Politics and Propaganda

Politics and Propaganda

Author: Nicholas J. O'Shaughnessy

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780719068539

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From the taunting videos of Osama Bin Laden to the partisan euphoria of the embedded journalist, from the visual rhetoric of the anti-globalisation movement to the empire of spin to the scalding polemics of American campaign advertising, propaganda is back. This book provides a full and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of propaganda, its meaning, content and urgent significance. It is one of the most original works ever published on the subject. While it applies a conceptual approach to the study of propaganda, the theoretics are grounded in practice. Insightful case studies on Symbolic Government, negative campaign advertising, single issue group polemic and corporate propaganda, culminate in a vivid narrative of the role of propaganda in driving the remorseless new conflict which began on September 11 2001. Contents Part One: Defining what and reasoning why 1. A question of meaning 2. Explaining propaganda Part Two: A conceptual arrangement 3. An essential trinity: rhetoric, symbolism and myth 4. Elements of propaganda: foundations; why we need enemies; enmity in action Part Three: case studies in propaganda 5. Privatising propaganda: the rise of the single issue 6. Evangelism and corporate propaganda 7. Propaganda and the symbolic state: a British experience 8. 9-11 and war 9. Weapons of mass deception: propaganda, the media and the Iraq war Afterword - The impact of propaganda Index Nicholas O'Shaughnessy is Professor of Marketing and Communication at the University of Keele


Network Propaganda

Network Propaganda

Author: Yochai Benkler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-17

Total Pages: 473

ISBN-13: 0190923644

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This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played a decisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives. Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news stories together with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, and the Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment. The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians, radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democratic politics.


After the Propaganda State

After the Propaganda State

Author: Daniel C. Lynch

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0804734615

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This book argues that a combination of property rights reform, administrative fragmentation, and technological advance has caused the post-Mao Chinese state to lose a significant degree of control over “thought work,” or the management of propagandistic communications flowing into and through Chinese society. The East Asian economic meltdown of the late 1990’s has reinforced the conviction, derived from Communism’s nearly worldwide collapse a decade earlier, that the only path to sustained prosperity combines an openness to trade and investment with market economies that are minimally impinged upon by state intervention. But, the author argues, the situations in China demonstrates that the political, social, and cultural costs of “reform and opening” are high. Notably, the construction of culture in China has fallen into the hands of lower-level government administrators, semiautonomous individuals and groups in society, and foreign-based public and private organizations. Contrary to the prevailing neo-liberal wisdom, however, this transformation has not generated a Habermasian public sphere and an autonomous civil society that will lead China inevitably toward democracy. Instead, the immediate result has been “public sphere praetorianism,” a condition in which the construction of culture becomes excessively market-oriented without being directed toward the achievement of public political goals. The case of China shows that under such conditions, a society is set adrift and rudderless, with its members unable or unwilling to channel their energies toward the resolution of pressing public concerns, and communication flows dissolve into a patternless mosaic. True, the flows are much less constrained by government than ever before—an important precondition for democratization. But the short-term effect is actually an enervating depoliticization—even narcotization—of society, while the state itself paradoxically continues to lose control.


Press, Propaganda and Politics

Press, Propaganda and Politics

Author: Rubén Jarazo Álvarez

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-08-11

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1443865672

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This collective work aims to compare media (and in particular cultural press) in Francoist Spain and Communist Romania, placing the two opposing paradigms in a common approach with the intention of identifying shared patterns and intricate connections between them, but, at the same time, without ignoring their radical differences. This comparison is performed both explicitly, through several chapters focusing on the general methodological implications of such a comparison between Francoist Spain and Communist Romania in the development of totalitarian / dictatorial propagandistic systems; and implicitly, by offering the academic frame to a series of case studies from both regimes. The contributors to this volume – Spanish, Anglo-Saxon and Romanian scholars – approach several aspects of media in relation to politics, propaganda, historical or social aspects in the two regimes, based on their academic backgrounds: history, cultural studies, media and literature. The volume intends to suggest – through its collection of general, comparative or analytic chapters, as well as through a new approach on two political and cultural phenomena otherwise studied as opposing paradigms – the need for a larger debate on the potential of the approach to these phenomena in a common framework.


