White propaganda
Propaganda whose source is identified truthfully: a government poster with the government's name on it, a party broadcast, a company's advertisement. The audience knows who is speaking and can weigh the message accordingly.
The color terms describe the source, not the content. They were formalized by military analysts after the Second World War, when the wartime services had run all three kinds and wanted a vocabulary for them, and they remain the working terms of the field.
White propaganda is the most common kind and the least studied, because it is the least surprising. Most of the items in this site's archive are white: posters issued by named ministries and committees, with the issuer printed on the sheet. Their techniques are no gentler for being signed. The Creel Committee's First World War posters, the Office of War Information's Second World War ones, and the civil defense pamphlets of the 1950s all carry an honest imprint and use Appeal To Fear, Flag Waving, and Transfer without restraint.
The honest source is a limit on the propagandist, not a guarantee to the audience. It means the message will be read as coming from that source and discounted accordingly, which is why propagandists so often prefer gray or black channels when they can get them. It also means the source can be held to account later, which is the one real advantage white propaganda offers a democracy.
Compare gray propaganda and black propaganda.
Sources
- Jowett, Garth S., and Victoria O'Donnell. Propaganda and Persuasion. 7th ed. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2019. ISBN 978-1506371344
- Daugherty, William E., and Morris Janowitz. A Psychological Warfare Casebook. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1958.