Propaganda & Persuasion

Those who wish to encourage students to cast a more critical eye on the persuasion that surrounds them in everyday life may choose to turn to the 5th edition of Jowett and O’Donnell's Propaganda & Persuasion. Written by specialists in the history of communication (Jowett) and persuasion and rhetoric (O’Donnell) this text is intended for use in courses on persuasion and propaganda, rhetoric and mass communication. Yet it also has much to offer to students studying communication more widely. Its aim of enabling students to “recognize, analyze and evaluate the propaganda in their midst” (p. xiv) is applicable to students of PR, marketing communications and corporate communication.

Propaganda & Persuasion falls somewhere between a monograph, reflecting the combined specialist interest of the authors, and a textbook. The authors’ include each of the Prefaces from previous editions and demonstrate the growth of interest in the topic. This is also a useful starting point for student researchers; the Prefaces track the emergence of new publications and contributions to the literature since the first edition of the text in 1986. The text is organised into eight chapters, commencing with a discussion of the differences between propaganda and persuasion and ending with a review of where the field is today. The chapter titles do not always reflect their content, however (see Chapter 3, Propaganda institutionalised), and the writing style is not consistently engaging. Some chapters are more obviously targeted at specialist courses. The more historical chapters, for example, may be less useful to some communication courses, while others have a much wider scope. This means that, for many courses, a directed reading strategy may be appropriate, focusing students on relevant chapters.

The book goes to some lengths to define propaganda and to distinguish between propaganda and persuasion. There is of course some confusion around the use of these terms as, the authors note, “propaganda” was renamed “persuasion” after Second World War in an attempt to escape its negative connotations (Bernays adopted the term “Public Relations” as a further alternative). Student readers may therefore be left questioning whether all forms of persuasive communication can be categorised as propaganda. An examination of theories of propaganda (see Chapter 4) includes many familiar communication models (opinion leaders, two-step/multi-step flow models, source credibility, etc.), focusing primarily on the psychological study of attitude. The authors recognise the limitations to such “transfer” models and have added additional sections on cultural approaches to communication (based on the work of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall), and collective memory studies (drawing on both cultural studies and history). These alternative perspectives, although rather briefly outlined here, are to be welcomed as additional ways to explore communication. In addition, the text introduces aspects of communication that we may not always consider in depth but which are nevertheless relevant to the study of PR and marketing communication. For example, the authors encourage an examination of the cultural myths that predispose us to accept a particular message and a more critical appraisal of the ideology embedded in communication campaigns.

One of the most useful chapters offers students and researchers a methodical ten-step approach to analysing communication campaigns (see Chapter 6, How to analyze propaganda). This section explores a number of techniques which maximise the effect of the propaganda campaign, and which are again relevant to any form of persuasive communication. This approach is subsequently demonstrated in the examination of the four propaganda case studies that follow. (A further two case studies from earlier editions of the text are published on the Student Study Site – although this was a very limited resource at the time of writing this review.) The case studies are largely US based, and focus on a range of topical issues including smoking and health as an example of corporate propaganda, the adoption of propaganda techniques in the marketing of pharmaceuticals, along with the expected wartime and political examples.

The historical emphasis of this text is its primary limitation for many communication courses: the text tracks the increasing influence of mass media through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, demonstrating that the development of propaganda is inextricably linked to developments in media technology. This emphasis on reviewing the past does not allow sufficient attention to be afforded to the role of the media today and, moreover, the changing way in which the public now engage with it. Although the text has been updated to include greater discussion of the internet, the use of blogs, YouTube videos and Twitter, this remains brief. As such the final chapter, How propaganda works in modern society, is rather disappointing. It offers a model of the process of propaganda which offers little that is new in communication studies, essentially listing all the components that contribute to the study of propaganda. It fails to point forward to new research directions, such as the changing role of the media and of how modern-day audiences engage with it. In particular, the emphasis on the process of propaganda does not fully consider the implications of communicating in a world where the “recipient” of communication is more sceptical, has access to multiple sources of information, and is becoming an increasingly powerful disseminator and co-creator of communication. A question remains unanswered in this text: if successful propaganda depends on control of information flow, what is the future of propaganda in a technologically sophisticated democracy where consumers have free access to multiple sources of information?