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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Propaganda
Politics is no longer the art of the possible, but of the fictive.
Its aim is not to change the world as it exists, but to affect the
way that it is perceived. In Storytelling Christian Salmon looks at
the twenty-first century hijacking of creative imagination,
anatomizing the timeless human desire for narrative form, and how
this desire is abused by the marketing mechanisms that bolster
politicians and their products: luxury brands trade on embellished
histories, managers tell stories to motivate employees, soldiers in
Iraq train on Hollywood-conceived computer games, and spin doctors
construct political lives as if they were a folk epic. This
"storytelling machine" is masterfully unveiled by Salmon, and is
shown to be more effective and insidious as a means of oppression
than anything dreamed up by Orwell.
Alexandra Kitty's vital new book is a guide to the stratagems and
techniques of war propaganda. When nations go to war, governments
need reliable and effective methods of rallying public opinion to
support their actions, regardless of the political leanings or
educational background of citizens. The Mind Under Siege explores
real life case studies and research in human motivation to show why
propaganda is more powerful, potent, and effective than other types
of persuasive messages. Reliance on primal phobias, and the threat
to reproduction, well-being, and life itself make propaganda a
reliable and powerful tool. For journalists and other news
producers, Kitty's book shows how to ask the right questions and
avoid spreading misinformation and propaganda and how to see more
insidious forms of manipulation and narrative through psychological
research and case studies.
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.
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