In certain aspect we can say so, but with the existence of hyper-connected network where the availability of information at consumer fingertips marketing communication must be view more then a propaganda because, if false claim we made consumer will be able to spread the news fast enough through their community .

Propaganda is not a past phenomenon. Spin and disinformation are forms of propaganda. All of the propaganda features identified in the question -- viral messages, unidentifiable sources, quick awareness -- were employed by the Russians prior to their annexation of Crimea. Their chief tool was online media, and they succeeded in influencing even mainstream media coverage and debate (notably on the issue of whether or not Ukraine has become a fascist state, which is untrue). It is much more risky for firms to attempt such a campaign, because as Afizan Amer notes, expert stakeholders can immediately counter it, and any firm's resources are far more limited than those of Putin's Russia.

Propaganda is something that always both parties in a conflict use. In the Ukrainian/Crim-conflict Kerry is just as good to hide the truth as Putin. But none of them act unethical: the common ethical philosophy for state leaders are the utilitarianism - a normative ethics that in short day that what leads to most welfare to your people is the action that imply the highest ethics.

It is generally true that marketing and propaganda have a lot in common. As others have remarked propaganda is not something of the past, and I wouldn't say that it is restricted to totalitarian states. Political commercials and more generally political spinning are obvious examples, but we are all continuously bombarded with advertising that makes us believe in we are living in a brave new world. If you want some good examples of marketing looks a lot like propaganda, consider the advertising the banks are doing. They sketch an image that all is well and that they are doing a great job to create opportunities for everyone. Clearly banks have a lot of power and making propaganda/marketing to assure that they keep that power is part of their core business.

As for social media, if you want a good example, go see what BP did during the oil spill. They obviously spend a lot of money on damage control and improving their image. This included a lot of pictures of happy people cleaning up under a bright blue sky, but also included having social media, that, while allowing some dissenting voices, made sure that the overall tone was positive for BP.

One problem is you would need to define what you mean by propaganda.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/propaganda

"Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view:"

Maybe some marketing comms can be that, especially when material issues become overtly political, like say fossil fuel companies *lying* that they're somehow good for the environment when this global warming thing has 99% of scientists in agreement. BP and Shell Oil had some pretty laughable advertising like that.

Maybe you need to look at memes.

http://storyality.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/storyality-100-the-holonic-structure-of-the-meme-the-unit-of-culture/

Im also of the opinion that the word propaganda might not suit academic langauge nicely...perhaps rephrasing it to misleading info or something relevant.

@Jt Velovski Clearly marketing is about influencing or persuading people's behavior and desires by putting it in golden light, or inducing people into believing that is the natural world order that the party is in charge / you cannot live without a smartphone. The methods are pretty much the same too: endless repetition, connection to images of happy smiling beautiful people (especially pretty young women and children that do well with both men and women), suggesting that you are left behind if you don't follow along and that most people/ sensible people/ or experts are already believers, outright fear mongering, trying to drown out and control damaging messages (this is actually a very active area in social media marketing) etc. Sure, our advertising bombardment is not quite the same as the North Korean Kim worship, not to mention that complaining that Iphone's are overhyped does not land you and your family in a concentration camp, but a) North Korea an extreme example, b) there is more competition in advertising, and c) we are just used to it and take it for granted.

@Hector Mothudi I agree that propaganda is a controversial word that heats emotions. However, misleading information is much more restrictive than propaganda, if only because it focusses on the rational level. Both marketing and propaganda target the emotional as much if not much more than the rational. IIRC Orwell's famous book 1984 coins the newspeak word bellyfeel or bellythink and IMO that phrases it quite well. Therefore, while I think that it is actually a good academic tradition to use neutral terminology, I also think it is good to try to see connections where they exist, and in this case, insisting they are two totally different things is by itself a political and emotional statement.

