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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Propaganda
The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda
and the Coercion of Consent looks at how the sharing of public
information has changed over time-and especially at the dramatic
transformation that took place in the media world in the early
decades of the 20th century. Just as the term "fake news" has
recently exploded into public consciousness, so did the concept of
propaganda a century ago. The book describes two major developments
that contributed to the "discovery" of propaganda in the decades
just before and after the First World War. The first was a shift in
the landscape of human psychology, emphasizing the role of the
irrational impulses in human behavior and renewing age old fears of
the herd mentality and the rise of the emotional mob. The second
was a social upheaval, as the stability of trustworthy local
communities faded and distant powers and faraway voices began to
dominate public discourse. Many thoughtful observers feared that
growing power of some voices meant that public consent could
actually be coerced-eroding the basic concept of democratic
government. Others persisted in trusting the basic rationality of
public opinion. Still others struggled to find ways in which
responsible leaders could guide the public without manipulating it.
This book explores the writings of six well-known American leaders
of the time-influential representatives of the political, business,
journalistic and academic worlds-who wrestled seriously with the
implications of these developments. The text underscores how their
commentaries of a century ago can offer helpful insight into what
has been happening in our contemporary world. The Fake News Panic
of a Century Ago is an excellent supplementary resource for courses
in social and intellectual history, media studies, and political
theory.
Staging West German Democracy examines how political "founding
discourses" of the nascent Federal Republic (FRG) were reflected,
reinforced, and actively manufactured by the Federal government in
conjunction with the West German, state-controlled newsreel system,
the Deutsche Wochenschau. By looking at the institutional history
of the Deutsche Wochenschau and its close relationship to the
Federal Press Office, Jan Uelzmann traces the Adenauer
administration's project of maintaining a "government channel" in
an increasingly diverse, de-centralized, and democratic West German
media landscape. Staging West German Democracy reconstructs the
company's integral role in the planning, production, and
dissemination of pro-government PR, and through detailed analyses
reveals the films to celebrate the FRG as an economically
successful and internationally connected democracy under Adenauer's
leadership. Apart from providing election propaganda for Adenauer's
CDU party, these films provided an important stabilizing factor for
the FRG's project of explaining and promoting democracy to its
citizens, and of defining its public image against the backdrops of
the Third Reich past and a competing, contemporary incarnation of
German nationhood, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In this
regard, Staging West German Democracy adds in important ways to our
understanding of the media's role in the West German nation
building process.
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