Propaganda in World War I

World War I was the first war in which mass media and propaganda played a significant role in keeping the people at home informed on what occurred at the battlefields.^{[1][page needed]} It was also the first war in which governments systematically produced propaganda as a way to target the public and alter their opinion.

According to Eberhard Demm and Christopher H. Sterling:

Propaganda could be used to arouse hatred of the foe, warn of the consequences of defeat, and idealize one's own war aims in order to mobilize a nation, maintain its morale, and make it fight to the end. It could explain setbacks by blaming scapegoats such as war profiteers, hoarders, defeatists, dissenters, pacifists, left-wing socialists, spies, shirkers, strikers, and sometimes enemy aliens so that the public would not question the war itself or the existing social and political system.^[2]

Propaganda by all sides presented a highly cleansed, partisan view of fighting. Censorship rules placed strict restrictions on frontline journalism and reportage, a process that continues to affect the historical record — for instance, possibly due to image concerns, there is no known visual evidence of American shotgun use during the war.^[3] Propagandists utilized a variety of motifs and ideological underpinnings, such as atrocity propaganda, propaganda dedicated to nationalism and patriotism, and propaganda focused on women.^[1][4][5]