making you afraid so you stop weighing the facts. news research
Techniques
Rhetorical techniques, with real examples
The 20 techniques Semblen flags, each in plain words, with real examples from 2026 news, political ads and government statements. A technique is a specific move that works on your feelings instead of your judgement. It is not the same as a strong opinion, and it is not political tilt.
Can you spot them? Spot the technique: two real passages (political ads, official posts or news). Pick the techniques you see, then check them against what Semblen found. About five minutes.
playing on dislike of a group. news research
"everyone's doing it" in place of a reason. 1937 list news research
only two choices when there are more. news research
only the facts that help one side. 1937 list
hinting at a hidden plot without evidence. added by Semblen
soft words for harsh government action. added by Semblen
blowing something up past what is true. news research
treating unequal things as the same. added by Semblen
pressure to act before you think. added by Semblen
wrapping a position in patriotism. news research
feel-good words with no concrete meaning. 1937 list
words picked for the feeling, not the facts. news research
a label in place of an argument. 1937 list news research
"I'm just like you" in place of a record. 1937 list
saying it again until it sticks. news research
blaming one group for a complex problem. added by Semblen
a catchy phrase in place of an argument. news research
casting a dispute as a threat to national independence. added by Semblen
borrowing a symbol's feeling for an unrelated claim. 1937 list
Where these techniques come from
None of these are new. Most were named by researchers who studied propaganda long before social media, and the rest come from the study of how news and official statements persuade.
Institute for Propaganda Analysis, 1937
In 1937 the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, a group of American educators and journalists alarmed by the propaganda of the 1930s, published seven "devices" for teaching people to recognise it. Six are here: Bandwagon Appeal, Card Stacking, Glittering Generalities, Name Calling, Plain Folks Appeal, Transfer. Schools have taught them ever since.
Research on propaganda in news (2019–2023)
In 2019 researchers annotated hundreds of news articles sentence by sentence for propaganda techniques, and that corpus became the basis of two international research competitions, SemEval-2020 and SemEval-2023. Semblen's model is trained on this work: Appeal to Fear, Appeal to Prejudice, Bandwagon Appeal, Black-and-White Fallacy, Exaggeration/Hyperbole, Flag-Waving, Loaded Language, Name Calling, Repetition, Slogans.
- Da San Martino et al., "Fine-Grained Analysis of Propaganda in News Articles" (2019)
- SemEval-2020 Task 11: Detection of Propaganda Techniques in News Articles
- SemEval-2023 Task 3: Persuasion Techniques in Online News
Added by Semblen
A few patterns recur in news, campaign ads and government statements that the lists above don't name, so we added them from the wider propaganda and argument literature: Conspiracy Appeal, Euphemistic State Language, False Equivalence, False Urgency, Scapegoating, Sovereignty Rhetoric.
Finding a technique is not a verdict that something is false, or that its author is acting in bad faith. It is a prompt to read closely.
Suggest a technique we should flag
Seen a move that isn't on this list? Tell us what it is and, if you can, give an example. A person reads every suggestion.