---
title: 'How to analyse propaganda: a step-by-step method'
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/
description: Seven steps to analyse propaganda, with a worked example from two sides, an essay structure, 15 prompts and common mistakes, using real archive posters.
section: FRAME
---

![Illustration: a dossier collage of an intelligence briefing room with case files and behavioral-analysis notes on a chalkboard.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-learn.jpg)

Learn

# How to analyse propaganda: a step-by-step method

Seven steps to analyse propaganda, with a worked example from two sides, an essay structure, 15 prompts and common mistakes, using real archive posters.

1. [Home](https://propagandaarchive.org/)
2. [Learn](https://propagandaarchive.org/learn/)
3. How to analyse propaganda: a step-by-step method

> **Content note.** The examples and essay prompts include a 1933 Nazi election banner, a caricature of Japanese soldiers on a 1944 U.S. war-bond poster, caricatured American soldiers on a 1951 North Korean poster, and ethnic scapegoating on a 1931 Chinese poster. They are shown as issued, as evidence of what each audience was shown. Showing a poster is not endorsing it.

[Short answer](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#short-answer) [Why use a method at all?](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#why-use-a-method-at-all) [The seven steps](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#the-seven-steps) [Worked example](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#worked-example-the-same-technique-from-two-sides) [Practice with the other techniques](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#practice-with-the-other-techniques) [Essay structure](https://propagandaarchive.org/how-to-analyse-propaganda/#essay-structure)

## Short answer

To analyse propaganda, describe the item, name who issued it and who it was for, state what it asks in one sentence, then find the technique that carries the ask and test it by covering the slogan, symbol or number. Finish with what is missing. Use the same questions for every side.

## Why use a method at all?

Weak propaganda essays either retell the poster or judge the regime that made it. A method keeps the essay on the object, and it works the same way on a Soviet poster, a British recruiting sheet or a 2022 ministry post: the archive uses [one working definition and one set of technique definitions for every side](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/working-definition/).

Explain moreShow less

The method has seven steps and uses the collection, which holds 6,705 entries, 5,137 of them posters from 69 countries across six eras from pre-1914 to the present. Every number here was counted from `examples/entries/`.

## The seven steps

1. **Describe before you judge.** List what is drawn and every word printed, including the small print.
2. **Name the issuer.** A ministry, a party, a campaign, a company or only a printer. If the sheet does not say, write "not stated" and say how the archive or museum worked it out. Do not guess a villain.
3. **Place it in time.** Date, place and the event around it. A poster is evidence of what one body said at one moment, not of what a nation thought.

Show all 7Show fewer

1. **Name the audience.** Citizens, soldiers, voters, an enemy's troops or a foreign public. The same image can mean different things to different readers, so say whom the issuer was addressing.
2. **State the ask in one sentence.** Enlist, buy, vote, report, hate, obey, believe. If you cannot state it in one sentence you have not found it yet. Some objects ask for a belief rather than an act.
3. **Find the technique and quote the tell.** Choose from the [technique pages](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/), then quote the words or point to the image that shows it. A label without a quoted tell is an opinion.
4. **Run the cover test and the swap test.** Cover the slogan, flag, name or number. Is an argument left? Then ask whether you would give the same label if the other side had issued the same design. If not, you are marking the issuer, not the technique.

Explain moreShow less

Two further checks belong in any essay: say what the item leaves out (a denominator, a date, a counter-example, a source), and say what it gets right. Several examples below rest on events that did happen, and the archive states that as plainly as it states the manipulation. For a printable form of these steps, use the [poster analysis worksheet](https://propagandaarchive.org/propaganda-poster-analysis-worksheet/); for a three-session classroom sequence, the [propaganda lesson plan](https://propagandaarchive.org/propaganda-lesson-plan/).

## Worked example: the same technique from two sides

Fear appeal is defined as a threat, an implied remedy and no weighing of the threat's size. Here it is applied to two First World War sheets from opposing belligerents.

![Have You Any Women-Folk Worth Defending? A young woman in a green shawl looks out from a white circle](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/women-folk-worth-defending-1915.jpg)

![What England Wants! Squadrons of aircraft with British roundels over burning factories and blast furnaces](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/was-england-will-1918.jpg)

Explain moreShow less

**Sheet A, Ireland, 1915.** A young woman in a green shawl in a white circle; printed "Have you any women-folk worth defending? Remember the Women of Belgium. Join to-day." The sponsor is not named; the printer is Hely's Limited, Dublin. The audience is men of recruiting age; the ask is to enlist. The technique is fear appeal. The tell is "Remember", a single word that makes the viewer supply a harm the poster never draws; the threat is moved onto the viewer's own family and enlistment is the only remedy named. Cover test: remove "Belgium" and no enemy is named at all. The collection's entry records that the Bryce Report of 12 May 1915 stated as proved that women were violated in Belgium, and that later research (Horne and Kramer, *German Atrocities 1914*, 2001) documents the mass killing of Belgian and French civilians in August to October 1914 while many individual stories printed in 1915 were never substantiated. The poster rests on real events and on unverified stories at once.

