| Ad Hominem: A Latin phrase that has come to mean attacking one's opponent, as opposed to attacking their arguments. |
| Ad nauseam: This uses tireless repetition of an idea. An idea, especially a simple slogan,
that is repeated enough times, may begin to be taken as the truth. This
approach is more effective alongside the propagandist limiting or
controlling the media. |
| Agenda Setting:
Agenda setting means the "ability [of the news media] to influence the
importance placed on the topics of the public agenda". If a news item is
covered frequently and prominently, the audience will regard the issue
as more important. |
| Appeal to Authority: Appeals to authority cite prominent figures to support a position, idea, argument, or course of action. |
| Appeal to Fear: Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling anxieties and panic in the general population, for example, Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman's Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people. |
| Appeal to Prejudice: Using loaded or emotive terms to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition. |
Bandwagon:
Bandwagon and "inevitable-victory" appeals attempt to persuade the
target audience to join in and take the course of action that "everyone
else is taking."
-- Inevitable victory:
invites those not already on the bandwagon to join those already on the
road to certain victory. Those already or at least partially on the
bandwagon are reassured that staying aboard is their best course of
action. (e.g., "The debate is over. Nearly everyone who matters agrees
with me.")
-- Join the crowd:
This technique reinforces people's natural desire to be on the winning
side. This technique is used to convince the audience that a program is
an expression of an irresistible mass movement and that it is in their
best interest to join. |
| Beautiful People: The type of propaganda that deals with famous people
or depicts attractive, happy people. This suggests if people buy a
product or follow a certain ideology, they too will be happy or
successful. (This is used more in advertising for products, instead of
political reasons.) Usually for advertising rather than political
purposes, sexual arousal may also be used. For example, a message promoting a brand of motorcycles to a male target audience may also include sexually attractive bikini-clad women within the advertisement, to make the product more appealing to the audience by targeting sexual desires.
However, some evidence suggests that using sexual appeal to sell a
product may not succeed, as the target audience may focus too much on
the sexually appealing people in the advertisement rather than the
product itself. |
| Big Lie:
The repeated articulation of a complex of events that justify
subsequent action. The descriptions of these events have elements of
truth, and the "big lie" generalizations merge and eventually supplant
the public's accurate perception of the underlying events. After World
War I the German stab in the back explanation of the cause of their defeat became a justification for Nazi re-militarization. |
| Black-and-White Fallacy: Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. (e.g., "You're either with us, or against us....") |
| Cherry Picking (fallacy) or Selective truth the British Deputy Director of Psychological Warfare Division
(R Crossman) stated during the Second World War "In propaganda truth
pays... It is a complete delusion to think of the brilliant propagandist
as being a professional liar. The brilliant propagandist is the man who
tells the truth, or that selection of the truth which is requisite for his purpose,
and tells it in such a way that the recipient does not think he is
receiving any propaganda... [...] The art of propaganda is not telling
lies, but rather selecting the truth you require and giving it mixed up
with some truths the audience wants to hear." |
| Classical Conditioning: All vertebrates, including humans, respond to classical conditioning.
