Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group.

As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda, in its most basic sense, presents information primarily to influence an audience. Propaganda is often biased, with facts selectively presented (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political, or other type of agenda. Propaganda can be used as a form of political warfare.

Bias, a highly reseached area by psychologists, and our emotions considerably enhance our susceptibility. Fear, for example, either present or created by the propaganda, can be extremely important to our level of susceptibility. The best example here is the terrorism of 9-11, which may have been emphasized for nearly a decade and kept us at a high level of susceptibility for the entire period.

Another important characteristic is that the processes of developing and maintaining false belief(s) presented by a system of propaganda are generally unconscious, at least in part. The less we understand about our susceptibility, the easier it may be to manipulate us.

While the term propaganda has acquired a strongly negative connotation by association with its most manipulative and jingoistic examples, propaganda in its original sense was neutral, and could refer to uses that were generally benign or innocuous, such as public health recommendations, signs encouraging citizens to participate in a census or election, or messages encouraging people to report crimes to the police, among others.