Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of mass communication that is primarily used to influence an audience and persuade them to further an agenda. Propaganda may not be objective and often selectively presents facts to encourage a particular perception, or uses loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information presented. Propaganda can be found in a wide variety of different contexts. Beginning in the twentieth century, the English term propaganda became associated with a manipulative approach, but historically, propaganda had been a neutral descriptive term of any material that promotes certain opinions, ideologies, or concepts. A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, TV shows, and websites. More recently, the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, in computational propaganda, bots and algorithms are used to manipulate public opinion, e.g., by creating fake or biased news to spread it on social media or using chatbots to mimic real people in discussions in social networks.