propaganda essay pdf

Special Issue: Propaganda

This essay was published as part of the Special Issue “Propaganda Analysis Revisited”, guest-edited by Dr. A. J. Bauer (Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Creative Media, University of Alabama) and Dr. Anthony Nadler (Associate Professor, Department of Communication and Media Studies, Ursinus College).

Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques

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This essay argues that the recent scholarship on misinformation and fake news suffers from a lack of historical contextualization. The fact that misinformation scholarship has, by and large, failed to engage with the history of propaganda and with how propaganda has been studied by media and communication researchers is an empirical detriment to it, and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem they are trying to solve is unclear.

School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK

Introduction

Propaganda has a history and so does research on it. In other words, the mechanisms and methods through which media scholars have sought to understand propaganda—or misinformation, or disinformation, or fake news, or whatever you would like to call it—are themselves historically embedded and carry with them underlying notions of power and causality. To summarize the already quite truncated argument below, the larger conceptual frameworks for understanding information that is understood as “pernicious” in some way can be grouped into four large categories: studies of propaganda, the analysis of ideology and its relationship to culture, notions of conspiracy theory, and finally, concepts of misinformation and its impact. The fact that misinformation scholarship generally proceeds without acknowledging these theoretical frameworks is an empirical detriment to it and serves to make the solutions and remedies to misinformation harder to articulate because the actual problem to be solved is unclear. 

The following pages discuss each of these frameworks—propaganda, ideology, conspiracy, and misinformation—before returning to the stakes and implications of these arguments for future research on pernicious media content.

Propaganda and applied research

The most salient aspect of propaganda research is the fact that it is powerful in terms of resources while at the same time it is often intellectually derided, or at least regularly dismissed. Although there has been a left-wing tradition of propaganda research housed uneasily within the academy (Herman & Chomsky, 1988; Seldes & Seldes, 1943), this is not the primary way in which journalism or media messaging has been understood in many journalism schools or mainstream communications departments. This relates, of course, to the institutionalization of journalism and communication studies within the academic enterprise. Within this paradox, we see the greater paradox of communication research as both an applied and a disciplinary field. Propaganda is taken quite seriously by governments, the military, and the foreign service apparatus (Simpson, 1994); at the same time, it has occupied a tenuous conceptual place in most media studies and communications departments, with the dominant intellectual traditions embracing either a “limited effects” notion of what communication “does” or else more concerned with the more slippery concept of ideology (and on that, see more below). There is little doubt that the practical study of the power of messages and the field of communication research grew up together. Summarizing an initially revisionist line of research that has now become accepted within the historiography of the field, Nietzel notes that “from the very beginning, communication research was at least in part designed as an applied science, intended to deliver systematic knowledge that could be used for the business of government to the political authorities.” He adds, however, that

“this context also had its limits, for by the end of the decade, communication research had become established at American universities and lost much of its dependence on state funds. Furthermore, it had become increasingly clear that communication scientists could not necessarily deliver knowledge to the political authorities that could serve as a pattern for political acting (Simpson, 1994 pp. 88–89). From then on, politics and communication science parted ways. Many of the approaches and techniques which seemed innovative and even revolutionary in the 1940s and early 1950s, promising a magic key to managing propaganda activities and controlling public opinion, became routine fields of work, and institutions like the USIA carried out much of this kind of research themselves.” (Nietzel, 2016, p. 66)

It is important to note that this parting of ways did  not  mean that no one in the United States and the Soviet Union was studying propaganda. American government records document that, in inflation-adjusted terms, total funding for the United States Information Agency (USIA) rose from $1.2 billion in 1955 to $1.7 billion in 1999, shortly before its functions were absorbed into the United States Department of State. And this was dwarfed by Soviet spending, which spent more money jamming Western Radio transmissions alone than the United States did in its entire propaganda budget. Media effects research in the form of propaganda studies was a big and well-funded business. It was simply not treated as such within the traditional academy (Zollman, 2019). It is also important to note that this does not mean that no one in academia studies propaganda or the effect of government messages on willing or unwilling recipients, particularly in fields like health communication (also quite well-funded). These more academic studies, however, were tempered by the generally accepted fact that there existed no decontextualized, universal laws of communication that could render media messages easily useable by interested actors.

