This is an eclectic, interdisciplinary overview of persuasive strategies and propaganda techniques. Living in a saturated media environment, we are crowded from all sides by persuasive messages and information. Advice, promotion and propaganda form a spectrum of persuasion - and everywhere we see it performed in its full theatricality, complete with actors, scripts, props and costumes. Media, Persuasion and Propaganda guides the reader through the many varieties of persuasion and its performance, exploring the protocols of rhetoric unique to the medium, from orality and print to film and digital images. Using case studies and exercises, this innovative study poses challenging questions: How do individuals and organisations exert influence to build communities and networks? What role do media play in communicating persuasive messages? How do we use recent discoveries in cognitive science to promote a cause, advocate social change or market ideas and products? How do we defend ourselves against manipulation and undue influence and when does persuasion turn into propaganda? It uses global examples and case studies to define the spectrum of persuasion, from promotion to propaganda. It examines the performance of propaganda, from orality to new media. It includes exercises in each chapter to reinforce the key themes and promote discussion. 1. Orientalism: it explores western scholarly and media portrayals of the Orient the Middle East, North Africa, and Islam for ideological purposes; 2. Abu Ghraib Exposed; it examines the disturbing images which emerged in the US media in 2004 exposing the torture of Iraqi prisoners by the American military and CIA operatives in Abu Ghraib prison, Baghdad; 3. PR and Climate Change: it delves into Cuba's Revolutionary Landscape to look at the presentation of climate issues; 4. The Power of Nightmares; British filmmaker Adam Curtis argues that the global 'War on Terror' is based on a myth providing politicians with their power to govern; and; 5. Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation Scanda. It also includes: 6. The Israel Lobby: In March 2009, British MP George Galloway was denied entry into Canada because he supported Hamas, an elected political party in Gaza identified as a terrorist organisation by the Canadian government. Soules examines the pro Israel lobby as a significant source of flak challenging media reports on Israeli Palestinian relations; 7. Fox News: raises issues about journalistic ethics and management interference, especially when that interference is sustained, partisan, and inflammatory; and 8. Ai Wei Wei: Never Sorry. In his notorious 1995 performance piece, dissident Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei photographed himself dropping an ancient Han Dynasty urn which smashed at his feet. This case study explores the aftermath and how Ai Wei Wei became a hero of dissent for critics of China's human rights policies.

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.

Modern presidents regularly appeal over the heads of Congress to the people at large to generate support for public policies. The Rhetorical Presidency makes the case that this development, born at the outset of the twentieth century, is the product of conscious political choices that fundamentally transformed the presidency and the meaning of American governance. Now with a new foreword by Russell Muirhead and a new afterword by the author, this landmark work probes political pathologies and analyzes the dilemmas of presidential statecraft. Extending a tradition of American political writing that begins with The Federalist and continues with Woodrow Wilson's Congressional Government, The Rhetorical Presidency remains a pivotal work in its field.

This major study of German attitudes toward England during the Great War, 1914-18, continues the story of Anglo-German antagonism where previous studies have ended. It shows how German propaganda sought to portray Britain as the main enemy of the German people, and focuses on the decision to launch unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain in January 1917, thus bringing the United States into the conflict. The book concludes by examining the contribution of anti-English feeling to the growth of right wing extremism in Germany after the war.

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. This book analyzes the shocking extent of their collaboration.

