A vital instrument of power, telecommunications is and has always been a political technology. In this book, Headrick examines the political history of telecommunications from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of World War II. He argues that this technology gave society new options. In times of peace, the telegraph and radio were, as many predicted, instruments of peace; in times of tension, they became instruments of politics, tools for rival interests, and weapons of war. Writing in a lively, accessible style, Headrick illuminates the political aspects of information technology, showing how in both World Wars, the use of radio led to a shadowy war of disinformation, cryptography, and communications intelligence, with decisive consequences.

In a Reformation kingdom ill-used to queens, Elizabeth I needed a very particular image to hold her divided country together. The 'Cult of Gloriana' would elevate the queen to the status of a virgin goddess, aided by authors, musicians, and artists such as Spenser, Shakespeare, Hilliard, Tallis and Byrd. Her image was widely owned and distributed, thanks to the expansion of printing, and the English came to surpass their European counterparts in miniature painting, allowing courtiers to carry a likeness of their sovereign close to their hearts. Sumptuously illustrated, Gloriana: Elizabeth I and the Art of Queenship tells the story of Elizabethan art as a powerful device for royal magnificence and propaganda, illuminating several key artworks of Elizabeth's reign to create a portrait of the Tudor monarch as she has never been seen before.

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing their political identities-including a transnational Muslim identity-online. In countries where political parties are illegal, the internet is the only infrastructure for democratic discourse. In others, digital technologies such as mobile phones and the internet have given key actors an information infrastructure that is independent of the state. And in countries with large Muslim communities, mobile phones and the internet are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites. This book looks at the role that communications technologies play in advancing democratic transitions in Muslim countries. As such, its central question is whether technology holds the potential to substantially enhance democracy. Certainly, no democratic transition has occurred solely because of the internet. But, as Philip Howard argues, no democratic transition can occur today without the internet. According to Howard, the major (and perhaps only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online. Activists both within diasporic communities and within authoritarian states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are the drivers of this debate, which centers around issues such as the interpretation of Islamic texts, gender roles, and security issues. Drawing upon material from interviews with telecommunications policy makers and activists in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tajikistan and Tanzania and a comparative study of 74 countries with large Muslim populations, Howard demonstrates that these forums have been the means to organize activist movements that have lead to successful democratic insurgencies.

Around the developing world, political leaders face a dilemma: the very information and communication technologies that boost economic fortunes also undermine power structures. Globally, one in ten internet users is a Muslim living in a populous Muslim community. In these countries, young people are developing their political identities-including a transnational Muslim identity-online. In countries where political parties are illegal, the internet is the only infrastructure for democratic discourse. In others, digital technologies such as mobile phones and the internet have given key actors an information infrastructure that is independent of the state. And in countries with large Muslim communities, mobile phones and the internet are helping civil society build systems of political communication independent of the state and beyond easy manipulation by cultural or religious elites. This book looks at the role that communications technologies play in advancing democratic transitions in Muslim countries. As such, its central question is whether technology holds the potential to substantially enhance democracy. Certainly, no democratic transition has occurred solely because of the internet. But, as Philip Howard argues, no democratic transition can occur today without the internet. According to Howard, the major (and perhaps only meaningful) forum for civic debate in most Muslim countries today is online. Activists both within diasporic communities and within authoritarian states, including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, are the drivers of this debate, which centers around issues such as the interpretation of Islamic texts, gender roles, and security issues. Drawing upon material from interviews with telecommunications policy makers and activists in Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tajikistan and Tanzania and a comparative study of 74 countries with large Muslim populations, Howard demonstrates that these forums have been the means to organize activist movements that have lead to successful democratic insurgencies.

This book examines the origins of Ireland in its first independent incarnation, the Irish Free State (1922-1937). It explores how contemporary public relations and propaganda techniques were used to construct an identity for this new state - a state which after enduring seven years of insurrection and civil war, became one of the most stable democracies in Europe. This stability, the book argues, was constructed not solely through policies enacted by governments, but through the construction of a Gaelic, Catholic and Celtic national identity. By shifting the perspective to how nation building was communicated, it weaves an interdisciplinary narrative that initiates a new understanding of nation building - providing insights of increasing relevance in current world events. Avoiding a simplistic cause and effect history of public relations, the book examines the uses and effects of early public relations from a political and societal perspective and suggests that while governments were only modestly successful in their varied propaganda efforts, cumulatively they facilitated a transition from violence to peace. This will be of interest to researchers and advanced students with an interest in public relations, propaganda studies, nation building and Irish studies.

