
Giesea, Jeff, 114 guerrilla warfare, 275–7
Giglietto, F., 304–5 ‘Guided Democracy’, 388
Gil de Zúñiga, H., 75 Gulf states, 272–3
600 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Gunster, Gerry, 537, 540 humanitarianism, 26, 27

Gusinsky, Vladimir, 495 Huntington, H.E., 166–7
Gustafsson, L., 554 Hussein, Sadam, 359
Guttenfelder, David, 207 hypodermic needle model, 226, 237n, 343
Hyunjin, S. and Ebrahim, H., 174, 176, 179
Habeck, M., 360
Hague Conventions, 26 ideavirus, 161
Hak-sun, Kim, 424, 438n identity see human thought and identity
Hall, Ivan P., 428 ideology, 25, 49, 142–3, 144–5, 190, 191, 210
Hall, Stuart, 5 Ignatius, D., 357
Hallahan, K., 144 imagery see visual propaganda
Hallin, D.C., 76 immigration, 7, 533–5, 535, 540, 541
Hallin, D.C. and Mancini, P., 481 imperialism, 374, 375
Hamas, 272, 284n, 587 Independent, 446, 450–1
propaganda method, 282, 283 India, 207, 297, 380
Hamas-Israeli conflict, 284n Indochina, 376
guerrilla warfare, 275–7 see also Cambodia; Laos; Vietnam
psychological operations (PSYOP), Indochina Wars, 390–4
274–5, 279–81 see also Vietnam War
viral propaganda, 162 Indonesia, 380, 383, 386–90, 395, 397
visual propaganda, 127–8, 129–31, 174 influence, 234
Hamre, John, 434 see also persuasion
Hannan, J., 79, 80, 81 informal governance, 201
Harman, J., 586 information, 442
Harsin, J., 74, 81 freedom of, 496
Haste, Cate, 25 see also disinformation; misinformation
hate crimes, 542 information (self-)tailoring, 75–6
Haymarket Massacre, 17 Information Age, 38, 73
healthcare, 520–1, 539, 540 see also Experience Age
hegemony, 193 information and communication technologies (ICT),
Henderson, Jennifer Jacobs, 119 127, 133
Henry, Emile, 14 see also Internet; social media; websites
Henry Jackson Society, 588 information deficit model, 294
Henry VII (King), 374 ‘information disorder’, 246–7
Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N., 309 information operations, 373, 382–96
Herzen, Alexander, 12 Indochina Wars, 390–4
Hezbollah, 273, 277–9, 280, 281, 282–3, 284n, 587 Indonesian Konfrontasi, 386–90
hijrah, 556–7, 560 Islamic fundamentalism, 394–6
Hill & Knowlton, 138 Malayan Emergency, 383–6
Hitler, Adolf, 159 information warfare, 442
Hjarvard, S., 72 information work, 256, 257
Ho Chi Minh, 379, 381, 391 Infowars, 58, 316
Hoang Cao Khai, 376 Ingram, H., 567
Hoaxy, 118–19 inoculation, 295–6, 298
Hobbs, R., 317 Inoue, Takashi, 432
Hof, R., 89 Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), 118,
Holmstrom, M., 71, 80, 81 514, 525n
Hong Kong, 417 insurance industry, 537–8
Horne, John and Kramer, Allen, 25, 263, 267, 269 insurgency theory, 6
Horsthemke, K., 77 integrative propaganda, 193–5, 352, 354, 355–6, 363,
Hotmail, 160 435–8
‘house-broken press’, 422 International Public Relations Association
Howard, P.N., 91, 177, 180 (IPRA), 139
Huey, L., 551, 553 International Working Men’s Association (IWMA), 4,
Hull, Isabel V, 25, 262, 263, 266 7–8, 10–11
human interest frames, 130, 133 Internet, 164, 499
human thought and identity, 42–3 radicalization, 552
 INDEX 601

