Opinion: what white, black and grey propaganda have in common is the use of certain linguistic and rhetorical techniques
The term propaganda is a loaded one. Indeed, to call something propaganda can be a type of propaganda technique itself, namely "labelling or name calling", used to discredit the statements of the opposition. The generally accepted definition of propaganda is that it is any information which is intended to influence beliefs or modify behaviours in order to further an agenda. Propaganda is not merely the expression of an opinion, or bias, or even persuasion. Unlike opinion, which by itself does not involve an agenda, propaganda, by definition, does. And unlike persuasion where the audience has the opportunity to enter into a debate, propaganda is one directional.
We can classify propaganda into three major categories: white, grey, and black. White propaganda is where the messenger does not hide their identity or purpose, and is very common. From advertising to public service messaging, such as the government's campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated, it is a one-sided presentation of an argument.
White propaganda is basically any information campaign where the source of the information (or the producer of the information) is clearly stated. Public health campaigns are the most obvious ones, but other examples include the Government's 'Reduce Your Use' campaign, Road Safety campaigns, Transport for Ireland (TFI) campaigns, or Safe Ireland campaigns.
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From RTÉ 2FM's Dave Fanning, what exactly is propaganda, why is it a tool of war and how long has it been that way?
In contrast, black propaganda is covert, often masquerading as the opposition in order to discredit it. Black propaganda often relies on falsehoods and gross misrepresentations. It is where the source is concealed or credited to a false authority.
Iconic examples come from the Second World War, like the New English Broadcasting Station which purported to be run by discontented British soldiers but was actually run by the German government to weaken the morale of the British people. We have also seen it with the Cold War, and other extreme political movements, while the extreme far-right is an example from today. The success of black propaganda is highly dependent on the receiver's willingness to accept the credibility of the source and the content of the message.
The most insidious (and successful) contemporary example of black propaganda, in my opinion, is the "carbon footprint" campaign introduced in 2004. Almost everyone is familiar with this purportedly beneficent campaign to curb climate change by reducing their individual carbon footprint, or the amount of carbon emissions produced by our individual lifestyle choices. This campaign was created by advertising agencies who were hired by British Petroleum (BP).
Grey propaganda falls somewhere in the middle and the lines are often hard to draw. A canonical example of grey propaganda comes from the Cold War era (post WWII to the fall of the Berlin wall), when the CIA funded Radio Free Europe until 1972, one of the only sources of information for Eastern European citizens, not originating from communist state-owned media.
Grey propaganda is ambiguous about the source or intent. It is the most common because it's basically most advertising or "spin". The tobacco industry's efforts to get everyone smoking through their various advertising campaigns is probably one of the best-known examples. It should be noted that they used both grey and black propaganda techniques (notably, by funding "studies" which showed the health benefits of smoking).
What all three types of propaganda have in common is the use of certain linguistic and rhetorical techniques. Indeed, "the major techniques of propaganda are long known rhetorical techniques gone wrong." Consider the following hypothetical headlines: "Man in his 40s of Algerian descent, stabs children in Parnell Square" and "Children stabbed in Parnell Square". Both are factually correct, but one is designed to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment. It is a propaganda technique known as "appeal to fear." While one occurrence of a headline such as this may not have inspired the riot that followed the event, the repeated dissemination of such examples, the ensuing faulty logic, as well as a combination of other techniques, did.
Read more: How social media inflames violence like Dublin riots
Before the internet and social media in particular, the ability to disseminate propaganda at scale was mostly limited to governments or those with substantial financial means. This has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. While the specific rhetorical techniques and motivations (money, power, ideology etc.) of propaganda have not changed through the ages, the sheer volume and velocity of propagandistic text is a whole new ball game.
We can process this firehose of information because people have evolved over thousands if not millions of years to be able to to consume information efficiently. We take mental shortcuts and rely on our friends and communities to affirm facts and beliefs so that we don't have to "reinvent the wheel" every time we read a news article or social media post. But these efficiencies also represent our vulnerabilities. The more information we are asked to consume, the more shortcuts we are forced to take.
The propagandist takes advantage of these vulnerabilities by means of logical fallacies and emotional appeals we are likely to either overlook or fall prey to. So we need some assistance - traditionally this was the role of fact checkers and domain experts, rhetoricians and linguists. The problem is that this massive volume of information can no longer be analysed or fact checked within the time it takes to reach critical mass within a targeted community (for example, it took a mere couple of hours from the time of the Parnell Square stabbing to several hundred people gathering at the scene).
From Big Think, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University Jason Stanley explains propaganda
Social media platforms like Facebook and X have come under scrutiny for not doing enough to stop the flow of misinformation and disinformation. At the same time, they have faced accusations of ideologically motivated censorship when users' posts have been either flagged, demonetised or removed. At the same time, we’ve seen that methods such as flagging, demonetising or removing can backfire when information consumers are already deeply rooted in their existing beliefs.
Since we cannot rely on either the platforms, nor the experts to filter the information for us, we need tools that empower individuals to overcome their vulnerabilities. It is critical that the tools we deploy do more than simply classify text fragments into arbitrary propaganda techniques. We already have powerful AI models which can, albeit with questionable accuracy, give us a classification. But these models are not able to provide any explanation as to how or why they gave us a particular classification, thus are prone to the "backfire effect".
Perhaps surprisingly, identifying propaganda techniques in text is hard
Perhaps surprisingly, identifying propaganda techniques in text is hard. When several experts were asked to classify news text fragments into one or more of 18 propaganda techniques, classification agreement was very low. But if we can decompose language into even more granular features, then we can use those features as predictors of propaganda techniques, and as a way of explaining to the reader why a particular text fragment deserves attention.
Using the headline from our stabbing example, we can decompose it as follows: there is a prepositional phrase which modifies the subject based on his age and nationality. The association between the subject’s nationality and the verb "stabs" creates an implicit association between immigration and violence, a propaganda technique known as "appeal to fear." Let us not let the propagandists co-opt our fears, concerns and vulnerabilities for their own ends.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