Most current research on the evolution of China's propaganda discourse only touches upon recent variations of official propaganda rhetoric grounded in popular media. Here, the research is extended by tapping into the most recently released popular cultural media narratives such as online documentaries, films, TV drama serials and education programs, all of which are enlisted and co-opted by the state for propaganda goals. This book maps out the cutting-edge expansions of official propaganda that are embedded in the entertainment industry of contemporary China. Its case studies bring to light the progression of the mainstream propaganda discourse in terms of its merging, cooperation and compromise with the commercial features of both the traditional and newly-emerging entertainment media. In particular, it examines a group of mass entertainment products which include two best-selling mainstream blockbusters, two on-line commercial web documentaries, the China Central Television Moon Festival Gala series, socialist revolutionary TV drama serials, and a prime time science and education program. In so doing, it forefronts the up-to-date developments and novelties of state propaganda: its motives, reasoning and approaches within the mediasphere of today's China. Illustrating how the CCP propaganda apparatus and tactics evolve and become embedded in popular media products, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Media Studies and Popular Cultural Studies.

In occupied France, the Nazis pursued aggressive, tightly orchestrated measures designed to monopolize the French market and foster agitation against Americans, Jews, Communists, and others. The documentary film was one instrument of propaganda employed by the Nazi occupiers, as well as the Vichy government and collaborationists. Nearly two hundred of those documentaries have been restored by the French Film Archives. Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit's Propaganda Documentaries in France: 1940-1944 is the first volume specifically devoted to nonfiction propaganda films distributed in France during the "dark years" of the German Occupation. This book provides a concise overview of Vichy and German film policies, including the purchase of an extensive network of movie houses, many of which were expropriated from Jewish owners. In addition, popular prewar American and French feature films were banned, while theaters were flooded with propagandist titles. Bertin-Maghit also illustrates how ideological priorities and political negotiations played out in both topical documentaries and weekly newsreels, juxtaposing Vichy's integrationist propaganda with German-sponsored documentaries of agitation and exclusion. While documentaries are the primary focus of this work, the author also addresses other forms of propaganda, such as newsreels and posters. Appearing in English for the first time-and featuring a filmography of 178 restored works-Propaganda Documentaries in France: 1940-1944 is a provocative and wide-ranging work of history and cinema that will be of interest to film scholars and historians as well as sociologists and political scientists.

Television news and the Cold War grew simultaneously in the years following World War II, and their history is deeply intertwined. In order to guarantee sufficient resolve in the American public for a long term arms buildup, defense and security officials turned to the television networks. In need of access to official film and newsmakers to build themselves into serious news organizations, and anxious to prove their loyalty in the age of blacklisting, the network news divisions acted as unofficial state propagandists. They aired programs produced, scripted, and approved by the White House and the Departments of State and Defense as news and public affairs programs. Based on extensive primary research, this book makes a strong and compelling argument for collaboration between US television networks and government during the early years of the medium, and demonstrates how the Cold War was effectively 'sold' to the American public.

The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda re-appraises one of the most closely studied issues in European history - the appeal of the Nazi party and analyses the reasons behind the remarkable and sustained success of National Socialism in Germany. David Welch challenges previously held assumptions about the effectiveness of Nazi Propaganda, summarizes the major current debates and argues that in order to be successful, propaganda must preach to the partially converted.
This second edition brings the book up to date with a revised introduction and postscript to reflect the historiographical debates of the 1990s. It includes new material on many topics such as:
* continuities and discontinuities between Weimar and the Third Reich
* the medium of radio
* the 'Hitler myth'
* Nazi targeting of specific classes and social groups
* racial purity.

