ABSTRACT
Propaganda is the conscious attempt to control or change the attitudes and behaviour of a group, through manipulation of communication (either in the provision of information, or the use of imagery). Qualter (1962; 1985) identifies several properties of propaganda: it is deliberate, and aims to influence an audience; it attempts to affect behaviour by modifying attitudes (rather than through the threat of violence or offer of reward); it is essentially elitist, with a small group attempting to influence the behaviour of the many; it uses all forms of symbol (including verbal language, music and visual images). Given this definition, it is surprisingly hard to analyse, not least in terms of separating propaganda from ideology, and propaganda from the usual course of news reporting or political debate in the liberal democracies. Ideologies are belief systems that are in the interests of a dominant class, and are propagated throughout society. However, while the content of much school education may fruitfully be analysed as ideology (and is indeed deliberately designed to influence the behaviour and attitudes of pupils), it does not seem appropriate or fruitful to call it propaganda. Further, propaganda is not unproblematically untrue. While it may falsify facts, it may also simply be selective with facts, and present those facts in an emotive manner. To deem propaganda untrue is to minimise the degree to which the ‘truth’ is itself negotiated and contested in everyday life. What is one person’s truth is an other’s lie. Hence, while truth is frequently judged to be the first casualty of war, as propaganda and selective reporting take over, it is worth considering the degree to which news reporting in peace time is (and has to be) highly selective. The news cannot report everything that happens without discrimination. An analysis of propaganda is therefore posed with the problem of distinguishing legitimate selectivity with illegitimate selectivity, or at least, with explaining the particular circumstances that make the illegitimate selection propaganda, and not ideology. [AE] Further reading: Foulkes 1983.