**Sheet B, Germany, 1918.** Aircraft with British roundels fill a burning sky over blast furnaces; printed "What England wants!" and a quotation from a named politician. The sponsor is not named, the artist is Egon Tschirch and the printer is Selmar Bayer, Berlin. The audience is the domestic public, and the entry tags the purpose as mobilise and comply. The techniques are fear appeal and card stacking. The tell is that one speaker, introduced as "the English Labour leader", stands for a nation's intent while the picture supplies the catastrophe. Cover test: remove the quotation and the headline has no evidence. The entry records that the label is wrong, since William Joynson-Hicks was a Conservative MP and air-power campaigner, and that the quotation has not been checked against the *Daily Telegraph* of 3 January 1918. It also records that the threat was not invented: British aircraft bombed industrial towns in western Germany in 1918, as German airships and Gotha bombers had bombed British cities from 1915.

**Same-standard comparison.** Both sheets turn a real event into a single remedy and give the viewer no way to weigh the threat. The difference is in the evidence offered: A names no case and relies on the viewer's memory of reports; B attaches a named quotation, then relabels its speaker. A claim such as "Sheet B is more deceptive because Germany lost" is not about the object. Read more in the [fear appeal technique page](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/).

## Practice with the other techniques

Two more sheets show that the method does not change when the technique does.

![For the Motherland's Sake, Go Forward, Heroes! A Red Army soldier with a submachine gun backed by a bearded medieval warrior](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/soviet-for-the-motherlands-sake-go-forward-heroes-toidze-1943.jpg)

![Think of Hungary: Be vigilant! A black sky, a red horizon and a skyline of ruined buildings above the letters CDU](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/cdu-denkt-an-ungarn-1957.jpg)

Explain moreShow less

The 1943 Soviet sheet signed by Irakli Toidze places a medieval bogatyr behind a Red Army soldier. The entry tags transfer and glittering generalities: the legendary past lends prestige to the present, and "Motherland" and "heroes" are virtue words with no specific. [Read the technique: transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/).

The 1957 West German CDU poster uses the suppressed 1956 Hungarian uprising as the stigma to guard against, with the party letters as the only remedy on the sheet. The entry notes the event is documented and the sheet names no opponent; what is scored is a real event used as a warning tied to a party choice.

## Essay structure

A propaganda analysis essay of 800 to 1,500 words follows the method.

Explain moreShow less

- **Introduction.** Name the object or objects, its issuer, date and audience, and state a claim that can be wrong. Example: "The 1943 Soviet sheet persuades through borrowed prestige, not argument."
- **Context paragraph.** The event and what the audience already knew.
- **Technique paragraphs (one per technique).** Each follows a fixed order: claim, quoted tell, cover test, what the object leaves out.
- **Counter-evidence paragraph.** What is true in the object, what the issuer got right, or how a different reading is defensible. The archive tags are readings, not rulings.
- **Comparison paragraph.** If you use two objects, state differences in scale, intent and context as plainly as the similarities. A state ministry and a one-day protest leaflet are different kinds of actor even when the technique matches.
- **Conclusion.** Return to the claim and say what it shows and does not show. Do not generalise from one poster to a regime or people.

For a timed short answer, do steps 1 to 6 first and write the cover test last.

## Fifteen essay and question prompts

Each prompt is answerable from one archive object or a pair.

**Content note:** Illustration of forcible feeding: a restrained woman has a tube inserted in her nose in a prison cell. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Torturing Women in Prison: a woman held in a chair while a man pours liquid down a tube in her nose, Votes for Women scratched on the wall](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/torturing-women-in-prison-wspu-1910.jpg)

![Apartheid Kills, Stop the Tour: a dense crowd of raised fists under the date of a march](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/apartheid-kills-stop-the-tour-wellington-1981.jpg)

![Enemies of the Five-Year Plan: eight grimacing caricature heads, including a landowner, a kulak and a priest](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/deni-bedny-enemies-of-the-five-year-plan-1929.jpg)

![Fortune is always on the side of the brave: a masked soldier in a helmet with a night-vision mount, quotation credited to P. I. Bagration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/schaste-na-storone-otvazhnogo-bagration-mod-poster-2022.jpg)

![Celebrate the 4th, Buy Extra War Bonds: a caricatured Japanese soldier squeezed through a large numeral 4](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/celebrate-the-4th-buy-extra-bonds-1944.jpg)

![Heroic Soldiers of the People's Army: Korean People's Army infantry with bayonets charge beside tanks toward a sign reading Busan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/kpa-charge-on-busan-poster-1951.jpg)

![Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja: a banner several storeys high on Berlin's Voßstraße](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/ein-volk-ein-fuehrer-ein-ja-1933.jpg)

