ABSTRACT
This article is about propaganda that is heard rather than seen. It canvasses some work done on sound propaganda before the 20th century, but focusses on the decades after the development of radio broadcasting in the late 1920s, the period of greatest concern about sound propaganda. Harold Laswell emphasised in an influential 1934 encyclopaedia entry that propaganda could take “spoken, written, pictorial or musical form” (Lasswell, 1934: 521). While that had always been the case, and there has always been belief about the importance of aural persuasion, in the era of mass media the different trajectories, capacities and receptions of visual and aural propaganda became subjects for more frequent reflection. Concern about the social and political consequences of vulnerability to sound propaganda arguably peaked in the mid-20th century, when “totalitarian” regimes were offering practical demonstrations of what monopoly, or attempted monopoly, of aural propaganda could achieve.
