Running head: ECONOMIC PROPAGANDA 1

Economic Propaganda
Dmitry Iodko
UF 300
Susan Latta
ECONOMIC PROPAGANDA 2
Abstract
Human communication has always incorporated the exchange of ideas and persuasion. As long
as societies have interacted on a larger scale, certain beliefs and ideas have been imposed
through various means on society and propaganda has existed in some form. Propaganda is used
in many different areas today through a variety of mediums. This paper focuses on the issue of
economic propaganda today. Closely linked with public relations, economic propaganda has
played a large role in the history of marketing and remains an inevitable part of life today. It can
be applied as a useful tool to promote change or cause harm and destruction when used
unethically. Given the immense amount of communication mediums available in this age,
society must decide how and to what degree it wants to regulate economic propaganda.
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Economic Propaganda
For as long as humans have been communicating and expressing their ideas to one
another, they have used persuasion and bias to support their position. Everyone has their own
opinions on certain matters and specific reasons of varying validity for holding those opinions.
When a deliberate attempt is made to impose a certain belief or opinion on society, this is often
considered as propaganda. Propaganda, as we know it today, was first practiced by the Greeks in
Athens according to the American Historical Association. In The Story of Propaganda, they
claim Differences on religious and political matters gave rise to propaganda and
counterpropaganda. and The Greeks had games, the theater, the assembly, the law courts, and
religious festivals, and these gave opportunity for propagandizing ideas and beliefs. Which
previous civilizations did not (par 2). They go on to say that from that time all developed future
societies used propaganda-although the term wasnt around then, with England and Spain using
it in a modern way in the sixteenth century (par 3). The word itself, according to the AHA, was
coined in the United States around 1914 with the start of World War I (The Story of Propaganda
par 1).
Today, according to Duffy, there exist two types of propaganda: neutral and negative. In
her article Thoughts on Public Relations Education: Can Propaganda be Good for You? she
writes that the neutral case is a campaign of mass persuasion while the negative case is
"intentional use of suggestion, irrelevant emotional appeals, and pseudo-proof to circumvent
human rational decision making processes." (p377 - p378). These two definitions seem to
suggest that one type relies on reasoning to persuade of its idea while the other capitalizes on
feelings to bypass rational thinking. Propaganda of both types, especially prominent in war and
politics, is also used for many other purposes all throughout our world today. One of its most
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common applications is seen particularly in the area of marketing through all forms of media in
our commercialized society.
Economic propaganda, often associated with public relations, engulfs most members of
todays society on a daily basis. We are bombarded with appeals for our business and support by
an immersing wave of omnipresent media. Due to its widespread influence and proven
effectiveness, there exists the potential for corporations to mislead the public through partial,
self-serving information that profits them. In If Seals Were Ugly, Nobody Would Give a Damn:
Propaganda, Nationalism, and Political Marketing in the Canadian Seal Hunt, Marland states
that propaganda seeks to sway public opinion by repetition of truth based alarmist claims that
often reinforce already existing opinions in order to stir emotions, bring to society to action, and
ultimately gain power (par 5). An example of this he brings up is how anti seal hunting activists
accuse hunters of breaking laws and cruelty such as skinning seals alive, use the media to portray
seals as cute and docile, and hire attractive celebrities to promote clothing with anti-seal hunting
slogans. This is done to attract the attention and stir up people even in distant parts of the world,
who otherwise have no stake in the issue, to put pressure on the Canadian government to ban seal
hunting (par 16). It is easy to see how this could be used in the wrong way in a free market
economy where opposing vendors are competing for business. For this reason, there have been
established propaganda regulating institutions such as PR Watch and propogandacritic.com in the
US, and Spin Watch in the UK according to Fawkes in Does the European Union (EU) need a
propaganda watchdog like the US Institute of Propaganda Analysis to strengthen its democratic
civil society and free markets? (par 23). The purpose of these is to ensure the marketing
practices are carried out in an ethical and socially responsible way.
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Aside from economic conflicts between corporations and special interest groups, it also
happens between countries on an international scale. Never, arguably, has economic propaganda
been used so effectively for an ill cause, as by the Nazi regime in Germany. OShaughnessy
argues in Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand that the fascist ideology was marketed
very masterfully, even by our modern standards, like a consumer brand to the German public of
that time (p 55). He states that everything produced by the Third Reich, from books to buildings,
was based on intended imagery and evaluated according to its persuasive value. Economic
prosperity was preached with the promise of private property ownership and access to the finest
consumer goods for the citizens of Germany. The proclaimed ideology was that all products
produced by the regime were the most modern, at the cutting edge of technology, and superior to
the rest of the world. Even after the country had suffered much damage from allied attacks and
the tide of the war had turned, the regime assured their citizens that they had developed superior
miracle weapons that would defeat the allies (Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand
pg. 60).
There are endless examples of ways economic propaganda has been used in the history of
our world to educate, indoctrinate, and shift the tide of power and profit. Today it is still very
much active and present in many facets of our ever globalizing economy. Marketing, and
consequently, economic propaganda, will always be around as long people are doing business
and communicating in mass. It can be monitored and regulated to a degree, but can never be
stopped as long as society has freedom of expression. The challenge has been and remains to
objectively distinguish propaganda from persuasion and determine how far society is willing to
go to regulate it.

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References
Duffy, M. E. (2000). Thoughts on Public Relations Education: Can Propaganda be Good for
You?. Critical Studies In Media Communication, 17(3), 377.

Fawkes, J., & Moloney, K. (2008). Does the European Union (EU) need a propaganda watchdog
like the US Institute of Propaganda Analysis to strengthen its democratic civil society and free
markets?. Public Relations Review, 34(3), 207-214. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2008.04.004

http://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-
series/pamphlets/what-is-propaganda/the-story-of-propaganda

MARLAND, A. (2014). If Seals Were Ugly, Nobody Would Give a Damn: Propaganda,
Nationalism, and Political Marketing in the Canadian Seal Hunt. Journal Of Political Marketing,
13(1/2), 66-84. doi:10.1080/15377857.2014.866026

O'Shaughnessy, N. (2009). Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand. Journal Of Public
Affairs (14723891), 9(1), 55-76.