Staging Chinese Revolution surveys fifty years of theatrical propaganda performances in China, revealing a dynamic, commercial capacity in works often dismissed as artifacts of censorship. Spanning the 1960s through the 2010s, Xiaomei Chen reads films, plays, operas, and television shows from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective, demonstrating how, in a socialist state with "capitalist characteristics," propaganda performance turns biographies, memoirs, and war stories into mainstream ideological commodities, legitimizing the state and its right to rule. Analyzing propaganda performance also brings contradictions and inconsistencies to light that throw common understandings about propaganda's purpose into question. Chen focuses on revisionist histories that stage the lives of the "founding fathers" of the Communist Party, such as Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, and the engaging mix of elite and ordinary characters that animate official propaganda in the private and public sphere. Taking the form of "personal" memories and representing star and youth culture and cyberspace, contemporary Chinese propaganda appeals through multiple perspectives, complicating relations among self, subject, agent, state building, and national identity. Chen treats Chinese performance as an extended form of political theater confronting critical issues of commemoration, nostalgia, state rituals, and contested history. It is through these reenactments that three generations of revolutionary leaders loom in extraordinary ways over Chinese politics and culture.

"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job". So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolation to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the moment it realized that all was lost without American aid, the British Government employed a host of persuasive tactics to draw the U.S. to its rescue. With the help of talents as varied as those of matinee idol Leslie Howard, Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin and society photographer Cecil Beaton, no section of America remained untouched and no methodfrom Secret Service intrigue to the publication of horrifying pictures of Nazi atrocities - remained untried. The British sought and won the support of key journalists and broadcasters, including Edward R. Murrow, Dorothy Thompson, and Walter Winchell: Hollywood film makers also played a willing part. Cull details these and other propaganda activities, covering the entire range of the British effort. A fascinating story of how a foreign country promoted America's involvement in its greatest war, Selling War will appeal to all those interested in the modern cultural and political history of Britain and the United States.

Mainstream media in the United States for the past 60 years has converged with the neo-colonial foreign policy objectives of the state to create a misinformed, biased narrative against the Cuban revolution. Using extensive examples, including pre-revolutionary historic coverage, journalist Keith Bolender reveals how the national press has established an anti-Cuba chronicle in adherence to Washington's unrelenting regime change policies. From coverage of the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cuban Five and the current issues of Obama's 'Cuban Thaw' in 2014 to the renewed hostility under the Trump Administration, the edition examines with specific clarity how damaging corporate media treatment of Cuba is to the understanding of the revolution and those who continue to support it. This original treatment scrutinises the foundation for the media's hostility against Cuba's socialist political/economic system, providing new insight into the propaganda workings of the so called 'free' press in the US and across Western liberal democracies. The work is a unique resource for activists, journalists and students interested in the ever-complicated relationship between the United States and its island neighbour to the south.

Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790-1822 focuses on the work produced collaboratively between 1816 and 1822 by the poet and radical journalist William Hone and the brilliant young graphic satirist George Cruikshank. It shows how both men drew on their experience in the gutter press and advertising industry to produce satire which dissolves distinctions between literature and trash, art and advertising, and politics and propaganda. The book also sheds new light on the relations between popular political authors and graphic artists and the major Romantic writers of the period.

William Connolly presents a lucid and concise defense of the thesis of "essentially contested concepts" that can well be read as a general introduction to political theory, as well as for its challenge to the prevailing understanding of political discourse. In Connolly's view, the language of politics is not a neutral medium that conveys ideas independently formed but an institutionalized structure of meanings that channels political thought and action in certain directions. In the new preface he pursues the implications of this perspective for a distinctive conception of ethics and democracy.

