Bandwagon
_Bandwagon
is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime and
plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is also one of
the seven main propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda
Analysis in 1938. Bandwagon is an appeal to the subject to follow the
crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda
is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning
side, because more people have joined it. In modern propaganda, bandwagon has taken a new twist. The subject is to be convinced by the propaganda that since everyone else is doing it, they will be left out if they do not. This is, effectively, the opposite of the other type of bandwagon, but usually provokes the same results.