Chapter 12 Further Reading: Propaganda Techniques

Foundational Works

1. Bernays, Edward. Propaganda. Horace Liveright, 1928. (Reprint: Ig Publishing, 2005.)

The primary source for understanding propaganda as a positive practice. Bernays's frank celebration of mass persuasion as a necessary instrument of democratic governance is essential reading — not as a guide to ethical communication, but as a candid account of how organized persuasion operates in mass societies. The book's openness about its subject makes it uniquely valuable: Bernays is not concealing what he is doing in the way later public relations practitioners would. Read critically, asking at each turn whether what Bernays describes is persuasion or manipulation, and by whose standards.

Annotation: Short (168 pages in the Ig Publishing edition) and readable. The opening chapters on the "invisible government" of opinion management are most relevant to this chapter. Bernays is writing for a 1928 audience, so some references require historical context.

2. Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes. Knopf, 1965. (Original French: 1962.)

The most comprehensive theoretical account of propaganda. Ellul's structural analysis — propaganda as a feature of modern mass society rather than simply a technique of cynical elites — provides the deepest intellectual framework for understanding why propaganda is so difficult to resist. His argument that educated information consumers are more susceptible than less-informed people, and his distinction between political and sociological propaganda, are still intellectually productive. Dense and demanding but rewarding.

Annotation: More difficult than Bernays; more theoretically ambitious. Chapters 1-3 are essential; later chapters on democratic propaganda are particularly provocative. Ellul writes from a Christian existentialist perspective that inflects his analysis — take his framework seriously while remaining critical of its normative dimensions.

3. Institute for Propaganda Analysis. The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches. Harcourt, Brace, 1939.

The primary text for the seven-technique taxonomy. The IPA's analysis of Father Coughlin's radio propaganda — using the seven techniques to dissect specific rhetorical moves — was one of the first systematic applications of propaganda analysis to contemporary political communication. Even readers unfamiliar with Father Coughlin will find the methodological framework instructive, and the historical context illuminates the anxieties that motivated the IPA's founding.

Annotation: Valuable primarily for the methodology, not the historical subject. The seven techniques are articulated here most clearly. Available through university libraries; not in print.

Historical Propaganda

4. Longerich, Peter. Goebbels: A Biography. Random House, 2015.

The authoritative scholarly biography of Joseph Goebbels. Based on extensive primary source research, including Goebbels's diaries, this book provides the most comprehensive account of how Nazi propaganda actually operated — from the specific decisions made in Goebbels's ministry to the relationship between propaganda and the regime's other instruments of power. Essential for anyone who wants to understand Nazi propaganda in its historical specificity rather than as a generalized cautionary tale.

Annotation: Long (700+ pages) but essential. For course purposes, focus on Chapters 8-18 covering the propaganda ministry. Longerich is careful to maintain the distinction between what Goebbels wrote in his diary and what actually happened.

5. Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich in Power. Penguin, 2006.

The second volume of Evans's definitive Third Reich trilogy, covering 1933-1939. Evans provides the historical context that Longerich's biography assumes, showing how Nazi propaganda functioned within the broader transformation of German society. Particularly strong on the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of the media, the role of spectacle, and the relationship between propaganda and the social psychology of the German population.

Annotation: Evans is always readable despite the density of historical material. This volume is the most relevant for the propaganda chapter; the third volume (The Third Reich at War) addresses how propaganda adapted during wartime.

6. Rid, Thomas. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

The comprehensive history of covert propaganda operations. Rid traces "active measures" from early Soviet disinformation through the Cold War on both sides through contemporary Russian information operations, drawing on declassified intelligence documents and archival research. Particularly strong on Operation INFEKTION (the AIDS disinformation campaign), the CIA's Cold War cultural programs, and the genealogy of current Russian disinformation in Cold War predecessors.

Annotation: Narrative history, highly readable, rigorously sourced. Invaluable for contextualizing contemporary information operations in their historical lineage.

7. Bytwerk, Randall L., editor. Landmark Speeches of National Socialism. Texas A&M University Press, 2008.

Primary source collection. Bytwerk provides carefully translated and annotated primary texts from Nazi propaganda, with scholarly apparatus that contextualizes each document without sanitizing its content. The Propaganda Archive at Calvin University (bytwerk.com/gpa), which Bytwerk maintains, is an invaluable online resource for primary Nazi and East German propaganda sources with scholarly contextualization.

Annotation: Use in conjunction with scholarly secondary sources. These primary texts require careful framing; the Bytwerk introductions provide essential context.

Modern Political Communication and Propaganda

8. Wylie, Christopher. Mindfck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America*. Random House, 2019.

The insider account of Cambridge Analytica, by a whistleblower. Wylie was a founding member and research director of Cambridge Analytica and was instrumental in identifying and publicizing the data privacy violations at its heart. His account is vivid and specific — providing technical detail about how psychographic targeting was developed and deployed. Read critically: Wylie is not a neutral party; his narrative emphasizes his own early resistance to ethical violations and should be triangulated against other sources.

