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It has often been claimed that public relations practice borders on persuasion and blatant propaganda. Is public relations the same as propaganda? Please discuss the role of persuasion and propaganda in PR using theory and practical examples to support your argument.
The UK Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR, 2012, originally formed as the Institute of Public Relations in 1948) provides the following definition: Public relations is about reputation – the result of what you do, what you say, and what others say about you. Public relations is the discipline that looks after reputation, earns understanding and support, and influences opinion and behavior. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organization and its public. (Copley, 2014)
The definition clearly states that public relations is a practice used for managing reputation, it is a direct or indirect communication bridge between a subject and its target audience. The main goal is influence meant to be achieved by presenting information using creative expression and campaigns, designed to enhance the impact of information.
The key word is ‘Presentation’ not manipulation of individual opinions.
Edward Bernays, regarded as the father of modern public relations, was a great proponent of propaganda as he described the process as manufacturing consent or getting people to do what you wanted them to. He and his supporters saw propaganda being used as a communication tool for social control. In model terms, it is one-way symmetric without the need for feedback. (Franklin, 2009)
As the media industry is getting bigger and more varied, the lines between traditional practices and the ethics involved are getting blurred. Public relations overall allows reputation management to be altered in ways that could seem similar to propaganda but there are intricate differences between both practices that can be understood clearly by analyzing the breakdown given below,
One of the Key differentiating factors between Public relations and Propaganda to be considered is that PR is a two-way communication method, which means the agency’s professional practitioners and the organization’s client form ideas by communicating within the management and with the target audience (Public) to carry forward a campaign whereas propaganda is usually a one-way communication practice which focuses on spreading the ideas instead of garnering feedback or insights from the public. Leaving no space for inputs by the decided target audience.
Another differing factor is that PR relies on facts to create further decisions. Honest, research-backed communication takes place to gain the desired outcome while propaganda doesn’t necessarily consider the truth to create open dialogues, misleading information carried forward to reach a certain agenda is the main goal. Another major difference between public relations and propaganda is that the information disseminated as part of public relations activities is almost always based on research and is accurate.
Propaganda and PR can be viewed as similar in many ways, as they both aim to create ideas and influence public opinion, using the mainstream media, and targeting specific audiences. The result of both is to get people to act. But despite the similarity in their objectives, the methods to achieve them are contrasting in nature which might seem like the same thing to the vast majority of the public. The most important difference as discussed remains the truth of the messages. Propaganda uses prejudice, half-truths, and misinformation. PR uses facts, which can be tested. It relies on logic and sometimes emotions to disseminate information between an organization or an individual and its community. The use of proven facts is important when filing a journalist or sending a media report, as incorrect information can affect your credibility with journalists.
A key factor in both practices is Persuasion. Persuading the opinions, ideologies, and behavior of a set demographic, the public is manipulated into believing a certain thing and behaving a certain way. The impact created by influencing people’s outlook on specific things is what both, PR and propaganda aim to do. But what does persuasion mean?
Persuasion has to do with cognition and the active assessment of the content of a particular message. As a microprocessor of socialization, it involves changing minds, opinions, and attitudes about causality and affect (identity) in the absence of overt material or mental coercion. Or, in Perloff’s words, persuasion is an ‘activity or process in which a communicator attempts to induce a change in the belief, attitude, or behavior of another person or group of persons through the transmission of a message in a context in which the persuadee has some degree of free choice'(Perloff 1993:14).1It can lead to common knowledge, or ‘epistemic conventions’ (that may or may not be cooperative), or it can lead to a homogenization of interests. (Johnston, 2000)
Persuasion. When thought of, can resemble either good or bad. This process enables people to try to influence others to change their behavior or attitudes into what they want them to be. It will use every symbol It can to appeal to the masses, including pictures, sounds, words, and so on. But Influence will always be deliberate and not by accident.
In the end, the decision power remains with the individual, but it heavily relies on the intelligently altered information and ideas put forward cohesively. It does not involve coercion, but a proposal.
Persuasion regarding either public relations or propaganda boils down to the very idea of putting the desired campaign in the forefront and aligning the opposing opinions or the feedback loop in a descending trajectory. In attempts to do so, an organization can achieve a state of misleading or manipulated information that seems like the only truth for the public to believe in.
The factor that differentiates a successful PR campaign from a propaganda strategy is its purpose, which comes down to the eternal debate about good versus bad.
