Since its linguistic appropriation by totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, in particular by the Nazis, the term ‘propaganda’ has had negative overtones. However, this was not the case when American author Edward Bernays (1891-1995) chose the word with Latin origins as the title for his influential book on the methodology of modern public relations work.

In his 1928 publication, the journalist – a nephew of Siegmund Freud, who had emigrated from Vienna as a child – was the first to transfer findings from psychological research to the fields of politics, economics and society. He described influencing the population by the strategic deployment of mass media as not only a possibility, but as a necessity given the increasingly complex nature of the world. Instead of appealing to individuals, a successful advertising campaign must be aimed at the public as a whole. He regarded this as particularly necessary in democracies in order to counteract the chaos that would otherwise emerge as a result of so many individual opinions. In the area of product marketing, Bernays’ approach was not to advertise goods and services as a means of satisfying a need, but as a way of expressing the personality of the consumer.