PROPAGANDA:
CASE STUDIES
CDSn4104 HYBRID WARFARE

WHAT IS PROPAGANDA?
 “Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to
influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for
ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided
messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels.”

 Wide-spread and multifaced phenomenon
 Related with modernity – Importance of mass culture

PRE-MODERN ERA
 Heroic poems, legends, hymnus
Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC)
 Importance of print and increasing mobility and literacy
 Institutionalized by Catholic Church
§Pontificio Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide (1627)
 French revolution and Napoleonic Wars
Caricatures and bulletins
La Marseillaise

FIRST WORLD WAR
 Need for mass mobilization and consistent war effort (home front)
Motivation of fighting forces and population
Demonizing enemy
Communicate key messages
 United Kingdom as leading country
Centralization under the Foreign Office (1916) and Ministry of Information (1918)
Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (1915)
Inspiration for Nazi Germany

TOTALITARIAN REGIMES
 Third Reich and Soviet Union as a new type of regimes
Constant mass mobilization of population as key feature of regime
Ambition to create new man
 New means of communication
Movies (Leni Riefenstahl, Sergei Eisenstein)
Radio
 Special institutions
Reich Ministry of Propaganda (1933)

TOTALITARIAN REGIMES



WORLD WAR II
 Propaganda as indispensable part of war effort
Present in all spheres of public life – posters, songs, movies, radio broadcast
Important role of public speaking
 Important component of ideology
Judeo-Bolshevism x Democracies

WORLD WAR II
 But at the same time use of everyday problems and themes


COLD WAR
 Ideological contestation with limited kinetic component – propaganda as the main tool
Appeal to values represented by each system
Blurring lines between propaganda and culture
Every component of politics as venue for propaganda (Space race, decolonization)
 Importance of information component
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Operation Infektion  (1983)

MODERN DAYS
 Geopolitical contestation is back as well as propaganda
RT, Sputnik, Confucius Institutes
Use of internet – trolls (Internet Research Agency)
MH17 (2014) or COVID-19 (Chinese virus)
 Open information space as opportunity
Non-state actors
Private companies
Profiteers
 Different context but same goals – Challenge for democratic system

THANK YOU FOR ATTENTION