Classical Propaganda Theory 1. Propaganda is an essentially situational, pragmatic and not ideological phenomenon. 2. Propaganda is a form of communication aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community. 3. Classical situational propaganda concerns its relative independence from ideology.

1. Beyond Hegemony :Classical
Propaganda Theory and
Presidential Communication
Strategy After The Invasion Of
Iraq
KARTIKA PRATIWI
LUVIANA AVRIYANTI
MAHFUD ACHYAR
Paramadina Graduate School - 2013

2. The Hegemonic Perspective
“The consensus that undergirds civil society including beliefs
and norms concerning private property, the market, social
relations, and the proper role and behavior of political elites and
the governments.” (Marxist or Gramscian: 1971)
“A large body of work that seeks to understand the government-
press nexus in terms of the government’s ability to keep
information available to the public within such narrow
ideological boundaries that democratic deliberation and
influence are all but impossible”. (Entman, 2004 : 46)

3. Classical Propaganda Theory
 Propaganda is an essentially situational,
pragmatic and not ideological phenomenon.
 Propaganda is a form of communication
aimed towards influencing the attitude of the
community.
 Classical situational propaganda concerns its
relative independence from ideology.

4. The Differences
Hegemonic Theory
- Hegemonic theory sees the themes constituting
Propaganda as the ideas of the ruling class –
directly benefiting society’s owners and rulers. So,
the masses are under control of the super-power.
- It holds that the president and other government
officials (including the military) wield extra
ordinary power to shape news coverage of war and
by extensions, to manage public opinion.

5. The Classical Propaganda Theory:
- Propaganda showed the bedrock beliefs of the masses are
more important than political ideology because propaganda
must align with common beliefs for it to be effective.
- Propaganda was not the art of inflicting an opinion on the
people, but rather the art of receiving an opinion from the
masses.

6. Hegemony, Propaganda,
and Iraq
Let’s compare the predictions of the Hegemony traditions with
classical propaganda tradition in Iraq post-invasion:
Hegemonic Perspective:
1. With respect to use of Propaganda : Hegemonic expects
president will go on the offensive; generating rhetoric to promote
an ideological position, unchecked by the events on the ground.
2. News coverage : hegemonic predicts presidential rhetoric will set
the news agenda, framing war coverage for the news media and
public.
3. Public Opinion :Hegemonic predicts the presidential domination
of the news will result in strong support for presidential policies.

7. Propaganda Perspective
 Argues that president will often find themselves on the
defensive with respect to propaganda when collision of real
world events with mass public creates political pressure.
 News coverage : Classical propaganda theory suggest
that the president might have the loudest voice he must
compete for attention with events or others offered by his
critics.
 Public Opinion : it predicts that president will succeed
leading public opinion only insofar as he sells what the
public wants to buy. News dominance can’t buy support.

8. Perspective
 Compare the predictions of the hegemony tradition with
those of the classical propaganda tradition.
1. With the respect to use of propaganda, the hegemonic,
perspective expects presidents will go on the offensive,
generating rhetoric to promote an ideological position,
unchecked by events on the ground.
2. With the respect to news coverage, the hegemony tradition
predicts presidential rhetoric will set the news agenda,
framing war coverage for the news media and the public.
3. With the respect to public opinion, hegemony theories
predict the presidential domination of the news will result in
strong support for presidential policies.

9. Method
1. Two coders read all of the front-page New York Times stories
about Iraq for the period between January 2003 and June 2004.
2. They coded for the presence of any mention of U.S. casualties.
3. A test of inter-coder reliability on this particular measure was near
perfect (95 %), with the only differences turning out to be when
one or the other coder missed a reference to casualties in the
next.
4. To track the presence of other themes in war news we used the
Nexis database to determine how many stories about Iraq
contained relevant keywords.

10. On the defensive: Quagmire, Casualties, and
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
 The hegemonic perspective envisions a president able to
command media attention in support of its agenda and to
determine the news framing applied to Iraq.
 Case: Pressure on the Bush administration began almost
as soon as the U.S military had toppled Baghdad.
 The pressure came in three forms:
1. A public desire for visible progress toward eventual
success in establishing security and order in Iraq
2. The failure to find weapons of mass destruction
3. Rising public concern over U.S. casualties.

11. Eroding News
Dominance
 It is clear that the conditions that enabled him to manage
the news in the prewar period disappeared soon after the
invasion.
 The result was that war news in fact amplified the pressure
previously outlined, giving them the political force that
pressured the Bush administration into its defensive
propaganda posture.
 President Bush’s failure to dominate the news can be seen
in two ways.
 Casualties were not the only troubling topic making news
management difficult.

12. Responsive Propaganda
 Bush did not so much manage news of Iraq as manage his
public relations efforts in light of news from Iraq.
 The defensive and pragmatic nature of the administration’s
propaganda campaign reveals itself in several ways:
1. In contrast to hegemony’s predictions, the administration
did not spend much time touting its successes in the post-
invasion period.
2. The reactive, rather than proactive
3. In response to the collapse of its initial justification for war
in Iraq.

13. Implication
 Bush does not speech about how many military to Iraq
 Mass media write a news about Bush Speech
 Bush control to the media? Or control the hegemony?
 Antonio Gramsci and Karl Marx Theory about propaganda
 Hannah Arendt about public theory
 Propaganda: Harold Laswell Theory

14. War Justification
As classical propaganda theory predicts, the administration
responded to the pressures created by the flow of casualties in
Iraq by stepping up its propaganda efforts to justify the war.
The efforts can be seen in two ways:
 First: the Bush administration made greater efforts to
communicate with the public when the situation on the
ground in Iraq worsened. For Example doing TV Press
Conference.
 Second : Its attempt to reframe the entire US mission in
Iraq; to find and destroy Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
because Iraq become the central front in the war on terror.

15. Summary
Presidents are not the iron hegemony of news and opinion, they occupy
the center of a vortex of political pressures during war that forces them to
respond or risk losing public support.
At their strongest moments, presidents can certainly dominate the news
and make it difficult for critics to gain a foothold but on the other hand
influencing the public becomes harder as the administration’s control
over information erodes, and the public slowly grows aware of
discrepancies between official rhetoric and reality.
Classical propaganda theory encourages a broader and more agnostic
consideration of the forces shaping elite strategy and communication. It
still allowing opinion differences among the elites and the general public.
As a result, Classical propaganda theory is better than hegemony theory
because it more accurately maps the social and political world and better
apprehends of the role and impact of communication.

16. Reference
 Stanley J. Baran and Dennis K. Davis. 2010. Mass
Communication Theory:Foundations, Ferment, and
Future, Sixth Edition. Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.