Of course it is, but not in any new or paradigm-shifting way. I recommend the following piece of related reading: http://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/online-reputation-management-governments-national-interest-or-out-dictator’s-playbook

Thanks everyone for taking time out to address the question. I am looking forward to more comments specially around use of social media by politicians all over the world.

Let me add one quick point especially about the definition issue raised earlier by my colleagues.

Propaganda is, as a mass communication method, not necessarily evil. Especially before World War I, propaganda simply was a method to 'convert the unconverted'. For instance, the missionary activities of Vatican used to be know as Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide ( Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith ). Phil Taylor's Munition of the Mind is a good source on the history of propaganda.

World War I was practically the point when 'we' decided that 'we' don't do propaganda, the 'enemy' does propaganda. (You can also claim even the spin on the definition of propaganda was a propaganda project itself to discredit competitive messages). Currently, the countries argue that their enemies do propaganda while they and their allies do public information (WWI - US), war information (WWII - US), public diplomacy etc. Edward Bernays even explains the birth of the concept of 'public relations' through propaganda: propaganda was a bad word so they found a new phrase to describe activities of propaganda nature (attempts to convert the unconverted).

@Mukul P Gupta - coming back to your original question, I would say if we take the dictionary definition (or the 'evil' definition), social media actually makes it impossible to do propaganda. You can no longer mislead people as there is a plethora of messages targeting the same audiences. (I agree with Afizan's comment here)

If we take a more liberal (or the 'conversion') definition of propaganda, political communication in social media is indeed very similar to propaganda. Labelled as nation branding, digital diplomacy etc., countries even try to change the views of foreign publics through social media. (I, personally, had various conversations with embassies in the DC area through Twitter for instance).

Politicians also use social media for domestic political marketing reasons to reach out to their electorate. Most of the time, they refrain from interacting with people for one reason or the other. But they maintain an active profile. Obama made really interesting use of digital communications - for instance people on his e-mail groups and social media accounts learned his VP candidate before mass media back in 2008.

The 'viral' aspect of social media comes back to 'inbound marketing' understanding where politicians aim to bring voters (and votes) closer to them by using messages that catch the attention of people.

Propaganda and advertisements try to avoid the mind and go straight to the heart or the belly, while discouraging their target to think about the matter. But propaganda is political, while marketing is economic, though that's not the only difference. Online marketing is a lot more surreptitious, with scripts, supercookies, etc running in the background, while the user is unaware their online action is tracked.Political parties failed to catch on and do the same to us, as yet.

While he was not the first to utilize social media, Obama's party was one of the first to make great use of social media for his campaign . When I say great use, I mean correctly leveraging the tools provided through social media including tracking his site(s) visitors. A case study about Obama's digital campaign provided by Edelman states "...prioritized and tracked prospective voters all the way to the polls

using the campaign’s Houdini database. It used the data to drive strategic decisions down to granular detail – for every voter, every e-mail, every dollar and every vote that was needed to win."

The case study later goes into detail on how tracking led to the identification of "super users" which were in some form volunteers for the campaign, creating social and fundraising groups providing them with tools from the campaign's database and analytics to reach, connect and activate others.

The tiered communications used through social media could very well be considered propaganda (the historical or "non-evil" definition) as messages were tailored to interests, doubts, and concerns of the various groups as well as addressed candidates' claims.

As for the current Oxford Dictionary definition of the word propaganda, this article may provide some insights into the political use of social media for propaganda.

http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/klausen-et-al-youtube-jihadists/html

My take on this one is that Marketing deals with persuasivess which could influence the customer's decision making in a positive manner or negative thereof...unlike propaganda which in most cases carries unethical practice to lure somebody to change their decisions especially in political content, as a result propaganda as a word is irrelevant in business sense...agree with Sylvia

It needs to be noted that in Marketing one is also required to follow some ethical principles and there's government policies guiding Marketing & public relations either electronic or face to face the laws needs to be adhered to...unlike propaganda which could be used outside government laws.