Riyadh Conference on the Use of the Islamist propaganda effectiveness, 223–36

Internet to Counter the Appeal of aims, narratives, lines of persuasion and
Extremist Violence, 586–7 dissemination, 241–2
terrorist propaganda, 579–81 barriers to measuring, 224–6
users, 131 center of gravity, 232
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 91, 106, 109–10, 115, 288 fear appeal, 229–31
Brexit campaign, 503, 543n Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), 229
Crimea, 305 leadership effect, 231–2
criminal complaints against, 315 measures of, 228–9
Vladimir Putin, 499 measurement space, 225
interwar period, 250–2 methodologies for measuring, 226–8
intimidation, 199 policy implications, 235
Iran, xxv, 208–9, 283, 451 recruitment, 232–4
see also Hezbollah Israel
Iraq, 569, 572, 574 and Hamas, 284n
Iraq War guerrilla warfare, 275–7
disinformation, 57, 66–7 psychological operations (PSYOP), 274–5,
framing, 206 279–81
Great Britain, xxvi, xxix viral propaganda, 162
media campaigns, 444 visual propaganda, 127–8, 129–31, 174
sockpuppets, 110 and Hezbollah, 273, 277–9, 279–81
strategic narratives, 38–9, 39–40, 44–5 propaganda method, 281–2
iReorter, 258 psychological operations (PSYOP), 282, 283–4
Islamagainstextremism.com, 361 Italy, 13, 60, 274
Islamic State (IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh) / Islamic State
Movement (ISM) Janis, I.L., 341
agitative propaganda, 357–9 Janis, I.L. and Feshbach, S., 340
counterpropaganda, 359–3 Japan, 422–38
aims, narratives and lines of persuasion, 241–2 comfort women, 423–5, 427, 428
botnets, 112 Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC),
dark net, 588, 589 440n
female recruits, 550–62 integration propaganda, 435–8
prior research, 551–2 Malayan Emergency, 383, 384
promises made to, 555–62 media, 426, 429–30
propaganda channels, 553–5 coverage of Carlos Ghosn case, 432–3
radicalization, 552–3 foreign media’s criticism of Abe
terrorist attacks, 562 administration, 430–2
media, 359, 360, 578 propaganda environment, 433–5
media strategy, 569–3, 579 Russia, 501–2, 506n
propaganda of the deed, 261 soft power strategy, 426–9
recruitment, xxvii, 58, 224 (see also Islamic State World War Two, 66, 375, 425
(IS/ISIL/ISIS/Daesh) / Islamic State Movement Japan Times, 425
(ISM): female recruits) Jenkins, B., 579
Russian propaganda, 290 Johnson, L., 89
social media, 583 Johnson, Lyndon, 60
recruitment, 585–6 Johnson, T.H., 340
Southeast Asia, 395–6 Joint Threats Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG),
strategic communication tactics, 566–74 110
campaign design, 568–71 Jones, Alex, 316
campaign dissemination, 571–3 Jones, Sally-Anne, 231–2
literature review, 567–8 Jonsson, O. and Seely, R., 307
sources, 568 journalism, 58, 65
US counterterrorism communication, 327–9 citizen journalism, 92
video production, 330–1 fact-checking, 179–80
viral propaganda, 160 fake news, 305, 306, 519
visual propaganda, 126 objectivity, 524
see also Islamist propaganda effectiveness online journalism, 307–9
602 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

power, 148 La República, 487

United States, 318 Laato, A., 142
Jowett, G.S. and O’Donnel, V.J., 41, 100n, 181, 206, Laclau, E., 477, 478
223, 351, 354, 356 Lakoff, G., 516
Jungherr, A., 185 Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 159
Landsberger, S.R., 408
Kadyrov, Ramzan, 500 Laos, 383, 398
Kairoi, 468, 469, 470, 471, 471 Lasswell, Harold, xxiv, 113, 173, 206, 372, 401, 461
Kammerer, Anton, 15 Lasswell. D., 190
Katz, E. and Lazarsfeld, P.F., 343 Latin America, 476–89
Katz, R., 562 historical and conceptual aspects
Katz, R. and Devon, J., 583 of populism, 477–80
Kaye, David, 430 synthesised framework of populist
Kennedy, John F., 393 communication, 480–7, 482
Kerr, Alex, 426, 427, 428 LaTour, M.S. and Zahra, S.A., 340, 341
Khashoggi, Kamal, 519 Latsabidze, Beqa, 309
Khawirijites, 360–1 Latvia, 297
Khoman, Thanat, 396–7 Laybats, C. and Tredinnick, L., 75
Khor, Martin, 408 Lazarsfeld, P.F., 513
Kiev Post, 504 Le Queux, William, 249
Kimerling, A.S., 195 Le Révolte, 13
King, G., 178, 181 leadership effect, 231–2
Kinney, A.B., 579 Leave campaign, 63–4, 80–1
Kissinger, Henry, 397 Leave.EU, 532–3, 536, 537, 539–41, 542
Kitzberger, P., 479, 480 Lebanon, 130, 273, 277, 278, 279, 281, 284n
Kjeldsen, J.E., 166 Lee, B. and Campbell, V., 167
Klein, N. and Yadav, M., 353–4 Lee, Edwin, 425
Klein, O. and Muis, J., 540 Lee, Ivy, 137
Klicperová-Baker, M., 199 Lee Kuan Yew, 381–2, 388
Klinger, U. and Svensson, J., 182 legitimization, 148
Kmer Rouge, 393–4 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 8, 9, 191, 193, 195, 199, 200
Knight Foundation, 513, 517, 521, 525 see also Marxism-Leninism
Knightley, Philip, 56 Lerner, A., 89
Knobel, M. and Lanksher, C., 164 Lessig, Lawrence, 307
knowledge, 442 L’Etang, J., 148
public knowledge, 510–20, 520–1 Levada Center, 498–9
Kogan, Aleksandr, 539 Leventhal, H., 341
Konfrontasi, 387–90 Lewandowsky, S., 76, 77, 82
Kono, Yohei, 425 Li Keqiang, 413
Kony, Joseph, 233 Li Zhanshu, 413
Korea see North Korea; North Korean case study libel, 62–3
Korean War, 209–10, 214 liberal democracy, 48, 50, 87
Kotler, P., 351 Libya, 445, 451
Kotler, P. and Zaltman, G., 354 Liebling, A. and Strauss, C., 227
Kozinets, R., 227 lies, 60–1
Kracauer, S., 181–2 see also disinformation; fake news
Krämer, B., 478 limited access cases, 207–9
Kravchinski, Sergey, 16 see also North Korean case study
Kremer, A. and Martov, Yu., 191 Lindsay, J., 386, 387
Krippendorff, K., 172, 186 Lindsay, Norman, 30, 31
Kropotkin, Peter, 10, 12, 14 Linnemann, T., 165
Krushchev Thaw, 196 literacy, 193
Kushner, B., 436 see also media literacy
Kuwait, 138 literature, 194
‘Kuwaiti baby atrocity’, 60 see also children’s books
Kuzio, T. and D’Anieri, P., 307 Lloyd George, David, 265, 266
 INDEX 603

