Use of the word, propaganda, is counterproductive when describing one's own side's use of it because of the perjorative connotations of the word among English-speaking peoples in the first decade of the 21st Century. In Spanish, so I am told, the word just means advertising.
I am making do with the term strategic communications while waiting for somebody to coin a better euphemism.
Many terms and concepts held over from the Industrial Age prevent us from thinking and communicating clearly about new threats we face in the Cognetic Age. For example,propaganda does not fit today’s decentralized information-communication environment because we associate it with the centralized control and management of information and communications that reflected the concentration of power during the Industrial Age. With the advent of the Internet and globalization, this concentration of power no longer exists in the hands of the few; indeed, many people now have access to it. This shift in power is the defining feature of the Cognetic Age. Moreover, considerable negative baggage has attached itself to propaganda, a word continually used to describe almost any activity having to do with influencing perceptions, whether for good or ill. This intellectual burden stifles our ability to fight ideological war by tying our minds and tongues to the dogmas of the past. -- Lt Col Bruce K. Johnson, USAF, Dawn of the Cognetic Age
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