This panel reconsiders propaganda by shifting attention away from centralized messaging and toward the everyday practices that made propaganda possible or limited its reach. Across different political systems and historical contexts, the papers in this panel ask a shared question: what happens when propaganda is examined from the ground up, through the people who enacted it, adapted it, or used it for their own purposes? Collectively, the panel argues that propaganda’s effectiveness cannot be understood solely through ideology, media, or state intent. It depended on how deeply it entered daily routines and existing social networks. When propaganda aligned with these practices, it could circulate widely; when it did not, it stalled, was reshaped, or produced unintended outcomes.

First, Shumeng Han focuses on wartime seed-promotion campaigns in Republican China under the Nationalist government, showing how agricultural modernization agendas depended on grassroots officials’ practical labor, as local constraints and field experience complicated official propaganda about improvement. Second, Andrew Fisher examines the career of “Chief” Nipo Strongheart, a lecturer and performer who used his work as a World War I propagandist to craft an Indigenous identity, advance claims for Native American citizenship, and challenge dominant representations of the Indian “race.” His case shows that propaganda could serve purposes beyond state control. Turning to the early years of the People’s Republic of China, Yi Ren analyzes the Chinese Communist Party’s “propaganda network” in the 1950s, revealing how a carefully designed top-down system faltered when its demands on people’s time, mobility, and resources exceeded what everyday rural life could support. Finally, Bukola Oyeniyi examines digital propaganda in Nigeria’s 2023 election, arguing that viral memes and WhatsApp messaging operated less as campaign directives than as dispersed social practices sustained by small payments and patronage networks.

Drawing on sources ranging from official archives and newspapers to oral histories, interviews, and digital materials, the papers in this panel demonstrate that propaganda was neither monolithic nor uniformly effective. Its power rested on social conditions that states could influence but not fully control. By placing everyday practices at the center of analysis, this panel invites a broader rethinking of propaganda as a negotiated and participatory process. Such a perspective helps explain both propaganda’s reach and its limits across different historical contexts.