Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Fake Future: The Threat Of Foreign Disinformation On The U.S. And Its Allies, Brandon M. Rubsamen

Global Tides

This paper attempts to explain the threat that foreign disinformation poses for the United States Intelligence Community and its allies. The paper examines Russian disinformation from both a historical and contemporary context and how its effect on Western democracies may only be exacerbated in light of Chinese involvement and evolving technologies. Fortunately, the paper also studies practices and strategies that the United States Intelligence Community and its allied foreign counterparts may use to respond. It is hoped that this study will help shed further light on Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns and explain how the Intelligence Community can efficiently react.

Utilization Of Propaganda Throughout The Great War: A Revolutionary Experience, Andrew R. Thibaudeau

CAFE Symposium 2023

This project delves into the impact of propaganda on countries and citizens throughout World War I. It shows how the impacts of this bloodless revolution still resonate in society today, and how it has changed the world eternally, especially with the modern usage of the internet.

Book Review: Mind Over Media: Propaganda Education For A Digital Age, Faith Rogow

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities Of Space, Time, And Memory In Twentieth-Century War And Genocide, Volker Benkert, Michael Mayer

Purdue University Press Books

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide investigates interconnections between space and violence throughout the twentieth century, and how such connections informed collective memory. The interdisciplinary volume shows how entangled notions of time and space amplified by memory narratives led to continuities of violence across different conflicts creating “terrortimes” and “terrorscapes” in their wake. The volume examines such continuities of violence with the help of an analytical framework built around different themes. Its first part, spatial and temporal continuities of violence, looks at contested spaces and ideas of national, ethnic, or religious homogeneity that …

Modern American Propaganda: An Institutional History, Douglas Morrow

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy is the primary government institution in charge of overt, foreign-directed propaganda. This paper argues that the institutional culture of this institution was born and came to fruition in the period 1941-1953, and has not significantly changed since. That institutional culture includes a fierce adherence to a “strategy of truth,” with aesthetic norms being reserved and largely unemotional as a result of positioning themselves in moral and aesthetic opposition to Nazi and early Cold War Communist propaganda. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to staff these nascent institutions with artists, poets, …

Intellectual Freedom, Cultural Exchange, And Nazi Germany: The Relationship Between The Deutsch-Ausländischer Buchtausch, University Of Denver, And Other Cultural Heritage Institutions, David Fasman

University Libraries: Staff Scholarship

Shortly after Hitler’s rise to power, the Prussian State Library was restructured, birthing a new entity – the Deutsch-Ausländischer Buchtausch (German Foreign Book Exchange, DAB). The DAB was responsible for exchanging books and serials with scholarly institutions worldwide. In 1936, the University of Denver (DU) received a gift of books from the DAB. Nearly fifty percent of the books would be categorized as Nazi propaganda or eugenics literature by current standards. Upon further research, it was discovered that the DAB’s relationships included Stanford, Yale, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the …

Information Warfare: Lessons In Inoculation To Disinformation, Meghan Fitzpatrick, Ritu Gill, Jennifer F. Giles

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

While propaganda and disinformation have been used to destabilize opposing forces throughout history, the US military remains unprepared for the way these methods have been adapted to the Internet era. This article explores the modern history of disinformation campaigns and the current state of US military readiness in the face of campaigns from near-peer competitors and proposes education as the best way to prepare US servicemembers to defend against such campaigns.

From The Editor, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Parameters Spring 2022, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Les Six Continents: An Exploration Of Political Visual Rhetoric In Public Sculpture, Olivia Liu Guillotin

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Les six continents series stands as remnants of the 1878 Exposition Universelle and as a visual marker of the cultural, social, and economic culture of the time period. The series, serving as public art, continues to inform and participate in its environment and space, as it is on display by the entrance of the Musée d’Orsay today. Personified representations of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Oceania as allegorical female figures, the series offers insight into the colonial world where it emerged, and how its impact has visually been ingrained in contemporary society. By using these six statues …

How "Lyingnewspapers" Made Huey Long The Ruler Of His State: A Model Of Press-Populist Dynamics, Christina A. Georgacopoulos

LSU Master's Theses

Huey Long’s use of the phrase “lyingnewspapers” to discredit negative publicity is commonly cited as evidence of his negative relationship with the mainstream press, but he did not always hold a hostile view toward newspapers. Before the press turned against him during his enemies' attempt to impeach him as governor in 1929, newspapers were one of his central tools for political advancement. He devised strategies to attract press attention and relied on newspapers to publicize himself and propagate his ideas more frequently and consistently than he used circulars or radio broadcasts, which are commonly attributed to his political success. As …

Today’S Fake News Is Tomorrow’S Fake History: How Us History Textbooks Mirror Corporate News Media Narratives, Nolan Higdon, Mickey Huff, Jen Lyons