Ideology, economics, and false consciousness

If academics have been less interested than governments and health scientists in analyzing the role played by propaganda in the formation of public opinion, what has the academy worried about instead when it comes to the study of pernicious messages and their role in public life? Open dominant, deeply contested line of study has revolved around the concept of  ideology.  As defined by Raymond Williams in his wonderful  Keywords , ideology refers to an interlocking set of ideas, beliefs, concepts, or philosophical principles that are naturalized, taken for granted, or regarded as self-evident by various segments of society. Three controversial and interrelated principles then follow. First, ideology—particularly in its Marxist version—carries with it the implication that these ideas are somehow deceptive or disassociated from what actually exists. “Ideology is then abstract and false thought, in a sense directly related to the original conservative use but with the alternative—knowledge of real material conditions and relationships—differently stated” (Williams, 1976). Second, in all versions of Marxism, ideology is related to economic conditions in some fashion, with material reality, the economics of a situation, usually dominant and helping give birth to ideological precepts. In common Marxist terminology, this is usually described as the relationship between the base (economics and material conditions) and the superstructure (the realm of concepts, culture, and ideas). Third and finally, it is possible that different segments of society will have  different  ideologies, differences that are based in part on their position within the class structure of that society. 

Western Marxism in general (Anderson, 1976) and Antonio Gramsci in particular helped take these concepts and put them on the agenda of media and communications scholars by attaching more importance to “the superstructure” (and within it, media messages and cultural industries) than was the case in earlier Marxist thought. Journalism and “the media” thus play a major role in creating and maintaining ideology and thus perpetuating the deception that underlies ideological operations. In the study of the relationship between the media and ideology, “pernicious messages” obviously mean something different than they do in research on propaganda—a more structural, subtle, reinforcing, invisible, and materially dependent set of messages than is usually the case in propaganda analysis.  Perhaps most importantly, little research on media and communication understands ideology in terms of “discrete falsehoods and erroneous belief,” preferring to focus on processes of deep structural  misrecognition  that serves dominant economic interests (Corner, 2001, p. 526). This obviously marks a difference in emphasis as compared to most propaganda research. 

Much like in the study of propaganda, real-world developments have also had an impact on the academic analysis of media ideology. The collapse of communism in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of neoliberal governance obviously has played a major role in these changes. Although only one amongst a great many debates about the status of ideology in a post-Marxist communications context, the exchange between Corner (2001, 2016) and Downey (2008; Downey et al., 2014) is useful for understanding how scholars have dealt with the relationship between large macro-economic and geopolitical changes in the world and fashions of research within the academy. Regardless of whether concepts of ideology are likely to return to fashion, any analysis of misinformation that is consonant with this tradition must keep in mind the relationship between class and culture, the outstanding and open question of “false consciousness,” and the key scholarly insight that ideological analysis is less concerned with false messages than it is with questions of structural misrecognition and the implications this might have for the maintenance of hegemony.

Postmodern conspiracy

Theorizing pernicious media content as a “conspiracy” theory is less common than either of the two perspectives discussed above. Certainly, conspiratorial media as an explanatory factor for political pathology has something of a post-Marxist (and indeed, postmodern) aura. Nevertheless, there was a period in the 1990s and early 2000s when some of the most interesting notions of conspiracy theories were analyzed in academic work, and it seems hard to deny that much of this literature would be relevant to the current emergence of the “QAnon” cult, the misinformation that is said to drive it, and other even more exotic notions of elites conspiring against the public. 

Frederic Jameson has penned remarks on conspiracy theory that represent the starting point for much current writing on the conspiratorial mindset, although an earlier and interrelated vein of scholarship can be found in the work of American writers such as Hofstadter (1964) and Rogin (1986). “Conspiracy is the poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age,” Jameson writes, “it is a degraded figure of the total logic of late capital, a desperate attempt to represent the latter’s system” (Jameson, 1991). If “postmodernism,” in Jameson’s terms, is marked by a skepticism toward metanarratives, then conspiracy theory is the only narrative system available to explain the various deformations of the capitalist system. As Horn and Rabinach put it:

“The broad interest taken by cultural studies in popular conspiracy theories mostly adopted Jameson’s view and regards them as the wrong answers to the right questions. Showing the symptoms of disorientation and loss of social transparency, conspiracy theorists are seen as the disenfranchised “poor in spirit,” who, for lack of a real understanding of the world they live in, come up with paranoid systems of world explanation.” (Horn & Rabinach, 2008)

Other thinkers, many of them operating from a perch within media studies and communications departments, have tried to take conspiracy theories more seriously (Bratich, 2008; Fenster, 2008; Pratt, 2003; Melley, 2008). The key question for all of these thinkers lies within the debate discussed in the previous section, the degree to which “real material interests” lie behind systems of ideological mystification and whether audiences themselves bear any responsibility for their own predicament. In general, writers sympathetic to Jameson have tended to maintain a Marxist perspective in which conspiracy represents a pastiche of hegemonic overthrow, thus rendering it just another form of ideological false consciousness. Theorists less taken with Marxist categories see conspiracy as an entirely rational (though incorrect) response to conditions of late modernity or even as potentially liberatory. Writers emphasizing that pernicious media content tends to fuel a conspiratorial mindset often emphasize the mediated aspects of information rather than the economics that lie behind these mediations. Both ideological analysis and academic writings on conspiracy theory argue that there is a gap between “what seems to be going on” and “what is actually going on,” and that this gap is maintained and widened by pernicious media messages. Research on ideology tends to see the purpose of pernicious media content as having an ultimately material source that is rooted in “real interests,” while research on conspiracies plays down these class aspects and questions whether any real interests exist that go beyond the exercise of political power.

The needs of informationally ill communities

The current thinking in misinformation studies owes something to all these approaches. But it owes an even more profound debt to two perspectives on information and journalism that emerged in the early 2000s, both of which are indebted to an “ecosystemic” perspective on information flows. One perspective sees information organizations and their audiences as approximating a natural ecosystem, in which different media providers contribute equally to the health of an information environment, which then leads to healthy citizens. The second perspective analyzes the flows of messages as they travel across an information environment, with messages becoming reshaped and distorted as they travel across an information network. 

Both of these perspectives owe a debt to the notion of the “informational citizen” that was popular around the turn of the century and that is best represented by the 2009 Knight Foundation report  The Information Needs of Communities  (Knight Foundation, 2009). This report pioneered the idea that communities were informational communities whose political health depended in large part on the quality of information these communities ingested. Additional reports by The Knight Foundation, the Pew Foundation, and this author (Anderson, 2010) looked at how messages circulated across these communities, and how their transformation impacted community health. 

It is a short step from these ecosystemic notions to a view of misinformation that sees it as a pollutant or even a virus (Anderson, 2020), one whose presence in a community turns it toward sickness or even political derangement. My argument here is that the current misinformation perspective owes less to its predecessors (with one key exception that I will discuss below) and more to concepts of information that were common at the turn of the century. The major difference between the concept of misinformation and earlier notions of informationally healthy citizens lies in the fact that the normative standard by which health is understood within information studies is crypto-normative. Where writings about journalism and ecosystemic health were openly liberal in nature and embraced notions of a rational, autonomous citizenry who just needed the right inputs in order to produce the right outputs, misinformation studies has a tendency to embrace liberal behavioralism without embracing a liberal political theory. What the political theory of misinformation studies is, in the end, deeply unclear.

I wrote earlier that misinformation studies owed more to notions of journalism from the turn of the century than it did to earlier traditions of theorizing. There is one exception to this, however. Misinformation studies, like propaganda analysis, is a radically de-structured notion of what information does. Buried within analysis of pernicious information there is

“A powerful cultural contradiction—the need to understand and explain social influence versus a rigid intolerance of the sociological and Marxist perspectives that could provide the theoretical basis for such an understanding. Brainwashing, after all, is ultimately a theory of ideology in the crude Marxian sense of “false consciousness.” Yet the concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of thinkers profoundly hostile to Marxism not only to its economic assumptions but also to its emphasis on structural, rather than individual, causality.” (Melley, 2008, p. 149)

For misinformation studies to grow in such a way that allows it to take its place among important academic theories of media and communication, several things must be done. The field needs to be more conscious of its own history, particularly its historical conceptual predecessors. It needs to more deeply interrogate its  informational-agentic  concept of what pernicious media content does, and perhaps find room in its arsenal for Marxist notions of hegemony or poststructuralist concepts of conspiracy. Finally, it needs to more openly advance its normative agenda, and indeed, take a normative position on what a good information environment would look like from the point of view of political theory. If this environment is a liberal one, so be it. But this position needs to be stated clearly.

Of course, misinformation studies need not worry about its academic bona fides at all. As the opening pages of this Commentary have shown, propaganda research was only briefly taken seriously as an important academic field. This did not stop it from being funded by the U.S. government to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars a year. While it is unlikely that media research will ever see that kind of investment again, at least by an American government, let’s not forget that geopolitical Great Power conflict has not disappeared in the four years that Donald Trump was the American president. Powerful state forces in Western society will have their own needs, and their own demands, for misinformation research. It is up to the scholarly community to decide how they will react to these temptations. 

• Mainstream Media
• / Propaganda

Cite this Essay

Anderson, C. W. (2021). Propaganda, misinformation, and histories of media techniques. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review . https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-64

Bibliography

Anderson, C. W. (2010). Journalistic networks and the diffusion of local news: The brief, happy news life of the Francisville Four. Political Communication , 27 (3), 289–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2010.496710

Anderson, C. W. (2020, August 10). Fake news is not a virus: On platforms and their effects. Communication Theory , 31 (1), 42–61. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa008

Anderson, P. (1976). Considerations on Western Marxism . Verso.

Bratich, J. Z. (2008). Conspiracy panics: Political rationality and popular culture. State University of New York Press.

Corner, J. (2001). ‘Ideology’: A note on conceptual salvage. Media, Culture & Society , 23 (4), 525–533. https://doi.org/10.1177/016344301023004006

Corner, J. (2016). ‘Ideology’ and media research. Media, Culture & Society , 38 (2), 265 – 273. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443715610923

Downey, J. (2008). Recognition and renewal of ideology critique. In D. Hesmondhaigh & J. Toynbee (Eds.), The media and social theory (pp. 59–74). Routledge.

