5/3/2021 50 Types of Propaganda

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By Mark Nichol

Are you a propagandist? If you write non ction intended to persuade, yes, by a broad de nition, you
almost certainly are. Here are fty terms for, and de nitions of, forms of propaganda, at least one of which
such writers will likely employ in a given piece of content.

Propaganda (the word is from a New Latin term meaning “propagating,” synonymous in this connotation
with publicizing) has been de ned as “communication intended to shape perceptions, manipulate
cognition, and direct behavior.” That’s a broad de nition — a narrower one would limit propaganda to Categories
willful, prejudicial manipulation of information — but it helps writers and readers understand that because
almost any content can be considered propaganda, they must be alert to the subtext of almost any content Business Writing Book Reviews
they produce or consume.
Mistakes Expressions
1. Ad hominem: attacking opponents rather than opponents’ ideas or principles
2. Ad nauseam: repeating ideas relentlessly so that the audience becomes inured to them Fiction Writing Freelance Writing
3. Appeal to authority: use of authority gures (or perceived authority gures such as celebrities) to
support ideas General Grammar

4. Appeal to fear: exploitation of audience anxieties or concerns

Grammar 101 Misused Words
5. Appeal to prejudice: exploitation of an audience’s desire to believe that it is virtuous or morally or
otherwise superior Punctuation Spelling
6. Bandwagon: exploitation of an audience’s desire to conform by encouraging adherence to or
acceptance of idea that is supposedly garnering widespread or universal support Style Vocabulary
7. Beautiful people: depiction of attractive famous people or happy people to associate success or
happiness with adherence to an idea or cause or purchase of a product Writing Basics Usage Review
8. Black-and-white fallacy: presentation of only two alternatives, one of which is identi ed as undesirable
9. Classical conditioning: association of an idea with another stimulus Writing Quizzes

10. Cognitive dissonance: using a favorable stimulus to prompt acceptance of an unfavorable one, or
producing an unfavorable association
11. Common man: adoption of mannerisms and/or communication of principles that suggest a nity with
the average person
12. Cult of personality: creation of an idealized persona, or exploitation of an existing one, as a
spokesperson for an idea or a cause
13. Demonizing the enemy: dehumanizing or otherwise denigrating opponents to sway opinion
14. Dictat: mandating adherence to an idea or cause by presenting it as the only viable alternative
15. Disinformation: creating false accounts or records, or altering or removing existing ones, to engender
support for or opposition to an idea or cause
16. Door in the face: seeking compliance with a request by initially requesting a greater commitment and
then characterizing the desired outcome as a compromise or a minor inconvenience
17. Euphoria: generating happiness or high morale by staging a celebration or other motivating event or
o er
18. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt: disseminating false or negative information to undermine adherence to
an undesirable belief or opinion
19. Flag waving: appealing to nationalism or patriotism
20. Foot in the door: manipulation by encouraging a small gift or sacri ce, which establishes a bond that
can be exploited to extract more signi cant compliance
21. Glittering generalities: applying emotionally appealing but vague and meaningless words to an idea
or cause
22. Half-truth: making a statement that is partly true or only part of the truth, or is otherwise deceptive
23. Inevitable victory: assurance of uncommitted audience members and reassurance of committed