That is, if A is always present when B is present and B causes a
physical reaction (e.g. disgust, pleasure), then when presented with
object A in the absence of B, that same reaction will be experienced. |
| Cognitive Dissonance: People desire to be consistent. Suppose a pollster
finds that a certain group of people hates his candidate for senator
but loves actor A. They use actor A's endorsement of their candidate to
change people's minds because people cannot tolerate inconsistency. They
are forced to either dislike the actor or like the candidate. |
| Common Man: The "plain folks"
or "common man" approach attempts to convince the audience that the
propagandist's positions reflect the common sense of the people. It is
designed to win the confidence of the audience by communicating in the
common manner and style of the target audience. Propagandists use
ordinary language and mannerisms (and clothe their message in
face-to-face and audiovisual communications) in attempting to identify
their point of view with that of the average person. A common example of
this type of propaganda is a political figure, usually running for a
placement, in a backyard or shop doing daily routine things. This image
appeals to the common person. With the plain folks device, the
propagandist can win the confidence of persons who resent or distrust
foreign sounding, intellectual speech, words, or mannerisms." For
example, a politician speaking to a Southern United States crowd might
incorporate words such as "Y'all" and other colloquialisms to create a perception of belonging. |
| Cult of Personality:
A cult of personality arises when an individual uses mass media to
create an idealized and heroic public image, often through unquestioning
flattery and praise. The hero personality then advocates the positions
that the propagandist desires to promote. For example, modern
propagandists hire popular personalities to promote their ideas and/or
products. |
| Demonizing the Enemy:
Making individuals from the opposing nation, from a different ethnic
group, or those who support the opposing viewpoint appear to be subhuman
(e.g., the Vietnam War-era term "gooks" for National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam aka Vietcong, or "VC"), worthless, or immoral, through suggestion or false accusations. Dehumanizing is also a term used synonymously with demonizing, the latter usually serves as an aspect of the former. |
| Demoralization: Propaganda towards an adversary to erode fighting spirit, and encourage surrender or defection. |
| Dictat:
This technique hopes to simplify the decision making process by using
images and words to tell the audience exactly what actions to take,
eliminating any other possible choices. Authority figures can be used to
give the order, overlapping it with the appeal to authority technique, but not necessarily. The Uncle Sam "I want you" image is an example of this technique. |
| Disinformation:
The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the
purpose of making a false record of an event or the actions of a person
or organization, including outright forgery of photographs, motion pictures, broadcasts, and sound recordings as well as printed documents. |
| Divide and Rule:
Divide and rule in politics and sociology is gaining and maintaining
power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into pieces that
individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy. |
| Door-in-the-Face Technique:
Is used to increase a person's latitude of acceptance. For example, if a
salesperson wants to sell an item for $100 but the public is only
willing to pay $50, the salesperson first offers the item at a higher
price (e.g., $200) and subsequently reduces the price to $100 to make it
seem like a good deal. |
| Dysphemism: A dysphemism is an expression with a negative connotation. It is the opposite of a euphemism. |
| Euphemism:
A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place
of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant. |
| Euphoria:
The use of an event that generates euphoria or happiness, or using an
appealing event to boost morale. Euphoria can be created by declaring a
holiday, making luxury items available, or mounting a military parade
with marching bands and patriotic messages. |
| Exaggeration:
An exaggeration (or hyperbole) occurs when the most fundamental aspects
of a statement are true, but only to a certain degree. It is also seen
as "stretching the truth" or making something appear more powerful,
meaningful, or real than it actually is. Saying that a person ate 20 spring rolls at a party when they actually ate 7 or 8 would be considered an exaggeration. |
| False Accusations: False accusations can be in any of the following contexts: Informally in everyday life. Quasi-judicially. Judicially. |
| Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt:
Sometimes abbreviated as FUD, an attempt to influence public perception
by disseminating negative and dubious/false information designed to
undermine the credibility of their beliefs. |
Firehose of Falsehood:
A propaganda technique in which a large number of messages are
broadcast rapidly, repetitively, and continuously over multiple channels
(such as news and social media) without regard for truth or consistency.
|
| Flag-Waving:An attempt to justify an action on the grounds that doing so will make
one more patriotic, or in some way benefit a group, country, or idea.
The feeling of patriotism this technique attempts to inspire may not
necessarily diminish or entirely omit one's capability for rational
examination of the matter in question. |
| Foot-in-the-Door Technique: Often used by recruiters and salesmen. For example, the perpetrator
walks up to the victim and pins a flower or gives a small gift to the
victim. The victim says thanks and now they have incurred a
psychological debt to the perpetrator. The person eventually asks for a
larger favor (e.g., a donation or to buy something far more expensive).
