Search

This paper discursively examines Nasheeds as a powerful propaganda tool used by the Islamic State. IS produced Nasheeds as a media stratagem during its territorial victories (boom) and defeats (bust). This paper aims to analyse how IS constructs its own version of reality to gain grounds among its in-group and sympathisers, and demoralise its out-group. This study fills a gap in research as Nasheeds have received limited attention, particularly on the discursive level, compared to other IS' media products. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to draw a comparison between IS' boom and bust Nasheeds. Twenty Nasheeds have been selected for a discussion covering the period from 2013 till 2019. Guided by van Dijk's (2000, 2005, 2008) interdisciplinary socio-cognitive framework and ideological strategies, we propose a Reality Construction Model (RCM) consisting of 13 Reality Construction Strategies (RCSs) as well as 14 Reality Construction Tools (RCTs) deployed by the group to achieve its version of reality. Findings reveal similarities and differences in the usage of RCSs in boom and bust. The analysis revealed that Nasheeds aimed at magnifying and sanctifying its feats, agitating its operatives to take action, and demonising its adversaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-dominated 'ideotainment' has become a global trend to enhance political persuasion. Broadening the geopolitical and ideological contexts of research could further enrich this field. This study analyzes the failed case of state-sponsored virtual idols 'Jiangshanjiao' (JSJ) and 'Hongqiman' (HQM) with attention to Chinese netizens' critical responses, and further uncovers the erratic, diverse, and controversial aspects of Chinese fandom nationalism. In China, the Communist Party of China has tamed fandom culture to promote pro-governmental nationalist activism. However, this soft propaganda is sometimes counterproductive and has been underexamined. This study uses textual and critical discourse analyses to examine netizens' posts, comments, and answers regarding the JSJ and HQM. The findings reveal the conflict between emerging civic spirit and notorious commercialism; the conflict between functional attachment embedded in constructive patriotism and affective attachment embedded in the hierarchy; and the complex negotiation between participatory nationalists, cautious patriots, and rational citizens about the boundaries of politics and entertainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to reviewers, this commentary emphasizes the importance of studying audiences in understanding right-wing news cultures, while at the same time situating news audiences within broader circuits of meaning making. It also elaborates on the extent to which right-wing news cultures represent a “global” phenomenon, discussing the need for international comparison and attention to transnational information flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent technological and political developments have caused researchers to reevaluate journalists’ relevance vis a vis other forms of media production, with some calling for a “decentering” of journalism within broader media cultures. While there has been sizeable growth in research concerning the impacts of new digital technologies on journalism, we call for a renewed focus on partisan media. We contend that the future of journalism studies necessarily involves a reckoning with right-wing news cultures and note four areas where further research is especially necessary: including theorizing how conservative news influences and its epistemological assumptions, as well as right-wing media’s increasing salience across a diverse array of communities in the U.S. and across the globe. We intend this essay as a provocation to journalism studies scholars, with the goal of effecting a robust and reflexive subfield devoted to the study of right-wing news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is an elusive concept, but at least analysts agree on the antagonism between the people and the elites. One of its hypostases can be found in the stadiums: football is a popular sport, particularly in Italy and Romania. The sport has become a powerful vehicle for mobilizing masses and for political propaganda. It can therefore represent a means of building a public image. In this context, we will examine the ways in which two ambitious men, Silvio Berlusconi and Georges Becali, used AC Milan and Steaua Bucharest to build a political career based on a foundation with a business base. The context of loss of landmarks linked to neoliberal globalization and economic financialization, required a popular and territorial compensation: football was the answer. The comparison of the two success stories combines the business financial base, the popular urban territorialism of the clubs and the mass demonstrativeness of their charismatic leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1950s to the 1970s, Britain's strategic role in the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia shaped the post-WWII contours and ramifications of what Winston Churchill famously dubbed the Anglo-American 'special relationship'. Through its clandestine Information Research Department (IRD), Britain targeted anti-communist propaganda, focusing on neutral nations and the overseas Chinese communities. The IRD assessed communist influence among emigrant Chinese communities along with their views of the United States. The IRD served to support American goals while bolstering Britain's regional influence. Despite occasional divergences, the IRD and the United States Information Agency (USIA) coordinated efforts to counter communist expansion, reflecting the adaptability of their 'special relationship'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From disinformation to cyberattacks, Chinese and Russian military units' digital operations have gained increasing international attention over roughly the past decade. Less studied are some of these units' historical antecedents, the military-political directorates of the Soviet military and Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the 20th century. The political officers, or commissars, who staffed these directorates played a large role in shaping the development of psychological warfare beyond the Cold War and into the information age. This article