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audience members that an idea or cause will prevail
24. Join the crowd: communication intended to persuade the audience to support an idea or cause
because it is or will be the dominant paradigm
25. Labeling or name-calling: using euphemistic or dysphemistic terms to encourage a positive or
negative perception of a person, an idea, or a cause
26. Latitudes of acceptance: introducing an extreme point of view to encourage acceptance of a more
moderate stance, or establishing a barely moderate stance and gradually shifting to an extreme position
27. The lie: false or distorted information that justi es an action or a belief and/or encourages acceptance
of it
28. Love bombing: isolation of the target audience from general society within an insular group that
devotes attention and a ection to the target audience to encourage adherence to an idea or cause
29. Managing the news: in uencing news media by timing messages to one’s advantage, reinterpreting
controversial or unpopular actions or statements (also called spinning), or repeating insubstantial or
inconsequential statements that ignore a problem (also called staying on message)
30. Milieu control: using peer or social pressure to engender adherence to an idea or cause; related to
brainwashing and mind control
31. Obfuscation: communication that is vague and ambiguous, intended to confuse the audience as it
seeks to interpret the message, or to use incomprehensibility to exclude a wider audience
32. Operant conditioning: indoctrination by presentation of attractive people expressing opinions or
buying products
33. Oversimpli cation: o ering generalities in response to complex questions
34. Pensée unique (French for “single thought”): repression of alternative viewpoints by simplistic
arguments
35. Quotes out of context: selective use of quotations to alter the speaker’s or writer’s intended meaning
or statement of opinion
36. Rationalization: use of generalities or euphemisms to justify actions or beliefs
37. Red herring: use of irrelevant data or facts to fallaciously validate an argument
38. Reductio ad Hitlerum: persuasion of an audience to change its opinion by identifying undesirable
groups as adherents of the opinion, thus associating the audience with such groups
39. Repetition: repeated use of a word, phrase, statement, or image to in uence the audience
40. Scapegoating: blaming a person or a group for a problem so that those responsible for it are assuaged
of guilt and/or to distract the audience from the problem itself and the need to x it
41. Selective truth: restrictive use of data or facts to sway opinion that might not be swayed if all the data
or facts were given
42. Sloganeering: use of brief, memorable phrases to encapsulate arguments or opinions on an emotional
rather than a logical level
43. Stereotyping: incitement of prejudice by reducing a target group, such as a segment of society or
people adhering to a certain religion, to a set of undesirable traits
44. Straw man: misrepresentation or distortion of an undesirable argument or opinion, or misidentifying
an undesirable persona or an undesirable single person as representative of that belief, or oversimplifying
the belief
45. Testimonial: publicizing of a statement by an expert, authority gure, or celebrity in support of an idea,
cause, or product in order to prompt the audience to identify with the person and support the idea or
cause or buy the product
46. Third party: use of a supposedly impartial person or group, such as a journalist or an expert, or a
group falsely represented as a grassroots organization, to support an idea or cause or recommend a
product
47. Thought-terminating cliché: use of a truism to sti e dissent or validate faulty logic
48. Transfer: association of an entity’s positive or negative qualities with another entity to suggest that the
latter entity embodies those qualities
49. Unstated assumption: implicit expression of an idea or cause by communication of related concepts
without expressing the idea or cause
50. Virtue words: expression of words with positive connotations to associate an idea or cause with the
self-perceived values of the audience

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4 Responses to “50 Types of Propaganda”

Roberta B. on May 31, 2013 6:20 pm

All the tricks of the trade exposed! Excellent! We expect these tactics with product advertising, but nd it
sickening when they’re used in political campaigns.
Reductio ad Hitlerem – That’s a new one on me (the label, anyway), since we’ve all heard that one lobbed
into the discussion, usually as a last resort! So, there’s a name for it now. Great list!

Jean Kearsley on May 31, 2013 6:51 pm

Your de nition of “cognitive dissonance” is rather muddled . . . though it’s actually producing some in my
head!

An earlier post on “10 Directional-Sign Disasters” had an excellent de nition of the term, by example, in
the rst entry in that post of April 11th.

I would say that cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable mental state induced by encountering any
instance of opposite — or at least widely variant — concepts, usages or implications, and trying to
process both at the same time. Note that the disparaty doesn’t have to be along a “positive” or “negative”
axis. In fact, two proagandists each attempting to utilize cognitive dissonance for their own ends might
have opposite impressions of which pole was positive and which negative!

The de nition you provided above matches up, not with cognitive dissonance itself, but with techniques
which can be adopted to trade on its existance to alter people’s perceptions. A well-managed
presentation of charming “images” of an otherwise unpopular public gure can disrupt the thought
processes of those who hold that individual in disdain, by con icting with already held impressions.
Eventually, by repetition or by sheer numbers, these instances of new (mis)information will have a
disarming e ect. The easiest way to avoid that uncomfortable dissonance is to reverse ones original
opinion in favor of the unavoidable plurality of new-minted favorable sound- & video-bytes..

Stephen Thorn on June 17, 2013 4:22 pm

Marvelous idea for an article, Mark, and excellent execution of same! I recall in high school that we
touched on a few of these techniques as advertising tools but your list is far more detailed and
comprehensive, and therefore more useful, than those long-ago lessons. With the state of so-called
“journalism” today and its ugly tendency to wear a cloak of respectability to mask its covert
propagandizing to the public this information is especially vital. Good job.

Carl Clark on September 15, 2015 1:53 pm

This is a fantastic list, and I have cross-posted it extensively since it was originally written.

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