Interview: Propaganda
#66: With Gavin Wilde
A big welcome to new subscribers! We’re glad to have you here. This is our interview format, in which we give one expert a little more space.
Gavin Wilde is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and author of a recent paper on the limits of foreign propaganda. His career and research have focused on cyber, propaganda, and Russia issues – having previously served in roles at the U.S. National Security Council and in the U.S. intelligence community. Our questions are in bold, his answers in block quotes.
What is propaganda?
Propaganda is essentially any organized attempt to shape or tinker with how people perceive the world, in hopes of directing their behavior in some beneficial way for the propagandist – good or bad. It’s more manipulative than, say, persuasion, which is more of a give-and-take, where the benefit is more mutual. For instance, if I aim to convince you of something, I’m considerate of your agency, and I mostly defer to and respect your own ability to reach a conclusion. But propagandists see information as an instrument, people as objects.
How effective is propaganda?
For the most part, the jury is still out – that goes for advertising, political subversion, and “fake news.” As much as we’d like to assume humans and information function the same way as chemicals and physics – it’s just not the case. People are complex animals who sometimes prize social status over factual accuracy. This makes it hard to study real-world events, media, and public discourse and find clear cause-and-effect relationships.
Are there any risks to overestimating its effectiveness?
Absolutely. If we too eagerly buy into the idea that propaganda “works,” we adopt the same mindset of the propagandist: We start to see our neighbors as unwitting dupes. We start seeing conspiracies behind every narrative. We start asking authorities to intervene and filter information. And we try to hold narratives accountable for what are ultimately human choices. That mindset is probably more harmful to democracy and society than any specific narrative could be.
To what extent did the internet change propaganda?
The Internet gave propaganda higher speed and global reach, and created pathways for anyone – beyond just governments, media outlets, or advertisers – to attempt it. Before the Internet, people were faced with a limited number of facts and events to interpret, and had a smaller number of authoritative voices to help them do so; now they have an infinite supply of both. The Internet made it easier for propagandists to try to not only shape beliefs, but to portray them as the best we can even hope for – dismissing the notion of any verifiable truth altogether.
Do we know what makes societies vulnerable?
The societies most at risk are ones with declining trust among citizens and toward the legitimacy of their governing institutions. That kind of crisis of confidence is always accompanied by propaganda, but it stems from systemic failures to meet people’s needs at a fundamental, real-world level. When people feel disenfranchised and detached, they look for some sense of control, explanatory power, and even a scapegoat. This is where demagogues use propaganda as a distraction.
Are authoritarian governments the only source of propaganda?
No, but they definitely have structural advantages – using censorship, government-run media sources, and persecution of investigative journalism to solidify their grip on power. They try to use this same playbook abroad. But while we tend to associate propaganda mostly with authoritarians, democratic governments also engage in it – including for noble purposes like public health, disaster response, and cybersecurity awareness.
What disadvantages do liberal democracies have in responding?
The core paradox is that enabling them to respond to propaganda risks gradually eroding major features of what makes them democracies in the first place: free and open expression. Our laws and our values constrain how much the government can police public discourse – and that’s a very good thing! But it also means it’s very tough to curb propaganda, of any stripe, beyond making it more transparent – enabling people to make better informed judgements about their media diets (should they choose to do so).
So how should they react?
There’s no silver bullet, but I think the key is that resilience to propaganda is mostly rooted in people’s real-world, lived experiences – less in the media they consume. Most of the response efforts I’ve seen focus on the latter, at the expense of the former. I think we need to flip that balance, because it gives us as citizens and our elected leaders too easy an out. Improving our political culture may seem impossible – but no more so than somehow hacking society (for good or ill) using propaganda. And we’ll arguably gain more from the attempt in the long run.
What’s a question you wish you were asked and what’s your answer to it?
What about TikTok and access to user data? Couldn’t that be used to craft a propaganda campaign?
There are plenty of good reasons for democracies to put curbs on how much data any service provider – foreign or domestic – can collect about their users. But fear of influence campaigns is far from the most compelling one. The notion that human complexity can be reconstituted from the bits of data they leave in their everyday wake is rooted less in settled science than in clever marketing.
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