Propaganda through the ages.

Neolithic cave drawings are thought to be among the very earliest forms of propaganda, as they impressed their viewers with celebratory depictions, then propaganda is an intrinsic expression of human beings. Throughout ancient civilisations, consistent written evidence has shown the importance of persuading audiences to build a reputation that would favourably impress the public opinion. The word “propaganda” itself refers to the committee of Roman Catholic Church cardinals, founded by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 (Congregatio de propaganda fide), in charge of missions to convert the masses to Catholicism. The term acquired its negative connotation during the 20th century, when it began to be increasingly associated with war and politics. Propaganda is now intended as a means of disseminating ideas and rumours for the purpose of helping or damaging an institution, a cause or a person. Over time, propaganda has increasingly been used and shaped by the media. These have allowed to reach an unprecedented number of people while progressively consolidating the evolution of propaganda into the present-day effective machine of control and persuasion aimed at not only communicating a message, but also at constructing reality itself (Staal 2019). With the rise of social media and the Web 2.0, there has been a progressive loss of control by traditional information gatekeepers that created and delivered messages through newspapers, radio and television. Consequently, propaganda is now also inextricably linked to and disseminated by fake news, filter bubbles, algorithms, misinformation characterised by proximity and immediacy reaching wider audiences than in the past. Propaganda has mostly been analysed by focusing on its persuasive effects on society (e.g., Bernays 1928; MacKenzie 1984; Herman and Chomsky 1988; Taylor 2003; Jowett – O’Donnell 2011), in politics (e.g., Taylor 1999), in the press (e.g., John and Silberstein-Loeb 2015; Yudia – Yen 2015), in the digital media (e.g., Boler – Davis 2021; Woolley – Howard 2019), during wars (e.g., Tran 2007) or within a linguistic perspective (e.g., Zienkowski 2021; Maly 2022; Schena, J., 2020; Spier 2022; De-Sardan 2008), Furthermore, the extant literature mostly analyses propaganda linked to present-day issues without much reference to the past, although propaganda has much deeper historical roots (e.g., Brownlees 2014, 2006; Brewer 2009). As a consequence, the upcoming Special Issue of Token. A Journal of English Linguistics (http://www.ujk.edu.pl/token/) will prevalently focus on the discourse of propaganda in historical English texts.