# The defectiveness of propaganda **Keywords:** propaganda, epistemic defectiveness, meaning revision, emotion, social– political philosophy. **Opening (not a real abstract):** and 3 Universitat de Barcelona, Spain We argue that political propaganda is a negative phenomenon, against a recent strain of philosophical theorizing that argues that political propaganda can sometimes be neutral or even positive. After an exploration of the sense and connotation of the word ‘propaganda’ in ordinary use and in the scholarly literature, we discuss Ross’s initial account of propaganda as an epistemically defective form of political communication. We claim that, with some refinements, it is an explanatorily useful analysis. We then assess two prominent attempts that aim at classifying legitimate cases of public communication as cases of propaganda, namely Ross’s revision of her previous model and Stanley’s influential account. We show that some of the cases in contention are problematic and that the arguments the authors offer **Authors:** [[Constant Bonard Filippo Contesi Teresa Marques]]