Forensic Research Archive of Manipulation and Exploitation
Illustration: a dossier collage of generic campaign-era posters, loudspeaker trucks and rally crowds.

Techniques · Classical

Bandwagon

Bandwagon is a propaganda technique that treats popularity, momentum or 'everyone knows' as proof. Polls, view counts or 'the tide' are offered in place of the claim's merits, inviting the audience to join the crowd rather than weigh the case. It is one of the seven devices the Institute for Propaganda Analysis named in 1937.

See 554 bandwagon examples in the archive

Illustration, not an archive object

Also called Everyone's doing it, Social proof

Treat popularity, momentum, or 'everyone knows' as proof.

How to spot Bandwagon: the tell

Polls, view-counts, or 'the tide' offered in place of the claim's merits.

What Bandwagon is not

Reporting a real majority as a political fact.

History and effect of Bandwagon propaganda

IPA 1937; later formalized in social psychology as social proof and conformity pressure (Asch's line experiments, Cialdini's influence research).

Perceived consensus substitutes for evidence, exploiting the audience's aversion to being the lone holdout.

Lineage: IPA 1937

How Bandwagon propaganda works

The bandwagon device answers the question "why should I?" with "because everyone else is." The Institute for Propaganda Analysis listed it among its seven devices, and Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee's The Fine Art of Propaganda (1939) described it as an appeal to follow the crowd: the propagandist tries to convince the audience that all members of a group it belongs to already accept the program, so it should join them. The message has three moving parts: a display of the crowd (a number, a picture, a count, a result), an identification of that crowd with the audience ("your neighbours", "the nation", "people like you"), and an implied cost of standing apart, whether isolation, disloyalty or being on the losing side.

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The crowd can be shown in several registers. Numerical: sales figures, poll leads, vote shares, signatures, view and follower counts. Visual: rallies filmed from above, massed uniforms, flags in every window, badges and stickers that make participation visible in the street or at work. Temporal: "momentum", "the tide", "a movement whose time has come", which claims that the crowd is growing and will soon include everyone. Ritual: elections or plebiscites whose near-unanimous results are published as proof that the whole people stands behind a leader or program.

Two variants recur. In open competition (elections, markets) the claim is that the crowd is winning and latecomers will miss out; campaigns of both major US parties talk up momentum and release favourable internal polls, and advertisers cite sales as proof of quality. In closed systems the claim is that the crowd is already total: the published result, the filmed rally and the workplace quota all show dissent as a rounding error, which also tells any doubter that they are alone. In the social-media era the counters are built into the interface (likes, shares, trending lists), which makes the displayed crowd both more persuasive and easier to inflate. That is the point where the device shades into Manufactured consensus and Astroturfing.

Why Bandwagon propaganda works

Popularity is sometimes real evidence: if many independent people chose something, they may know something. The device exploits that shortcut when the crowd is not independent, not informed, or not real. Robert Cialdini called the shortcut social proof (Influence, 1984): under uncertainty, people look at what others do to decide what is correct. Solomon Asch's line-judgement experiments (1951, 1956) found that when a unanimous group of confederates gave an obviously wrong answer, participants went along on roughly a third of the critical trials, and that a single dissenting ally sharply reduced conformity. Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard (1955) separated the two pressures at work: informational influence (the group probably knows) and normative influence (the wish to be accepted).

Illustration: a rally crowd seen from behind as anonymous silhouettes, with crowd-estimate charts.
Illustration, not an archive object
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Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence (1974) adds the political dimension: people monitor the climate of opinion, and those who believe they are in the minority speak up less, which makes the apparent majority look larger still. Experiments show the same loop in online systems. Matthew Salganik, Peter Dodds and Duncan Watts (2006) found in an artificial music market that showing download counts made popular songs more popular and outcomes less predictable. Lev Muchnik, Sinan Aral and Sean Taylor (2013) found that a single artificial up-vote on a news-site comment raised the chance of further up-votes and its final score. David Rothschild and Neil Malhotra (2014) found that telling survey respondents a policy had majority support modestly raised their own support for it. See Social proof and Conformity in the Learn library.