summarizes this history and demonstrates its relevance to modern PLA and Russian military psychological warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores a lesser-known aspect of World War I by examining Ottoman propaganda, particularly jihad pamphlets, aimed at mobilizing Muslims against the British Empire and its Allies. Using historical records and primary sources, the study reveals the Ottoman Empire's involvement in a broader 'revolution program' with Germany and highlights parallels between Allied and Ottoman propaganda. The analysis offers new insights into the strategies and content of these materials, shedding light on how wartime propaganda shaped perceptions and influenced Muslim communities under Allied rule or influence during World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geopolitical changes of the past two centuries have significantly altered the international balance of power, resembling Orwell's dystopian vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four. This article introduces the Orwellian paradigm to forecast future relations among the USA, Russia, and China. It suggests that, akin to Orwell's paradigm, the interactions among these powers will be shaped by situational interests. Geopolitical balance and interrelations among them indicate a tripolar pattern. Through analogy, this paper compares the Orwellian paradigm with the geopolitical dynamics among the three major powers. The results indicate that tripolarity will persist due to nuclear weapons, potential military conflicts, propaganda, and fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractA controversial and grotesque obituary for former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appeared on 25 March 2022, at the door of the Sokol House building in Banja Luka, the capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic. A similar obituary was found in Arilje, Serbia. Both obituaries quickly circulated on social media and became headlines in Serbian mass media, demonstrating the power of memes in spreading complex cultural information. This incident is being studied to understand how memetic content can be used in culture wars and public diplomacy and how the American government and Serbian-American relations are represented in Serbian public political discourse, particularly in relation to Albright's death. The study inspects the literature on memetics and thanatopolitics while introducing a rigorous research methodology (rhetorical criticism and mediated discourse analysis) in order to study the mentioned obituaries and accompanying news articles. Our findings suggest that using memes as collective memory anchors (or taking a meme's eye of view approach) can be effective in propaganda activities, particularly in culture wars. We argue that the analyzed case represents an instance of memetic propaganda, as it encompasses a sophisticated fusion of media sensationalism with memetic/cultural engineering techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to study the propaganda of the Russian Empire in Central Asia on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. In the work, the method of comparative analysis and civilizational approach was used, which made it possible to assess the impact of propaganda narratives on the development of the region. The study found that the jubilee celebrations were an occasion for the build-up of monarchist propaganda. The practical significance of this research lies in its detailed analysis of the mechanisms of monarchist propaganda during the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in Central Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that women's affective labor was widely and deeply appropriated in the Red Army's war propaganda in the early 1930s. This appropriation allowed women to emerge as free humans, visible social producers, empowered political subjects, significant war participants, and active shapers of history on an unprecedented scale in Chinese history. The selected cases examined in this paper are drawn from the songs, plays, and posters employed in the Red Army's war propaganda of the early 1930s. By highlighting the recurrent symbols of women's affective labor in these rudimentary yet innovative examples of wartime propaganda, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the complex and dialogic messages regarding women's contribution to social production and reproduction conveyed through the Red Army's propaganda. Additionally, this paper explores the liberating potential of gendered affective labor as a non-capitalist concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how China's propaganda system operates as an aspect of governance, especially how propagandists understand the public opinion they seek to influence. Understanding the concept of yuqing (public opinion conditions) is crucial for understanding propaganda in China. Yuqing is considered akin to the medical condition of public opinion (yulun). Hence, propaganda is treatment that the state provides to an organic social body of public opinion, which is subject to constant monitoring and treatment. The party-state is keen on establishing standards and norms about what a healthy and clean society should be. Thus, this paper argues that the propaganda system does not contribute to responsive authoritarianism by collecting grassroots information, but instead prioritizes cleansing public discourse in accordance with party-state logic. Furthermore, contrary to the belief that authoritarian propaganda focuses on demobilizing collective resistance and forcing compliance, China's propaganda system disciplines the public by actively constructing discursive norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dreams of Jakob Vaarask (1862-1936), an Estonian Orthodox teacher and priest who, from 1889 to 1926, lived and worked on the island of Vormsi, for much of that period part of the Russian Empire's Estland province. I intend to show that dreams, rather than random and purely individual manifestations of the subconscious, can be used as historical sources, in Vaarask's case demonstrating the extent to which political propaganda and social hierarchies were internalised by individuals in the late Russian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In April 1918, the Leipzig publishing house Insel released its Flämisches Novellenbuch, curated by