Books About Propaganda and Why Beliefs Spread

Walter Lippmann opens with the difference between events outside our experience and the pictures we form of them. News and familiar categories help fill that gap before we are aware of making a judgment. Start here for a way to ask what an opinion rests on when most of what it describes has been conveyed to us by someone else.

Jacques Ellul treats propaganda as part of the social environment in which people hear and explain events. His discussion of messages that reinforce belonging gives a reader something to notice alongside direct political appeals. Choose it for a historical account of how familiar ideas can become harder to question simply because much of public life assumes them.

Jason Stanley asks how a statement can invoke a democratic ideal while supporting practices that undermine it. The argument makes particular words worth paying attention to, especially when a familiar ideal is treated as proof that a policy serves it. Choose it for a philosophical account of why the form of a claim can conceal what it is doing.

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky look at the institutions behind the news that reaches an audience. Their model puts advertising, ownership, and dependence on regular sources alongside editorial decisions. Read it for a structural explanation that you can compare against particular cases of coverage, omission, or disagreement.

Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell move between definitions, historical examples, and case studies. Their treatment makes it possible to consider an appeal alongside the circumstances of its production and the response it received. Choose it for a reference that helps you establish what evidence you need before calling something propaganda.

Neil Postman examines the changes he thinks television brought to American public argument. A short news item followed by another unrelated one gives him a way to ask what a medium makes it easy to say or follow. Choose it as a historical account of television and compare its questions with other ways you receive news.

Tim Wu traces businesses that give people something to read or watch and in return sell access to their attention. Looking at newspapers and broadcasting together makes the financial relationship visible across more than one medium. Read it to ask who pays for a source you use and what sort of attention it has reason to keep.

Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway look at historical campaigns that publicly questioned evidence, including the fight over tobacco harms. A reader can compare the scientific record with the way disagreement about it was presented. Choose it for documented examples of how a public argument can prolong doubt after specialists have reached a much clearer view.

David McRaney looks at changes of mind through personal accounts and research on belief. Some of his subjects have to change their relationship to a group as well as reconsider a claim. Choose it for the reasons an explanation that looks persuasive from the outside can feel costly for a particular person to accept.

Cass R. Sunstein asks why a false story can seem more credible as more people repeat it. His account of people drawing conclusions from one another gives you a way to look for independent evidence when an assertion suddenly seems widespread. Read it for the difference between a rumor’s reach and the reasons for believing it.

Sinan Aral brings research on large social networks to questions about the news and claims people see online. His discussion of a historical study of false news on Twitter helps distinguish how a claim travels from whether it deserves belief. Choose it if you want to see what researchers can compare when they have records of many people sharing stories.

Eli Pariser writes about early personalization in online search and news. A query that produces different results for different people gives him a concrete case for asking what an interface has chosen to show. Read it as an early account of a problem worth asking about whenever information feels complete simply because it is easy to find.

Jonathan Haidt asks how moral intuitions and group affiliations relate to public arguments. His book offers an account of why two people can hear the same reasons and think they address different stakes. Choose it to consider what an argument assumes about the people hearing it, and compare its explanation with books that start from institutions or media.

Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson use cognitive dissonance to examine the explanations people give for their own choices. Cases involving criminal investigations show how a prior judgment can grow harder to revise after someone has acted on it. Read it for a way to notice when defending a decision has become more important than checking it.

Carl Sagan describes habits of asking for evidence that work even when a claim is entertaining. His discussion of considering several explanations helps a reader stay with the uncertainty that a satisfying story can close too quickly. Choose it for a practical book about looking for grounds to believe something.

Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West give readers examples of graphs and statistics that look more informative than they are. Checking which cases were counted can put a different question to an apparently clear chart. Choose this if you want to get better at reading the evidence that a claim carries around with it.

Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall ask how people in a community come to share beliefs by relying on one another’s evidence. Their case studies and models let readers consider how a conscientious person might draw a mistaken conclusion from the evidence that happened to reach them. Read it for the social part of deciding which evidence to trust.

Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts trace links and attention among news sources during the 2016 US election cycle and its aftermath. The historical comparison gives readers a way to ask where a claim traveled and which sources reinforced it. Choose it for an example of studying an information system as a whole.

Peter Pomerantsev reports from several countries where journalists, activists, and other people contend with an abundance of contradictory claims. His account also draws on his family’s experience of Soviet media. Read it for the decisions people make about what to trust when they cannot settle a question simply by finding another version of the story.

Thomas Rid studies the documented history of political disinformation in the twentieth century and after. His discussion of false documents gives a reader cases in which a claim’s apparent source can be checked against how historians eventually traced it. Choose it for evidence about how the public and investigators came to know what had happened.

In The Chaos Machine, Max Fisher reports on how technology companies made choices about what users were likely to see and keep looking at. His case studies connect a business priority to what people encountered in public discussion. Read it for the reporting that traces those connections through particular institutions and events.