Downey, J., Titley, G., & Toynbee, J. (2014). Ideology critique: The challenge for media studies. Media, Culture & Society , 36 (6), 878–887. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443714536113

Fenster (2008). Conspiracy theories: Secrecy and power in American culture (Rev. ed.). University of Minnesota Press.

Herman, E., & Chomsky, N. (1988). Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Pantheon Books. 

Hofstadter, R. (1964, November). The paranoid style in American politics. Harper’s Magazine.

Horn, E., & Rabinach, A. (2008). Introduction. In E. Horn (Ed.), Dark powers: Conspiracies and conspiracy theory in history and literature (pp. 1–8), New German Critique , 35 (1). https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033x-2007-015

Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism . Duke University Press.

The Knight Foundation. (2009). Informing communities: Sustaining democracy in the digital age. https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Knight_Commission_Report_-_Informing_Communities.pdf

Melley, T. (2008). Brainwashed! Conspiracy theory and ideology in postwar United States. New German Critique , 35 (1), 145–164. https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-2007-023

Nietzel, B. (2016). Propaganda, psychological warfare and communication research in the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. History of the Human Sciences , 29 (4 – 5), 59–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695116667881

Pratt, R. (2003). Theorizing conspiracy. Theory and Society , 32 , 255–271. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023996501425

Rogin, M. P. (1986). The countersubversive tradition in American politics.  Berkeley Journal of Sociology,   31 , 1 –33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41035372

Seldes, G., & Seldes, H. (1943). Facts and fascism. In Fact.

Simpson, C. (1994). Science of coercion: Communication research and psychological warfare, 1945–1960. Oxford University Press.

Williams, R. (1976).  Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society . Oxford University Press.

Zollmann, F. (2019). Bringing propaganda back into news media studies. Critical Sociology , 45 (3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920517731134

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are properly credited.

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The Impact of Nazi Propaganda: Visual Essay

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Propaganda was one of the most important tools the Nazis used to shape the beliefs and attitudes of the German public. Through posters, film, radio, museum exhibits, and other media, they bombarded the German public with messages designed to build support for and gain acceptance of their vision for the future of Germany. The gallery of images below exhibits several examples of Nazi propaganda, and the introduction that follows explores the history of propaganda and how the Nazis sought to use it to further their goals.

Examples of Nazi Propaganda

Nazi national welfare program.

This 1934 propaganda poster in support of the national welfare program reads: “National health, national community, child protection, protection of mothers, care for travelers, are the tasks of the NS-Welfare Service. Join now!”

Nazi Recruitment Propaganda

This mid-1930s poster says, “The NSDAP [Nazi Party] protects the people. Your fellow comrades need your advice and help, so join the local party organization.

Hitler Youth Propaganda

This 1935 poster promotes the Hitler Youth by stating: “Youth serves the Führer! All ten-year-olds into the Hitler Youth.”

Nazi Propaganda Newspaper

An issue of the antisemitic propaganda newspaper  Der Stürmer  (The Attacker) is posted on the sidewalk in Worms, Germany, in 1935. The headline above the case says, "The Jews Are Our Misfortune."

Triumph of the Will Propaganda Film

Leni Riefenstahl's documentary-style film glorified Hitler and the Nazi Party. It was shot at the 1934 Nazi Party congress and rally in Nuremberg.

Propaganda Portrait of Hitler

This portrait,  The Standard Bearer , was painted by artist Hubert Lanzinger and displayed in the Great German Art Exhibition in Munich in 1937.

The Eternal Jew

This 1938 poster advertises a popular antisemitic traveling exhibit called  Der Ewige Jude  (The Eternal Jew).

Antisemitic Display at Der Ewige Jude

Women examining a display at the  Der Ewige Jude  (The Eternal Jew) exhibition in the Reichstag building in November 1938.

Antisemitic Children's Book

From the 1938 antisemitic children’s book  The Poisonous Mushroom . The boy is drawing a nose on the chalkboard, and the caption reads: “The Jewish nose is crooked at its tip. It looks like a 6.”

The Definition and History of Propaganda

Propaganda is information that is intended to persuade an audience to accept a particular idea or cause, often by using biased material or by stirring up emotions. This was one of the most powerful tools the Nazis used to consolidate their power and create a German “national community” in the mid-1930s.

Hitler and Goebbels did not invent propaganda. The word itself was coined by the Catholic Church to describe its efforts to discredit Protestant teachings in the 1600s. Over the years, almost every nation has used propaganda to unite its people in wartime. Both sides spread propaganda during World War I, for example.