the literary translator and art critic, Friedrich Markus Huebner. This anthology of contemporary Flemish literature, which promised its readers a literary tour of 'real-life' Flanders, was part of a much larger number of translations sponsored by the German occupier during the First World War in Belgium. This article explores the image of Flanders that was propagated by Huebner in service of the German cultural propaganda, with a focus on its anti-Belgian undertones. Huebner's selection of short stories seems to represent Flanders as a poor, unfulfilled and rural nation, systematically oppressed by the Belgian state. In this regard, the anthology seamlessly aligns itself with the rhetorical strategy deployed by the German occupation administration – a narrative that casted the Belgian state as the true oppressor, while positioning the Germans as loyal allies and benevolent protectors of the Flemings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the New York Times covered the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The analysis identifies the news frames of front-page stories in the Times during the first two days after the nuclear strike and compares them to the frames promoted by the U.S. government. This study adds to the literature by offering a micro view of the way the government propaganda campaign was embedded directly into the Times' coverage of the atomic bomb. While previous research has provided a broad assessment of how the Times and the news media in general were manipulated, this study identifies the specific news frames as they appeared in government documents and news reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic backsliding and autocratisation tendencies raise the question of what liberal democracy can do to defend itself. Of particular concern are populists, who are often perceived to have an ambiguous commitment to the principles of liberal democracy. The defence of liberal democracy has often been conceived in legal terms, for example, with party bans and propaganda restrictions. However, legal means are criticized for being elitist because they are directed against irrational and emotionally driven masses and because they allegedly violate the very values that they are supposed to protect by limiting the democratic freedom of some groups. Instead, critics have proposed cultural and socio-economic means as non-elitist and non-exclusionary alternatives more in line with the values of democracy. This article discusses whether the employment of cultural and socio-economic means against groups – in casu populists – who are perceived as a challenge to liberal democracy can avoid the charge of elitism and exclusion by analysing whether these means are consistent with the publicity constraint. It finds that the use of education and money to defend democracy against such groups relies on a form of elitism and exclusion similar to the one that the defence by legal means is charged with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of cinema by the Young Turk Movement, which played a significant role in transforming the Ottoman Empire from an absolutist regime into a constitutional monarchy in 1908. Upon gaining power, the Young Turks faced various external and internal political challenges, such as imperialist ambitions over Ottoman territory, Balkan states' efforts to reclaim lost lands, and separatist movements within the empire. This article explores how they used cinema to promote their political agenda and address these challenges. It argues that cinema was employed not only to display power and spread propaganda but also to project an image of governance aligned with constitutional ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The living environments of children in Estonian working-class literature are depicted in a way that would lead the reader to support certain political views and sympathize with the working classes. The political effect distinguishes the depictions of the children's environments in working-class literature from naturalist descriptions, which, albeit still gruesome, are more neutral. It also sets it apart from the Soviet proletarian approach, in which Soviet propaganda was always at the forefront. This article analyses fictional works by Estonian working-class authors to demonstrate how children's environments were used to promote the working-class movement that took hold in Europe in the beginning of the twentieth century and considers the intentions of these authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In histories of preventing and treating tuberculosis, many physicians came to prioritize the place and role of the home by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was as true in the West as it was in the late Ottoman Empire. Also common, practices of scapegoating the poor and other marginalized populations as TB's sources and carriers were pervasive. In this article, we examine how ideas of health, TB, and home converged to accentuate class in the ostensibly objective public health literature and propaganda of late Ottoman and early republican Turkey. Analyzing both textual and graphic narratives found in primary sources written in Ottoman Turkish, our study explores how officials – lacking resources and alternatives – opted to pursue ambitious public health propaganda campaigns to at least achieve broad educational inoculation of the population. In doing so, rudimentary matters of treatment were taught and legislated in ways that aligned with the contemporary propagation of national citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the extent of cyber-electronic operations in Russia’s conception of hybrid warfare by analyzing its interventions in Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014), and Syria (2015). The concept of hybrid warfare, which combines conventional and irregular tactics, asymmetric warfare, act of terrorism, propaganda, and information warfare, has gained prominence in recent years. The study provides a conceptual framework by reviewing the literature on hybrid warfare and presenting different perspectives on the concept, and focuses on cyber-electronic operations as a crucial component of hybrid warfare. Based on the case studies, the findings suggest that cyber-electronic operations are a vital part of Russia’s hybrid warfare strategy. This article introduces a novel aspect to the