Garth S. Jowett, Victoria O'Donnell

What Readers Say

Garth Jowett is co-author, with Victoria O'Donnell, of Propaganda & Persuasion — the standard scholarly text on the subject, now in its sixth edition, that has been used in university courses on media and communication since 1986. It's the book that serious students of propaganda read when they want a comprehensive analytical framework rather than a polemic or a narrative. Jowett and O'Donnell trace the history of propaganda from classical rhetoric through contemporary digital media, develop a clear definition and taxonomy, and work through case studies systematically. It's dense and academic and exactly what it's designed to be.

His mentions come through the propaganda reading cluster, where the book appears alongside more accessible titles as the scholarly reference that rounds out the list for readers who want rigor.

Where to Start

Propaganda & Persuasion (co-authored with Victoria O'Donnell) is the work. It's the kind of book that rewards having already read several of the more accessible texts in the field — Cialdini, Postman, Hoffer — because the framework it provides makes more sense when you have concrete examples to map it onto. Not a starting point, but a valuable endpoint for readers who want to go deep.

Reading Context

Jowett and O'Donnell occupy a different position in the propaganda reading list than everyone else — they're the academic reference rather than the argument. The more accessible books make the case; this one provides the vocabulary and structure to analyze it. Readers who come to the subject through journalism (Pomerantsev, Temelkuran) or history (Arendt) find the Jowett/O'Donnell framework useful for organizing what they've encountered.