If the purpose is financial, organizational, capital, or social gain putting the said subject in a good light is acceptable as a PR practice, when it starts blurring the lines between telling the public something and commanding the same thing as if it is the only truth to attain power and control, it starts becoming propaganda. Anything that goes beyond a mutual interest and starts benefitting a personal interest or shared interest of only a few affecting most people can be termed as Propaganda instead of a ‘Public relations strategy’.
Considering the case of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his rise to power and prominence in the largest democracy of the world, it is relevant to understand how a political party can establish a PR strategy and then develop that into widespread propaganda to overthrow a government and garner the support of more than a billion Indians, based on their collective religious beliefs to go on to becoming Quite possibly one of the greatest world leaders.
This study aims at analyzing how a political party manipulated, curated, and persuaded billions of people into believing in an agenda using the following propaganda and persuasion techniques,
1. Computational Propaganda
Howard and Woolley have theorized that three main elements – political bots, organized trolling campaigns of hate and harassment, and the online semination of ‘fake news’ and disinformation – form a broader system of computational propaganda, an ‘assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, and big data tasked with the manipulation of public opinion’ (Woolley and Howard, 2019)
By providing misleading information, deceptive descriptions of events, and deceitful characterization of opponents and outgroups, illegitimate1 social media accounts depict a ‘reality’ that is not factual2, but that has the potential to generate real consequences (Bisbiglia, 2019; Rodny-Gumede, 2018; Siddiqui, Svrluga, 2016).
Motivated by this potential threat, in recent years numerous scholars have investigated this pernicious form of political indoctrination – referred to as computational propaganda (Nerino, 2021)
Due to the rise in accessibility of social media, and control over the majority of the other media outlets in the country, his party was able to form a hard-hitting storyline that resonates with the people of India. The story of a poor child born in a village in a state where the great Mahatma Gandhi was from, struggling with poverty. The media emphasized how he overcame the difficulties by selling tea as a young adult to earn money honestly and provide for his family. The ‘honest’, ‘hard-working’, and ‘common man’ coming from rags to riches by doing good in his community was something every person in this developing nation could relate to. (Strong and Killingsworth, 2011)
The narrative was publicized by the press, as a great inspiration for the youth to look up to and by default believe in what the man has to offer in terms of beliefs, agendas, and policies because the media made it seem like this ‘chaiwala’ (English translation – Tea vendor) is one of them, someone who made it by the sheer perseverance and belief in his hindu, religious upbringing. This laid the foundation for the unabashed trust people must have in him because he is not an outsider but someone who is the right heir to the power he has garnered. So, everything he proclaimed henceforward was to be taken as the absolute truth, and the narrative made it possible with great conviction. (Singh, 2021)
2. Flag waving Two Way Symmetrical Technique
The power of national symbols to rouse impassioned emotion and behavior has been noted by scholars from a variety of disciplines including sociologists (Mills, 1961), anthropologists (Firth, 1989), political scientists (Laswell, 1935), historians (Curti, 1946) and psychologists (Kelman, 1969). Many of these accounts suggest that individuals’ ties to national symbols often supersede their ties to the group that the symbols represent. The crux of these assertions is that expressions of national sentiment are directed toward national symbols rather than the nation itself and that such symbolism is infused with unique psychological meaning and political import. (Schatz and Lavine, 2007)
There is wide recognition that national symbols are a potent source of political power and influence, capable of rallying support for state interests by evoking emotional expressions of national identification, allegiance, and self-sacrifice.
One of the main reasons why a mass audience can be influenced by propaganda is the ability to agree on the same beliefs and ideologies. India is a largely Hindu-dominant country, the regional name for the country is ‘Hindustan’ (Land of the Hindus) by exploiting the nomenclature, his party unified his target public as one (Hindus). This enabled the followers as well as the non-followers to believe in one common thing, that they belonged to the same community. Irrespective of their financial, geographical, or societal standings, every Indian could get behind the ideology of being a part of something larger than themselves, because they felt included. This in turn created a community of people that involved the majority of the country on one side of the spectrum led by the visionary Hindu man sharing the same ideologies and principles as them. Of course, this created a backlash from the other parts of the country, but the resistance was negligible in front of the massive, shared vision of making India a Hindu nation.
The propaganda was able to achieve this by making it seem like every person who shared this interest was part of the communication and not a unilateral governance. This form of communal adherence made the wave of Modi resurge into the most successful propaganda victory. Something that seemed impressive in Public communication was a narrative-driven, shared interest agenda to bring one particular party into power that would benefit only a certain section of society.
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