existing analysis by regarding Russia’s cyber-electronic operations not merely as a tool, but also as a decisive element of its hybrid warfare strategy. Within this context, it conducts a thorough examination of Russia’s utilization of these operations to procure a strategic advantage across political, economic, informational, and conventional warfare domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps communication channels exploited by the Salafi-jihadist violent extremist organisations (VEOs) and their followers between March 2020 and June 2022 on The Onion Router (TOR). It argues that the true scale of digital jihadist presence on TOR has remained insignificant for years. Militant Islamists have mostly used.onion domains as backup propaganda dissemination channels, which enable content takedown policies introduced by countering violent extremism stakeholders to be circumvented. Aside from propaganda distribution, TOR attracts Salafi-jihadist VEOs and their followers for other reasons, as it facilitates anonymous communication, crowdfunding, sharing of terrorist manuals or the organisation of terrorist attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on one particularly striking example of the opportunities and dangers of using propaganda to narrate the armed struggle against apartheid: the feature film Kalushi, which dramatically depicts the life and death of the young Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier Solomon Kalushi Mahlangu. If Thabo Rametsi, acting as the protagonist, insists that Kalushi ought to be understood as a piece of propaganda, we should take him at his word. It is enough that he says so. Therefore, the question is simply: is the film effective? I have chosen to utilise short (anonymised) quotations from a dozen student essays as a ‘source’ for analysing the film. Written in fulfilment of the requirements for an introductory course on African History, these student essays are useful precisely because they are not written by experts. That is, when responding to Kalushi, the students are reacting to its storytelling, soundtrack, costumes, and so on – all of the basic tools for presenting propaganda through cinema. Analysing these essays in conjunction with scholarly books and articles on Mahlangu, this article engages Rametsi’s notions of positive propaganda as a provocation, raising a series of legitimate questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French news channel CNEWS is regularly compared to Fox News due to presumed ties with the far right, and for promoting conspiracy theories and partisan propaganda. Using data from the ReCitCom project, I propose simple metrics for quantifying the partisanship of news audiences cross-nationally and identifying channels like Fox News in other media systems. I apply them to France and find that CNEWS has the most ideologically radical news audience within the French media ecosystem, and that the pattern is more pronounced with higher frequency of use. Comparatively, I show that the Fox News and CNEWS audiences have an equivalent ideological lean that justifies the comparison between the two outlets at the audience level. The two audiences are also disproportionately receptive to far-right candidates compared to other news audiences and their respective national samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accusations of sexual perversion, of defying both the statutes of man and the laws of the almighty, have since Antiquity been a staple of heresiographic discourse. They had pride of place in Muslim heresiology as well, which charged many a heretical sect with engaging in group sex, incest, wine-drinking, as well as the shunning of the obligatory rituals such as prayer and pilgrimage. One group has fared particularly badly at the hands of Muslim heresiographers – the so-called Shiʿi 'extremists' (Ghulāt), who lived in Iraq in the eighth and ninth centuries. Scholarship has mostly taken a simplistic approach to accounts about their alleged antinomianism, by either rejecting them as hostile propaganda or, more frequently, by accepting them wholesale as accurate. Meanwhile the historical, polemical contexts in which such accusations were made have been ignored. This article evaluates within a broad historical context two bodies of evidence: the heresiographical accusations on the one hand, and the Ghulāt's own writings on the other. My contention is that while the most hair-raising accusations are nothing by hostile polemics, others do reflect the Ghulāt's actual beliefs and practices. I conclude by examining the cultural meanings which antinomianism had among the Ghulāt – namely, as boundary markers and tools for identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the 2016 Diba Expedition to Facebook, a mass collective organized campaign directed at independence-leaning Taiwanese individuals and institutions, as an example of cyber nationalism through a highly organized meme war between anti- and pro-Taiwan independence users on Facebook. Drawing upon a social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis of the nationalist campaign, this study examines the ways Diba members deployed multimodal elements of political propaganda and popular culture in the preparation and mobilization of the campaign as well as the playful memetic interaction between the two camps on the battlefield. The analysis and discussion underscore the playful and carnivalesque ecology of Chinese social media that users deployed in the 2016 expedition while also demonstrating the dilemma of undertaking a Chinese nationalism campaign beyond the Great Firewall, where those based in the Mainland needed to overcome the state's regulations of online security to defend the motherland. This study contributes to the growing research on cyber nationalism in China and adds a further dimension to the study of Chinese social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a national crisis, can state propaganda shift public opinion, and if so, in what direction? Existing studies show that the effects of state propaganda on public opinion in China are mixed. Analysing data from an online survey experiment conducted during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, this article finds that the Chinese public responded positively to propaganda that promoted Xi Jinping's leadership, when these messages included text as well as images