Propaganda Course

Course description

As the most influential and powerful city in the world, Washington, D.C. is under constant propaganda attack by foreign entities seeking to influence and manipulate American perceptions and policies.

You as an analyst, policymaker, or policy implementer are a regular target of foreign propaganda. You need to know how to recognize it and handle it.

This situation is a natural political reality. Those who shape public opinion or design or implement U.S. national security strategy, economic policy and foreign policy – including government officials and staff, the military and intelligence services, think tanks, news and entertainment media, and students and professors – are among the principal targets of foreign propagandists.

We can gain an understanding of modern-day propaganda, disinformation and influence operations by studying not only the memoirs of practitioners and secondary source analysis, but also by the examination of original materials.

This course combines history, communications, political science, psychology, diplomacy, warfare, intelligence, and other disciplines to show the development and deployment of propaganda, especially the modern propaganda of a mass society developed over the 20^th Century, and its refinements into the present. It combines a historical survey with a study of foreign propaganda technique.

This is a defensive course in propaganda: to help the student develop awareness and the means to neutralize the effects of foreign influence operations aimed at the United States.

The flip side of this course, Public Diplomacy and Political Warfare (IWP IR 656), offered in the spring, is designed to help the student develop awareness and means of conducting offensive propaganda abroad.

A companion course is Political Warfare: Past, Present and Future (IWP IR 641) offered in the fall on Thursday afternoons.

Course objectives & learning outcomes

COURSE OBJECTIVES

This course is designed:

• To help the student develop or sharpen an awareness of foreign propaganda that is designed to influence American attitudes and decision-making;
• To provide the student with a firm historical and methodological background of foreign propaganda and its effects;
• To prepare the student to build a resistance to foreign disinformation and propaganda that will affect perceptions and policy formation; and
• To assist the student to devise or employ countermeasures against foreign propaganda.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Students will demonstrate recognition and knowledge of foreign propaganda that is designed to influence American attitudes and decision-making.
• Students will demonstrate knowledge of the history and methodology of foreign propaganda and its effects.
• Students will design strategies, tactics, and methods to counter foreign disinformation and propaganda.  They will analyze and evaluate different methods.  They will devise and employ countermeasures against foreign propaganda.