Los Angeles Times, 416, 586 McKinley, William, 4

Lotan, Gilad, 112 McVeigh, B., 166
Lu, C., 417 media
Lucas, E. and Nimmo, B., 287, 288, 289, 293 al-Qaeda, 578, 579
Luntz, Frank, 63, 513 chemical weapons attack, 449–2
Lyons, 13, 14 Donald Trump, 517–19, 522–3, 524–5
framing, 443–4
McDonald, Malcolm, 389 ISIS, 359, 360, 569–3, 578, 579
Macfarlane, Julian, 433–4, 435 Japan, 426, 429–30
Machiavelli, N., 157 coverage of Carlos Ghosn case, 432–3
Macnair, L. and Frank, R., 567 foreign media’s criticism of Abe
Macron, Emmanuel, 73, 111, 297, 503 administration, 430–2
Maduro, Nicolas, 485, 486, 487 propaganda environment, 433–5
Magellan, Ferdinand, 374 mainstream media, 232
magic bullet theory see hypodermic needle model mass media, 22, 228–9, 444
Mahoney, Michael S., 306 North Korea, 210
Mair, Thomas, 541–2 populism, 478–80, 481, 484–7
Majul, Cesar, 378 refugees, 534
Makronissos prison camp, 464–5, 473n in Soviet propaganda, 197–8
Malatesta, Errico, 13 Syrian conflict, 446–7
Malay Peninsula, 374, 375–6 Western media coverage, 447–53
Malayan Emergency, 383–6 and the terrorist propaganda, 578–9
Malaysia, 397 (see also online?)
Manila, 397 UK Independence Party (UKIP), 535
Mao Zedong, 68, 194 US Presidential election 2016, 513–14
marhaenism, 380 Vladimir Putin, 492, 493, 494–5, 495–7, 499,
Marion, Kitty, 17 500–1
market segmentation, 342–3 ‘Work and Victory Week’, 466, 467, 468
see also audience segmentation see also journalism; news channels; news maga-
marketing zines; newspapers; radio; Russia Today (RT);
niche marketing (see narrowcasting) social media; television
peace marketing, 351, 354–7, 359–3 media bias, 309–11
as propaganda, 353–4 media literacy, 117–19, 293–4, 298, 317
viral marketing, 160–1 media priming, 443, 454n
Markwica, R., 74 mediatisation, 72
Marshall Plan, 461, 470–1, 472 Medvedev, Dmitry, 493, 497
Marwick, A. and Lewis, R., 163–4 ‘Megali Idea’, 462
Marx, Karl, 8–9, 10 memes, 156, 163–6
Marxism, 143, 379 metaphorical, 166–7
Marxism-Leninism, 190–1, 200, 383 memetics, 162–3
mass migration, 7 metaphor, 159–63
see also immigration metaphorical memes, 166–7
Massoumi, Cyrus, 309, 315 microblogs, 179
master narratives, 47–8 migration, 7
see also myths see also immigration
Masterman, Charles, 27, 249, 265 militant philanthropy, 463
Matrat, Lucien, 138–9 Miller, J., 72
May, Theresa, 536 Miller, Yuri, 58
Mayring, P., 182 Milton, D., 568
Mazzoleni, G., 73, 478 Mingzao, C., 408
McCain, John, 522 mirror imaging, 258
McCants, Will, 327 misinformation, 67, 246
McChesney, Robert, 4 Wardle’s taxonomy of, 304
McGeehan, T., 289 see also disinformation
McIntyre, L.C., 71, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82 Miskimmon, A., 40, 41, 47, 51, 52, 399
McKenna, Rebecca, 376–7 mission statements, 44–6
604 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

