Register

The canon of propaganda and public opinion

A register of the work that made mass persuasion a thinkable object — from the discovery of the crowd to self-categorisation theory.

Entries
64
Schools
7
Scope
1895–2007

The institute publishes this register because its own object is not an invention of the present. What a society believes about itself, and what it believes others believe, has been worked on for more than a century — under the names of crowd psychology, public opinion, propaganda analysis, critical theory and experimental social psychology.

Each entry names the concept the field inherits from it. This is a map of a field, not a reading list and not a bibliography.

Pioneers of crowd psychology

5

The generation that discovered the crowd as a psychological object. Suggestion, imitation and the dissolution of the individual in the group passed directly from here into practice.

  1. 1895 Gustave Le Bon 1841–1931 Psychologie des foules The crowd mind
  2. 1901 Gabriel Tarde 1843–1904 L'opinion et la foule The laws of imitation
  3. 1908 Georges Sorel 1847–1922 Réflexions sur la violence The social myth
  4. 1916 Wilfred Trotter 1872–1939 Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War The herd instinct
  5. 1922 Ferdinand Tönnies 1855–1936 Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung A critique of public opinion

Public opinion, public relations and the image

7

Those who turned crowd theory into a profession — and their first critics. The manufacture of consent, the pseudo-event and the hidden persuaders belong to this line.

  1. 1906 Ivy Ledbetter Lee 1877–1934 Declaration of Principles Declaration of Principles
  2. 1920 George Creel 1876–1953 How We Advertised America The Four Minute Men
  3. 1922 Walter Lippmann 1889–1974 Public Opinion The pseudo-environment
  4. 1928 Edward L. Bernays 1891–1995 Propaganda The engineering of consent
  5. 1936 Will Irwin 1873–1948 Propaganda and the News; or, What Makes You Think So? The contamination of news
  6. 1957 Vance Packard 1914–1996 The Hidden Persuaders The hidden persuaders
  7. 1962 Daniel J. Boorstin 1914–2004 The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America The pseudo-event

The founding of communication research

13

The empirical programme that made propaganda measurable: content analysis, panel studies, laboratory experiments — and the medium-centred counter-current from Toronto.

  1. 1927 Harold D. Lasswell 1902–1978 Propaganda Technique in the World War The five-question formula of communication
  2. 1935 Leonard W. Doob 1909–2000 Propaganda: Its Psychology and Technique Overt and covert propaganda
  3. 1939 Alfred McClung Lee & Elizabeth Briant Lee 1906–1992 · 1908–1999 The Fine Art of Propaganda: A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches The seven propaganda devices
  4. 1940 Hadley Cantril 1906–1969 The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic Critical ability
  5. 1944 Paul F. Lazarsfeld 1901–1976 The People's Choice The two-step flow of communication
  6. 1946 Robert K. Merton 1910–2003 Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive Pseudo-Gemeinschaft
  7. 1947 Kurt Lewin 1890–1947 “Frontiers in Group Dynamics” Gatekeeping
  8. 1951 Harold A. Innis 1894–1952 The Bias of Communication The bias of communication
  9. 1953 Carl I. Hovland 1912–1961 Communication and Persuasion Source credibility
  10. 1954 Wilbur Schramm 1907–1987 The Process and Effects of Mass Communication The field of shared experience
  11. 1955 Elihu Katz 1926–2021 Personal Influence Opinion leadership
  12. 1964 Marshall McLuhan 1911–1980 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man The medium is the message
  13. 1990 Philip M. Taylor 1954–2010 Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Present Era Perception management

Critical theory and the culture industry

8

The European tradition that read propaganda not as a deviation but as the normal working of the technological and cultural order.

  1. 1936 Walter Benjamin 1892–1940 Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit The decay of the aura
  2. 1939 Serge Tchakhotine 1883–1973 Le Viol des foules par la propagande politique The rape of the masses
  3. 1947 Max Horkheimer & Theodor W. Adorno 1895–1973 · 1903–1969 Dialektik der Aufklärung The culture industry
  4. 1947 Siegfried Kracauer 1889–1966 From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film The mass ornament
  5. 1948 Antonio Gramsci 1891–1937 Quaderni del carcere Hegemony
  6. 1950 Jean-Marie Domenach 1922–1997 La propagande politique Simplification and the single enemy
  7. 1962 Jacques Ellul 1912–1994 Propagandes Sociological propaganda
  8. 1964 Herbert Marcuse 1898–1979 One-Dimensional Man One-dimensional thought

Totalitarianism, language and wartime analysis

10

Those who worked out what the totalitarian regime does to language — through testimony, philology and wartime intelligence analysis — and the practitioners they studied.

