Date of Submission

4-29-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Department

National Security

Advisor

Paulette Pepin, Ph.D.

Keywords

Propaganda, Perception Management, Moral-Duty Framing, Enemy Construction, Narrative Control, Cognitive Autonomy

LCSH

Propaganda, Disinformation, Legitimacy of governments, Cognition--Social aspects

Abstract

This study reconceptualizes propaganda not as a collection of regime-specific messaging practices, but as a structured and adaptive system of perception management operating across political and ideological boundaries. Addressing fragmentation within existing scholarship, it examines how propaganda constructs legitimacy, organizes interpretation, and aligns individual cognition with state objects through recurring narrative strategies and disinformation mechanisms. Using a qualitative framework, the analysis draws on primary materials from four wartime cases: the Stalinist Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the United States during World War II, and wartime Britain. The findings demonstrate that, despite variation in political systems, propaganda consistently operates through three interrelated mechanisms: moral-duty framing, enemy construction, and narrative control. Across cases, state messaging collapses the distinction between individual agency and political obligation, embeds participation within identity, and structures interpretation through simplified moral binaries that constrain alternative understanding. Crucially, propaganda functions less through explicit falsification than through selective omission, strategic emphasis, and emotional framing, shaping the conditions under which meaning is constructed. While authoritarian systems rely on centralized control and interpretive monopoly, democratic contexts depend on credibility, internalization, and perceived consensus. These differences alter form but not underlying function. Ultimately, propaganda operates as a coherent interpretive environment that stabilizes perception, limits cognitive autonomy, and renders state-aligned interpretations natural and inevitable, particularly under conditions of war.

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