missionaries, 376–7 Chinese Dream, 406, 414

Mittelstaedt, Jean, 411 Columbian Chemicals, 105
Miyamoto, Dr. Masao, 437 disinformation, 61
MMR vaccine, 57 Donald Trump, 516, 517
modernity, 371–2 Hugo Chavez, 483
Moloney, K., 87, 138, 145, 149 restructuring, 525
Moods of Ginger Mick, The (Dennis), 32 World War One, 4
Morales, Evo, 477, 479, 480, 481, 483, 484, 485–6, 488 Newman, D., 74
Morgan, John Hartmann, 28, 266 news channels, 57–8
Morocco, 519 see also Russia Today (RT)
Most, Johann, 14–15 news magazines, 130
Mudde, C., 478 newspapers, 4, 7, 174, 193, 197, 206, 446
Mueller, Robert, 317 see also individual newspapers
Murdock, G., 72 Nguyen, N.H., 392
Murphy, J. and Devine, D., 535, 543 NHK World-Japan, 429–30, 433, 434, 438n
Murray, Gilbert, 27 niche marketing see narrowcasting
Muslim Brotherhood, 272, 277 night letters, 340
Musolff, A., 166 Nihonjiron, 427, 438n
Mustafaraj, E. and Metaxas, P.T., 90 Nikkei, 432
Myanmar, 394–5, 398 Nishioka, Tsutomu, 424
myths, 49–51, 62, 190 Nix, Alexander, 89
see also master narratives normalization process, 466–71
North Korea
Nacos, B., 578 biological warfare propaganda, 336, 337, 345–6
Nakano, Koichi, 432 nuclear war, 346–7
naming and shaming, 295 North Korean case study, 205–19
Napoleon Bonaparte, 55 background and literature review, 206–9
narrative persuasion, 43 findings, 213–17
narrative turn, 42 inter-Korean relations, 209–11
narrative-led operations, 45 lessons learnt, 217–18
narratives limitations, 218–19
post-truth, 80–1 methodology, 212–13
see also alternative narratives; master narratives; Norton-Taylor, R., 446
strategic narratives nuclear war, 346–7
narrowcasting, 584–6 Nuland, Victoria, 503–4
see also audience segmentation Nye, Joseph and Armitage, Richard, 428
Nasrallah, Hassan, 278, 279, 283
nation building, 352 Oakes, Nigel, 540
National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (NTS), 196 Obama, Barack, 62–3, 325, 414, 452, 472, 512
National Health Service (NHS), 539, 540 Obamacare, 520–1
national mindedness, 462 obfuscation, 91, 398
National Resistance Movement, objectivity, 524
Greece, 465 Office for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons
National Schism, Greece, 462 (OPCW), 448
nationalism, 377–82, 497 Old Testament, 56
NATO, 44, 47, 269, 316 Olsen, D., 165
Nazi Germany, 34–5, 56–7, 128 One Belt One Road (OBOR) see Belt and Road
Nedelea, A. & M., 354 Initiative
negative advertising see attack videos online dishonesty, 307–8
neo-populism, 477, 478, 489n online journalism, 307–9
Netherlands, 375, 380, 386 online political posters (OPPs), 167
netnography, 227 Ontario provincial elections, 96–9
Neuman, P., 552 ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ (Lindsay), 31
Neuman, S., 165 Orban, Victor, 523
Neumann, P.R., 587 Ordered Protection Motivation Model (OPM), 341–2
New York Times Oriental Outlook, 407
audience, 521 Orlov, Vladimir, 251
 INDEX 605

Orthodoxy, 497–8 pleasure economy, 74

see also Greek Orthodox Church Plekhanov, Gregory, 191
Osaka, 423, 425 pluralism, 426
O’Shaughnessy, N., 35, 350 polarisation, 64
O’Shaughnessy, N. and Baines, P.R., 359 police, 344–5
otherisation, 481 political campaigns, 92–3
political communication, 166–7, 184–5
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), 272, 273, political expression, 58
274, 275, 276, 283 political fear, 336–7
pan-propagandaism, 143 political fiction, 56
Papacharissi, Z., 72 political parallelism, 484, 489n
Papadimitriou, D., 462 political reform, 317–18
parallel reality, 65–6 Political Warfare Executive (PWE), 252, 253
Parallel Response Model (PRM), 341 Politico.com, 314
Paris, 14 politics of fear, 199
Paris Commune, 4 PolitiFact, 313
Paris Peace Process, 267, 269, 270 Pollock, Sir Frederick, 264
Parker, Critchley, 31–2 Ponsonby, Arthur, 265, 268–9
participatory propaganda, 85–100 popular culture, 5, 214
audience amplification, 90–1 populism / populist communication, 476–9
audience segmentation, 88–90 historical and conceptual aspects, 477–80
case studies, 93–9 neo-populism, 477, 478, 489n
definition, 92 synthesised framework, 480–7, 482
evolving nature of propaganda, 86–8 Portugal, 374, 375
obfuscation, 91 Pospelov, Pyotr, 337
US Presidential election 2016, 93–4 postcolonialism, 382–96, 400
see also co-conspiracy; computational Indochina Wars, 390–4
propaganda; post-truth: collective Indonesian Konfrontasi, 386–90
reinforcement of; user participation Malayan Emergency, 383–6
Pasternak, Boris, 194 postmodern warfare, 307
Patek, Umar, 583 post-truth, 71–82
patriotism, 497, 499 affiliation and affect, 79–80
Payne, K., 441, 444, 446 audience satisfaction, 77–8
peace, 355 collective reinforcement of, 78–9
peace dividend, 351 Experience Age, 73–5
peace marketing, 351, 354–7, 359–3 fake news, 312
Pearce, W.B. and Littlejohn, S.W., 190, 191 information (self-)tailoring, 75–6
Peisakhin, L. and Rozenas, R., 289 mediatisation and affect, 72–3
Pennycook, G. and Rand, D., 296 narrative construction, 80–1
People’s Choice, The (Lazarsfeld), 513 Potter, J., 158
perception, 442 Poulgrain, G., 389
Perrow, C., 434 power, 141, 142, 147, 148, 189–90
Perry, Rick, 60 and peace, 355
Perry, S., 159 soft power strategy, 426–9
personalized pluralist model, 484 power balancing, 375
persuasion, 43, 47, 56, 234, 295, 442, 511 Pravda, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198
Peru, 477 press, 4–5
Pew Research Center, 108, 117, 128, 515 ‘house-broken press’, 422
Phan Dinh Phung, 376 see also newspapers
Philippines, 374, 376–9, 396, 397, 519 press agent model, 140
Phillips, W., 535 press freedom, 485–7, 505
Philo, G., 534 prison detainees, 12–13, 464
Piata, A., 167 profiling see audience segmentation; narrowcasting
Pineda, A., 142 Project Servator, 344–5
Pisicane, Carlo, 11 Proletkult, 194
Pizzagate, 65, 76, 77, 303 promotion, 362
Plato, 156, 248 Pronin, E., 293
606 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

