After World War I, some media researchers began studying how governments used propaganda to advance the war effort. They found that during the war, governments routinely relied on propaganda divisions to spread “information” to the public. Though propaganda was considered a positive force for mobilizing public opinion during the war, researchers after the war labeled propaganda negatively, calling it “partisan appeal based on half-truths and devious manipulation of communication channels.”⁵ Harold Lasswell’s important 1927 study Propaganda Technique in the World War focused on propaganda in the media, defining propaganda as “the control of opinion by significant symbols, … by stories, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication.”⁶ Propaganda analysis thus became a major early focus of mass media research.