PROPAGANDA AND ITS OBJECTIVES

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare. 

The work of the Institute for Propaganda Analysis led to what we can consider a primitives' theory of attitude change. Several of the propaganda devices the institute identified are quite similar to techniques later studied more carefully in scientific research on persuasion. Scientific research shows that these devices have some ability to change attitudes but that they don't work on everyone.

As defined by both Lasswell and Brown, propaganda would include much of advertising (where the aim is not the good of the receiver but greater sales for the advertiser), much of political campaigning (where the aim is not the good of the receiver but the candidate's election), and much of public relations (where the aim is often not the good of the receiver but the most favorable image of a corporation).

Lasswell also discussed four major objectives of propaganda:

 To mobilize hatred against the enemy

 To preserve the friendship of allies

 To preserve the friendship and, if possible, to procure the cooperation of neutrals

 To demoralize the enemy