Media and Propaganda| Where Propaganda Lives On—Introduction

Abstract

Marked by high polarization and the dissemination of falsehoods via online platforms, contemporary media ecosystems are being used by a plethora of political actors to manipulate people’s perceptions of reality. Over the last decades the propagation of fake information mostly via social media has been labelled disinformation or fake news, concepts that we argue may not be the most adequate to fully understand how such practices impact public opinion and how they differ from other used in the past. We call for the concept of propaganda to be reconsidered as a theoretical construct used to problematize the different strategies and tactics used in the digital environment by actors aiming to deceive different publics.