Propaganda tactics are timeless. While the game has moved on since the time of Augustus, the rules remain the same. Until the reign of Augustus, no one in Rome had come close to creating a personality cult. A striking image, a catchy phrase, shocking material – these are the bread and butter of propaganda. It[…]
In the dying days of empire, the British financed a global cinema service. Introduction It’s 1945. A mobile cinema van drives into a village in Ghana. Word spreads, music plays and a crowd gathers. The travelling commentator gives local chiefs a tour of the equipment, showing off this latest British technology, and explains the aims[…]
Empire was a consistent theme in these hundreds of pamphlets. In the Great War, the British government modernised and systematised propaganda for the first time. From the beginning in 1914, it aimed not only at domestic and enemy audiences, but also at the most powerful neutral country: the United States. The Propaganda Bureau, operating secretly[…]
Three types of historical writing flourished in the Middle Ages: chronicles, hagiography, and the rhetorical monograph. By Dr. Paul Antony HaywardHistorian A natural starting point for any attempt to know a past society is its histories—the texts with which its members recorded what had happened and was happening in their world. Many precious witnesses of[…]
It severely affected public opinion in favor of war and further energized a war-weary public in England. On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania was hit by repeated torpedo attacks emanating from a German u-boat off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,960 passengers and crew on board, only 767 survived. 128 of the deceased were[…]
Napoleon didn’t like sitting for portraits, and yet artists and mass market prints helped cement his legendary status. By Matthew Wills Corsican-born Napoleon Bonaparte, known for conquering much of Europe and crowning himself Emperor of the French, knew the importance of good iconography. Portraiture and propaganda were crucial elements of his life story, which began with his[…]
The United States was a relative latecomer to the world of mass propaganda and public diplomacy. By James Chisem Blue Jeans and Cola: U.S. Propaganda and the Cultural Cold War When the Cold War is mentioned in conversation, on the news, or in text, one’s mind invariably wanders to a series of distilled essences: soldiers[…]
How Cold War officialdom made the world safe for propaganda. Introduction SINCE THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, Americans have been treated to a daily diet of news about the depth and breadth of Russian disinformation sloshing around on social media and dropped into the sweaty hands of various Trump campaign apparatchiks. In 2017, the U.S. Department of[…]
Inscriptions ranging from the first Persian king, Cyrus, through Artaxerxes reveal elements in common in both Babylonian and Egyptian texts. Stretching from Egypt to the Indus River, the Persian Empire was the largest empire yet seen in the ancient Near East. Typically, the Hebrew Bible depicts ancient Near Eastern empires as divine instruments of punishment.[…]
The Assyrian king was the main promoter of big feasts and special events, during which he played the role of leader and benefactor of his country. Banqueting is a powerful means of communication. Throughout human history, men and women have always done their best to enjoy food as much as possible in social settings in[…]
The poster became a cheap transmitter of these various messages and combined visual arts with psychological methods to incessantly repeat Nazi ideologies to the German public. In 1925, a bellicose Adolf Hitler understood that he needed the power of mass persuasion to push his political ideology on the German people. Citing propaganda as an essential component of statecraft[…]
Artists suddenly became soldiers on the front to win the hearts and minds of the American public. Introduction In 1917, James Montgomery Flagg created his iconic Uncle Sam poster encouraging American men to join the war cause with the clear message, “I want you for the U.S. Army!” as the U.S. ramped up preparations to enter[…]
Vance Packard’s ‘Hidden Persuaders’ was an exposé of the new techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers. Introduction In 2014, Facebook revealed details of an experiment they had carried out in collaboration with Cornell University. Researchers modified the type of content that appeared in some users’ newsfeeds. For one group, the Facebook algorithm was[…]
The British poster artist Cyril Kenneth Bird, known as Fougasse, once referred to posters as “anything stuck on a wall with the objective of persuading the passer-by”. Introduction The British poster artist Cyril Kenneth Bird, known as Fougasse, once referred to posters as “anything stuck on a wall with the objective of persuading the passer-by”[…]
This year marked the centennial of the conclusion of the First World War, an anniversary that passed in this country with relatively little notice. Yesterday, my family went to a screening of They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s new World War I documentary, which apparently set records for a cinematic “event” (i.e. a special one- or two-day[…]