Secrecy and Society

The main thrust of this study is to assess how the systematic biases found in mass media journalism affect the writing of history textbooks. There has been little attention paid to how the dissemination of select news information regarding the recent past, particularly from the 1990s through the War on Terror, influences the ways in which US history is taught in schools. This study employs a critical-historical lens with a media ecology framework to compare Project Censored’s annual list of censored and under-reported stories to the leading and most adopted high school and college US history textbooks. The findings reveal …

Disintegrating The Enemy: The Pla’S Info-Messaging, Jacqueline N. Deal

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

The DoD can exploit weaknesses in Chinese military attempts at political warfare, or “enemy disintegration,” most recently observed in PLA media on the subject of the pandemic. Targeted information efforts will signal the United States’ refusal to be intimidated, expose untruths in Chinese government messaging to its citizens, and reassure relevant third parties of US military resolve.

The Color Line In Communism: The East German Ministry Of Culture’S Portrayal Of Paul Robeson’S State Visit, Colin J. Rensch

Masters Theses

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Cold War, the American Civil Rights movement, and anticolonialism combined to create a complex political, social, and economic landscape and a division of the globe into the so-called first, second, and third worlds. It is within this context that African American performer and activist Paul Robeson traveled to the GDR for an official visit in October 1960.

This visit was highly significant in light of the oppression Robeson had experienced at the hands of the US State Department. In response to Robeson’s communist sympathy, the State Department had revoked Robeson’s passport in 1950, and …

“Reds Driven Off”: The Us Media’S Propaganda During The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident, Steven M. Landry

Student Publications

In 2008, the Annenburg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a poll to determine just how informed voters were following that year’s presidential election. One of the most shocking things they found was that 46.4% of those polled still believed that Saddam Hussein played a role in the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11th, 2001. No evidence had ever emerged linking him to it after 5 years of war in Iraq, but that did not matter, as “voters, once deceived, tend to stay that way despite all evidence.” Botched initial reporting can permanently entrench false …

The Anatomy Of Patriotism: The Commodification Of American Gender Roles And The Female Body In World War Ii Print Media, Adison Beals

Voces Novae

During World War II, the United States turned to the female gender roles that underpinned American society and commodified them in print media to sell the war effort and female participation in it, resulting in the appearance of hands, lips, and legs in propaganda, makeup advertisements, and pinup images. This phenomenon reflects how physical presentation indicates social anxieties and American constructions of gender, as well as how the female body is imbued with cultural symbolism.

A Roundtable For Victoria M. Grieve, Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood In The 1950s, Thomas Field Jr., Julia L. Mickenberg, Lori Clune, Mary Brennan, Donna Alvah, Victoria M. Grieve

Publications

Dr. Thomas Field introduces a roundtable discussion of Victoria M. Grieve's Little Cold Warriors: American Childhood in the 1950s, providing a synopsis of reviewer critiques before the reviewers expand on their views and the author responds.

Esther Reed's Political Sentiments And Rhetoric During The Revolutionary War, Kennedy Harkins

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

In 1780, during the final stretch of the American Revolutionary War, Esther Reed penned the broadside "Sentiments of an American Woman." It circulated in Philadelphia, persuading citizens to turn over their last dollars to the cause. Reed's broadside called to action the women of Philadelphia; they knocked on doors, campaigned with words, and stepped firmly into the "man's world" of politics and revolution. Reed's words were so effective that women in cities across the colonies took to raising money as well. Using New Historicist and feminist reading strategies, this study compares and contrasts Reed's rhetoric to Thomas Paine's Common Sense …

Bonding Images: Photography And Film As Acts Of Perpetration, Christophe Busch

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical and contemporary cases of collective violence show an incremental use of photography and film to capture and disseminate violent acts. Recording cruelty during conflict seems to be a highly ritualised practice that urges the question what communicative and psychological functions these acts have? Why and how does perpetrator photography shape a binding moral world that divides 'us' versus 'them'? These visualising acts are commonly seen as proof of power that desensitises the perpetrators and dehumanises the victims. This contribution focuses on the imagery of the Holocaust, looks into the functions that capturing and sharing cruelty has on the evolution …

The Real Winner Of The Second World War: Patriotic Consumption And The Formation Of A Society Of Spin, Jordan T. Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The unique circumstances in the United States during the Second World War allowed for business to continue as usual on the home front. Advertisers, public relations experts, and big business all worked for the government to promote the war effort. For a period of time major companies in the United States were producing advertisements that persuaded citizens to support rationing, buy war bonds, hate the enemy, and keep their brand names in mind in the post-war years. Companies who supported the war effort had their brands connected with ideas of patriotism and enjoyed the success of brand loyal consumers in …

Parallels Between The U.S. And Russia: The Trump Administration, Andrew S. Langmeier

International ResearchScape Journal

Russia has come up repeatedly in discussions of Donald Trump and the current U.S. administration. In time for the 100^th anniversary of the 1917 Russian revolution, this paper aims to describe the importance and interconnectedness of image, information, hegemony, and power by exploring connections between the U.S. and Russia. An interdisciplinary approach drawing from fields such as cultural studies, linguistics, and anthropology will be applied to selected events and actions of the Trump administration. This study provides a method of framing US political events against Russian history and contemporary reality.