propaganda Putin, Vladimir, 201, 290, 307, 316, 511

(im)moral stance, xxiv propaganda performance 2000-2018, 492–505
ancient Greece, 248 approval and disapproval ratings 2013-2014, 498
anti-propagandists, 267–70 comparison of 2000 and 2018, 494
as co-production between communicator and domestic, 495–9
audience, xxvi–xxvii international, 499–504
definitions, xxv–xxvi, 86, 246, 351–3 Pyszczynski, T., 363
Fraser, L., 24
Grabo, Cynthia, 256 Qualter, T.H., 353
Jowett, G.S. and O’Donnel, V.J., 41, 100n, 223
Lasswell, Harold, 206, 372, 461 radical populism, 477, 478, 489n
Oxford English Dictionary, 269 radicalization, 49, 552–3
Pineda, A., 142 counter-radicalization, 361
Plekhanov, G., 191 radio, 208–9, 463, 486
Ponsonby, Arthur, 268 Radio Swan, 208
Taylor, P.M., 157, 453, 460 Rafiq, A., 358–9, 361
versus disinformation, 247, 248–58 Rafiq, Haras and Malik, Nikita, 552
Cold War, 253–7, 308 Ramos, Jorge, 487, 488n
in the digital age, 257–8 Rani, Anita, 435
interwar period, 250–2 Ranstorp, M. and Hyllegren, P., 552
World War One, 248–50 Rayport, Jeffrey, 160–1
World War Two, 252–3 Read, J., 268
evolving nature of, 86–8 Reagan, Ronald, 60
objectives, 510–11 reality
origin of the term, 127 parallel reality, 65–6
relevance, xxiiv–xxiv pseudo-realities, 62
responses to, 143 reciprocity, 230, 339
role in opinion and perception, 442–4 referendums, 481–4
Propaganda (Bernays), 137 see also EU referendum
Propaganda Critic, 118 refugee crisis, 533, 534
propaganda of the deed (POTD), 3–18, 261, 351–2, 390 regulation, 297, 298, 316–17
acts of violence / assassinations, 4, 5–6, 13–15 religion
Bakunin supporters, 11–12 Chinese Dream, 416
genealogy, 7–10 Cold War, 467
Islamist propaganda, 228, 261 Hamas and Hezbollah, 281
political economy background, 6–7 Israel, 280, 281–2
press, 4–5 North Korea, 215, 217
Vera Zasulich, 12, 16 Soviet propaganda, 194, 200
Protection Motivation Model (PMM), 341 Ren-TV, 500
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 61 Reporters Without Borders, 505
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 8, 9–10 Republic, The (Plato), 248
proxy wars, 445 Resilient Communities Fund, 324–5
pseudo-realities, 62 resonance metaphor, 47
psychiatry, 200 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, 587
psychological operations (PSYOP), 273–4, 279–81, Revolutionary Catechism, The (1869), 11
282–4 Reychler, L., 354
psychological reactance, 230, 237n Rheingold, Howard, 307
psychological violence, 199 rhetoric, 156–8
public information model, 140 ancient Greece, 247
public knowledge, 519–20, 520–1 in Arab culture, 273
public relations, 137–8, 138–41, 144–5, 148–9 Donald Trump, 514, 515, 516, 517
definitions, 143, 145–6, 146–7 duplicitous, 63
historiography, 142 Hilary Clinton, 515
peace marketing, 355 populism, 478, 480–1
Soviet Union, 193 divisive mechanisms, 481–4
see also corporate propaganda rhetorical criticism, 155–6, 158, 167–8
public trials, 199 memes, 163–6
 INDEX 607

metaphor, 159–63 Russian Orthodox Church, 497–8

metaphorical memes, 166–7 Russian propaganda, 286–298
Richards, I.A., 159 character, 286–7
Richardson, Louise, 24 characteristics, 290
Rieger, D., 50 defending against, 293–7
Riesman, D., 352 effectiveness, 289–90
Riyadh Conference on the Use of the Internet to Coun- goals and objectives, 289
ter the Appeal of Extremist Violence, 586–7 persuasiveness, 291–3
Rizal, Jose, 378, 379 sources and types, 287–9
Roberts, C., 208 Rwanda, 519
Rodley, C., 162, 164–5
Rodocanachi, C., 464–5, 465 Saipov, Sayfullo, 223
Rogers, R., 185 Sakharov, Andrei, 195
Rogers, R.W., 341 Salafi jihadists, 35, 39–40, 47–8, 50
Rohingya Muslims, 394–5 Salah, Sheikh Raed, 277
Rokeach, M., 190 Saltman, E. and Smith, M., 551, 553
Romania, 337 San Francisco, 423, 424–5, 427
Roosevelt, Theodore, 18 Sanders, Bernie, 512
Roper, J., 141 Sandy Hook massacre, 65
Rossiya, 496, 500 Sankei Shimbun, 432
Rove, Karl, 61 Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and
Rovira-Kaltwasser, C., 478 Accountability in Content Moderation, 116
Rowbury, Ross, 430 Sargeaunt, Antony, 23
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), 445 Saudi Arabia, 272–3
Rumiyah, 555, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562 Sawab Center, 332
Rushkoff, D., 165–6 SCAME method, 226, 343
Russia Schank, Roger, 42
2007 parliamentary vote, 497 Schattschneider, E.E., 352, 354
2008 presidential elections, 497 Schiappa, E., 156
Aaron Banks, 537 Schlieffen Plan, 262
‘arrested modernisation’, 12 Schori Liang, C., 554, 555
character assassination (CA), 201 Schudson, Michael, 318
China, 501, 502 science, 306
Crimea, 40, 289, 305, 306–7, 346 scripted propaganda, 443
democracy index ranking, xxv search engines, 90
digital propaganda, 502–3 see also Google
disinformation, 65–6, 503 Second World War see World War Two
fake news, 519 Segaert, Henry, 28
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 91, 106, 109–10, segmentation, 88–90
115, 288 Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins), 156, 163
Brexit campaign, 503, 543n self-reliance, 210
Crimea, 305 semiotic analysis, 227–8
criminal complaints against, 315 Seo, H., 126, 129–30, 174, 175
Vladimir Putin, 499 Seo, H. and Ebrahim, H., 126, 131, 134, 445
Japan, 501–2 Shanghai Daily, 416
post-truth, 312 Shared Values Initiative, 324
prison detainees, 12–13 Sharp, G., 355, 359, 362
propaganda of the deed (POTD), 15–17 Sheffield, H., 357
social media, 503, 504 Shifman, L., 164
Syrian conflict, 449, 450, 451 show trials, 199
US Presidential election 2016, 59, 61–2, 91, 106, Shrivastava, P., 143
303, 317, 503–4 Sihanouk, Prince Norodom, 380–1
Yuri Miller, 58 Singapore, 381–2, 384, 389, 395, 397
see also Putin, Vladimir; Russian Sister Cities International, 438n
propaganda; Soviet Union Skouras, Spyros, 466, 467–8
Russia Today (RT), 62, 287, 316, 500–1 Skripal, Sergey, 503
Russian Civil War, 195 Sloman, S. and Fernbach, P., 78
608 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Snow, N., 425 findings, 213–17