How the Nazis Used Propaganda

The Nazis were notable for making propaganda a key element of government even before Germany went to war again. One of Hitler’s first acts as chancellor was to establish the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, demonstrating his belief that controlling information was as important as controlling the military and the economy. He appointed Joseph Goebbels as director. Through the ministry, Goebbels was able to penetrate virtually every form of German media, from newspapers, film, radio, posters, and rallies to museum exhibits and school textbooks, with Nazi propaganda. 

Whether or not propaganda was truthful or tasteful was irrelevant to the Nazis. Goebbels wrote in his diary, "no one can say your propaganda is too rough, too mean; these are not criteria by which it may be characterized. It ought not be decent nor ought it be gentle or soft or humble; it ought to lead to success." 1 Hitler wrote in  Mein Kampf  that to achieve its purpose, propaganda must "be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away."

Some Nazi propaganda used positive images to glorify the government’s leaders and its various activities, projecting a glowing vision of the “national community.” Nazi propaganda could also be ugly and negative, creating fear and loathing by portraying the regime’s “enemies” as dangerous and even sub-human. The Nazis’ distribution of antisemitic films, newspaper cartoons, and even children’s books aroused centuries-old prejudices against Jews and also presented new ideas about the racial impurity of Jews. The newspaper  Der Stürmer  (The Attacker), published by Nazi Party member Julius Streicher, was a key outlet for antisemitic propaganda. 

This visual essay includes a selection of Nazi propaganda images, both “positive” and “negative.” It focuses on posters that Germans would have seen in newspapers like  Der Stürmer  and passed in the streets, in workplaces, and in schools. Some of these posters were advertisements for traveling exhibits—on topics like “The Eternal Jew” or the evils of communism—that were themselves examples of propaganda. 

Connection Questions

• As you explore the images in this visual essay, consider what each image is trying to communicate to the viewer. Who is the audience for this message? How is the message conveyed?
• Do you notice any themes or patterns in this group of propaganda images? How do the ideas in these images connect to what you have already learned about Nazi ideology? How do they extend your thinking about Nazi ideas? 
• Based on the images you analyze, how do you think the Nazis used propaganda to define the identities of individuals and groups? What groups and individuals did Nazi propaganda glorify? What stereotypes did it promote? 
• Why was propaganda so important to Nazi leadership? How do you think Nazi propaganda influenced the attitudes and actions of Germans in the 1930s?
• Some scholars caution that there are limits to the power of propaganda; they think it succeeds not because it persuades the public to believe an entirely new set of ideas but because it expresses beliefs people already hold. Scholar Daniel Goldhagen writes: “No man, [no] Hitler, no matter how powerful he is, can move people against their hopes and desires. Hitler, as powerful a figure as he was, as charismatic as he was, could never have accomplished this [the Holocaust] had there not been tens of thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of ordinary Germans who were willing to help him.” 2  Do you agree? Would people have rejected Nazi propaganda if they did not already share, to some extent, the beliefs it communicated? 
• Can you think of examples of propaganda in society today? How do you think this propaganda influences the attitudes and actions of people today? Is there a difference between the impact of propaganda in a democracy that has a free press and an open marketplace of ideas and the impact of propaganda in a dictatorship with fewer non-governmental sources of information? 
• 1 Quoted in Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 90.
• 2 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, interview with Richard Heffner, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Part I,” The Open Mind (TV program), PBS, July 9, 1996.

How to Cite This Reading

Facing History & Ourselves, “ The Impact of Nazi Propaganda: Visual Essay ”, last updated February 5, 2024.

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103 Propaganda Essay Topics & Examples

Looking for good propaganda topics to write about? This field is truly exciting and worth exploring!

🏆 Best Propaganda Topic Ideas

🔊 excellent propaganda essay examples, 👍 good propaganda essay topics, ❓ questions about propaganda.

In your propaganda essay, you might want to focus on the historical or ethical aspects of the issue. Another interesting option would be to focus on a particular case and discuss the effectiveness of propaganda. In this article, we’ve gathered a list of top propaganda topics to write about. They will suit for essays, research papers, speeches or other projects. We’ve also added some excellent propaganda essay examples to inspire you even more.

