Science of Coercion: Communication Research & Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960

Science Of Coercion

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The Emergence of Communications Study: Psychological Warfare or Scientific Thoroughfare?

Communication research, in turn, became for a time the preferred method for testing and developing such techniques. The Science of Coercion uses long-classified documents to probe the contributions made by prominent mass communication researchers such as Wilbur Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, and others, then details the impact of psychological warfare projects on widely held preconceptions about social science and the nature of communication itself.

A fascinating case study in the history of science and the sociology of knowledge, The Science of Coercion offers valuable insights into the dynamics of ideology and the social psychology of communication.

He is the recipient of six national and international awards for historical writing, literature, and investigative reporting. His work has appeared in the Journal of Communication, Intelligence and National Security, and many other magazines and journals. Convert currency. Add to Basket. Book Description Oxford University Press, Condition: New.

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Never used!. Seller Inventory P More information about this seller Contact this seller. Book Description Oxford University Press. And in central America alone you're talking about fatalities measured in the hundreds of thousands. All right, communications research is the sort of Ivory Tower version of much the same sort of thing.

There are schools of communication research at most major universities of the US and sometimes its folded into the sociology department. In any case its a box of preconceptions and of tools.

Preconceptions of what communication is. And of tools of studying communication. And these preconceptions and tools are used to train journalists, public relations specialists, TV and Radio personalities, all sorts of people, college professors I'm talking about myself now all sorts of people who might be called ideological workers in US society.

People who's day to day profession is to shape other peoples ideology and ideas. Communication research is very much tied up with that because in part it provides methods for measuring how successful these types of ideological campaigns have been. DE :We should make the point that psychological warfare does not in any way preclude the use of deadly force. That the type of warfare that is called psychological warfare is warfare that is generated for the specific purpose of producing its primary reaction in the psychological field.

This does not necessarily imply however that no blood is shed. CS :No, by no means and in fact from its inception from its earliest definition in classified government records, psychological warfare is defined to include assassinations, covert operations , gerilla warfare counterinsurgency etc.

From its inception psychological warfare has been the mating of violence on the one hand and what people would call today propaganda or mass communication on the other hand. Another thing that's interesting about psychological warfare, from its inception it has also targeted the people of the United States, the common preconception is that for better or for worse this is something we do to them. The reality is that from the governments standpoint, from the standpoint of those who are paying the bills for its development the targets always involve not only foreign audiences but domestic audiences as well.

DE :One of the points that we should make just in passing is that the illusion that psychological warfare does not necessarily produce bloodshed or is not necessarily very bloody appears to have contributed to rationalizations of some of the people who bridge the gap between psychological warfare and mass communication research, they rationalize their use of psychological warfare by saying that this would lead to a reduction of blood shed or less violent methods of coercion.

CS :Sure and there are circumstances where that is true. For example if you have a batallion of surrounded troups and you can use leaflets and loudspeakers to convince them that they are better of surrendering than fighting to the death etc.

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But that's a very limited part of how these techniques are actually used. The mean way application both measured in terms of how often, how much money is spent, how much academic attention is given to it. The mean use of psychological warfare has been the suppression of rebellious, prodemocratic movements in countries that the united states government felt that it wanted to dominate. Generally because of the natural resources of the country, sometimes because of its geostrategic position.

Thats what psychological warfare has actually been used for. Sometimes that meant beating up union organizers, sometimes it meant death squads.

Spitfire List | Repost: FTR #93 The Science of Coercion II - Interview With Christopher Simpson

Sometimes it meant systematic training of police organizations and of course as time has passed, its more than fifty years since now, and the science if you will, has not stood still in this time. As this has become more and more sophisticated, new techniques have emerged, to both intensify the violence and to divorce or to separate the sponsoring country or organization from responsibility for the violence. This was one of the big lessons of Vietnam, from the standpoint of am security planners, that you kept american troops out of the line of fire to the maximum degree possible, because there was a political price to pay if too many kids came home in body bags.

So what do you do, you send down the green berets to train and equip the salvadoran police force or their treasury police which then becomes an organized form of death squad. To carry out a quite bloody civil war in El Salvador that lasted for a decade in the s. As horrifying as that war was, its just one name on the list, there are many other examples like that, that have unfolded over the last years. DE :In your discussion of psychological warfare you talk about light propaganda, black propaganda and grey propaganda do you think it would be appropriate to discuss the role of some of these personnages and institutions that are involved on the one hand with psychological warfare and on the other hand with mass communication research as perhaps a form of grey propaganda.

CS :Sure, part of what the book argues is that this area of academic study in the various schools that are connected to it and the body of knowledge that is connected to it and most importantly, the preconceptions that are connected to it, the preconceptions that are tied up with communication research, emerged in very important part due to goverment psychological warfare funding at the height of the cold war.

CS :OK, white propaganda is like the Voice of America, its like NBC News, it is info that is repeated constantly that has the appearance of veracity, objectivity, naturalness and so on, but which in fact has a distinct ideological subtext, distinct set of preconceptions about the message that one is trying to put across. Black propaganda on the other hand is what most people would call covert ops, assassinations, insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, dirty tricks of a variety of sorts, sabotage, the Contra affaire in Nicaragua, and then building on that the whole Iran-Contra business, then building on that the whole business of the Iran Contras and the drugs.

Those would be examples of black propaganda. Grey propaganda to get to your question exists somewhere between the two. And it has characteristics of both. The most common type of grey propaganda is where the organization that's sponsoring it puts disinformation misinformation into the news media, that have the appearance of being independent from that sponsoring organization. A rather simple example of this would come from, say if the CIA puts a They planted this info as though it where truths in european newspapers. That's grey propaganda, the next step is when the information blows back to the United States and the story could be read in the tabloids.

Later this was exposed as having been a misinformation campaign. If you follow all the details of what's going on it is possible understand it but most of us dont have time and we get this barrage of information, fake information usually from the media that takes on the appearance of being true, when in reality its manufactured by people who have a story to promote.

And by and large the manufacturing is done by people who have the money to pay PR firms and so on to put this story out. Those of us who cant afford that have more difficulty to get access to the media. Now your program Dave gets out pretty well. But Dan Rather has a bigger audience. DE :Certainly, one of my favourite expression is an old turkish proverb: 'He who tells the truth gets chased out of nine villages' - - - Chris you talk about the interrelationship between psychological warfare and mass communication research as involving three major types of intersections: 1 You discuss US psychological warfare as applied communication research and much of the funding for communication research has come from national security related institutions and that this in turn was shaping the post WWII nature of mass communication research as an academic discipline and you traced the genesis of this relationship to a number of different institutions which where centers of psychological warfare during the WWII, I'd like to briefly read a quote from page 25 of TSC and ask you to develop this further.

This old boy network had much to do with shaping the immediate post WWII academic discipline of mass communication research as well as psychological warfare'. And this hasn't been the case since During the war you had these networks of psychological warfare specialists created. Moving into the cold war period the networks persist.

Science of coercion : communication research and psychological warfare 1945-1960

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