ABSTRACT
This chapter looks forward to how propaganda and public relations changed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as well as what might be done to resist them today. The chapter traces three major developments in propaganda. First, the chapter follows how propaganda has spread to new and disparate areas of the corporation where it was not present in the early twentieth century, with special attention paid to the role it plays in product design. Second, the chapter traces how surveys, polls, focus groups, and big data have helped to better specify target publics and identify how they can be governed. Third, the chapter discusses the first two points in combination, revealing how the spread of public relations and its ability to better specify publics and govern them have worked in combination to spread and intensify the effects of propaganda on contemporary life. Other aspects of the corporation that are discussed alongside these changes in public relations are mass production, micromanufacturing, branding, industrial design, marketing, retail, department stores, political campaigns, co-optation, and employee morale.
The last section of the chapter looks at how this text would direct resistance to propaganda differently in comparison with previous accounts, including those of Jason Stanley and Herbert Marcuse. The crux of the matter is that this account of argues that propaganda works to govern publics through changing their natures and so any notion that relies on human nature to provide the spark and motivation for resistance are problematic. This chapter offers some insights about how an opponent that works by transforming human nature might best be fought by looking at an ongoing and successful campaign to combat propaganda: the smoking cessation movement. Contrary to popular belief, smoking cessation experts believe that tobacco propaganda plays a much larger role in creating and maintaining tobacco use than nicotine and so their efforts are focused on combatting propaganda. This movement has lessons to offer about what it takes to resist or even displace contemporary propaganda.
