Reality May 8, 2022 Updated: September 23, 2026 22 min read Ulrik Adda

Propaganda (2012): A Mirror of Western Media and Consumer Culture

Propaganda pretended to come from North Korea in order to show Western society through an outsider's lens. More important than the disguise is how many of its mechanisms we can now recognise in advertising, media, feeds and our own habits.

In 2012 a film appeared online presenting itself as a North Korean view of the West. With a grave, didactic narrator it dissects consumerism, advertising, celebrity culture, politics, war, mass media and entertainment. But Propaganda did not come from Pyongyang. It was made by New Zealand filmmaker Slavko Martinov and deliberately disguised as a North Korean propaganda documentary.

That deception matters, but it is not the film's most interesting feature. It is part of the experiment itself: do we judge the same message differently when we believe it comes from an enemy? Once the North Korean mask is removed, a more uncomfortable question remains: how much of its criticism of Western culture can we recognise in ordinary life even when we reject some of its political conclusions?

This article therefore does not treat the film as evidence. It treats its scenes and theses as questions, then checks them against independent research on repetition, advertising recognition, identity-based consumption, media selection and algorithmic recommendation. Where the film exaggerates, simplifies or interprets politically, that distinction must remain visible.

The biggest change since 2012 is the medium itself. Television was then the central metaphor. Today each of us carries a personalised screen in a pocket. Propaganda no longer has to be one message broadcast to a mass audience; it can be an advertisement, headline, video or recommendation tailored to an individual and delivered when engagement is most likely. That does not imply one central plan behind everything. It does mean that the question of who shapes our attention has become even more important.

The film that pretended to be propaganda

Martinov designed the film as a fake North Korean propaganda documentary. NZ On Screen describes it as an attack on Western propaganda that was itself disguised as North Korean propaganda; uploaded to YouTube in 2012, it convinced many viewers they were watching authentic DPRK material before its authorship became public through the festival and later release context.

That changes how the film should be read. Its statements cannot honestly be cited as evidence of what 'North Korea thinks about the West'. But the format opens a legitimate epistemic question: how much does a source label determine our judgement of content? If a viewer accepts a criticism when it appears to come from a Western critic but rejects it when it is attributed to the DPRK — or the reverse — framing has affected judgement without establishing whether the claim itself is true.

Article rule: authorship matters for understanding the method. The truth of each substantive claim must be checked outside the film.

Propaganda is not only a dictator's poster

In ordinary speech propaganda often evokes overt state messaging: flags, military parades, political slogans and censorship. The history of public relations and media studies describes a wider field of organised persuasion. Edward Bernays wrote openly in 1928 about systematic shaping of public opinion. Herman and Chomsky later proposed a different structural model in which media outcomes need not result from a single central order but can emerge through ownership, advertising incentives, sourcing routines, institutional habits and political pressure.

That model should be used as an analytical framework, not a universal key. Economic and institutional filters do not prove that every news story is false or that journalists consciously coordinate propaganda. The more useful question is which interests, deadlines, source dependencies and business models make some stories easier to amplify than others.

Phenomenon	What it can mean	What it does not prove by itself
State propaganda	Deliberate political persuasion of a population.	That every state statement is false.
PR / political marketing	Strategic shaping of image, message and response.	That audiences have no agency.
Advertising	Paid persuasion about products, services or brands.	That every promoted product is useless or fraudulent.
Media framing	Selection of emphasis, wording, images and context.	That the frame is centrally coordinated.
Algorithmic distribution	Ranking content through relevance or engagement models.	That an algorithm alone determines political belief.

Selling an object — or selling an identity

One of the film's stronger themes is that advertising does not sell only objects. It often sells a story about the person the customer is supposed to become: successful, desirable, young, rebellious, healthy, wealthy, responsible or part of a group. Research on identity-based consumption supports the basic mechanism: people attend to brands, products and media linked to identities they associate with themselves and can use consumption to signal those identities.

That does not mean every brand choice is manipulation. A product can have genuine quality, utility or aesthetic value. The useful distinction is between the function of the object and the symbolic promise attached to it. A phone is a communication device; an advertisement can simultaneously sell creativity or status. A car is transportation; its imagery may sell freedom, power or belonging.

A useful question is not only 'Do I need this?' but 'Which version of me is this message selling together with the product?'

When an advertisement does not look like an advertisement

The boundary between information and advertising is often less visible than in a traditional television ad break. Native advertising is designed to resemble articles, posts, recommendations, videos or surrounding editorial material. The U.S. FTC therefore warns that commercial material can be deceptive when it creates the impression of an independent or impartial source.

Experimental research on covert advertising matters because recognising persuasive intent changes how a message is processed. People respond not only to ad content but also to whether they understand that someone is trying to influence them. Clear disclosure can improve ad recognition, but a label is not a magic shield: placement, wording, prior experience and attention affect whether people notice and understand it.

The 2012 film mainly discussed television, corporations and traditional advertising. Today the same problem includes sponsored posts, affiliate links, product placement, influencer recommendations and material formatted almost exactly like an ordinary feed item.

