Propaganda

This seminal study and critique of propaganda from one of the greatest French philosophers of the 20th century is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1962. Taking not only a psychological approach, but a sociological approach as well, Ellul’s book outlines the taxonomy for propaganda, and ultimately, it’s destructive nature towards democracy. Drawing from his own experiences fighting for the French resistance against the Vichy regime, Ellul offers a unique insight into the propaganda machine.

Learn how the perception of truth has been weaponized in modern politics with this "insightful" account of propaganda in Russia and beyond during the age of disinformation (New York Times). When information is a weapon, every opinion is an act of war. We live in a world of influence operations run amok, where dark ads, psyops, hacks, bots, soft facts, ISIS, Putin, trolls, and Trump seek to shape our very reality. In this surreal atmosphere created to disorient us and undermine our sense of truth, we've lost not only our grip on peace and democracy -- but our very notion of what those words even mean. Peter Pomerantsev takes us to the front lines of the disinformation age, where he meets Twitter revolutionaries and pop-up populists, "behavioral change" salesmen, Jihadi fanboys, Identitarians, truth cops, and many others. Forty years after his dissident parents were pursued by the KGB, Pomerantsev finds the Kremlin re-emerging as a great propaganda power. His research takes him back to Russia -- but the answers he finds there are not what he expected. Blending reportage, family history, and intellectual adventure, This Is Not Propaganda explores how we can reimagine our politics and ourselves when reality seems to be coming apart.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.

"The book details the vast sums Global Affairs Canada, Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence spend articulating a one-sided version of Canada's foreign policy. A Propaganda System traces the long history of government information control during war, including formal censorship, as well as extreme media bias on topics ranging from Haiti to Palestine, investment agreements to the mining industry. The book also details the corporate elite's funding for university programs and think tanks"--Provided by publisher.

One of the most influential figurative painters of his generation, Neo Rauch presents bold, new work in PROPAGANDA. Rauch is widely celebrated for his captivating compositions that bring together figurative painting and surrealism into an entirely new kind of visual encounter. They often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with artistic traditions of realism—but they remain dreamlike and impossible to reduce to a single story. Though his art is highly refined and executed with great technical skill, Rauch himself stresses the intuitive, deeply personal nature of how he works. As the artist notes, “My process is far less a reflection than it is drawing from the sediments of my past, which occurs in an almost trance-like state.” Eight large-scale canvases and seven smaller, more intimately scaled works continue the artist’s exploration of figuration and the ambiguous nature of meaning in visual art. In some of the larger works, the saturation of the canvas with characters, objects, and, forms, all rendered at different scales and in conflicting arrangements, creates a collage-like quality—a figurative scrapbook of Rauch’s personal iconography. The publication features a short story by acclaimed novelist and playwright Daniel Kehlmann, which was inspired by the paintings in this book. The fantastical text moves between present-day New York and an unknown time of enchanted forests, knights, and witches, exploring the many layers found in Rauch’s canvases. Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at David Zwirner, Hong Kong in 2019, Neo Rauch: PROPAGANDA is available in both English-only and bilingual English/traditional Chinese editions.

From the taunting videos of Osama Bin Laden to the partisan euphoria of the embedded journalist, from the visual rhetoric of the anti-globalisation movement to the empire of spin to the scalding polemics of American campaign advertising, propaganda is back. This book provides a full and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of propaganda, its meaning, content and urgent significance. It is one of the most original works ever published on the subject. While it applies a conceptual approach to the study of propaganda, the theoretics are grounded in practice. Insightful case studies on Symbolic Government, negative campaign advertising, single issue group polemic and corporate propaganda, culminate in a vivid narrative of the role of propaganda in driving the remorseless new conflict which began on September 11 2001. Contents Part One: Defining what and reasoning why 1. A question of meaning 2. Explaining propaganda Part Two: A conceptual arrangement 3. An essential trinity: rhetoric, symbolism and myth 4. Elements of propaganda: foundations; why we need enemies; enmity in action Part Three: case studies in propaganda 5. Privatising propaganda: the rise of the single issue 6. Evangelism and corporate propaganda 7. Propaganda and the symbolic state: a British experience 8. 9-11 and war 9. Weapons of mass deception: propaganda, the media and the Iraq war Afterword - The impact of propaganda Index Nicholas O'Shaughnessy is Professor of Marketing and Communication at the University of Keele

Introduce readers to the concept of propaganda by analyzing examples from the past and present. This approachable overview includes tips on how to spot propaganda and how to respond to fake news.

As Philip Taylor has written, 'The challenge (of the modern information age) is to ensure that no single propaganda source gains monopoly over the information and images that shape our thoughts. If this happens, the war propagandists will be back in business again.' Propaganda came of age in the Twentieth Century. The development of mass- and multi-media offered a fertile ground for propaganda while global conflict provided the impetus needed for its growth. Propaganda has however become a portmanteau word, which can be interpreted in a number of different ways. What are the characteristic features of propaganda, and how can it be defined? The distinguished contributors to this book trace the development of techniques of 'opinion management' from the First World War to the current conflict in Afghanistan. They reveal how state leaders and spin-doctors operating at the behest of the state, sought to shape popular attitudes - at home and overseas - endeavouring to harness new media with the objective of winning hearts and minds. The book provides compelling evidence of how the study and practice of propaganda today is shaped by its history.