Week 03
Propaganda: Definition, History, and Reception
Required Reading
Propaganda & Persuasion
Reading guidance: Chapter 1, “What Is Propaganda, and How Does It Differ from Persuasion?”
Further Reading
The Definition of Propaganda
Amelia Godber and Gloria Origgi
“Telling Propaganda from Legitimate Political Persuasion”
Episteme (2023)
Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan
Information Disorder: Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy Making
Council of Europe (2017)
History of Propaganda
David Welch (ed.)
Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to WikiLeaks
I.B. Tauris (2013)
Reading guidance: Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 5.
The Reception of Propaganda
Anton Shirikov
“Fake News for All: How Citizens Discern Disinformation in Autocracies”
Political Communication (2024)
Magdalena Wojcieszak, Erik C. Nisbet, Lea Kremer, Golnoosh Behrouzian and Carroll Glynn
“What Drives Media Use in Authoritarian Regimes? Extending Selective Exposure Theory to Iran”
The International Journal of Press/Politics (2019)
Ashley Blum
“Popular Propaganda: Audience Preferences for State and Independent Media in an Informational Autocracy”
SSRN working paper (2024)
Aaron Erlich, Calvin Garner, Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand
“Does Analytic Thinking Insulate Against Pro-Kremlin Disinformation? Evidence From Ukraine”
Political Psychology (2023)
Aykut Öztürk, Seda Demiralp, Ugur Ozdemir and Candas Ayan
“Belief and Resistance: Vulnerability to Authoritarian Disinformation in Turkey and the Effect of Counter-Strategies”
Preprint (2026)
Ellen Mickiewicz
Television, Power, and the Public in Russia
Cambridge University Press (2008)
Is Propaganda Effective? The Case of Nazi Propaganda
Ulrike Weckel (ed.)
Audiences of Nazism: Using Media in the Third Reich
Berghahn Books (2023)
Reading guidance: Read the Introduction, “Media and Their Users in Nazi Germany.”
David Welch
The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda
Routledge, 2nd edition (2002)
Reading guidance: Chapter 4.
Peter Selb and Simon Munzert
“Examining a Most Likely Case for Strong Campaign Effects: Hitler’s Speeches and the Rise of the Nazi Party, 1927–1933”
American Political Science Review (2018)
Maja Adena, Ruben Enikolopov, Maria Petrova, Veronica Santarosa and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya
“Radio and the Rise of the Nazis in Prewar Germany”
The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2015)
Truth Claims of Propaganda
Maxim Alyukov and Kristian Lundby Gjerde
“Faking the Fact-checker: Authoritarian Propaganda and Genre Mimicry in Wartime Russia”
Working paper (2026)