The unwritten social contract between the victim and perpetrator causes
the victim to feel obligated to reciprocate by agreeing to do the larger
favor or buy the more expensive gift. |
| Framing (social sciences): Framing is the social construction of a social phenomenon often by mass media
sources, political or social movements, political leaders, or other
actors and organizations. It is an inevitable process of selective
influence over the individual's perception of the meanings attributed to
words or phrases. |
| Gaslighting:
Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying to sow
seeds of doubt in a target individual or group, hoping to make them
question their own memory, perception, sanity, and norms. |
| Gish Gallop: Bombarding a political opponent with obnoxiously complex questions in
rapid fire during a debate to make the opponent appear to not know what
they are talking about. |
| Glittering Generalities: Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words that are
applied to a product or idea, but present no concrete argument or
analysis. This technique has also been referred to as the PT Barnum effect. (e.g., the advertising campaign slogan "Ford has a better idea!") |
| Guilt by Association or Reductio ad Hitlerum: This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of
an action or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus if a group that supports a certain policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive,
or contemptible people support the same policy, then the members of the
group may decide to change their original position. This is a form of
bad logic, where A is said to include X, and B is said to include X,
therefore, A = B. |
| Half-Truth: A half-truth is a deceptive statement that includes some element of
truth. It comes in several forms: the statement might be partly true,
the statement may be totally true but only part of the whole truth, or
it may utilize some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, or
double meaning, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade, blame, or
misrepresent the truth. |
| Information Overload: Information overload can have the same effect as secrecy and
certainly in the short term and for democracies today it might be
considered more effective. When information overload occurs, it is
likely that a reduction in decision quality will occur. The glut of
information generated by modern technology [...] threatens to make its
receivers passive. Overload prompts disengagement. |
| Intentional Vagueness: Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply
its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of
undefined phrases, without analyzing their validity or attempting to
determine their reasonableness or application. The intent is to cause
people to draw their own interpretations rather than simply being
presented with an explicit idea. In trying to "figure out" the
propaganda, the audience forgoes judgment of the ideas presented. Their
validity, reasonableness and application may still be considered. |
| Labeling: A euphemism is used when the propagandist attempts to increase the perceived quality, credibility, or credence of a particular ideal. A dysphemism
is used when the intent of the propagandist is to discredit, diminish
the perceived quality, or hurt the perceived righteousness of the
individual. By creating a "label", "category", or "faction" of a
population, it is much easier to make an example of these larger bodies,
because they can uplift or defame the individual without actually
incurring legal-defamation. Labeling can be thought of as a sub-set of guilt by association, another logical fallacy. |
| Latitudes of Acceptance: If a person's message is outside the bounds of acceptance for an
individual and group, most techniques will engender psychological
reactance (simply hearing the argument will make the message even less
acceptable). There are two techniques for increasing the bounds of
acceptance. First, one can take an even more extreme position that will
make more moderate positions seem more acceptable. This is similar to
the door-in-the-face technique. Alternatively, one can moderate one's
own position to the edge of the latitude of acceptance and then over
time slowly move to the position that was previously held. |
| Loaded Language: Specific words and phrases with strong emotional implications are
used to influence the audience, for example, using the word reforms
rather than a more neutral word like changes. |
| Love Bombing: See also: Milieu control
Used to recruit members to a cult or ideology by having a group of
individuals cut off a person from their existing social support and
replace it entirely with members of the group who deliberately bombard
the person with affection in an attempt to isolate the person from their
prior beliefs and value system. |
| Lying and Deception: Lying and deception can be the basis of many propaganda techniques
including Ad Homimen arguments, Big-Lie, Defamation, Door-in-the-Face,
Half-truth, Name-calling or any other technique that is based on
dishonesty or deception. For example, many politicians have been found
to frequently stretch or break the truth. |
Managing the News: According to Adolf Hitler, "The most brilliant propagandist technique
will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind
constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them
over and over." This idea is consistent with the principle of classical
conditioning as well as the idea of "Staying on Message." Example Wall Wall Wall
|
| Milieu Control: An attempt to control the social environment and ideas through the use of social pressure |
| Minimization: Minimization is the opposite of exaggeration. It is a type of deception involving denial coupled with rationalization in situations where complete denial is implausible. |
| Name-Calling: Propagandists use the name-calling technique to incite fears and
arouse prejudices in their hearers in the intent that the bad names will
cause hearers to construct a negative opinion about a group or set of
beliefs or ideas that the propagandist wants hearers to denounce. The
method is intended to provoke conclusions about a matter apart from
impartial examinations of facts. Name-calling is thus a substitute for
rational, fact-based arguments against an idea or belief on its own
merits. |
| Non Sequitur: A type of logical fallacy, in which a conclusion is made out of an argument that does not justify it. All invalid arguments can be considered as special cases of non sequitur. |
| Obfuscation:
intentional vagueness, confusion . Generalities are deliberately vague
so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention
is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analyzing
their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or
application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own
interpretations rather than simply being presented with an explicit
idea. In trying to "figure out" the propaganda, the audience forgoes
judgment of the ideas presented. Their validity, reasonableness and
application may still be considered. |
| Operant Conditioning: Operant conditioning involves learning through imitation. For
example, watching an appealing person buy products or endorse positions
teaches a person to buy the product or endorse the position. Operant
conditioning is the underlying principle behind the ad nauseam, slogan
and other repetition public relations campaigns. |
| Oversimplification: Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems. |
| Pensée Unique: Enforced reduction of discussion by use of overly simplistic phrases or arguments (e.g., "There is no alternative to war.")