Drawing on newspapers, archival sources, and memoirs, Spectacular Politics shows how, as President of the Second Republic and then as Emperor Napoleon III, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte used public speech and spectacle to dazzle and seduce the French population, helping to pioneer the modern techniques of image politics and the manipulation of a mass electorate.
Elected President of the Second Republic in 1848, the year of the inception of universal male suffrage, this nephew of Napoleon I overthrew that Republic in 1851 to establish himself as Emperor Napoleon III, a title he kept for almost twenty years. During this period, Louis-Napoleon used events as diverse as the annual national holiday on the birthday of Napoleon I, the glitzy inaugurations of Paris's new streets, the universal expositions, and the many military reviews of the time to stage elaborate public celebrations.
Author Matthew Truesdell shows how these events were more than just festive amusements, but were in fact some of Louis-Napoleon's key tools in the projection before a mass audience of powerful images that allowed him to present himself as the incarnation of the national will and the ideal leader for the age. His ability to package his ideas in short, appealing verbal slogans made him one of the most successful political orators in French history. He had a knack for coming up with the felicitous phrase, the emotionally engaging slogan that summed up his policy in simple terms and was infinitely repeated in newspapers, speeches, songs, and poems, in the "soundbite" style that dominates politics today.
But this study also goes beyond the story of Louis-Napoleon's attempts to manipulate public opinion to examine how his political opponents--especially the republicans--used similar techniques in their ultimately successful effort to supplant his regime.
Spectacular Politics makes a significant contribution to the larger history of the discovery of image and spectacle as tools of political manipulation. It will be of interest to scholars of modern French history, modern Europe, and the history of politics.

Collects and comments on materials about the theory and practice of propaganda in twentieth century war and politics. World War I was the first "total" war in history, and propaganda was disseminated to affirm the righteous cause, sustain morale, discomfit the enemy, placate allies, and pressure neutrals. The process continued in each war thereafter, down to and including the 1991 Gulf War, differentiating only to the extent that propagandists had access to ever more elaborate technologies of mass communications. The bibliography includes works about propaganda theory; sources that deal with the motivation, planning, and purpose of propaganda; includes sources relating to the media through which the propaganda was disseminated; and samples of actual propaganda, ranging from feature films to published pamphlets. The author has chosen entries that provide the most useful sampling of the great variety of propaganda theory and practice that has developed in the twentieth century, with reference specifically to war and politics.

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.

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.

At the end of the First World War, India's government officials and nationalist politicians began to recognize the need for an organized communications network. The challenge for government and nationalists alike was to create a propaganda machine that could disseminate news to a large and diverse population, at the same time eliciting the desired political response. Milton Israel describes the role of the press in the last stage of the nationalist struggle in India on the eve of the British departure.

This text examines President Woodrow Wilson's policies regarding the future of the Danubian basin. It reveals that American attitudes and policies toward Hungarian participation in the Dual Monarchy were influenced by propaganda, the domestic American press and the demands of diplomacy.

Much of the story about the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany has yet to be told. In Motherland in Danger, Karel Berkhoff addresses one of the most neglected questions facing historians of the Second World War: how did the Soviet leadership sell the campaign against the Germans to the people on the home front? For Stalin, the obstacles were manifold. Repelling the German invasion would require a mobilization so large that it would test the limits of the Soviet state. Could the USSR marshal the manpower necessary to face the threat? How could the authorities overcome inadequate infrastructure and supplies? Might Stalin's regime fail to survive a sustained conflict with the Germans? Motherland in Danger takes us inside the Stalinist state to witness, from up close, its propaganda machine. Using sources in many languages, including memoirs and documents of the Soviet censor, Berkhoff explores how the Soviet media reflected-and distorted-every aspect of the war, from the successes and blunders on the front lines to the institution of forced labor on farm fields and factory floors. He also details the media's handling of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, as well as its stinting treatment of the Allies, particularly the United States, the UK, and Poland. Berkhoff demonstrates not only that propaganda was critical to the Soviet war effort but also that it has colored perceptions of the war to the present day, both inside and outside of Russia.

