Authorship and Origins of the Seven Propaganda Devices: A Research Note

The analytic construct of the seven propaganda devices--name calling, glittering generalities, transfer, testimonial, plain folks, card stacking, and bandwagon--long has been familiar in the field of communication. The following documentary account of the seven-devices framework, extending and focusing my previous explications of the subject, clarifies who first developed the format, how it came to be published, why it both captured immediate interest and longstanding attention, and how later it encountered social and ideological conditions that variously facilitated or impeded its diffusion and use.