The iconic "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster was part of U.S. government's propaganda campaign during World War I, organized by its Committee on Public Information.

A student who is writing a paper that "explores the legal limits of US government propaganda" contacted us recently. He asked if we could recommend any books or essays that "deal with the limits of US legislation concerning PR and propaganda."

Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of books written about this particular topic, although there are several that discuss how U.S. government propaganda techniques were developed and practiced, often to the detriment of democracy.

Among the more recent books that discuss U.S. government propaganda, of course, there are the books that I co-authored with John Stauber -- Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq and The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the War in Iraq. And there are a number of articles on PRWatch.org, written by myself and by my colleague, Diane Farsetta, about the Pentagon military analyst program that was exposed last year by New York Times reporter David Barstow. The articles we've written that are most relevant to this topic include:

We recently received an email query from a high school student asking some questions about one of the books that John Stauber and I have written about the war in Iraq. Rather than answer those questions individually, I thought I'd answer them publicly here:

1. What are the top techniques deployed by the government to falsely inform the public?

There are a range of techniques used by governments, corporations and other parties to misinform the public. Some of the techniques that I find most objectionable are:

The Center for Media and Democracy, an independent, nonprofit public interest organization located in Madison, Wisconsin, is seeking an inspired Executive Director to oversee, manage and grow the organization. CMD's primary mission is promoting transparency and an informed debate by exposing corporate spin and government propaganda, and by engaging the public in collaborative, accurate and fair online reporting.

I've been following some of the recent writings of Patrick Ruffini, a former "eCampaign Director" for the Republican National Committee who is part of an effort to reinvent and reinvigorate the Republican Party in the United States. Ruffini is overall a fairly smart guy who is realistic enough to emphatically reject some of the more ridiculous conservative talking points. I've seen him write some astute analyses, particularly when writing about online political organizing.

I was struck, therefore, at the absence of all those positive qualities when Ruffini wrote a recent blog post that touched on topics related to what the government should actually do when it governs. The goal in politics, after all, is not simply to win elections but to wield power toward some purpose upon taking office. Ruffini's post, titled "The iPod Tax: This Is How We Win," suggests that he is searching for hot-button issues that will help conservatives win elections. Upon reading it, however, I came away thinking that the real problem facing conservatives is that they literally have no idea how to govern effectively, and little evident interest in learning.

A chart by Patrick Ruffini showing the relative importance of various online media to the Obama election campaign.

Ruffini begins by criticizing New York governor David Patterson, who recently proposed to address his state's $15.4 billion budget gap by introducing a number of "tax increases on services people use every day -- like iTunes downloads and taxis." Ruffini sees the proposal as "a gift" to conservatives because it gives them "a ready-made issue" to campaign on, namely, "kill the iTunes tax."

This "Air Force Blog Assessment" chart specifies "rules of engagement" for dealing with bloggers.Viral marketing strategist David Meerman Scott says he was surprised recently to discover that the U.S. Air Force has its own Twitter feed, staffed by Captain David Faggard, who holds the title of Chief of Emerging Technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon.

Scott interviewed Faggard and reports that his team's "mission is to use current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively engage conversations between Airmen and the general public." Faggard says the focus is on "Direct Action within Social Media (blogging, counter-blogging, posting products to YouTube, etc.); Monitoring and Analysis of the Social Media landscape (relating to Air Force and Airmen); and policy and education (educating all Public Affairs practitioners and the bigger Air Force on Social Media)."

In addition to a Twitter feed, Scott reports that

Capt. Faggard writes The Official Blog of the U.S. Air Force; has pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook; helps publicize a Second Life area called Huffman Prairie; contributes to iReport (user name USAFPA); and is on Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious, Slashdot, Newsvine, Reddit. There's Air Force widgets. And there's even a video mashup contest for high schools to show school spirit sponsored by the Air Force.

Other branches of the military are also getting into the social networking game, along with other branches of government. The Army also has its own Twitter feed, as does the Department of Homeland Security, the Bush White House, and the U.S. Joint Forces Command, the U.S. Department of State, and the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Just a few months ago, U.S. military analysts raised concerns that Twitter and other online social networking technologies could become terrorist tools. It appears they've decided that they can be useful for their own purposes as well.