A groundbreaking look at how the interrogation rooms of the Korean War set the stage for a new kind of battle-not over land but over human subjects Traditional histories of the Korean War have long focused on violations of the thirty-eighth parallel, the line drawn by American and Soviet officials in 1945 dividing the Korean peninsula. But The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War presents an entirely new narrative, shifting the perspective from the boundaries of the battlefield to inside the interrogation room. Upending conventional notions of what we think of as geographies of military conflict, Monica Kim demonstrates how the Korean War evolved from a fight over territory to one over human interiority and the individual human subject, forging the template for the US wars of intervention that would predominate during the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Kim looks at how, during the armistice negotiations, the United States and their allies proposed a new kind of interrogation room: one in which POWs could exercise their "free will" and choose which country they would go to after the ceasefire. The global controversy that erupted exposed how interrogation rooms had become a flashpoint for the struggles between the ambitions of empire and the demands for decolonization, as the aim of interrogation was to produce subjects who attested to a nation's right to govern. The complex web of interrogators and prisoners-Japanese-American interrogators, Indian military personnel, Korean POWs and interrogators, and American POWs-that Kim uncovers contradicts the simple story in US popular memory of "brainwashing" during the Korean War. Bringing together a vast range of sources that track two generations of people moving between three continents, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War delves into an essential yet overlooked aspect of modern warfare in the twentieth century.

Using interviews of Nazi officials and German publishers, as well as printed and manuscript sources, Mr. Hale tells how the Nazi party developed its own insignificant party press into mass circulation newspapers, and how it forced the transfer of ownership of important papers to camouflaged holding companies controlled by the party's central publishing house. Contents: Introduction. I. The Volkischer Beobachter--Central Organ of the Nazi Party. II. The Nazi Party Press, 1925-1933. III. The Organization of Total Control. IV. The Party and the Publishing Industry, 1933-1934. V. The Final Solution--The Amann Ordinances. VI. Political and Economic Cleansing of the Press. VII. The Captive Publishing Industry, 1936-1939. VIII. The German Press in Wartime. Index. Originally published in 1964. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"The most comprehensive bibliography yet published in the public opinion field." --Journalism Quarterly. Besides a selection of the most significant titles from earlier years, this book contains a comprehensive listing of books, pamphlets, and articles which appeared between 1934 and 1943. Originally published in 1946. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In the late seventeenth century the role of printed propaganda in manipulating public consciousness became increasingly explicit, and governments developed systematic controls over the printed word. This book considers the purposes, mechanisms, content, and audience of royal printed propaganda in early modern France. The author first sketches the impact of the invention of printing and characterizes propaganda generally during the reign of Louis XIV. In succeeding chapters he discusses the theory and practice of censorship and the government's relationships with the recently established French periodical press, presenting a balanced portrait of the crown's objectives and mixed success in influencing the sources of opinion. The varieties of government-inspired pamphlet propaganda are carefully and extensively analyzed, and signed royal propaganda receives special attention. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Pirates and Emperors is a brilliant exploration of the role of the United States in the Middle East that exposes how the media manipulates public opinion about what constitutes terrorism. Chomsky masterfully argues that appreciating the differences between state terror and nongovernmental terror is crucial to stopping terrorism and understanding why atrocities like the bombing of the World Trade Center and the killing of the Charlie Hebdo journalists happen.

A brilliant, shattering, and convincing account of United States-backed suppression of political and human rights in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and the role of the media in misreporting these policies The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism relentlessly dissects the official views of establishment scholars and their journals. The best and brightest pundits of the status quo emerge from this book thoroughly denuded of their credibility.

A visual survey of the public myths and collective symbols used in the making of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the subsequent war with Iraq. The book traces a remarkable period of history in which the power of words and images successfully challenged the military might of an established state, setting forth an avalanche of public sentiment that led to revolution.

Human attention is in the highest demand it has ever been. The drastic increase in available information has compelled individuals to find a way to sift through the media that is literally at their fingertips. Content recommendation systems have emerged as the technological solution to this social and informational problem, but they've also created a bigger crisis in confirming our biases by showing us only, and exactly, what it predicts we want to see. Data versus Democracy investigates and explores how, in the era of social media, human cognition, algorithmic recommendation systems, and human psychology are all working together to reinforce (and exaggerate) human bias. The dangerous confluence of these factors is driving media narratives, influencing opinions, and possibly changing election results. In this book, algorithmic recommendations, clickbait, familiarity bias, propaganda, and other pivotal concepts are analyzed and then expanded upon via fascinating and timely case studies: the 2016 US presidential election, Ferguson, GamerGate, international political movements, and more events that come to affect every one of us. What are the implications of how we engage with information in the digital age? Data versus Democracy explores this topic and an abundance of related crucial questions. We live in a culture vastly different from any that has come before. In a society where engagement is currency, we are the product. Understanding the value of our attention, how organizations operate based on this concept, and how engagement can be used against our best interests is essential in responsibly equipping ourselves against the perils of disinformation. Who This Book Is For Individuals who are curious about how social media algorithms work and how they can be manipulated to influence culture. Social media managers, data scientists, data administrators, and educators will find this book particularly relevant to their work.