Propaganda and American Democracy

Propaganda and American Democracy

Author: Nancy Snow

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2014-03-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0807154148

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Propaganda has become an inescapable part of modern American society. On a daily basis, news outlets, politicians, and the entertainment industry -- with motives both dubious and well-intentioned -- launch propagandistic appeals. In Propaganda and American Democracy, eight writers explore various aspects of modern propaganda and its impact. Contributors include leading scholars in the field of propaganda studies: Anthony Pratkanis tackles the thorny issue of the inherent morality of propaganda; J. Michael Sproule explores the extent to which propaganda permeates the U.S. news media; and Randal Marlin charts the methods used to identify, research, and reform the use of propaganda in the public sphere. Other chapters incorporate a strong historical component. Mordecai Lee deftly analyzes the role of wartime propaganda, while Dan Kuehl provides an astute commentary on former and current practices, and Garth S. Jowett investigates how Hollywood has been used as a vehicle for propaganda. In a more personal vein, Asra Q. Nomani recounts her journalistic role in the highly calculated and tragic example of the ultimate act of anti-American propaganda perpetrated by al-Qaeda and carried out against her former colleague, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Propaganda and American Democracy offers an in-depth examination and demonstration of the pervasiveness of propaganda, providing citizens with the knowledge needed to mediate its effect on their lives.Edited by Nancy Snow


How Propaganda Works

How Propaganda Works

Author: Jason Stanley

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-05-26

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1400865808

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How propaganda undermines democracy and why we need to pay attention Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us—not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid. He examines how propaganda operates subtly, how it undermines democracy—particularly the ideals of democratic deliberation and equality—and how it has damaged democracies of the past. Focusing on the shortcomings of liberal democratic states, Stanley provides a historically grounded introduction to democratic political theory as a window into the misuse of democratic vocabulary for propaganda's selfish purposes. He lays out historical examples, such as the restructuring of the US public school system at the turn of the twentieth century, to explore how the language of democracy is sometimes used to mask an undemocratic reality. Drawing from a range of sources, including feminist theory, critical race theory, epistemology, formal semantics, educational theory, and social and cognitive psychology, he explains how the manipulative and hypocritical declaration of flawed beliefs and ideologies arises from and perpetuates inequalities in society, such as the racial injustices that commonly occur in the United States. How Propaganda Works shows that an understanding of propaganda and its mechanisms is essential for the preservation and protection of liberal democracies everywhere.


Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention

Media, Propaganda and the Politics of Intervention

Author: Florian Zollmann

Publisher: Peter Lang Us

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9781433128240

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"This study investigates US, UK and German news media coverage of a range of cases that involved human rights violations during military operations including Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Egypt. It will be demonstrated that 'humanitarian intervention' and R2P are evoked in the news media if so called 'enemy' countries of Western states conduct human rights violations. The Western news media shows far less concern for human rights violations if they are conducted by Western states and their 'allies'. The news media is supposed to scrutinize governments particularly during times of war. Yet, this study demonstrates that the news media plays a crucial role in facilitating a selective process of shaming during the build-up towards military interventions. This process has led to an erosion of internationally agreed norms of non-intervention, as enshrined in the UN Charter".--Provided by publisher.


Affective Politics of Digital Media

Affective Politics of Digital Media

Author: Megan Boler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1000169170

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This interdisciplinary, international collection examines how sophisticated digital practices and technologies exploit and capitalize on emotions, with particular focus on how social media are used to exacerbate social conflicts surrounding racism, misogyny, and nationalism. Radically expanding the study of media and political communications, this book bridges humanities and social sciences to explore affective information economies, and how emotions are being weaponized within mediatized political landscapes. The chapters cover a wide range of topics: how clickbait, "fake news," and right-wing actors deploy and weaponize emotion; new theoretical directions for understanding affect, algorithms, and public spheres; and how the wedding of big data and behavioral science enables new frontiers of propaganda, as seen in the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook scandal. The collection includes original interviews with luminary media scholars and journalists. The book features contributions from established and emerging scholars of communications, media studies, affect theory, journalism, policy studies, gender studies, and critical race studies to address questions of concern to scholars, journalists, and students in these fields and beyond.


Social Media and Democracy

Social Media and Democracy

Author: Nathaniel Persily

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-09-03

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1108835554

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A state-of-the-art account of what we know and do not know about the effects of digital technology on democracy.


Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Politics in Eighteenth-century England

Public Opinion, Propaganda, and Politics in Eighteenth-century England

Author: Thomas Whipple Perry

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1962

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780674724006

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This book is the first thorough account of the Jewish Naturalization Act of 1753, a notorious but little-understood episode in English history. The author discusses the position of the Jews in the mid-eighteenth century and explains why they sought and obtained passage of the bill, which was opposed with a well-organized propaganda campaign.