Propaganda Concepts | 50 Ways They Manipulate Information To Shape Your Mind

Propaganda techniques have been used throughout history to manipulate people's thoughts, emotions, and actions. Here is a list of 50 common propaganda techniques that are still in use today. From ad hominem attacks to straw man arguments, these techniques aim to sway public opinion in favor of a particular idea, cause, or product. By being aware of these tactics, you can better recognize when you are being manipulated and think critically about the messages you receive.

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

3. Appeal to authority: use of authority figures (or perceived authority figures such as celebrities) to support ideas

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

5. Appeal to prejudice: exploitation of an audience’s desire to believe that it is virtuous or morally or otherwise superior

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

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

8. Black-and-white fallacy: presentation of only two alternatives, one of which is identified as undesirable

9. Classical conditioning: association of an idea with another stimulus

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 affinity 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 offer

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 sacrifice, which establishes a bond that can be exploited to extract more significant 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 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 justifies 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 affection to the target audience to encourage adherence to an idea or cause

29. Managing the news: influencing 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. Oversimplification: offering 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 influence 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 fix 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 figure, 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 stifle 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