Snowden, Edward, 110 inter-Korean relations, 209–11
Snyder, T., 311 lessons learnt, 217–18
Sobchak, Ksenia, 499 limitations, 218–19
Sobieski, Daniel John, 90 methodology, 212–13
Soble, J., 426 South Lebanese Army (SLA), 278
social capital, 148 Southeast Asia, 371–401
social media anti-colonialism, 377–82, 400
Abe 2.0, 431 Association of Southeast Asian Nations
affective feedback loop, 78 (ASEAN), 371, 396–400, 400–1
audience amplification, 90–1 colonialism, 371, 373–7
audience segmentation, 88–90 information operations, 382–96
citizens as content producers, 184 (see also Indochina Wars, 390–4
user participation) Indonesian Konfrontasi, 386–90
code of practice, 317 Islamic fundamentalism, 394–6
confirmation bias, 64 Malayan Emergency, 383–6
content analysis, 174–81, 175–8, 182, 227 modernity, 371–2
counterterrorism, 587 Soviet Union
echo chambers, 50, 78, 86, 88–9, 92 character assassination (CA), 189, 190–201
Experience Age, 73–5 motives and targets, 195–7
fact-checking and verification, 296–7 role of the media, 197–8
fake news, 307–8 strategies, 192–5
framing, 207 violence, 198–200
information (self-)tailoring, 75–6 Cold War, 196–7, 208, 253–7, 286–7, 460
ISIS, 554, 583 biological warfare propaganda, 337–9
Israel, 282 White Russia massacre, 68
mediatisation and affect, 72–3 see also Russia
news from, 57, 108 Spain, 232, 374, 375, 376–7, 378–9
obfuscation, 91 Sparkes-Vian, C., 162, 163
policing, 314–15 speech, freedom of, 296–7
populism, 488 Spence, J., 68
regulation, 297 Spicer, Sean, 522–3
Russia Today (RT), 501 spin doctors, 140
Russian propaganda, 288, 307, 499, 503 Sproule, J. Michael, 113–14, 143
Vladimir Putin, 493 stakeholders, 146
Syrian conflict, 445–6 Stalin, Joseph, 192–3, 194–5, 195, 196, 199
terrorist propaganda, 227, 231, 232, 581–3 Stampnitzky, L., 542
narrowcasting, 584–6 Stanley, J., 523
threats posed by, 583–4 state of emergency propaganda, 461–6
terrorist recruitment, 233–4, 233, 585–6 state propaganda, 308
user participation, 114 ‘stealing thunder’, 295
visual propaganda, 128–33, 174 Stephen, Leslie, 63
see also computational propaganda; Facebook; Stimson, Henry L., 377
participatory propaganda; Twitter; WhatsApp Stirner, Max, 10
socialisation, 234 StopFake, 310, 313–14
sociological propaganda, 49–51, 143 stories see alternative narratives; master narratives;
sockpuppets, 107, 108–11, 113, 117–18 strategic narratives
Soekarno, 380, 382, 386, 387, 388 Straitjacket Society: An Insider’s Irreverent View of
Soft Power 30 Report (McClory), 426 Bureaucratic Japan (Miyamoto), 437
soft power strategy, 426–9 strategic communication, 41–2, 144
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 194 Islamic State Movement (ISM), 566–74
Somalia, 519 strategic narratives, 38–52
Song, Y. and Xu, R., 75 concept and theory, 39–40
Sophists, 156 definitions, 40–1, 44, 47
source identification, 295–6 Islamic State Movement (ISM), 568–9
South Korean propaganda case study, 205–19 in practice
background and literature review, 206–9 battles of narratives, 48–9
 INDEX 609