Conservative Right-Wing Protest Rhetoric In The Cold War Era Of Segregationist Mobilization, Devon A. Wright

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the early Cold War decades, the Citizens’ Councils of America (CCA) became the flagship conservative right-wing social movement organization (SMO). As part of its organizational activities, it engaged in a highly sophisticated propaganda effort to mobilize pro-segregationist opinion, merging traditional racist arguments with modern Cold War geopolitics to characterize civil rights activism and federal civil rights reforms as an effort to bring about a tyrannical, Soviet-inspired, dictatorship. Through a content discourse analysis, this research aims to contribute to understanding what factors determine how SMO’s deploy propaganda rhetoric. The main hypothesis is that geopolitical factors, defined here as specific geographic …

A Turn To Realism And Humanism From Propaganda: Chinese Photojournalism Practices Between 1976 And 1988, Shi Li

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

China’s photojournalistic field undertook great transformations in the 1980s. While the conservatives continued to cling to the propagandistic doctrine, a more progressive trend was emerging. The tension between these two forces had its historical roots and would go on to shape the way Chinese photojournalism developed. Based on archival research and in-depth interviews, this paper revisits the history of Chinese photojournalism practices between 1937 and 1988 and identifies the key features of these three periods: the wartime propaganda of 1937—1949, the intensification of propaganda of 1949 —1976, and the transformation to realism and humanism in 1976—1988.

Secrecy, Confidentiality And "Dirty Work": The Case Of Public Relations, Sue Curry Jansen

Secrecy and Society

No abstract provided.

Their Swords, Our Plowshares: "Peaceful" Nuclear Weapons, Propaganda, And Cold War Memory Expressed In Film: 1959-1989, Michael A. St. Jacques

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons as tools of warfare and diplomacy. Immediately following the Second World War, American attitudes toward the atomic bomb were overwhelmingly positive. Once the Soviet Union developed their own atomic bomb and the United States lost the atomic monopoly, attitudes started to shift. After the first hydrogen bombs tests, public sentiment, as demonstrated in film, became markedly negative. To counter these negative attitudes and portray their nuclear weapons as peaceful tools instead of weapons of mass destruction, both the United States and the Soviet Union developed …

Cult Of Personality: North Korea Under Kim Il-Sung, Tyler Lutz

Senior Capstone Theses

This paper is about origins of the totalitarian regime in North Korea and it's founding father, Kim Il-Sung. Specifically, the paper talks about how Kim was able to rise to power, the cult of personality he was able to construct around himself, and how he is deified through propaganda.

The Knights Of The Front: Medieval History’S Influence On Great War Propaganda, Haley E. Claxton

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Spanning a number of academic areas, “Knights of the Front: Medieval History’s Influence on Great War Propaganda” focuses on the emergence of medieval imagery in the First World War propaganda. Examining several specific uses of medieval symbolism in propaganda posters from both Central and Allied powers, the article provides insight into the narrative of war, both politically and culturally constructed. The paper begins with an overview of the psychology behind visual persuasion and the history behind Europe’s cultural affinity for “chivalry,” then continues into specific case studies of period propaganda posters that hold not only themes of military glory and …

Teaching About Propaganda: An Examination Of The Historical Roots Of Media Literacy, Renee Hobbs, Sandra Mcgee

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Contemporary propaganda is ubiquitous in our culture today as public relations and marketing efforts have become core dimensions of the contemporary communication system, affecting all forms of personal, social and public expression. To examine the origins of teaching and learning about propaganda, we examine some instructional materials produced in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA), which popularized an early form of media literacy that promoted critical analysis in responding to propaganda in mass communication, including in radio, film and newspapers. They developed study guides and distributed them widely, popularizing concepts from classical rhetoric and expressing them in …

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Michelle Cunningham

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The focus of this proposed thesis will be on the animated propaganda films the studios of Walt Disney produced for the government during World War II, analyzing three of the most widely viewed animated features: The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer's Face (1943), and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). These government-financed films were used to encourage Americans to pay their taxes; they generally depicted Germany as a threatening enemy and encouraged support for America's effort and involvement in the war. Using a semiotics theoretical approach, the thesis will analyze these films as propaganda to demonstrate how …

The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973, Valeria Andrea Gurr-Ovalle

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis provides an exploratory overview of the role the El Mercurio newspaper played along with the military after the Chilean coup of 1973. The study reviews the contents of the newspaper's front pages, including their coverage of the events during the coup. The thesis will show how the paper revisited its coverage each year on the anniversary -- September 11th and 12th -- beginning with the years dominated by the military government, from 1973 through 1990, and continuing through the transition to democracy, from 1991 through 2007. The primary method used in the course of this examination is a …