I was preparing to be interviewed about propaganda on the excellent Cambridge Marketing podcast. I first thought that it was an old-fashioned term that had been replaced by the term disinformation. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised there were differences, and that both were, unfortunately, alive and well.
Propaganda is a word that has been broadened in meaning, like ‘strategy’ or ‘crisis’. I attempted to define it from academic sources as “Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic use of communication to shape people’s beliefs, emotions or behaviour in the interests of a cause or sponsor, typically through selective presentation, repetition and manipulation”. Basically, it is an organised effort with a particular objective. It uses selection (framing) or message manipulation to influence an audience. It is systematic, not just a one-off strong opinion, in order to shape how an audience sees an issue and responds to it.
Framing is a tactic the media has used for decades. It involves deciding what to include and what to exclude. Think of this: an editor of a BBC TV News programme has been allocated 30 seconds to cover the war in Ukraine. Many things could be included. The leaders involved: Zelenskyy, Trump and Putin. The number of deaths on the battlefield and among the civilian population. How drones have changed warfare. Support from other countries, from NATO to North Korea. The price of petrol and diesel. The list could go on. The BBC would select – frame – that news broadcast so that it gave a truthful and unbiased viewpoint. That’s ethical framing. But what if we wanted to tell the story purely from one side? Then it can become propaganda.
Time to bring in the new kid on the block, disinformation. Although it has been around for centuries, it just wasn’t called that. Disinformation is different from propaganda. My definition: “Disinformation is deliberately false or misleading information spread with the intention to deceive.” Propaganda directs your response; disinformation deliberately deceives you. A propaganda campaign can use disinformation, but it doesn’t have to. Oh, and misinformation is “inaccurate information shared without deliberate deception.”
We might describe PR and communications as strategic activities aimed at changing people’s attitudes, opinions, feelings or behaviour. Now, isn’t that getting close to the definition of propaganda? It depends on how they are used.
An example from last week really struck me. I’m a member of the Royal Photographic Society and joined a webinar by the professional Magnum photographer Mark Power. Over nearly two hours, he showed a slideshow of his photographs spanning about 15 years and five published books on America. He said he was searching for the real America, but never found it. His pictures from the USA’s heartland showed desolation, poverty, and ugliness. Not just one location; he visited hundreds of towns and villages (but not big cities). All the same. It struck me that we have been fed a propaganda message about America. The land of wealth, innovation, IT, Silicon Valley, powerful corporations, big cars and houses. For a few, that may be accurate. For the majority, it is far from the truth. Selective presentation, repetition and manipulation. If we have our eyes open, we will see it.
Disinformation is the evil we need to counter. The fresh CIPR State of the Profession 2026 survey found that disinformation was the most pressing challenge for PR, above AI and its impacts. Other research shows that 77% of UK adults say they worry about disinformation. Rightly so. Russia has invested heavily in disinformation campaigns to interfere and cause chaos in its enemy, the West. It has been caught paying UK and European politicians to spread pro-Russian disinformation. It has used its Pravda network of hundreds of news-like websites worldwide to publish about 3.6 million pro-Russian articles a year (ironic that ‘pravda’ is Russian for ‘truth’). This is aimed at influencing LLMs as well as populations in the West on how they describe and view Russia. To counter disinformation in our work as communicators, we need to monitor, identify, and swiftly counter false narratives; practise accurate, transparent communication; rigorously fact-check any message that could mislead people; and prepare for ever-increasing volumes of disinformation in our polarised, contested public discourse.
The mistake is thinking propaganda means lies. Sometimes its power comes from telling carefully selected truths, what the UK media sometimes call spin, and from ensuring they are the only truths you encounter. The test of whether it is ethical PR or propaganda is whether the communication helps people make an informed judgement, or whether it steers them by obstructing that judgement with material omissions, distortion and efforts to exclude competing explanations.
Something to chew on.
[Image of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York at night from Unsplash+]
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