Understanding Propaganda as a Social Process

The next speaker at the P³: Power, Propaganda, Polarisation ICA 2024 postconference is Christian Baden, whose focus is on propaganda a as social process. Much of the work on propaganda remains very technical, and there is a need to move beyond this; propaganda is now again a major topic in research, with work having increased substantially since the mid-2010s. But it should not be equated simplistically with mis- and disinformation or ‘fake news’, or addressed only through fact-checks; this alone is not going to work.

False information is only a small part of propaganda: propaganda is systemic, disseminated by actors who are committed to it for the long term; t is long-term, systemic, big-picture, culturally embedded, and evaluative of social processes. Much of it does not use inherently false information, but instead selectively presents technically correct information taken out of context. It is a form of strategically planned public communication that claims a monopoly of truth on political issues and delegitimises consent.

This applies broadly, beyond the predominant contexts of crises and wars, beyond domestic and national realms, beyond authoritarian regimes, and even in high-choice digital information environments. In such environments, audiences by definition have ready access to competing claims, and what information they are exposed to in itself does not determine what they believe; the question is what they consider to be believable and significant. Propaganda seeks to condition these considerations; as a result of such propaganda, claims about the war on Gaza are received but disregarded by partisans from both sides, for instance.

Propaganda thus works on multiple levels: it generates enduring long-term meta-narratives and story worlds about how the world works, as well as creating adaptive medium-term communication campaigns that provide resonant explanations for salient concerns, and channelling day-to-day (dis)information flows that respond to news events in the short term and enable tactical mobilisation and demobilisation.

Such propaganda efforts both maintain ongoing propaganda narratives, and offer ‘evidence’ that can be used by those who believe in such propaganda to dismiss any specific counter-narratives as counter-propaganda, and to dismiss its sources as propagandists; this supports processes of ‘evidence’-based information screening as well as source-based information screening. At the medium level, it also enables resonance-based information screening, where information that does not align with partisans’ views can be dismissed too.

Propaganda motivates people to actively affirm their beliefs; it offers ontological security and encourages a performance of loyalty; this motivates participation directed against others, including the policing of dissent. This can also be supported by inauthentic communication strategies, of course. This leads to a belief in a culturally embedded monopoly of truth, and in studying it requires us to move away from a focus on actual truth claims and towards a focus on the consistent narratives that such propaganda promotes.