that showed Xi being compassionate during his visit to Wuhan. However, when textual propaganda focused on familiar narratives, such as Xi's leadership, international praise of China's experience in fighting the virus, China's efforts to send medical assistance to other countries, and praise for medical workers, it was largely ineffective in changing political opinions. These results suggest that visual components that evoke an emotional response of solidarity can increase government favourability in public opinion. At the same time, propaganda narratives that fail to address critical questions about a national crisis, including its severity and attribution, tend to be ineffective at persuading the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robotised propaganda has become a new stage in the dissemination of manipulative content online, exploited for its low entry costs and high effectiveness. State actors, non-state actors, and politically and business-focused actors can spread ideas, share thoughts or sow half-truths and lies with the help of hundreds of automatised accounts and contribute to the manipulation of people's minds. In a short time, robotised propaganda gained the attention of academics as well as international organisations. Especially, Russian influence operations utilising the newest advantages of technological development stand at the epicentre of research interests in the Central and Eastern European region. In our research, we aim to test the hypothesis that information from media which are presented as pro-Russian were connected to a higher percentage of accounts classified as bots. The research sample covers all the media categories in the Czech Republic, as stated by the Political Capital study 'The Weaponization of Culture: Kremlin's traditional agenda and the export of values to Central Europe'. For robotised accounts activity analysis, we use a script based on a tweetbotornot R package by Kearney. As the results show, pro-Russian positive media have a statistically significant higher probability for bot account activity than media expressing neutral opinions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, British feminist advocate Anne Knight has been acknowledged for her pioneering role in women's suffrage propaganda. This article aims to rectify misinterpretations regarding Knight's contribution by re-evaluating her actions and materials during the 1840s. It argues that her significance lies in creatively deploying established tactics from various social movements and diverse texts to invigorate the women's suffrage cause, showcasing sustained commitment across diverse domains. This article is structured into four sections. Firstly, it provides a concise biography of Anne Knight, accompanied by an evaluation of previous studies. Secondly, by re-examining her feminist propaganda, it establishes that Knight's role as a creator of the material, rather than the original author, does not diminish her creativity but underscores strategic adaptability in media use and translating discourse into action. Thirdly, through an exploration of her writings and practices, this article investigates the divergence within women's suffrage activism in contemporary British society. Lastly, it delves into Knight's discourse and actions during the French Second Republic, revealing her distinctive role and the broader significance of women's collective struggle. In summary, this article unveils the intricate facets of Knight's pioneering role, offering a nuanced understanding of early Victorian Britain's women's suffrage activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article examines the role of media platforms in the jihadist propaganda ecosystem. It presents a case study of the Muntasir Media platform which achieved extensive media impact in Spain during the period 2018–19. A descriptive analysis is provided of the emergence, evolution and demise of the platform, which can be viewed as an archetypal illustration of the effect sought by Islamic State propaganda in extolling the work of media jihadists. The article argues that platforms have not only been essential for maintaining the visibility of the jihadist narrative but have also offered an attractive form of surrogate activism for radicalised individuals cut off from formal organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the reporting of Alexander Werth from the Soviet Union for the BBC during World War II. Werth's despatches, broadcast mostly under the title 'Russian Commentary', sought to bring to life the struggles of an ideologically opposed nation that had become an ally against Nazi Germany. The article analyses Werth's technique as a correspondent, situating it within the wider political and propaganda climate within which he was working. It assesses his work's significance for the study of ideas of journalistic objectivity in wartime. It looks too at the optimism his reporting expressed as the tide of war began to turn in the allies' favour—a change that Werth saw as a sign that the Soviet Union's wartime alliance would endure beyond the end of the conflict—a hope that was crushed by the onset of the Cold War, and renewed enmity between Moscow and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Nationalist government initiated the first national network of mobile film screenings, which subsequently had a great influence on political propaganda in Chinese cinema. Based on corpus data from Chinese archives, diaries, newspapers, periodicals, and literature archived from 1931 to 1945, this study investigates the goals, effects, and shortcomings of mobile film exhibition under Jiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP) government in China, focusing on the Second Sino-Japanese War. I contend that the Nationalist government regarded films as propaganda to promote cultural identity, the social state, and collectivist ideology. To some extent, such films contributed to the development of democracy and national morality before the war, persuasion during the war, and consolation after the war. However, the mobile film industry in the Jiang era also suffered from some practical problems, such as the lack of planning, inefficient management, obscure content, and chaotic viewing settings. Hence, mobile projection remained a form of public ceremony whose impact deviated from its original