page_title: Propaganda
section_title: Herman and Chomsky
hierarchical_section_title: Propaganda / Models / Herman and Chomsky
caption_attribution_description: Political Cartoon
context_page_description: Propaganda is communication that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations, the media, and individuals can also produce propaganda.
  In the 20th century, the term propaganda has often been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically is a neutral descriptive term.
  A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, TV shows, and websites. More recently, the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, through the use of bots and algorithms to create computational propaganda and spread fake or biased news using social media.
context_section_description: The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky which argues systemic biases exist in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes:
  The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
  First presented in their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product – readers and audiences (rather than news) – to other businesses (advertisers) and relying primarily on government and corporate information and propaganda. The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media: Ownership of the medium, the medium's Funding, Sourcing of the news, Flak, and anti-communist ideology.
  The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important. Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles the model postulates as the cause of media bias.
caption: Early 20th-century depiction of a "European Anarchist" attempting to destroy the Statue of Liberty
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