Bandwagon propaganda examples across eras and sides

  • Triumph of the Will (1935, Germany, NSDAP). Leni Riefenstahl's film of the 1934 Nuremberg party rally devotes much of its length to massed formations of party, SA, SS and Labour Service members and to cheering crowds, presenting the movement as the whole nation in step. The case is carried by scale and uniformity rather than by stated policy (Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism", New York Review of Books, 1975).
  • War-bond payroll drive (1943, United States, U.S. Treasury). Treasury posters asked workplaces to reach a shared savings target; Let's Fly This Flag: Everybody at Least 10 Percent in War Bonds offers the shop a flag to fly once "everybody" puts at least 10 percent of pay into war bonds. The reason given is collective participation, not the merits of the bond (U.S. National Archives, NARA 514865; Lawrence R. Samuel, Pledging Allegiance: American Identity and the Bond Drive of World War II, 1997).
  • "More Doctors Smoke Camels" (from 1946, United States, R.J. Reynolds). Cigarette advertising from the 1930s to the early 1950s paired physician imagery with popularity claims, and the Camel campaign presented a brand's standing among doctors as a reason to smoke it. The popularity claim stood in for evidence about health, overlapping with Testimonial (Martha Gardner and Allan Brandt, American Journal of Public Health, 2006).
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  • Single-list elections (1937-1984, Soviet Union; 2014, North Korea; ruling parties). Soviet elections to the Supreme Soviet offered one approved candidate per seat, and official results regularly reported turnout and support above 99 percent for the "bloc of Communists and non-party people", published as proof of unanimous backing (Jerome Gilison, "Soviet Elections as a Measure of Dissent: The Missing One Percent", American Political Science Review, 1968). North Korea's state news agency reported turnout and approval at or near 100 percent for the 2014 Supreme People's Assembly election. Unlike a poll lead in a competitive election, these figures were produced where abstaining or voting against carried personal risk, so they measure compliance at least as much as opinion.
  • "Big Mo" in US primaries (1980 and 1984, United States, Republican and Democratic campaigns). After winning the 1980 Iowa caucuses, George H. W. Bush told reporters he had "Big Mo", presenting momentum itself as a reason to back him; Gary Hart's 1984 campaign surged on the same logic after New Hampshire. Larry Bartels's study of the primary process found that expectations about a candidate's chances do shift voters' preferences, which is why campaigns compete to be seen as rising (Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice, 1988).
  • Purchased followers (2010s, United States and worldwide, Devumi). A New York Times investigation reported that the company Devumi sold millions of fake Twitter followers and engagements to entertainers, business people, political figures and others, many of the accounts built from copied profiles of real users (Nicholas Confessore and colleagues, "The Follower Factory", 2018). In 2019 the New York Attorney General announced a settlement with the company, stating that selling fake followers and engagement is illegal deception. A follower count is a bandwagon signal; buying one is the commercial form of Manufactured consensus.

  • Networked campaigning (2016, Philippines, consultants working across parties). Jonathan Corpus Ong and Jason Vincent Cabañes interviewed the strategists, paid influencers and fake-account operators behind Philippine political campaigns and found them working for politicians of several camps, using coordinated accounts to make candidates and hashtags appear popular and trending (Architects of Networked Disinformation, Newton Tech4Dev Network, 2018).

  • "Wer hat gesiegt?" (1932, Germany, NSDAP). An NSDAP text poster in the 1932 Prussian Landtag campaign cites "Adolf Hitlers 13 Millionen" and promises that "the second blow" follows on 24 April. The figure refers to Hitler's votes in the second round of the presidential election on 10 April 1932, which he lost to Hindenburg, so the count is real but is presented as a victory and as momentum (Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-04651A; see Wer hat gesiegt? (NSDAP election column, Prussian Landtag campaign)).

  • "85 Million Americans Hold War Bonds" (1945, United States, U.S. Treasury). A War Finance Division poster states that 85 million Americans already hold bonds and sets the figure beside the Statue of Liberty, so the reader is invited to join a majority. The number is the poster's own claim; FRAME has not checked it (NARA 514205; see 85 Million Americans Hold War Bonds).
  • "2285 New Yorkers Volunteered in One Week" (1917, United States, Mayor's Committee on National Defense). The poster prints columns of names of recent enlistees and asks "Is Your Name on This List?", making a roll of neighbours the argument for enlisting (NARA 4-P-32; see 2285 New Yorkers Volunteered in One Week. Is Your Name on This List?).
  • "2 out of 3 Britons mobilised for war" (1942, United Kingdom, British government). A figure-filled map reports, citing the Minister of Labour in the House of Commons on 21 May 1942, that 22 of 33 million people aged 14 to 65 were mobilised, so the unmobilised third is the odd one out. Unlike the unaudited counts above, the figure is attributed to a named office and can be checked in Hansard (NARA 44-PF-400k; see 2 out of 3 Britons mobilised for war).
  • "44 Nations Condemn Red China" (1951, Thailand, U.S. Information Agency). A Thai-language poster distributed in Asia shows 44 countries pointing at China and offers the number as the case against it. The figure matches the 44 votes in favour of UN General Assembly resolution 498(V) of 1 February 1951, which was carried 44 to 7 with 9 abstentions, so the count is real; the poster presents it in place of the reasons for the vote (NARA 306-PPA-53; see 44 Nations Condemn Red China (Thai poster distributed in Thailand)).
  • Election drive in annexed Latvia (January 1941, Soviet Union). A Latvian-language magazine spread for the 12 January 1941 USSR Supreme Soviet election pairs the refrain "everyone to the ballot boxes" with crowd photographs and a procession with Lenin and Stalin portraits. It is the first election held in the Baltic states after the Soviet annexations of 1940 and belongs with the single-list elections above (Wikimedia Commons, LatvianSSRElection1941; see 12. janvārī visi pie vēlēšanu urnām (On 12 January, everyone to the ballot boxes), Riga magazine spread on the USSR Supreme Soviet election, 1941).