Do you trust the liberal media? While the tabloid and right-wing press - the Sun, The Times, the Mail and the Express - are constantly criticised for dangerous bias, outlets like the BBC and the Guardian are trusted by their readers to report in the interests of the public. However, the reality is that all corporate media is systematically filtered by the powerful interests that own, manage and fund it. Propaganda Blitz shows that the corporate media does not just 'spin' the news - it fundamentally distorts everything it touches, hiding the real issues from public view, and often completely reversing the truth. This book uncovers a storm of top-down campaigns behind war reporting from Iraq, Syria and Palestine, as well as the destruction of the credibility of figures on the left, including Jeremy Corbyn, Russell Brand and Hugo Chavez. Exposing propagandists at the top levels of the BBC, as well as their reporting on the Scottish independence referendum, the dismantling of the NHS and looming climate chaos, Propaganda Blitz explains the real meaning of 'objective' journalism, exposes the fake news about 'fake news' and outlines a model for anti-business media activism.

On January 28 2011 WikiLeaks released documents from a cache of US State Department cables stolen the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London published one of the memos with an article headlined 'Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising'. The effect of the revelation was immediate, helping set in motion an aggressive counter-narrative to the nascent story of the Arab Spring. The article featured a cluster of virulent commentators all pushing the same story: the CIA, George Soros and Hillary Clinton were attempting to take over Egypt. Many of these commentators were trolls, some of whom reappeared in 2016 to help elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. This book tells the story of how a proxy-communications war ignited and hijacked the Arab uprisings and how individuals on the ground, on air and online worked to shape history.

In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.

This book offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the Islamic State's use of propaganda. Combining a range of different theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences, and using rigorous methods, the authors trace the origins of the Islamic State's message, laying bare the strategic logic guiding its evolution, examining each of its multi-media components, and showing how these elements work together to radicalize audiences' worldviews. This volume highlights the challenges that this sort of "full-spectrum propaganda" raises for counter terrorism forces. It is not only a one-stop resource for any analyst of IS and Salafi-jihadism, but also a rich contribution to the study of text and visual propaganda, radicalization and political violence, and international security.

Do you trust the liberal media? While the tabloid and right-wing press - the Sun, The Times, the Mail and the Express - are constantly criticised for dangerous bias, outlets like the BBC and the Guardian are trusted by their readers to report in the interests of the public. However, the reality is that all corporate media is systematically filtered by the powerful interests that own, manage and fund it. Propaganda Blitz shows that the corporate media does not just 'spin' the news - it fundamentally distorts everything it touches, hiding the real issues from public view, and often completely reversing the truth. This book uncovers a storm of top-down campaigns behind war reporting from Iraq, Syria and Palestine, as well as the destruction of the credibility of figures on the left, including Jeremy Corbyn, Russell Brand and Hugo Chavez. Exposing propagandists at the top levels of the BBC, as well as their reporting on the Scottish independence referendum, the dismantling of the NHS and looming climate chaos, Propaganda Blitz explains the real meaning of 'objective' journalism, exposes the fake news about 'fake news' and outlines a model for anti-business media activism.

President Vladimir Putin is a figure of both fear and fascination in the Western imagination. In the minds of media pundits and commentators, he personifies Russia itself - a country riven with contradictions, enthralling and yet always a threat to world peace. But recent propaganda images that define public debate around growing tensions with Russia are not new or arbitrary. Russia and the Media asks, what is the role of Western journalism in constructing a new kind of Cold War with Russia? Focusing on British and US media coverage of moments of crisis and of co-operation between the West and Russia, McLaughlin exposes how such a Cold War framework shapes public perceptions of a major, hostile power reasserting itself on the world stage. Scrutinising events such as the Ukraine/Crimea crisis, the Skripal Poisoning and Russia's military intervention in Syria - as well as analysing media coverage of the 2018 Russian presidential election and build up to the 2018 World Cup - Russia and the Media makes a landmark intervention at the intersection of media studies and international relations.

As a consequence of the rapid diffusion of online media, the conditions for political communication, and research concerning it have radically changed. Is empirical communication research capable of consistently describing and explaining the changes in political communication in the online world both from a theoretical and methodological perspective? In this book, Gerhard Vowe, Philipp Henn, and a group of leading international experts in the field of communication studies guide the reader through the complexities of political communication, and evaluate whether and to what extent existing theoretical approaches and research designs are relevant to the online world. In the first part of the book, nine chapters offer researchers the opportunity to test the basic assumptions of prominent theories in the field, to specify them in terms of the conditions of political communication in the online world and to modify them in view of the systematically gained experiences. The second methodological section tests the variations of content analysis, surveys, expert interviews and network analyses in an online environment and documents how successful these methods of empirical analysis have proven to be in political communication. Written accessibly and contributing to key debates on political communication, this bookshelf essential presents an indispensable account of the necessary tools needed to allow researchers decide which approach and method is better suited to answer their online problem.