Transparency changes context. The informational value of the same claim changes when we know who authored it, who paid for it and whether the speaker has a direct interest in our next action.

Repetition: when familiarity begins to feel true

One of the best documented psychological mechanisms relevant to the film's wider argument is the illusory truth effect. A 2024 review finds that repetition increases perceived truth, including for misinformation, implausible claims and under some conditions claims that conflict with prior knowledge. Repetition can also influence intentions to share information.

Another 2024 study identifies a subtler memory problem: after repetition, people more often experience information as something they 'already knew'. Familiarity with the source and familiarity with the claim can blur in memory. A sentence encountered in a headline, video, comment, meme and conversation therefore does not require a central propagandist to gain a psychological advantage — it may simply become familiar.

This does not mean repetition automatically convinces everyone. The effect has boundaries, and content, prior knowledge and motivation matter. But one media-hygiene lesson is strong enough: familiarity is not evidence.

When something feels 'obvious' or like 'everyone knows it', separate two questions: How often have I heard this? and What is the best evidence that it is true?

From broadcast television to the personalised feed

In 2012 it still made sense to imagine mass media mainly as one programme shown to many people. Today's feed is different. A platform ranks an enormous pool of candidates and shows each user only a small selection. Media power therefore also lies in the order, frequency and timing of exposure.

Caution is essential here. Large research collaborations studying Facebook and Instagram around the 2020 U.S. election found substantial exposure to ideologically like-minded sources. Yet experimentally reducing that exposure did not simply reduce political polarization. 'The algorithm causes polarization' is therefore too simple. Algorithms shape exposure; political attitudes emerge from a wider system of people, groups, identities, media and institutions.

Regulation has meanwhile begun to address recommender transparency. The EU Digital Services Act requires certain large services to explain key recommender parameters and, in relevant cases, provide options not based on profiling. That does not prove malicious platform intent; it shows that how visibility is allocated has itself become a public-interest issue.

2012	2026
A television channel selects a programme for a large audience.	A feed ranks material for an individual user.
The ad break is relatively distinct from the programme.	An ad can use the same format as an ordinary post.
An editor decides what reaches the front page.	Editors, creators, advertisers and algorithms jointly shape visibility.
Core metrics are audience size and circulation.	Metrics include clicks, watch time, shares, purchases and other behavioural signals.

A person faces many screens showing advertising, news, politics, war, shopping and social media while holding a phone. — **From mass broadcasting to the personalised feed.** This symbolic editorial illustration shows the overlap of advertising, news, spectacle, politics and algorithmically selected attention. It does not imply that every depicted message is controlled by one actor or plan. Image: THY-REALITY — original editorial illustration Original project editorial asset

Where the film lands — and where we should brake

Propaganda works because it uses montage, music, extreme examples and an authoritative voice — the very techniques it criticises. That forces viewers to experience persuasion rather than merely hear about it. But it also means the film is not a neutral research monograph. Selective examples can make pathological behaviour look representative of an entire society; complex political events can be reduced to one cause; humour and irony can blur evidence and rhetoric.

This article therefore does not adopt the equation West = propaganda. Western societies contain competing media, legal protections, research criticism, public corrections and plural sources, as well as commercial and political persuasion systems. Democratic and authoritarian environments are not made equivalent merely because propaganda exists in both. Meaningful comparison requires examining pluralism, coercion, censorship, ownership transparency and the real ability to investigate and dissent.

The film's most useful move is therefore not its grand political verdict but its change of viewpoint. Looking at our own culture as if it were foreign can make normalised rituals visible: status consumption, compulsive screen checking, blurred ads and recommendations, fear in campaigning, or politics turned into spectacle. The same scepticism must then be applied to the film itself.

Double test: do not believe the dominant story merely because it is dominant. Do not believe the counter-story merely because it is rebellious.

An everyday attention audit: seven questions

If we bring the film from 2012 into everyday life now, its most practical result is not a list of 'good' and 'bad' media. It is a habit of checking the architecture of a message before reacting. Propaganda, advertising and political persuasion are most effective when we analyse only the object being discussed and not the way that object was selected and presented.

Question	What it checks
1. Who is speaking?	Author, institution, brand, anonymous account or intermediary.
2. Who pays or benefits?	Financial, political, reputational or organisational interest.
3. What am I being asked to feel?	Fear, anger, envy, scarcity, belonging, urgency.
4. What am I being asked to do?	Buy, click, vote, share, hate, or remain on a platform.
5. What is missing?	Comparison data, time horizon, contrary evidence, denominator.
6. Why am I seeing this now?	Breaking event, campaign, paid distribution, trend or personalisation.
7. Would I accept the same evidence from the other side?	A check for double standards and identity-protective reasoning.

These questions do not create immunity. A person can be highly critical of one kind of manipulation while remaining blind to another that confirms their identity. That makes the final question the hardest: am I using the same evidentiary standard for a message I like and one I dislike?

The film can be a mirror, not a map. Its value is not that it tells us whom to believe, but that it makes us notice the mechanism by which something begins to look plausible, normal, desirable or urgent.