Political analyst Mark Smith offers the most original and compelling explanation yet of why America has swung to the right in recent decades. How did the GOP transform itself from a party outgunned and outmaneuvered into one that defines the nation's most important policy choices?

Conventional wisdom attributes the Republican resurgence to a political bait and switch--the notion that conservatives win elections on social issues like abortion and religious expression, but once in office implement far-reaching policies on the economic issues downplayed during campaigns. Smith illuminates instead the eye-opening reality that economic matters have become more central, not less, to campaigns and the public agenda. He analyzes a half century of speeches, campaign advertisements, party platforms, and intellectual writings, systematically showing how Republican politicians and conservative intellectuals increasingly gave economic justifications for policies they once defended through appeals to freedom. He explains how Democrats similarly conceived economic justifications for their own policies, but unlike Republicans they changed positions on issues rather than simply offering new arguments and thus helped push the national discourse inexorably to the right.

"The Right Talk" brings clarity, reason, and hard-nosed evidence to a contentious subject. Certain to enrich the debate about the conservative ascendancy in America, this book will provoke discussions and reactions for years to come.

A powerful critique of how manipulation of media gives rise to disinformation, intolerance, and divisiveness, and what can be done to change direction. "Mickey Huff and Nolan Higdon emphasize what we can do today to restore the power of facts, truth, and fair, inclusive journalism as tools for people to keep political and corporate power subordinate to the engaged citizenry and the common good."-Ralph Nader The role of news media in a free society is to investigate, inform, and provide a crucial check on political power. But does it? It's no secret that the goal of corporate-owned media is to increase the profits of the few, not to empower the many. As a result, people are increasingly immersed in an information system structured to reinforce their social biases and market to their buying preferences. Journalism's essential role has been drastically compromised, and Donald Trump's repeated claims of "fake news" and framing of the media as "an enemy of the people" have made a bad scenario worse. Written in the spirit of resistance and hope, United States of Distraction offers a clear, concise appraisal of our current situation, and presents readers with action items for how to improve it. Praise for United States of Distraction: "A war of distraction is underway, media is the weapon, and our minds are the battlefield. Higdon and Huff have written a brilliant book of how we've gotten to this point, and how to educate ourselves to fight back and win."-Henry A. Giroux, author of American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism "A timely and urgent demand re-asserting the central importance of civic pursuits-not commercialism-in U.S. media and society."-Ralph Nader "Higdon and Huff have produced the best short introduction to the nature of Trump-era journalism and how the 'Post-Truth' media world is inimical to a democratic society that I have seen. The book is provocative and an entertaining read. Best of all, the analysis in United States of Distraction leads to concrete and do-able recommendations for how we can rectify this deplorable situation."-Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times "The U.S. wouldn't be able to hide its empire in plain sight were it not for the subservient 'free' press. United States of Distraction shows, in chilling detail, America's major media dysfunction-how the gutting of the fourth estate paved the road for fascism and what tools are critical to salvage our democracy."-Abby Martin, The Empire Files "Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff provides us with a fearless and dangerous text that refuses the post-truth proliferation of fake news, disinformation, and media that serve the interests of the few. This is a vital wake-up call for how the public can protect itself against manipulation and authoritarianism through education and public interest media."-George Yancy, author of Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America and Professor of Philosophy at Emory University "United States of Distraction challenges our hegemon-media's ideological mind control and the occupation of human thought. ... Huff and Higdon correctly call for mass critical resistance through truth telling by free minds. Power to the people!"-Peter Phillips, author of Giants: The Global Power Elite