LASSWELL’S PROPAGANDA CONCEPT GOES TO COURT

Abstract

This paper examines Harold D. Lasswell’s early contributions to propaganda research by foregrounding the pivotal yet largely overlooked influence of U.S. legal governmental proceedings between 1939 and 1941 on the emergence of quantitative content analysis in comparative communications. Although Lasswell is widely remembered in communication studies for his post-war communication model, the paper argues that his methodological innovations to develop quantitative content analysis were first formulated in the context of US government court cases against foreign propaganda. Drawing on archival materials and existing scholarship, the paper demonstrates how Lasswell and his colleagues developed coding procedures and evaluative “tests” to determine whether periodicals, books, newspapers and magazines constituted foreign propaganda.