intent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicting factions within the late-Francoist regime, starting around 1968, prompted a slow-paced decline of the regime's internal power structures, with an uncertain expiry date. Clandestine groups within universities and workers' organizations pressed for regime change at different levels, and voices also emerged from within the Catholic Church and the army, often with the aim of restoring Spain's international relations with its European neighbors and ending isolation. Increasingly rattled by the violence and the organized terrorist activity of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, the repressive apparatus of the regime was determined not to relinquish control. It retaliated with large doses of information, disinformation, propaganda, and outright violence. Late-Francoist Spain thus presents a case study of practices and dynamics initiated during a nondemocratic period, whose legacy survived over the years and influenced the intelligence apparatus of the democratic country in which the Spanish now live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the choreographer Martha Graham, the personal became politicised because she used Jungian psychology and its archetypes to reveal and make 'universal' what she and Cold Warriors called 'the soul of mankind'. Graham thereby became useful as pro-Western, and particularly pro-United States (US), propaganda as she and her company toured Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Post-World War II (WWII) networks shared a Jungian approach to psychology seeded by Carl Jung, the first president of the International Psychiatric Association in 1907. During WWII, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland under Allen Dulles relied on Jung's work. During the postwar period, Graham entered therapy with Jung's American protégée, Frances Wickes. Dulles became the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Because the post-WWII fight against the Soviet Union was ideological, and utilised psychwar strategies, 'total warfare' included the consistent US government deployment of psychwar and Martha Graham. Graham's highly profound, personal works about the inner working of mankind through the Jungian use of archetypes became politicised when they were staged internationally by the US government between 1955 and 1987. The article uses Graham's letters to Wickes to support the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Chinese cyberspace, mass media and opinion leaders struggle over socio-political discourses. While the former propagates positive views on national policies, the latter often expresses dissenting opinions that challenge authoritarian rule. In the context of China–US competition, do citizens still perceive non-state sources as more credible? Taking the Belt and Road Initiative as the issue, this experimental study investigates how Chinese netizens process conflicting information from a government-owned news agency and two opinion leaders with varying levels of source credibility. Our findings reveal that high-credibility propagandistic news is effective, whereas low-credibility propaganda is not. Furthermore, an opinion leader perceived as independent surpasses government propaganda in influence, regardless of information credibility. However, when an opinion leader is perceived as backed by a rival nation, the former's influence is counterproductive unless their message credibility exceeds that of propaganda. This study sheds light on the prevalence of nationalistic sentiment in China, which has raised concerns about the manipulation of Chinese netizens by hostile forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Able Archer 83, a NATO nuclear exercise conducted in the fall of 1983, has been the subject of considerable debate in recent decades. While some analysts have argued that the superpowers came close to blows due to Soviet fears that the exercise was a ruse meant to disguise a NATO attack, revisionists have maintained that the danger associated with Able Archer 83 has been seriously overstated. In this article, the authors review the scholarship, take stock of the evidence, and discuss some of the challenges of studying nuclear history and close calls. They argue that further research is needed to determine how close of a nuclear call Able Archer 83 actually was and conclude that the case highlights the uncertainty inherent to nuclear policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much linguistic effort has been made to analyze Boko Haram's (BH) threat texts or newspaper reports on its activities using various discourse analytical and pragmatic tools. However, the group's early preaching, which offers a deeper understanding of its mission and ideology, has hardly ever received attention, much less how the group conceptualizes violence through religious propagation. This article investigates how linguistic metaphors are conceptually deployed in BH's early sermons to mark the group's stance on using violence in religious propagation. The corpus comprises five full-length sermons delivered in Hausa/Arabic by earlier BH leaders (Muhammad Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau) between 2008 and 2011 before the group went into violent confrontations. The sermons were recorded, translated to English for uniformity, coded in line numbers, and subjected to content analysis drawing insights from Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Stance Triangle. The study reveals that the BH group employs several conceptual mapping strategies that project three stance acts, namely, assigning value to the group's positions on the use of violence in religious propagation, drawing their target audience into similar positions, and invoking ethno-religious rewards/reasons for such positions. The results suggest that the use of certain metaphors could potentially impact society in various ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During China's Republican era (1912–1949), the Kuomintang (KMT) Nationalists experimented with propaganda in theory and practice as its propaganda moved from a traditionally preaching oriented mass culture to modern mass-media-based weaponry deemed as 'paper bullets.' Contrary to the commonly overstated role and influence of the Soviet Union and its theorists during this transition from a utilitarian to an aggressive, weaponized model of