![Recognize the signs of terrorism-related suspicious activity: a cheerful landscape of homes, a stadium and a marina above fifteen icons](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/see-something-say-something-dhs.jpg)

![No Way: Australian Government poster, a small boat in a storm-dark sea beneath the words NO WAY](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/no-way-operation-sovereign-borders-2013.jpg)

![Hero Huang Jiguang: a soldier in a fur cap lunges forward through smoke toward a bunker slit](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/hero-huang-jiguang-poster-china-1973.jpg)

![Restoration of a mighty, united and indivisible Russia: a column of soldiers with drummers and brass players marches down a town street](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/white-volunteer-army-restoration-russia-poster-1919.jpg)

![The Smoke in Which We Live: an apartment tower rendered as an open cigarette pack among factory chimneys](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dym-v-kotorom-my-zhivyom-1988.jpg)

![Chinese poster of July 1931: men in Korean white hats and coats attack fallen people under Japanese rising-sun flags](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/chinese-poster-koreans-incited-1931.jpg)

![I Want You for U.S. Army: Uncle Sam in a star-banded top hat points straight out at the viewer](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/i-want-you-for-us-army-1917.jpg)

Explain moreShow less

1. The 1910 Women's Social and Political Union poster is headed "Torturing Women in Prison". Is that a description or a loaded label (name-calling)? What would a neutral description be?

1. The 1981 Wellington protest poster uses a crowd of raised fists to announce a march. How does a poster by a protest movement use bandwagon, and does the same test apply to a government poster?

1. Deni and Bedny's 1929 sheet pairs eight caricatures with verse. Explain name-calling versus scapegoating with this poster.

1. The 2022 Russian Ministry of Defence poster credits a quotation to an 18th-century commander and gives no source. How does a named historical voucher work as testimonial and as transfer?

1. The 1944 U.S. Treasury poster shows a caricatured Japanese soldier in distress. Compare it with prompt 6, using one definition of name-calling for both.

1. The 1951 North Korean sheet shows caricatured enemy soldiers bayoneted and drowned. What does the archive's record say about the issuer, and what does it not say?

1. Identity fusion in a single-list election in 1933: why does a "No" read as leaving the people? Use only the slogan as evidence.

1. A 2018 U.S. Department of Homeland Security poster lists fifteen suspicious activities across ordinary settings. Is it fear appeal, a public-safety notice or both? What would make it a fair warning?

1. The 2013 Australian "No Way" poster names its sponsor and carries an authorisation line. What does it mean that white propaganda (openly attributed) can still use fear appeal?

1. The 1973 Shanghai poster has only a title. How can an image with almost no text still persuade, and what technique does the archive tag?

1. The 1919 White Volunteer Army poster promises a "mighty, united and indivisible Russia". Which parts are programme and which are glittering generality?

1. The 1988 Kiev anti-smoking poster is a health appeal from a state publisher. Does the same technique definition apply to a health message as to a war poster?

1. The 1931 Chinese poster attributes violence to Japan through a banner rather than showing it. How does assigning blame by caption differ from showing it?

1. Flagg's Uncle Sam makes a request in the name of the nation. Use the cover test to say whether any reason to enlist is left on the sheet.
2. Choose any two posters on this page from different sides and different decades. Compare them using the seven steps and state two differences in scale, intent or context along with the similarity in technique.

## Common mistakes

- **Judging the regime instead of the object.** A verdict on a regime is not analysis of its 1933 banner. Say what the banner does.
- **Treating every emotional poster as propaganda and every plain one as neutral.** A plain statistic can be card stacking, and a dated warning with a magnitude is not fear appeal.
- **Skipping the issuer.** If the sheet carries no imprint, say so rather than naming a villain.

Show all 7Show fewer

- **Applying a stricter label to the enemy.** The swap test catches this: if the U.S. and North Korean caricatures above get different labels, one is marked wrongly.
- **Equating scale or intent.** Similar technique does not mean similar act.
- **Treating a tag as a verdict.** Tags are readings; accept another technique if you quote evidence for it.
- **Ignoring true content.** Many items carry real events. Saying so is part of the method.

## Counts and sources

Of the 5,137 posters, the commonest technique tags are transfer (2,023), glittering generalities (1,350), card stacking (1,144) and fear appeal (1,068); a poster can carry more than one tag.

Explain moreShow less

Each image is from the collection; its entry carries the holding institution, licence basis and, for non-English posters, a translation. See [propaganda techniques list](https://propagandaarchive.org/propaganda-techniques-list/) for the definitions, [ethos, pathos and logos in propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/ethos-pathos-logos-propaganda/) for the classical frame, [Animal Farm and propaganda](https://propagandaarchive.org/animal-farm-propaganda/) for a literary case, and the [SOAPSTone propaganda poster guide](https://propagandaarchive.org/soapstone-propaganda-poster/) for a six-part reading frame. For the writer's side, the handbook page on [evidence](https://propagandaarchive.org/write/evidence/) shows how to argue without these techniques.