Should politically concerned and engaged artistic production disregard questions or/and requirements of aesthetic reception and value? Whether art should be "aesthetic" or "political" is not a new question. Therefore, in spite of those several contemporary approaches of this issue, the answer is not set in stone and the debate is still going on. This volume aims to broaden these debates and it stems from numerous conversations with politically engaged artists and artist collectives on issues related to the "aesthetitzation of politics" versus the "politicization of art," as well as the phenomenon of the so-called "unhealthy aestheticism" in political art. Thus, this study has three interrelated aims: Firstly, it aims to offer an interdisciplinary account of the relationship between art and politics and between aesthetics and the political. Secondly, it attempts to explore what exactly makes artistic production a strong - yet neglected - field of political critique when democratic political agency, history from below and identity politics are threatened. Finally, to illuminate the relationship between critical political theory, on the one hand, and the philosophy of art, on the other by highlighting artworks' moral, political and epistemic abilities to reveal, criticize, problematize and intervene politically in our political reality.

The British government has taken steps to halt the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths of civilians in Northern Ireland, most of whom had no connection to paramilitary activities. These killings were part of a ruthless dirty war that commenced in 1970 when Brigadier Frank Kitson, a counter-insurgency specialist, was sent to Northern Ireland. Kitson had spent decades in Britain's colonies refining old, and developing new, techniques which he applied in Northern Ireland. He became the architect of a clandestine war, waged against Nationalists while ignoring Loyalist atrocities. Kitson and his colleagues were responsible for: * The establishment of the clandestine Military Reaction Force (MRF) which carried out assassinations on the streets of Belfast of suspected IRA members; * They unleashed the most violent elements of the Parachute Regiment [1 Para] to terrorise Nationalist communities which, they adjudged, were providing support for the Official and Provisional IRA; * Spreading black propaganda designed to undermine Republican but not Loyalist paramilitary groups; * Deployed psychological warfare techniques, involving the torture of internees; * Sent Kitson's 'Private Army' - Support Company of 1 Para - to Derry where they perpetrated the Bloody Sunday massacre. The British Widgery and Saville inquiries did not hold Kitson and his elite troops accountable for Bloody Sunday. Kitson's Irish War lays bare the evidence they discounted: Kitson's role in the events leading up to and surrounding that massacre; evidence from a deserter from 1 Para who joined the IRA; a deceitful MI5 agent; a courageous whistle blower whom the British state tried to discredit, and much more, all of which points to a motive for the attack on the Bogside. This book unlocks the some of the key secrets of the Dirty War that the British government is still determined to cover-up.

Rhetoric is the art of speech and persuasion, the study of argument and, in Classical times, an essential component in the education of the citizen. For rhetoricians, politics is a skill to be performed and not merely observed. Yet in modern democracies we often suspect political speech of malign intent and remain uncertain how properly to interpret and evaluate it. Public arguments are easily dismissed as 'mere rhetoric' rather than engaged critically, with citizens encouraged to be passive consumers of a media spectacle rather than active participants in a political dialogue. This volume provides a clear and instructive introduction to the skills of the rhetorical arts. It surveys critically the place of rhetoric in contemporary public life and assesses its virtues as a tool of political theory. Questions about power and identity in the practices of political communication remain central to the rhetorical tradition: how do we know that we are not being manipulated by those who seek to persuade us? Only a grasp of the techniques of rhetoric and an understanding of how they manifest themselves in contemporary politics, argues the author, can guide us in answering these perennial questions. Politics and Rhetoric draws together in a comprehensive and highly accessible way relevant ideas from discourse analysis, classical rhetoric updated to a modern setting, relevant issues in contemporary political theory, and numerous carefully chosen examples and issues from current politics. It will be essential reading for all students of politics and political communications.