  1. 1929 Joseph Goebbels 1897–1945 practitioner Michael Gleichschaltung
  2. 1935 Leni Riefenstahl 1902–2003 practitioner Triumph des Willens The choreography of the masses
  3. 1938 Theodore F. Abel 1896–1988 Why Hitler Came into Power The life-history method
  4. 1944 Ernst Kris 1900–1957 German Radio Propaganda: Report on Home Broadcasts During the War Propaganda content analysis
  5. 1944 Hans Speier 1905–1990 German Radio Propaganda The sociology of propaganda
  6. 1947 Victor Klemperer 1881–1960 LTI – Notizbuch eines Philologen LTI — the language of the Third Reich
  7. 1949 George Orwell 1903–1950 Nineteen Eighty-Four Newspeak
  8. 1951 Hannah Arendt 1906–1975 The Origins of Totalitarianism The fictitious consistent world
  9. 1953 Nathan Leites 1912–1987 A Study of Bolshevism The operational code
  10. 1958 Aldous Huxley 1894–1963 Brave New World Revisited Control through pleasure

Psychoanalysis and large-group psychology

8

The line that construes the leader–mass bond as a libidinal structure; it runs from Freud to the theory of chosen trauma and large-group identity.

  1. 1921 Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse Identification within the mass
  2. 1933 Wilhelm Reich 1897–1957 Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus Mass character armour
  3. 1941 Erich Fromm 1900–1980 Escape from Freedom The escape from freedom
  4. 1950 Erik H. Erikson 1902–1994 Childhood and Society Pseudospeciation
  5. 1961 Wilfred R. Bion 1897–1979 Experiences in Groups and Other Papers Basic-assumption groups
  6. 1997 Vamık D. Volkan d. 1932 Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism Large-group identity and chosen trauma
  7. 1998 Otto F. Kernberg d. 1928 Ideology, Conflict, and Leadership in Groups and Organizations Malignant narcissism
  8. 2004 Jerrold M. Post 1934–2020 Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior The narcissistic leader–follower dyad

Mind control and experimental social psychology

13

The section in which persuasion, obedience, conformity and group identity were tested in the laboratory and the field — the scientific counterpart of the “brainwashing” debate.

  1. 1956 Joost A. M. Meerloo 1903–1976 The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing Menticide
  2. 1956 Solomon E. Asch 1907–1996 “Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority” Conformity and normative social influence
  3. 1957 William W. Sargant 1907–1988 Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing Transmarginal inhibition
  4. 1957 Leon Festinger 1919–1989 A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance Cognitive dissonance
  5. 1961 Robert Jay Lifton 1926–2025 Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China Ideological totalism
  6. 1961 Edgar H. Schein 1928–2023 Coercive Persuasion: A Socio-psychological Analysis of the “Brainwashing” of American Civilian Prisoners by the Chinese Communists Coercive persuasion
  7. 1961 Muzafer Sherif 1906–1988 Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment Realistic conflict theory
  8. 1972 Irving L. Janis 1918–1990 Victims of Groupthink Groupthink
  9. 1974 Stanley Milgram 1933–1984 Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View Obedience to authority
  10. 1979 Henri Tajfel 1919–1982 “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict” Social identity theory
  11. 1987 John C. Turner 1947–2011 Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory Self-categorization theory
  12. 1989 Herbert C. Kelman 1927–2022 Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility Compliance – identification – internalisation
  13. 2007 Philip G. Zimbardo 1933–2024 The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil Situationism

Notes on the register

A selection, and therefore an argument

Seven schools, one defining work for each entry. A canon is always a claim about what counts; this one is the institute's, and it can be contested on the record.

Years are first publication

Where a text has several dates — written in prison and printed later, or published in French before German — the first actual publication is used.

Practitioners are marked

Two entries are in the literature as the studied party rather than as theorists. They carry a practitioner tag; the distinction matters when the register is cited.

Where the register stops

It ends where the institute's own question begins. Pluralistic ignorance and the spiral of silence are not in it — that gap is the reason the institute exists, and is set out on the institute page.

Names, dates and titles are language-independent and reproduced as published; school descriptions and the inherited concept are given in the language of this page.