propaganda, this essay, drawing insights from articles in the foreign press of Republican China, illuminates the complexity and intricacy of this experimental phase. The period is characterized by continuity, ruptures, hybridization, and innovation, providing a nuanced, multifaceted understanding of KMT propaganda. Aligned with the existing non-Soviet perspective on KMT propaganda, emphasizing the integration of cultural, folk, or modern elements into the propaganda arsenal, this study enhances it by providing a more comprehensive outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital technology can empower citizen journalism as well as state media in authoritarian regimes. China's propaganda apparatus has undertaken a series of transformations to adapt itself to the changing media environment. This study investigates this adaptive process by drawing on over five million Weibo posts created by 103 newspapers between 2012 and 2019. Results show that through the digital transformation, newspapers are deliberately distancing themselves from their Orwellian past of abstract dogmatism to openly embrace infotainment. A soft-news-centered production model has emerged as the new journalistic paradigm on social media. Not only commercialized outlets but also mouthpiece newspapers produce more soft news than hard news. Regression results further substantiate that soft news is a gateway to propaganda, whose popularity can spill over into propaganda news. For every 100% increase in soft news popularity, propaganda popularity will rise by 38.5% in the following month. News outlets that have garnered attention to soft news can transfer that attention to their subsequent propaganda. These results illuminate how propaganda works in the digital realm, how authoritarian propaganda could be enhanced by infotainment, and why a less political platform could be more susceptible to political intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism calls for one’s loyalty and affiliation towards their chosen nation. Various versions of nationalism emphasise that one must prioritise said nation above themselves and their personal ethics, hence, allowing the nation to overpower the nationalist’s individuality. In this article, we use Critical Discourse Analysis to deconstruct the narratives of nationalism as portrayed in two popular films, viz. The Kashmir Files and Uri: The Surgical Strike, which are based on real historical events – the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus and the surgical strike by the Indian Army in retaliation to the Uri attack. Both films use narrative strategies to frame key historical events into certain ideological contexts, and hence they serve the populist purpose of swaying viewers’ opinion in favour of the dominant socio-political class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on transcripts from the television network Channel One, a popular news source in Russia, this article addresses the question: “How was Vladimir Putin covered by state-controlled media while the regime became increasingly centralized?” The literature on the subject is scarce and inconclusive. Dictators create different images of themselves, and the portrayals of present-day spin dictators — those who primarily rely on the power of propaganda to persuade rather than dominate — are understudied. While some analysts point to Putin’s omnipresence in mass media, others uncover the lack of media personalization and relatively neutral coverage. Using 385,981 news transcripts from 2000–2022 and relying on techniques from natural language processing, I examine how a present-day autocrat attempts to optimize the intensity of state-controlled propaganda. I uncover three main tendencies. First, during all the years in power, the ruler has been more frequently referred to through positive stories. Second, there is only partial evidence that the relative references to Putin on Channel One have significantly increased over time. Third, during all his years in power, Putin has been more frequently mentioned in domestic news rather than in stories about foreign affairs. However, I also demonstrate that the share of news about foreign affairs and events abroad that mentions the ruler has been increasing every year since 2013. By focusing on the supply side of propaganda, this article contributes to the literature on autocratic resilience and spin dictators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers who study conspiracy theories have increasingly addressed the questions of where conspiracy theories come from, what such theories do, and what to do about them. This essay serves as a commentary on the answers to these questions offered by contributors to this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conspiracy theory philosophy the primary debate has been epistemic, but the concern is now also shifting to the ethical and political implications of taking conspiracy theories seriously. This shift is epitomized in the work of Quassim Cassam, whose focus has moved away from the epistemic faults of the theories and theorists to the political function of conspiracy theories. This function, he argues, is to ‘express and promote an ideology’, specifically, racist, antisemitic, and extremist ideology. In this essay, I will challenge two of Cassam’s assumptions. First, I will disagree with his claim that racist conspiracy theories ought to be treated dismissively as a class. This is due in part to the difficulties in defining racist conspiracy theories and due in part to what I call the Conspiracy Theory Location Problem, which is the challenge of identifying what constitutes ‘the theory’. In response, I suggest we need to be even more particularistic about ‘instances’ of a theory. Second, I disagree that the only function of conspiracy theories is to promote racist ideology. Instead, I argue that there exists a class of antiracist conspiracy theories that resist white supremacy by uncovering racist conspiracies and challenging racist institutions, systems, and ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The judicial decision to overturn the federal right to abortion in the United States has profoundly influenced women across the country. Relying on 2,230 individual stories and over 500 posts on Instagram by anti-abortion activists, we investigate their discourse around abortion produced in a specific cultural