• Persuasion and Propaganda: Differences and Similarities In contrast to propaganda, persuasion is characterized by private acceptance of the position advocated in the message. In contrast to persuasion, propaganda is based on mind control aimed to condemn the recipients of a particular […]
• Rhetoric and Propaganda: How Far Is Rhetoric From Propaganda? In order to understand the essence of the two terms, it is important to consider the available definitions and meanings assigned to rhetoric and propaganda in the modern world.
• French Revolution: Role of Propaganda and Music The history of propaganda is based on three interweaving fundamentals: first, the mounting need, with the growth of civilization and the rise of nation-state, to win the battle for people’s minds; second, the increasing sophistication […]
• Propaganda in “Animal Farm” by George Orwell His greatest objective is to carry out the spreading of the revolution and to bring in the improvement of the general welfare of all the animals on the farm.
• Propaganda During World War II The Second World War was a complicated time for both the general public and the authorities since while the former worried for their safety, family, and homeland, the latter needed to maintain the national spirit […]
• Political Propaganda in The Aeneid by Virgil As the paper reveals, The Aeneid is a political epic that was written with a political agenda to justify the founding of the nation of Rome.
• “The Motherland Calls”: Art as Political Propaganda The statue is meant to commemorate the Soviet victory in the Second World War, represent the soviet might, and serve as a message to all enemies of the USSR.
• How to Control What People Do: “Propaganda” by Edward Bernays In the book, Bernays explains how he employed propaganda to manipulate the public when he was the head of the United States Department of public information during world war I.
• Commercial Advertising as a Propaganda System The propaganda system is a commonly used tool of winning the attention of the audience and is mostly used in political circles although it has of late gained popularity in the business environment.
• The World War II Propaganda Techniques All the parties to the war, including Germany, the Soviet Union, and Britain, invested many resources in propaganda, but the present essay will focus on the United States’ effort. Furthermore, propaganda messages were created to […]
• Basic Propaganda Techniques The majority of the article is dedicated to Logos, however, presenting logical arguments and examples. When examples of negativity can be largely attributed only to one side, the folly occurs as follows: Subject A is […]
• Propaganda Techniques in the Vitaminwater Advertisement Applying this technique implies that an advertisement uses strong, attractive words and phrases to show how good a product is in order to attract the audience’s attention.
• Propaganda Techniques in Advertising The end goal is to solidify the brand in the subconscious mind of the buyers, in order for it to be able to compete with other brands.
• Propaganda in the Democratic Society The article focuses on the effects of propaganda on the democracy. In the article, he focuses on his experiences in the media industry with respect to the past and the present news.
• Contribution of Media Text to World Wars’ Propaganda The key stakeholders in the industry prioritized profit maximization, hence amplifying the benefits of winning the war while minimally addressing the repercussions of the violence to the international community.
• Freedom of Speech and Propaganda in School Setting One of the practical solutions to the problem is the development and implementation of a comprehensive policy for balanced free speech in the classroom.
• The Role of Propaganda During World War II The poster encourages men to enroll in the army to protect the peaceful lives of women and children. By manipulating emotions and feelings, propaganda influenced people to enroll in the army or work harder.
• Nazi Propaganda and Triumph of the Will Based on this, the filming of the Triumph of the Will took place with the help of the vision of the world and the situation by the directors, omitting a number of significant events or […]
• Hitler’s Use of Propaganda and Fear-Mongering The establishment of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party led to the adoption of a properly coordinated propaganda campaign that would prepare the country for war.
• Jim Crow Era Signage and Advertisements: Tools for Reinforcement a Racist Propaganda The quality of the services offered to “colored” people, It comes as no surprise, that all public facilities and spaces were segregated, particularly in the Southern states.
• The Use of Radio in German Propaganda During the World War II One of the techniques used by the Nazis to persuade German people and shape their worldview was the use of such media as radio.
• War on Terror: Propaganda and Freedom of the Press in the US There was the launching of the “Center for Media and Democracy”, CMD, in the year 1993 in order to create what was the only public interest at that period. There was expansive use of propaganda […]
• Medieval and Renaissance Art Religious Style and Propaganda The main task of these artworks was to inspire and awe the people, to show the greatness and almightiness of God.
• Is Propaganda a Technique or a Phenomenon? The main goal of this paper is to analyze the nature of propaganda to answer the question of whether it is a phenomenon or a technique.
• Commercial Advertisements as a Form of Propaganda System This is due to the fact that the objective of advertisement is to promote a product or service resulting in a financial benefit to the firm.
• World War II Propaganda Posters in America The imagery of the boot stepping on the American church is not just a threat to the religious ideals of the country but a threat to freedom itself as the church often doubled as the […]
• Anti-Japanese Propaganda During World War II The content of propaganda was much the same as that of broadcast propaganda: emphasis on the Allies’ growing war potential, ridicule of the more preposterous assertions of the National Socialists, evidence of self-contradictions in the […]
• Propaganda in Art During the Second World War In the background of the Great Depression, and the Second World War this poster was the embodiment of the unification of generations, which takes place at the feast table.”The Four Freedoms” speech, proclaimed by Roosevelt […]
• Stereotypes and Propaganda in Society Analysis The unfortunate reality is that the propaganda onslaught is continuous and the gullibility of the audience is also too often and thus the thinking of the majority of the audience is corrupted on heavy scales.
• Persuasion and Propaganda in Modern Society Persuasion is based on discourse and dialogue; propaganda is intended to be one-sided” Some researchers, such as Cain, look at any piece of media communication according to the ten points identified by Jowett and O’Donnell […]
• The Use of Propaganda in Political Campaigns The issue of propaganda is of current importance because we hear such words we can face propaganda in every sphere of human life: political campaigns, propaganda of healthy way of life, propaganda in the sphere […]
• The History of Propaganda: From the Ancient Times to Nowadays The history of propaganda shows that some means of encouraging the troops, or discouraging the enemy were undertaken in the ancient times, and the times have preserved and brought up the names of the greatest […]
• Nazi’s Propaganda in the XX Century At first, Nazis used propaganda technologies to draw attention of other political organizations of the right wing, then, after the departure of imprisonment by Hitler, the party becomes better organized and, finally, propaganda is used […]
• Anti-War Movement DADA Vs. Propaganda Posters of WWI In relation to the causes of the WWI, these can considered as pertinent specifically on the basis that the reasons can be related to the type of society that is present during the said era.
• The Power of Propaganda He is of the opinion that lies comprise the lion’s share of propaganda and describes it as a very powerful tool utilized in the arena of politics.
• Bolshevik Propaganda in the Russian Revolution Communists hoped to achieve, and that was why they had more and more concentrated their propaganda efforts on the boys and girls and the young men and women.
