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Between propaganda and public relations: Definitional issues and professional self-representation in Italy and France in the early Cold War

par Di Jorio, Irene ;Souza de Cursi, Hugo
Référence International History of Public Relations Conference (2026: 22/23-06-2026: Bournemouth University)
Publication Non publié, 2026-06-22

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Over the past two decades, historiography has significantly challenged the idea of an ethical and linear progression from the unidirectional “propaganda” to the two-way symmetrical “public relations”. Scholars have shown both the historical overlap between these practices and the absence of correspondence between public relations and democracy, or between propaganda and dictatorship (Moloney, 2006; Weaver, Motion, & Roper, 2006; Auerbach, & Castronovo, 2014; Rodríguez-Salcedo, 2015, Rodríguez-Salcedo, & Watson, 2017; Baines, O’Shaughnessy, & Snow, 2019; Millette, 2024). Post 1945 Italy and France have remained largely marginal within this line of research, even though they offer a particularly revealing vantage point for examining the emergence of the notion of “public relations” between dictatorship and democracy (Di Jorio, 2025). Both countries had experienced state propaganda before 1945: over two decades in Fascist Italy (Cannistraro, 1975; Ferrara, 2011) and during the shorter but formative Vichy period in France (Amaury, 1969; Gervereau, Peschanski 1990; Di Jorio 2006). In the early Cold War, Italy and France hosted the two most influential Communist parties in Western Europe and became pivotal arenas of the struggle for hearts and minds. In both countries, the Marshall Plan operated as a large-scale public relations campaign, using mass media to open European markets to American firms and to promote anti-Communist narratives (Grémion, 1995; Mariuzzo, 2018). This context is commonly identified as the setting in which the term “public relations” emerged in Italy and in France. Drawing on the critical history of public relations (L’Etang, McKie, Snow, & Xifra, 2016), this paper analyses how Italian and French professionals conceptualised and named their activities after 1945, thus “naturalising” a distinction between “propaganda” and “public relations” (Olivesi, 2003, L’Etang, 2006, 2008, Ollivier-Yaniv, 2010) through the strategic use of a rhetoric of technical expertise and professional neutrality (Scott-Smith, 2002). The study focuses on definitional issues and professional self-representation. The analysis relies on internal professional sources, namely the journals of the first Italian and French PR associations (Relazioni Pubbliche and La Maison de Verre), to reconstruct debates, transnational references, and the close links between emerging PR professionals and political elites. Methodologically, this paper draws on “histoire croisée” (entangled history) rather than on a strictly comparative framework. By examining France and Italy not as isolated cases but as entangled historical spaces, the study traces how professional discourses and categories moved across national boundaries, were selectively appropriated, and were reshaped in interaction with distinct political and institutional contexts. This perspective makes it possible to analyse public relations as a transnational field structured by circulations, references and legitimising narratives within the political context of early Cold War Europe.