If your aim is to really understand propaganda, this is the one book you absolutely must read. Now in its 6th edition, Propaganda & Persuasion is a sweeping and in depth look at propaganda and its role in society.

Authors Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell have compiled the seminal book pulling together the various bits of independent research on propaganda that has mostly emerged in the past century. Propaganda & Persuasion goes much further, however, than simply bringing studies together, recounting how propaganda has been used in a grand historical showcase, reviewing the various research areas covering propaganda and theories put forward as a result, and guiding the reader through identifying and analyzing propaganda through real case studies.

Sheepishly, I must admit it took me quite some time to get through the entire book – but not because of the writing. The authors offer up an engaging and enjoyable style, that even makes the review on different schools of thought around propaganda easy to read and absorb. More so it is the sheer volume of information comprising Propaganda & Persuasion – this really is a comprehensive work – and I look forward to any future updates to it.

Propaganda & Persuasion is available for purchase at Amazon.


About Author

La Generalista is the online identity of Alicia Wanless – a researcher and practitioner of strategic communications for social change in a Digital Age. Alicia is the director of the Partnership for Countering Influence Operations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. With a growing international multi-stakeholder community, the Partnership aims to foster evidence-based policymaking to counter threats within the information environment. Wanless is currently a PhD Researcher at King’s College London exploring how the information environment can be studied in similar ways to the physical environment. She is also a pre-doctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and was a tech advisor to Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder. Her work has been featured in Lawfare, The National Interest, Foreign Policy, and CBC.

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