|
Quotes Out of Context: Selective editing of quotes that can change meanings. Political
documentaries designed to discredit an opponent or an opposing political
viewpoint often use this technique.
|
| Rationalization: Individuals or groups may use favorable generalities to rationalize
questionable acts or beliefs. Vague and pleasant phrases are often used
to justify such actions or beliefs. |
| Red Herring:
Presenting data or issues that, while compelling, are irrelevant to the
argument at hand, and then claiming that it validates the argument. |
| Repetition:
This is the repeating of a certain symbol or slogan so that the
audience remembers it. This could be in the form of a jingle or an image
placed on nearly everything in the picture/scene. This also includes
using subliminal phrases, images or other content in a piece of
propaganda. |
| Scapegoating: Assigning blame to an individual or group, thus alleviating feelings of guilt from responsible parties and/or distracting attention from the need to fix the problem for which blame is being assigned. |
| Slogans:
A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and
stereotyping. Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned
ideas, in practice they tend to act only as emotional appeals. Opponents
of the US's invasion and occupation of Iraq use the slogan "blood for
oil" to suggest that the invasion and its human losses was done to
access Iraq's oil riches. On the other hand, supporters who argue that
the US should continue to fight in Iraq use the slogan "cut and run" to
suggest withdrawal is cowardly or weak. Similarly, the names of the
military campaigns, such as "enduring freedom" or "just cause" can also be considered slogans, devised to influence people. |
| Smears:
A smear is an effort to damage or call into question someone's
reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It can be applied to
individuals or groups. |
| Stereotyping:
name calling or labeling. This technique attempts to arouse prejudices
in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as
something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds
undesirable. For instance, reporting on a foreign country or social
group may focus on the stereotypical traits that the reader expects,
even though they are far from being representative of the whole country
or group; such reporting often focuses on the anecdotal. In graphic propaganda, including war posters, this might include portraying enemies with stereotyped racial features. |
| Straw Man:
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation
of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the
illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially
similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever
having actually refuted the original position. |
| Testimonial: See also: Damaging quotation
Testimonials are quotations, in or out of context, especially cited to
support or reject a given policy, action, program, or personality. The
reputation or the role (expert, respected public figure, etc.) of the
individual giving the statement is exploited. The testimonial places the
official sanction of a respected person or authority on a propaganda
message. This is done in an effort to cause the target audience to
identify itself with the authority or to accept the authority's opinions
and beliefs as its own. |
| Third Party Technique: See also: Soft power
Works on the principle that people are more willing to accept an
argument from a seemingly independent source of information than from
someone with a stake in the outcome. It is a marketing strategy commonly
employed by Public Relations (PR) firms, that involves placing a
premeditated message in the "mouth of the media." The third party
technique can take many forms, ranging from the hiring of journalists to
report the organization in a favorable light, to using scientists
within the organization to present their perhaps prejudicial findings to
the public. Frequently, astroturf groups or front groups are used to deliver the message. |
| Thought-Terminating Cliché: A commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. |
| Transfer:
Also known as association, this is a technique of projecting positive
or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or
value onto another to make the second more acceptable or to discredit
it. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to
identify with recognized authorities. Often highly visual, this
technique often utilizes symbols (for example, the swastikas used in Nazi Germany, originally a symbol for health and prosperity) superimposed over other visual images. |
Unstated Assumption:
This technique is used when the propaganda concept would seem less
credible if explicitly stated. The concept is instead repeatedly assumed
or implied.
|
| Virtue Words: See also: Transfer (propaganda) These are words in the value system
of the target audience that produce a positive image when attached to a
person or issue. Peace, hope, happiness, security, wise leadership,
freedom, "The Truth", etc. are virtue words. Many see religiosity as a virtue, making associations to this quality effectively beneficial. |
| Whataboutism: Whataboutism is a variant of the tu quoque
logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by
charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving
their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian
propaganda. When criticisms were leveled at the Soviet Union, the
Soviet response would be "What about..." followed by an event in the
Western world. |
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