as everything, 46–7 Thailand, 383, 394, 397–8

ideology, 49 theatre, 198
master narratives, 47–8 Theocharisa, Y., 176, 179
mission statements, 44–6 Thi, Lam Quang, 391–2
sociological propaganda, 49–51 Thompson, Sir Robert, 256
target audiences, 51 Thucydides, 247–8
theoretical appeal, 42–4 Till Martyrdom Do Us Part (Saltman
STREET project, 361 and Smith), 551
Stroud, N.J., 76 Times, The, 61
Study Times, 410 tobacco industry, 59
Subotić, Jelena, 51 totalitarian propaganda, 312
Sullivan, Edmund J., 29–30 Track Two, 399–400
Sulzberger, A.G., 522 Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the
surveillance, 119 Past (Bentley), 424
Swan, JG, 33 Treaty of London 1839, 262
Swettenham, Frank, 375 Treaty of Versaille, 267, 270
Swiftboat Veterans, 61 Trepov, Fyodor, 12
Sydney Morning Herald, 32 trolling, 80, 90, 108–9, 287, 288, 290, 304
Sykes Picot Agreement, 48 Trotsky, Leon, 193, 195, 198, 199
symbolic violence, 147–8 Truman, Harry S., 459, 467, 470
Syria, 519 Truman Doctrine, 460
Syrian conflict Trump, Donald
Facebook, 129, 131–3, 174 disinformation, 64–5, 66, 67
framing, 444–7 election campaign, 303, 511–13, 523–4
Islamic State Movement (ISM), 569, 572, 574 media coverage, 513–14
Vladimir Putin, 493 rhetoric, 514, 515, 516
Western media coverage, 35, 447–53 Russia, 503, 504
Syrian White Helmets, 62 Twitter, 515–17, 518
fake news, 311, 511, 514, 516
Takata Corporation, 428 false and misleading claims, 519–22, 519, 520
Taliban, 340, 573 inconsistency, 45
Tanner Jr, J.F., 341 lies, 60
target audiences, 51 supporters, 90, 309
target marketing see narrowcasting Syrian conflict, 450, 451, 452
Tatham, S., 42 Twitter, 128, 185
Taylor, P.M., 55, 157, 441, 442, 443, 460 war on media campaign, 517–19, 522–3, 524–5
Teague-Jones, Reginald, 68 Xi Jinping, 414
technological society, 372, 436 truth, 66–7
Telegram, 588, 589 partial, 63
television, 287–8, 289, 486, 487, 496–7, 497, 498–9 see also post-truth
see also Russia Today (RT) truth decay, 312
Templer, Gerald, 385 truthiness, 65
TEPCO, 428 Tsfati, Y. and Weimann, G., 580
Terror Management Theory (TMT), 342 Tugwell, M., 276, 359
terrorism see also, 351–2 Tumblr, 117
terrorist attacks, 261–2, 562, xxiiv–xxiv tunnel warfare, 276, 282
see also 9/11; propaganda of the deed (POTD) Turkey, 519
terrorist propaganda, 577–89 Turkle, Sherry, 307
counterterrorism, 586–7 Turner, Ethel, 32–3
dark net, 587–9 Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D., 64
Facebook, 582, 583, 587 Twitter
Internet, 579–81 Abe 2.0, 431
media, 578–9 BBC, 430
narrowcasting, 584–6 bots, 112
social media, 179, 581–3 content analysis, 180–1
threats posed by, 583–4 Digital Outreach Team (DOT), 332
see also Islamist propaganda effectiveness disinformation, 57
610 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Donald Trump, 90, 128, 185, 515–17, 518 counterterrorism communications, 323–33
fake accounts, 62, 106, 115 Center for Strategic Counterterrorism
fake news, 313, 315 Communications (CSCC), 324
framing, 130, 207 Digital Outreach Team (DOT), 324, 325–31
Hillary Clinton, 512 Global Engagement Center (GEC), 324, 325
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 91 way forward, 331–3
ISIS, 583 Cuba, 208
political campaigns, 179 healthcare, 520–1
populism, 488 immigration, 7
Russian propaganda, 292, 504 Iran, 208–9
Sally-Anne Jones, 232 Iraq War, 110, 444, 500
Sawab Center, 332 Japan, 428–9, 437
users, 127, 128 Korean War, 209
visual propaganda, 126, 129–31, 174 media regulation, 316
Twitterbots, 503 National Security Agency (NSA), 588
North Korea, 346–7
UK Independence Party (UKIP), 534, 535, 537 objective journalism, 318
Ukraine, 66 Presidential election 2004, 62–3
media literacy, 317 Presidential election 2016
media regulation, 316 content analysis, 180
Russian propaganda, 288, 289, 290 Hilary Clinton, 63, 94
fake news, 303, 306–7, 309–11 media coverage, 513–14
social media, 207 Mueller investigation, 317
StopFake, 310, 313–14 participatory propaganda, 89, 90, 91, 93–4
US support, 500 participatory propaganda case study, 93–4
Vladimir Putin, 493, 498, 500, 502 rhetoric, 514–15
Ullah, Ata, 395 Russia, 59, 61–2, 91, 106, 303, 493, 503–4
Umberto I, King of Italy, 4 Trump campaign, 511–13
Union of Democratic Control (UDC), 268 Russia Today (RT), 501
United Kingdom sockpuppets, 110
2015 general election, 112 Syria, 445, 447, 452
austerity, 533, 534 terrorism, 223
EU referendum, 64 Ukraine, 500
financial motivations, 537–9 Vietnam War, 381, 390, 392–3
immigration, 534–5, 536, 540, 541 Vladimir Putin, 500, 502
Internet Research Agency (IRA), 503, 543n World War One, 265, 266
Jo Cox, 541–3 United States Agency for International
Leave campaign, 63–4, 80–1, 532–3, 536, 537, Development (USAID), 208
539–41 United States Freedom Army, 90
participatory propaganda case study, 94–5 Unleashing the Ideavirus (Godin), 161
immigration, 533–5 user participation, 114
Iraq War, xxvi, xxix see also citizens as content producers;
Russia, 503 participatory propaganda
Syrian conflict, 446, 447
terrorism, 223 van Wolferen, Karel, 422, 426, 436–7, 437–8
see also Great Britain Venezuela, 480, 483, 484, 485, 486–7
United Nations (UN), 209, 584, 586–7 verification, 296–7
United States Verstraete, M., 304
alt-right, 166 vertical coherence, 47
Brexit campaign, 536–7 Vickery, Chris, 539
Chinese Dream, 407, 414 Vietnam, 376, 379–80, 383, 398
Cold War, 316 Vietnam War, 35, 257, 381, 390–3
Great Britain, 470–2 violence, 190
Greece, 459, 460, 462–3, 466–8 cultural, 190
colonialism, 374, 375, 376, 376–7 ISIS, 561–2
counterpropaganda, 316 psychological, 199
biological warfare propaganda, 336–9, 345–6 Soviet propaganda, 198–200
 Index 611