NSDAP text poster on an advertising column, Prussia, April 1932, headed "Wer hat gesiegt?"

Treasury war bond poster: "85 Million Americans Hold War Bonds"

Thai-language poster showing 44 nations pointing at Red China

Names of New York volunteers printed in columns under the heading "2285 New Yorkers Volunteered in One Week"

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"Wer hat gesiegt?", NSDAP, Prussian Landtag campaign, April 1932. Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-04651A (Georg Pahl), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

"85 Million Americans Hold War Bonds", U.S. Treasury Department, War Finance Division, 1945. U.S. National Archives, NAID 514205. Public domain.

"44 Nations Condemn Red China", U.S. Information Agency, Thai-language poster, 3 May 1951. U.S. National Archives, NAID 5729953. Public domain. The pointing figures are drawn as period national and ethnic types; the sheet is shown uncropped.

"2285 New Yorkers Volunteered in One Week. Is Your Name on This List?", Mayor's Committee on National Defense, New York, 1917. U.S. National Archives, 4-P-32.

Where it appears in this archive

The archive tags hundreds of objects with this technique, most of them wartime fundraising and recruiting sheets that cite a count of those who have already given or enlisted (Americans All! Victory Liberty Loan, Let's Fly This Flag: Everybody at Least 10 Percent in War Bonds, 2285 New Yorkers Volunteered in One Week. Is Your Name on This List?, 85 Million Americans Hold War Bonds). The British 2 out of 3 Britons mobilised for war, the Cold War poster 44 Nations Condemn Red China (Thai poster distributed in Thailand) and the South Vietnamese-government sheet 26 Countries Around the World Aid South Vietnam use the same device for allied governments and international support, and the two electoral cases, Wer hat gesiegt? (NSDAP election column, Prussian Landtag campaign) and 12. janvārī visi pie vēlēšanu urnām (On 12 January, everyone to the ballot boxes), Riga magazine spread on the USSR Supreme Soviet election, 1941, show a vote count and a staged turnout used as proof of momentum. Compare Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja (One People, One Leader, One Yes) and the case study Manufactured unanimity: the Nazi single-list plebiscites, 1934-1938.

How to spot Bandwagon propaganda

  • If you delete the crowd (the number, the rally shot, the trending badge), is any argument left for the claim itself?
  • Who counted, and can the count be checked? Is it an independent poll with a published method, a campaign's own internal poll, or an unaudited counter?
  • Could the people in the crowd have said no without cost? A 99 percent result where dissent is punished measures compliance, not agreement.
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  • Is the crowd defined as "people like you" (your workplace, your nation, your faith), so that disagreeing feels like leaving the group?
  • Does the message sell inevitability ("the tide", "momentum", "don't be left behind") rather than reasons?
  • For online numbers: do the accounts behind the likes or follows look real (account age, activity, copied photos, bursts within the same minute)?

Where Bandwagon propaganda ends: edge cases and legitimate persuasion

5 items · Reporting a real majority is not the device (see Not this). A poll story that gives its…
  • Reporting a real majority is not the device (see Not this). A poll story that gives its sample, method and margin of error lets the audience weigh popularity as one fact among others. The device begins when the number is offered as the reason a claim is true or a choice is right.
  • Descriptive-norm messages in public-service campaigns use the same lever: hotel cards noting that most guests reuse their towels (Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius, Journal of Consumer Research, 2008) or UK tax letters stating that most people pay on time (Michael Hallsworth and colleagues, Journal of Public Economics, 2017). They are attributed and the statistics are true, which is where the line sits; they still persuade through conformity rather than argument, and readers can judge them on that basis.
  • A crowd of experts is a different case. Citing a scientific consensus appeals to the independent judgements of qualified people and can be checked against the literature; it becomes bandwagon only when the headcount replaces the evidence or is misstated. Presenting a lopsided expert field as a tie is the opposite error, Bothsidesism.
  • When the crowd is fabricated (bots, paid posters, inflated counts) the technique becomes Manufactured consensus; when the fake crowd poses as spontaneous citizens it is Astroturfing.
  • When the display claims the whole people rather than a majority and treats dissent as leaving the nation, it overlaps with Identity fusion, as in Ein Volk, ein Führer, ein Ja (One People, One Leader, One Yes), where official results gave about 92 and 95 percent. Repeated displays of support that move what is considered acceptable to say are Overton window shifting.