• Albert Speer’s Architectural Scale as a Tool of Nazi Propaganda In the center of attention of Hitler, there was the restructuring of Berlin by the architect Albert Speer. Such buildings as the Volkshalle and the Cathedral of Light were the most expressive projects that illustrated […]
• The Cyberspace War: Propaganda and Trolling To justify the theory that will be used in the study, it is necessary to state that the Russian government has been using the workforce of its employees to change people’s opinions to the ones […]
• World War II Propaganda and Its Effects The purpose of this paper is to examine the confrontation between the German and the Soviet propaganda machines during the period of the Second Patriotic War, outline the goals and purposes of each, and identify […]
• American Government: Propaganda and Persuasion He successfully achieved his goal of sending a man to the Moon and managed to beat the Soviet Union mostly due to his ability to capture people’s imagination.
• Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Its Propaganda The Middle East also has a serious economic impact on the rest of the world because of the rich oil deposits, especially in the countries bordering the Persian Gulf.
• Holocaust, Antisemitism, and Propaganda That is why, nowadays great attention is given to issues which led to the death of millions of people. Being a part of the ideology of Nazism, it led to the elimination of a great […]
• Authoritarian Propaganda in Education and Media The question that people often ask themselves is, ‘how do authoritarian regimes get away with violence, torture, and oppression?’ Most of the citizens in countries led by authoritarians often seem to be in agreement with […]
• Islamic State’s Online Propaganda to Men and Women The third hypothesis is that the ISIS extensively uses misrepresentation as a tool of online communication, i.e.the way the role and position of women in the ISIS presented in the terrorists’ online communication are significantly […]
• Propaganda as a Social Phenomenon Edgar Henderson, also comprehensively in propaganda scholarship, argues that propaganda is basically a social phenomenon owing to its objectivity and capacity to appeal to the psychological or sociopsychological dispositions of individuals.
• Propaganda and Marketing Relationships This aspect was meant to prevent the wrong societal perceptions that Bernays was promoting Venida products in the market, but showing the public the importance of the hairnets.
• Propaganda of Adolf Hitler and Jim Jones This is a scenario that has occurred with the Nazi, under the command of Adolf Hitler, and the story of Jim Jones, and the people who followed him in a quest to build an ideal […]
• Propaganda Techniques in Movies: Light, Camera, Action Despite using rather simplistic propaganda techniques and devices, such as Beautiful People and Flag-Waving, the movie manages to get the key idea of the major flaws at the very core of the current healthcare system […]
• Propaganda Model and Media Power The media is expected to expose any practices of the government and corporate bodies that may cause any harm to the public in one way or the other.
• Propaganda Movement in Mass Media Through the study of Gimenez et al, it was seen that the correlation between the propaganda model and the power of the media can be summarized on the impact of irrational exuberance as a means […]
• Influence of Propaganda Politics The organizers of the event were well conversant with the impact of the flag to the message; it created credibility and believability among the members of the public.
• The Marlboro Ads as a Propaganda Advertising As such, the target of information presented is to alter the attitudes of consumers towards the interests of the advert sponsors.
• Propaganda as Hezbollah’s Auxiliary Strategy These strategies include the construction of a propaganda theme park, the establishment of a Hezbollah television station, the development of anti-Israeli video games, and the production of varied merchandise that promote Hezbollah’s ideas and values.
• Why We Fight: American Wartime Propaganda The reason for this is simple contrary to what it is being suggested in the film, the overwhelming majority of German Nazis, as well as ordinary German citizens who never ceased supporting Nazis right to […]
• Propaganda, Persuasion and Public Relations For example in the case of the Australia’s cancellation of the Fuel Watch program Senator Xenaphon utilized propaganda stating that Fuel Watch was not an effective means of helping consumers stating the need to tackle […]
• Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative Propaganda refers to the form of communication that is meant to influence the feelings and attitudes of individual to believe or support a certain viewpoint.
• Propaganda Model: Herman and Noam Chomsky In Chomsky’s opinion, the conclusion that the tyranny of the majority can threaten the rights of persons, including the rights for freedom of speech and conscience, was the result of confusion caused by the vague […]
• Al Jazeera TV: A Propaganda Platform Al Jazeera is the largest media outlet in the Middle East reporting events mostly to the Arab world. The media outlet has equated revolutions in Egypt and Libya with the ejection of totalitarianism in the […]
• History of Hitler’s Nazi Propaganda According to Hitler, the German’s defeat in the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, German’s post war inflation, and the economic crisis of the year 1929 were accredited to International Jewry. Over time, the masses […]
• Media Propaganda: Poster Advertisement Further, at the lower right corner, the poster has a picture of the spray under consideration and the name of the spray: “New Axe Essence”.
• Propaganda and Mass Media: Obstacles and Best Conditions for Propagandist The first obstacle is to comprehensively understand the nature of the target audience that the propagandist wants to modify through the use of propaganda.
• Propaganda in the “Triumph of the Will” This is propaganda because the development of Germany was not based on the efforts of the labor force alone, but also on all German citizens and the world at large. He is often heard saying […]
• What American Leader Relies on Propaganda and Appeals to Fear?
• How Did Hitler Consolidate His Power and Continue to Gain Support Using Propaganda?
• How Is Propaganda Used?
• How Effective Were Indoctrination and Propaganda?
• Did a Campaign of Propaganda and Disinformation Initiate the War in Iraq?
• How Did the Nazi Regime Use Propaganda as a Form of Political Control?
• What Makes a Good Propaganda?
• How Media and Propaganda Are Related?
• How Did the Nazi Party Use Propaganda?
• How Were Cartoons and Propaganda Used Against Jews and Nazis During World War II?
• How Did Propaganda Help the Nazis Control?
• What Role Did Printed Propaganda Play in the Outbreak and Continuation of Conflict During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms?
• How the Nazi Germans Used the Media to Spread Propaganda During Hitler’s Time?
• How Does Napoleon Use Persuasive Language and Propaganda to Seize and Maintain Power?
• Was Propaganda the Main Reason for the Lack of Opposition to the Nazis?
• How Have Images and Designs Been Used as Social Protest and Propaganda?
• How Effective Was Propaganda in Affecting the Way People Acted and Thought?
• Why Did the British Government Make Use of Propaganda During World War I?
• How Successful Was Propaganda in Indoctrinating Nazi Ideals?
• How Did Radio and Movies Change People’s Ideas, and How Were They Used for Spreading Propaganda?
• What Are Propaganda Historical Origins?
• What Is Propaganda in Psychology?
• How Propaganda Helped the Nazi Government to Control Germany?
• How Far Did Ancient Coinage Serve as a Medium for Political Propaganda?
• What Is Bandwagon in Propaganda?
• Why the Society Has to Co-exist With Propaganda?
• How Vital Was Propaganda to Nazi Control Over Germany in 1934-1939?
• How Important Was the Governments Use of Propaganda in Bringing the Strike to an Early End?
• How and Why Did the Nazis Use Propaganda to Further Their Aims 1929-1933?
• How Does Propaganda Work?
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Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence

