The Princeton psychologist Hadley Cantril was central to development of the science of propaganda:
Hadley Cantril was Nelson Rockefeller's roommate at Dartmouth in the 1920's and his 1935 doctorate was on "The Psychology of Radio". Here's a quote from it:
“Radio is an altogether novel medium of
communication, preeminent as a means of social control and epochal in its influence upon the mental horizons of men.”
Cantril joined Princeton in 1936 and became president of the "Institute for Propaganda analysis" and founding editor in 1938 of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded "Public Opinion Quarterly" which was associated with the US government's psychological warfare efforts after World War II. He became
chairman of the Princeton Psychology
department. The Rockefeller Foundation gave him a $67K grant to form the "Princeton Radio Project".
The official story is that the October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" just happened to occur outside of Princeton and Cantril and associates took the opportunity to do an extensive study of people's responses and to write a book and do studies on the event. At the time, it was the largest mass persuasion event in human history.
In 1940 Cantril wrote "The Invasion From Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic".
The Rockefeller Foundation was especially interested in manipulating public opinion during wartime.
Their 1939 report said: “The war in Europe has given this country an unusual opportunity for studying the development of public opinion, the changes which opinion undergoes under varying conditions, and the reasons for change.”
and that the project:
"would supply essential facts on the formation and trend of opinion from peace to war time and from one stage to another under the force of successive war crises. It is expected that further analysis of the data will demonstrate the influence of such factors as family relationship, educational experience, and
occupation; the group origins of reported intensity of opinion or apparent lack of it on many issues"
Rockefeller helped guide American public opinion as America joined World War II in 1941. Rockefeller was moving their banking and oil interests into South America and were excited about using the new "soft power" of psychological operations to monitor and shape public opinion there. They funded Cantril and George Gallup to create "American Social Surveys" to assess public opinion in South
America. They did the same in the US. and Roosevelt used Cantril's findings to craft his speeches during the war. They also did projects with the Psychological Warfare Branch of Military Intelligence in North
Africa, the Department of State on US attitudes toward foreign affairs, and the Office of Strategic Services on German public opinion.
Over time, the Rockefellers especially but many other groups, funded ever more sophisticated public opinion monitoring and manipulation techniques and used them for both business and politics.
The War of the Worlds (radio drama)
That event seems to now be understood on at least 5 levels and was related to the study of propaganda for business and to get the US into World War II:
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Dramatic Orson Welles radio show intended to move an audience
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Rockefeller funded Princeton study to see how influenced a population could be by an emotionally powerful media
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The real manipulation was to test whether people would believe that others would believe the performance was real and
become hysterical. Early investigation into shifting a population's beliefs about other people!
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Denial of the panic as "fake news" and a "naturally arising" myth
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Claim that newspaper stories created the myth because "radio was a threat to newspapers" and they wanted to discredit it.