Sources and further reading

Sources

21 items · Asch, Solomon E. "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of…
  • Asch, Solomon E. "Effects of Group Pressure upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgments." In Harold Guetzkow (ed.), Groups, Leadership and Men. Carnegie Press, 1951.
  • Asch, Solomon E. "Studies of Independence and Conformity: I. A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority." Psychological Monographs 70(9), 1956.
  • Bartels, Larry M. Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice. Princeton University Press, 1988.
  • Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things. William Morrow, 1984.
  • Confessore, Nicholas, and colleagues. "The Follower Factory." The New York Times, 2018.
  • Deutsch, Morton, and Harold B. Gerard. "A Study of Normative and Informational Social Influences upon Individual Judgment." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51(3), 1955.
  • Gardner, Martha N., and Allan M. Brandt. "'The Doctors' Choice Is America's Choice': The Physician in US Cigarette Advertisements, 1930-1953." American Journal of Public Health 96(2), 2006.
  • Gilison, Jerome M. "Soviet Elections as a Measure of Dissent: The Missing One Percent." American Political Science Review 62(3), 1968.
  • Goldstein, Noah J., Robert B. Cialdini and Vladas Griskevicius. "A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels." Journal of Consumer Research 35(3), 2008.
  • Hallsworth, Michael, John A. List, Robert D. Metcalfe and Ivo Vlaev. "The Behavioralist as Tax Collector: Using Natural Field Experiments to Enhance Tax Compliance." Journal of Public Economics 148, 2017.
  • Lee, Alfred McClung, and Elizabeth Briant Lee. The Fine Art of Propaganda. Harcourt, Brace, for the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1939.
  • Muchnik, Lev, Sinan Aral and Sean J. Taylor. "Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment." Science 341, 2013.
  • New York State Office of the Attorney General. Announcement of settlement with Devumi, 2019.
  • Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. "The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion." Journal of Communication 24(2), 1974.
  • Ong, Jonathan Corpus, and Jason Vincent A. Cabañes. Architects of Networked Disinformation: Behind the Scenes of Troll Accounts and Fake News Production in the Philippines. Newton Tech4Dev Network, 2018.
  • Riefenstahl, Leni (director). Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will). 1935.
  • Rothschild, David, and Neil Malhotra. "Are Public Opinion Polls Self-Fulfilling Prophecies?" Research & Politics 1(2), 2014.
  • Salganik, Matthew J., Peter Sheridan Dodds and Duncan J. Watts. "Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market." Science 311, 2006.
  • Samuel, Lawrence R. Pledging Allegiance: American Identity and the Bond Drive of World War II. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
  • Sontag, Susan. "Fascinating Fascism." The New York Review of Books, 1975.
  • U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. "Let's Fly This Flag: Everybody at Least 10 Percent in War Bonds" (poster), NARA 514865.

Case studies

48 items · Big-character posters: how the opening labels of China's Cultural Revolution did the work…

Bandwagon propaganda examples in the collection

All 554 bandwagon examples
Consult of the doctors on the grave illness of the Grand Sultan (Consult vande medicijnen inde swaere siekte vanden grooten Sultaen)Spanish NetherlandsConsult of the doctors on the grave illness of the Grand Sultan (Consult vande medicijnen inde swaere siekte vanden grooten Sultaen)1683 · Transfer, BandwagonRocky Mountain Club, Hoover Fund: Relief in Belgium, The World Is Not All DarkUnited StatesRocky Mountain Club, Hoover Fund: Relief in Belgium, The World Is Not All Dark1917 · Bandwagon, TestimonialÖffentliches Eintopfessen zugunsten des WHW (Worms)Nazi GermanyÖffentliches Eintopfessen zugunsten des WHW (Worms)1938 · BandwagonContent noteI'm buying bonds, are you?United StatesI'm buying bonds, are you?1941 · Plain folks, Bandwagon'Whatever Part of the Loco We Make, Ours Is a Real War Job' (British Ministry of Supply poster)United Kingdom'Whatever Part of the Loco We Make, Ours Is a Real War Job' (British Ministry of Supply poster)1942 · Testimonial, BandwagonThe War Against JapanUnited KingdomThe War Against Japan1944 · Testimonial, BandwagonIt Runs Anyway!United StatesIt Runs Anyway!Aug 16, 1956 · BandwagonBinh Long Province Develops Its Rural LifeUnited StatesBinh Long Province Develops Its Rural Life1966 · Card stacking, Glittering generalities, Bandwagon

Bandwagon in the watch briefs

Propaganda techniques related to Bandwagon

Manufactured consensusAstroturfingOverton window shifting

Related guides and pages