symbolic, 147–8 Winter, C., 358, 568

see also propaganda of the deed (POTD) Winter, Ofer, 282
violent extremism, 551 Witte, K., 340, 341, 342
Violent Image, The (Bolt, 2011), 4, 17 Witte, K. and Allen, M., 340
viral agitpop, 162 Wladawsky-Berger, I., 74
viral marketing, 160–1 Woody, C.H., 352
viral propaganda, 155–6, 167–8 Wooley, S.C. and Howard, P.N., 87
memes, 163–6 ‘Work and Victory Week’, 459, 461, 466–71
metaphor, 159–63 World Socialist Web Site, 311
metaphorical memes, 166–7 World War One, 4, 86–7, 113
see also computational propaganda; digital atrocity propaganda, 22–3, 56
propaganda anti-propagandists, 267–70
Virdee, S. and McGeever, B., 540 architects of, 27–8
visual propaganda, 126–34 concept and theory, 23–6
Israeli-Hamas conflict, 127–8, 129–31, 174 impact on Australian population, 30–4
Syria, 129, 131–3, 174 international law as, 28–30
visual representation, 166–7 the ‘rape’ of Belgium, 265–7
Volchek, D. and Sindelar, D., 288 Bryce Report, 27, 29, 263–4, 265, 266, 268
Vosoughi, S., 292, 313 German invasion of Belgium, 262–3
Vote Leave, 536, 540–1 propaganda versus disinformation, 248–50
voter apathy, 497 World War Two, 66, 252–3, 375, 425, 462
Wylie, C., 89
Wakefield, Andrew, 57
Wall, T. and Mitew, T., 163, 165 Xi Jinping
Wall Street Journal, 407, 417 Chinese Dream, 405, 408–9, 417–8
Waller, M.J., 360 19th CPC Congress, 406, 410–11
Waltzman, R., 117 current situation and predicament, 413–17
Wanadi, Jusuf, 408 propaganda to policy, 411–13
Wang, Z., 408 Xiangping, M., 408
Wang Jiayu, 407 Xifra, J., 140, 145
Wang Xiaohui, 411 Xifra, J. and Heath, R.L., 142
war, 441, 445 Xinhua Daily, 406, 408, 409, 410, 415, 416
War on Terror, 38–9, 39–40, 45, 48
War Propaganda Bureau, 265 Yellow Vests Movement, 111
Wardle, C., 290, 304 Yeltsin, Boris, 492, 495
Wardle, C. and Derakhshan, H., 305 Yom Kippur War, 278
Washington Examiner, 451–2 Yomiuri Shimbun, 432
Washington Post, 90, 311, 451, 482, 522 Yoshimura, Hirofumi, 423, 424, 425, 427
Watson, T., 139 youth organizations, 194
Watts, J., 483 YouTube
Wayston, Elizabeth, 468 accessibility, 115
Weber, Max, 148 Al Qaeda, 395
websites, 580–1 Arabic language videos, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329
Weekly Disinformation Review, 290 Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), 395
Wei Da, 414 Columbian Chemicals, 105
Weimann, G., 227, 580 fake accounts, 115
Weimann, G. and Winn, C., 579 Hamas, 272–285
Welch, David, 22, 27 InfoWars, 316
West, Geoffrey, 23 ISIS, 126, 395, 583
WhatsApp, 67, 581 Islamist propaganda effectiveness, 226, 228
white widow, 231–2 Israel, 129
Why Britain Went to War, 33 Michael Gove, 75
Wiggins, B.E., 162–3 Syrian conflict, 131
Wigmore, Andy, 537–8, 539, 540, 542 US Presidential election 2016, 504
Wikipedia, 114 users, 581
Wilhelm I, Kaiser, 4 Vladimir Putin, 499
Winkler, C., 567 Yu Zhengsheng, 414
612 THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF PROPAGANDA

Zabecki, David, 22 Zionism, 280

Zasulich, Vera, 12, 16 Zionist International, 61
Zelin, A., 567–8 Žižek, S., 190
Zeta Global, 89 Zollmann, F., 443–4, 444
Zhang Lifan, 409 ‘zombie talk’, 165
Zhang Weiwei, 414 Zuckerberg, Mark, 58, 587
Zinoviev letter, 61, 250–2