Title: the ai scientist: towards fully automated open-ended scientific discovery.

Abstract: One of the grand challenges of artificial general intelligence is developing agents capable of conducting scientific research and discovering new knowledge. While frontier models have already been used as aides to human scientists, e.g. for brainstorming ideas, writing code, or prediction tasks, they still conduct only a small part of the scientific process. This paper presents the first comprehensive framework for fully automatic scientific discovery, enabling frontier large language models to perform research independently and communicate their findings. We introduce The AI Scientist, which generates novel research ideas, writes code, executes experiments, visualizes results, describes its findings by writing a full scientific paper, and then runs a simulated review process for evaluation. In principle, this process can be repeated to iteratively develop ideas in an open-ended fashion, acting like the human scientific community. We demonstrate its versatility by applying it to three distinct subfields of machine learning: diffusion modeling, transformer-based language modeling, and learning dynamics. Each idea is implemented and developed into a full paper at a cost of less than $15 per paper. To evaluate the generated papers, we design and validate an automated reviewer, which we show achieves near-human performance in evaluating paper scores. The AI Scientist can produce papers that exceed the acceptance threshold at a top machine learning conference as judged by our automated reviewer. This approach signifies the beginning of a new era in scientific discovery in machine learning: bringing the transformative benefits of AI agents to the entire research process of AI itself, and taking us closer to a world where endless affordable creativity and innovation can be unleashed on the world's most challenging problems. Our code is open-sourced at this https URL

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