Annotation: Excellent primary source material for understanding how the company understood its own capabilities. Triangulate claims about political impact against academic research, which is more skeptical.

9. Pomerantsev, Peter. This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. PublicAffairs, 2019.

The most accessible account of contemporary information warfare. Pomerantsev — a Russian-British journalist and researcher — explores how modern authoritarian propaganda operates differently from 20th-century propaganda: not by insisting on a single truth but by creating such a cacophony of conflicting claims that audiences become unable to distinguish truth from falsehood. His framework of "flood the zone" propaganda is essential for understanding contemporary Russian information operations and their democratic effects.

Annotation: Narrative nonfiction, highly readable. More journalistic than academic; serves as an entry point to deeper academic literature.

10. Kakutani, Michiko. The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.

A polemical but well-researched account of contemporary post-truth politics. Kakutani traces the intellectual and cultural genealogy of contemporary propaganda — from postmodern relativism to reality television to partisan media — arguing that multiple trends have converged to create an information environment unusually susceptible to propaganda. The book's partisan orientation should be noted; its analytical framework is nonetheless valuable.

Annotation: More accessible than academic accounts but less rigorous. Strong on cultural and intellectual history; weaker on empirical social science. Best paired with more systematic academic treatments.

Academic Research

11. Barberá, Pablo, John T. Jost, Jonathan Nagler, Joshua A. Tucker, and Richard Bonneau. "Tweeting From Left to Right: Is Online Political Communication More Than an Echo Chamber?" Psychological Science 26, no. 10 (2015): 1531-1542.

Empirical research on political communication bubbles. This study used Twitter data to examine the claim that social media creates partisan "echo chambers" where people only encounter politically similar content. The findings are nuanced: political engagement is somewhat more cross-partisan than the echo chamber metaphor implies, but highly engaged partisan users are significantly more siloed. Essential for empirically grounding claims about the structure of online political communication.

Annotation: Read alongside the more pessimistic echo chamber research (e.g., Sunstein, 2017) for a balanced empirical picture.

12. Chadwick, Andrew. The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press, 2017.

The most analytically sophisticated account of modern political media. Chadwick's "hybrid media system" framework captures how contemporary political communication flows across old and new media simultaneously — how legacy broadcast and print media, online partisan media, and social media interact to create the political information environment in which propaganda operates. Essential context for understanding why propaganda takes the forms it does in contemporary democracies.

Annotation: Academic text; more demanding than narrative accounts. Chapter 6 on media power hierarchies is particularly relevant.

13. Roozenbeek, Jon, and Sander van der Linden. "The Fake News Game: Actively Inoculating Against the Influence of Misinformation." Journal of Risk Research 22, no. 5 (2019): 570-580.

The research basis for inoculation/prebunking approaches to propaganda resistance. Roozenbeek and van der Linden present experimental evidence that pre-exposing audiences to weakened doses of propaganda techniques — through games, educational programs, or brief interventions — builds resistance to actual propaganda. The Bad News game, developed by these researchers, is a practical application of inoculation theory to propaganda resistance.

Annotation: Essential for anyone interested in evidence-based counter-propaganda education. The Bad News game (getbadnews.com) is free and directly applicable in educational settings.

14. Vance, James David. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. Harper, 2016.

Included here not as a propaganda analysis text but as a data point. This memoir of Appalachian working-class life became a focus of controversy about whether it accurately represents or propagandizes a specific American cultural community. Reading it through the lens of propaganda analysis — considering how cultural narratives about "real America" are constructed and deployed — is a productive exercise. Pair with scholarly critiques of the "hillbilly elegy" narrative for a full picture.

Annotation: Read the book; read the critical responses; then analyze both through the Plain Folks and Transfer frameworks. This exercise illustrates how propaganda analysis applies to narratives that are not explicitly political.

15. Benkler, Yochai, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts. Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics. Oxford University Press, 2018.

The most rigorous empirical study of online political propaganda in the 2016 US election. Based on systematic analysis of millions of online media stories, the authors find that the primary driver of misinformation and propaganda in the 2016 election was not Russian bots or Facebook algorithms but the partisan media ecosystem — particularly right-wing media outlets that operated with significantly weaker epistemic norms than mainstream or left-leaning outlets. This finding is controversial and contested, but the methodology is more rigorous than most comparable studies.

Annotation: Academic but readable. The empirical chapters are dense; the concluding chapters on implications are more accessible. Essential counterweight to accounts that emphasize technology and foreign actors over domestic partisan media as the primary propaganda vector.

All academic articles can be accessed through university library databases. Books are available through academic and public libraries. The Propaganda Archive (bytwerk.com/gpa) and GetBadNews.com (inoculation game) are freely accessible online resources particularly recommended for classroom use.