Showing results for "History" in Propaganda & Political Psychology

This gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control.

In today’s chaotic world, where the multiplication of information sources creates competing narratives, credibility is the key to winning the war of ideas. This is the reason why governments and corporations resort to astroturfing - creation of ostensibly grassroots movements set up to advance political agendas and commercial campaigns. The democratization of information and polarization of politics offer a perfect storm.

Historic levels of polarization, a disaffected and frustrated electorate, and widespread distrust of government, the news media, and traditional political leadership set the stage in 2016 for an unexpected, unlikely, and unprecedented presidential contest. Donald Trump’s campaign speeches and other rhetoric seemed on the surface to be simplistic, repetitive, and disorganized to many. As Demagogue for President shows, Trump’s campaign strategy was anything but simple.

A seminal and controversial figure in the history of political thought and public relations, Edward Bernays pioneered the scientific technique of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which he famously dubbed the "engineering of consent". During World War I, he was an integral part of the US Committee on Public Information, or CPI, a powerful propaganda apparatus that was mobilized to package, advertise, and sell the war to the American people as one that would "Make the World Safe for Democracy".

First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of "pseudo-events" - events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported - and the contemporary definition of celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". Since then Daniel J. Boorstin's prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any listeners who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.

Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last 70 years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging. The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times.

How three key figures in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran built ruthless irregular warfare campaigns that are eroding American power. In Three Dangerous Men, defense expert Seth Jones argues that the US is woefully unprepared for the future of global competition. While America has focused on building...

One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government's sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea's information underground.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would close the digital divide under his leadership. However, the divide still affects people and communities across the country. The complex and persistent reality is that millions of residents live in digital deserts, and many more face disproportionate difficulties when it comes to getting and staying online, especially people of color, seniors, rural residents, and farmers in remote areas. Economic and health disparities are worsening in rural communities without available internet access.

Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away. Through the weaponization of social media, the Internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the Internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.

A través del examen de múltiples fuentes Confino, muestra que la Contraofensiva no fue una excepcionalidad o una "aventura mesiánica", sino una estrategia posible en la línea de desarrollo de Montoneros, inseparable de la situación de exilio, de la historia política del país y de la región.

Democratic Delusions explores the potential of our media and tech systems to be democratic and contribute to a just and transformative democracy. This is only possible, Natalie Fenton argues, by first situating our political systems and mediated worlds within global capitalism. By interrogating different media and their relationship to seven key elements of democracy—power, participation, freedom, equality, public good, trust, and hope—the book asks: What is the response of society when the ability of news media to speak truth to power has been restricted by corporate logic?

The “gripping” (The Atlantic) story of five families shattered by pernicious, pervasive conspiracy theories, and how we might set ourselves free from a crisis that could haunt American life for generations. “Excellent . . . This is the intimate side of the cold civil war America has been...

Zieht sich eine liberale Gesellschaft gerade den Boden weg, auf dem sie fest stehen sollte? Ein Essay darüber, was die digitale Massenkommunikation zwischenmenschlich anrichtet. Nichts hat das Zusammenleben so umfassend verändert wie die Digitalisierung – wir denken, fühlen und streiten anders, seit wir dauervernetzt und überinformiert sind. Demokratiepolitisch bedeutsam wird dies bei der vielbeschworenen Debattenkultur. Denn die Umgangsformen der sogenannten Sozialen Medien haben längst auf die anderen Arenen übergegriffen, Politik und Journalismus spielen schon nach den neuen, erbarmungsloseren Regeln.

How can political campaigns fight back against disinformation? A decade after The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, which Politico called "Moneyball for politics," journalist Sasha Issenberg returns to the cutting edge of political innovation to reveal how campaigns are...

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was a period of remarkable voices: Churchill’s speeches, de Gaulle’s broadcasts from exile, Richard Dimbleby and Vera Lynn. Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda while at the same time eyewitness testimonies gave a voice to everyone, securing the BBC’s reputation as a purveyor of truth.

A direct counterpoint to fear mongering headlines about shariah law—a Muslim American legal expert tells the real story, eliminating stereotypes and assumptions with compassion, irony, and humor Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist...

This trenchant analysis examines the many ways our society's increasingly tenuous commitment to facts laid the groundwork for Donald Trump's rise to power. Award-winning journalist Nathan Bomey argues that Trump did not usher the post-truth era into being. He was its inevitable outcome. Bomey...

An accessible guide that breaks down the complex issues around mass surveillance and data privacy and explores the negative consequences it can have on individual citizens and their communities. No one is exempt from data mining: by owning a smartphone, or using social media or a credit card, we...

The brilliant, amoral, and spectacularly bold Bessie Tyler and Edward Young Clarke - together, the Southern Publicity Association - met the fervent William Joseph Simmons (founder of the second KKK), saw an opportunity, and played on his many weaknesses. Tyler and Clarke took Simmons' dying and broken KKK, with its 2,000-3,000 associates in Georgia and Alabama, and in a few short years swelled its membership to nearly five million.