Why Propaganda Matters in Both “Business” and “Politics”
Edward Bernays’s “Propaganda,” published in 1928, is a work on the techniques of forming public opinion and guiding the behavior of the masses. The author’s central claim is that modern democratic society does not run merely on people judging independently and rationally, but is sustained by a small number of people who organize information and attention and guide them in a certain direction.
Democracy is regarded as a system in which citizens think for themselves and choose the shape of politics and society. In reality, however, individuals cannot adequately research and judge every question in politics, economics, science, culture, and other fields. People therefore entrust their judgment to politicians, experts, newspapers, religious figures, the leaders of organizations they belong to, and so on. What they consider an important issue, which products they prefer, and what kind of life they feel to be desirable are also influenced by these intermediaries. Bernays calls those who operate this mechanism the “invisible government.” It is not a single secret organization but refers to the work of leaders and experts who direct the perceptions and choices of the masses in each field of society.
For the author, propaganda is the organized spreading of support for a particular idea or activity. The word generally calls to mind falsehood and war propaganda, but its good or evil is determined by the validity of its aims and the accuracy of the information conveyed. Corporate product sales, the promotion of party policies, university fundraising, public health improvement, and charitable work also use propaganda, insofar as they require society’s understanding and cooperation. The propaganda activities of the First World War showed that large-scale opinion formation was possible, and those methods came to be applied in peacetime society as well.
At the foundation lies an understanding of mass psychology. Human beings do not always accurately understand the reasons for their own behavior. Even in buying a product, not only practicality and price but also longing for social status, the desire for recognition by those around them, a sense of security, habit, and the like are at work. Merely repeating a product’s merits, therefore, cannot sufficiently change people’s behavior. It is necessary to find out what generates desire or resistance and to link the product or idea to the emotions lying beneath.
Society, moreover, is not a collection of homogeneous masses. Numerous groups overlap according to occupation, religion, region, hobby, class, and so on. Each group has persons and authorities it trusts. For that reason, gaining the approval of group leaders and experts is sometimes more effective than directly persuading every individual, because people use the judgment of those they trust as a clue for their own judgment.
From this way of thinking, the author emphasizes not only the wording of advertising but also methods of creating the very circumstances in which people make judgments. If exhibitions, competitions, ceremonies, survey announcements, and the like are planned to produce newsworthy events, interest spreads through newspapers and magazines. A soap sculpture competition, for example, is an activity that fosters art education and children’s creativity, and at the same time an opportunity to instill familiarity with the product in the home. Activities in which participants take part for their own purposes end up cultivating goodwill toward the company.
The professional who designs such activities is the public relations counsel. The role is not only to convey the client’s claims to society but also to convey society’s expectations and dissatisfactions to the client. If public antipathy arises from the actual conduct of a company or organization, changing the expressions used in publicity will not solve it. The product, management policy, treatment of workers, operation of the organization, and so on must be reformed. Public relations is the work of adjusting the relationship between an organization and society.
Regarding politics as well, the author argues that politicians cannot exercise leadership by merely chasing existing public opinion. They must set policy goals, investigate people’s interests and the circumstances of each group, and convey what the policy means for people’s lives. Rather than relying only on speeches or a candidate’s popularity, they are required to bring policies, actions, symbolic events, and means of communication together into a single plan. At the same time, he holds that campaign promises should be sincere and that the raising of political funds requires openness.
In education, welfare, and the arts as well, valuable work is not necessarily understood of its own accord. Universities need to explain the significance of their research to society, welfare organizations need to make people feel the need for support, and artists and cultural institutions need to create points of contact between daily life and art. The author believes that through such activities propaganda becomes a force that breaks society’s inertia and spreads new ideas and behavior.
This book explains such opinion formation as an inevitable mechanism of democracy and actively defends its operation by experts. Yet a tension remains between citizens’ self-determination and guidance by a small number of people. The author emphasizes the accuracy of information and professional ethics, but his answer to the question of who monitors the aims of those doing the guiding is insufficient. In light of this, the book is both a practical treatise on public relations and a work for considering how the judgments we feel to be our own will are shaped by social influences.
(The original text is here → Project Gutenberg)
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