moment—that of post-Roe America and a post-truth online society in which disinformation and conspiracy spread rampantly. This combined moment is particularly relevant given that people who can get pregnant are being marginalized and criminalized in American society at the same time that trust in experts and institutions is declining, thus troubling both institutional and feminist knowledge-production. Conceptually we draw on existing studies on embodied, feminist knowledge, intersectionality, populist expertise and conspiracy-believing, as well as gendered disinformation and conspiracy to show how (a) anti-abortion rhetoric devolves not only into disinformation but also conspiracy theories that are common among the alt-right and conservative online networks; (b) that the feedback loop among these communities is strong, and (c) that the anti-abortion movement on Instagram is experimenting with Gen Z rhetoric. We introduce and demonstrate the concept of embodied propaganda to capture the phenomenon of co-opting the experiences of marginalized groups in society to manipulate public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soviet view of Allied rivalry over Iranian oil concessions lies at the centre of the discussion in this article. This rivalry, framed as 'rivalry within partnership', had earlier precedents, and was resumed with vigour in 1943, with the added dimension of propaganda used against each other. It took place at a crucial time for Iran, namely during the Allied occupation during World War II, coinciding with the Tehran Conference and the preparation of Iranian political parties for the fourteenth Majlis elections (along with the role that Muhammad Riza Shah Pahlavi played in the success of the newly established Tudeh Party of Iran in those elections) all of which as viewed from a Soviet point of view based on Soviet documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article assesses the evolving dimensions of sympathy education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on the League of Pity, the juvenile branch organisation of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). In its early years the League sought to emphasise Christian service and self-denial, and aimed to help poor victims of abuse become useful members of society. After the turn of the twentieth century, however, images and descriptions of suffering children featured in its propaganda less frequently; they were increasingly supplanted by reports of the various fundraising events attended by League members. The NSPCC sought to promote a sense of community between the League's children and those whom it helped, but there was little real connection across the gulf that separated them. The League of Pity was an imagined community, despite its successes as an organised philanthropic offshoot of the NSPCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the life and expeditions of Manuel Iradier, a Basque explorer whose limited achievements were later mythologized to support Spain's imperial ambitions in Africa. Topics include his early exploratory failures in the Gulf of Guinea, the political manipulation of his legacy during the Franco and Primo de Rivera dictatorships, and the literary and symbolic importance of his works in Spanish colonial propaganda.

This article analyzes the ways the educational- and propaganda films produced by the film studio of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior during the 1950s and 60s are part of the broader landscape of socialist realist culture. The author proposes that by tracing the transformations of the fatherly police agent figure across the productions of the film studio, we can understand how the project of socialist realism itself began to change in the aforementioned period. In this light, the police agent becomes a figure on whom the shifting epistemological status of representation under state socialism is projected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual political communication in the social media sphere is increasingly valuable for its ability to more effectively persuade viewers in this increasingly cluttered media landscape. Using multi-model discourse analysis and following the theoretical framework of Everyday Politics, this study focuses on a random sample (N = 200) of user-generated Internet memes from Chinese national youth propaganda campaign Youth Study. In addition, the author observed the sharing and dissemination of these memes in online public discussions. The findings reveal that young participants maintain a varying distance from politics. They employ strategies such as dark humor, hyperbole, contrast, and appropriation of pop culture to portray two key roles – the charming, brilliant followers and the abandoned, hunted breakers, and to construct four main scenarios-cute threat, humble beg, funny politics, and veiled resistance. This politicized propaganda campaign is being transformed from state aspirations to the creative daily cultural consumption of young netizens. This analysis contributes to the scholarly literature on youth subcultures, political mobilization, and visual propaganda in post-socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In situations of disagreement in a polarized social world, rational argument is not always successful in persuading those who do not share our beliefs. Narratives of personal experiences have empirically shown to help bridge divides between disagreeing interlocutors, though this raises the question of how particular, personal narratives relate to the universal appeal of argumentation. It also leads us to reflect upon the dangers of these narratives functioning as a type of propaganda that bypasses reason. In this paper, I discuss how understanding narratives as ways to build common ground using standpoint-informed knowledge (hereafter: standpoint knowledge) can explain the empirical belief-changing potential of narratives. Additionally, viewing deliberation in the public sphere as a communal constitution of common ground may alleviate worries of narratives functioning as propaganda and explain how narratives foster perceived rationality, respect and humanity. On this account, our shared history is constantly shaped by narratives that we build together, which also allows for criticism of these narratives in a pluralist public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]