Özet:

The concept of propaganda is not as easy to define as it is usually assumed because it is not something very explicit. The main function of propaganda is to make a mass believe a certain opinion and unite it around that. There are no individuals in the target of propaganda. Its purpose is to attract the attention of its target mass and to influence it. That’s why, it hasn’t got much to do with the mind and intelligence. On the contrary, it has to use a plain language and to adress the emotions of the target mass as much as possible. The level of achievement of propaganda depends on a large scale on how much successful it is in forming the general viewpoint and particularly impressing the emotions of the crowd in target. The only goal here is to achieve the goal in some way as soon as possible. To shed light on the essence of propaganda, it can be said that it means affecting the feelings and actions of the mass deeply through the manipulation of specific ideas and discourses. The purpose of this article is to offer a considerable amount of information so as to clarify the relation between the concept of propaganda and ethics in general. Nowadays, in democratic, technological, post-industrial information society, propaganda seems to be more systemic, furtive and insidious. The new instruments of mass media such as advertising, public relations, perception management, and other tools of persuasion are much more propagandistic than the tools used by totalitarian dictators of days gone by. The thing that has changed owing to propaganda through time is this alone. In this article, the question “Is there any place for ethical concern in propaganda?” was discussed at full lenght. Besides, the study was prepared and written by means of the method of literature review.