PsyberSpace: Understand Your World

Understanding and Resisting Authoritarian Propaganda

In this episode of PsyberSpace, host Leslie Poston looks into the mechanisms of propaganda used by authoritarian regimes. The episode covers the psychological strategies behind media manipulation, revisionist history, and language control intended to mold public perception and behavior. Using historical and contemporary examples, Leslie highlights the importance of critical thinking and media literacy in recognizing and resisting these tactics. The episode also provides actionable strategies for maintaining personal and societal integrity in the face of propaganda, stressing the value of diverse media consumption and community building.

00:00 Introduction to Propaganda and Authoritarian Regimes
01:10 Defining Propaganda
01:41 Historical and Modern Examples of Propaganda
02:50 Key Propaganda Strategies
04:53 Psychological Effects of Propaganda
06:31 Recognizing and Resisting Propaganda
07:55 Building Resilience Against Propaganda
10:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Past episodes on misinformation, disinformation, the power of hope, decoding morals, white supremacy, mastering essential literacy skills, gaslighting, and extremist groups will be helpful as people around the world face a rise in right leaning propaganda.

References (some research mentioned but not cited here is also already cited in past episode show notes)

Rosenfeld, B., & Wallace, J. (2024). Information politics and propaganda in authoritarian societies. Annual Review of Political Science (Palo Alto, Calif. Print).

Colon, D. (2021). Les effets psychologiques de la propagande. In Analysis.

Brodziak, A., & Abram, D. (2024). Should the struggle against authoritarian regimes be based on Aristotle’s or Freud’s psychology, or rather on neuroscience? Qeios.

Boler, M., & Davis, E. (2020). Introduction: Propaganda by other means.

Osborne, D., Costello, T. H., Duckitt, J., & Sibley, C. (2023). The psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism. Nature Reviews Psychology.

Mattingly, D. C., & Yao, E. (2022). How soft propaganda persuades. Comparative Political Studies.

Mosiichuk, V., Tkach, B., & Lunov, V. (2024). Media effects and the narrative approach to counterpropaganda: A media psychology perspective. Social Science Research Network.

Chaudhari, D. D., & Pawar, A. (2021). Propaganda analysis in social media: A bibliometric review.

Van Bavel, J. V., Harris, E., Pärnamets, P., Rathje, S., Doell, K. C., & Tucker, J. A. (2020). Political psychology in the digital (mis)information age: A model of news belief and sharing. Social Issues and Policy Review.

Da San Martino, G., Shaar, S., Zhang, Y., Yu, S., Barrón-Cedeno, A., & Nakov, P. (2020). Prta: A system to support the analysis of propaganda techniques in the news. Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics.