A Trope-Based Computational Approach to Participatory Propaganda Analysis

Recent academic research reveals that strategic information operations often co-opt authentic communities to produceparticipatory propaganda—the manufacturing, curation, and amplification of stories that advance partisan narratives. In this paper, we push the field to move beyond disinformation and rhetorical techniques to a more productive narrative-based approach to propaganda analysis, and propose the first systematic computational method for the study of participatory propaganda. We propose a theory-driven computational framework centered on the concept of thepropaganda trope. Tropes are recurring scenes or stories that effectively anchor and communicate persuasive narratives. We argue that tropes provide a blueprint for impactful propaganda, and offer a valuable analytical lens for understanding how participatory propaganda is created and sustained. We illustrate this argument through an empirical case study examining state media and a state-aligned partisan community on Twitter.