Keywords

Infoganda

Language, Politics

Definition:

The act or acts of using public information networks such as newscasts or newspapers in a misleading, devious, or mischievous way, to disperse a hidden propagandic message that seems plausible to the population.

First usage:

Coined by Bob Corduroy on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show”, Wednesday 17th of March 2004.

The word has gotten mainstream acceptance with its use in an Op-Ed column by Frank Rich of the New York Times.

UPDATE: Geoff Nunberg has found older citations:

As it happens, infoganda” has been around for a while — it first appeared in the press during the Gulf War of 1991 as a name for the reports and footage that the Pentagon was furnishing to journalists.1 But the word may very well have been independently coined on several occasions.

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