A Fearful Engine of Power: Conceptualizing the Communication–Security Relationship (original) (raw)

Strategic Communication and U.S. National Security Affairs: Applied Critical-Cultural and Rhetorical Perspectives

Strategic Communication, 2016

Policymakers, officials, and commentators have long been concerned with the influence of global public opinion on U.S. foreign policy and national security (Farwell, 2012). The last 100 years have witnessed the establishment, consolidation, division, reform, or abolishment of numerous overt and covert agencies designed to influence foreign audiences (Arndt, 2005). Traditionally, the U.S. Department of State has led overt foreign influence activities, while the CIA has led covert operations, both of which reached their zenith during the Cold War (Simpson, 1996). In the post-September 11, 2001-era, prominent examples of U.S. strategic communication activities have included the Bush Administration’s “Shared Values” initiative in 2002 (Fullerton & Kendrick, 2006) and President Obama’s Executive Order 13584, which established the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications in 2011 to counter terrorist propaganda within interactive digital environments (Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, 2013, para. 1). In order to align and synchronize foreign influence activities, in 2010 the White House issued the first National Framework for Strategic Communication, which defined strategic communication as: (a) the synchronization of our words and deeds and how they will be perceived by others, as well as (b) programs and activities deliberately aimed at communicating and engaging with intended audiences, including those implemented by public affairs, public diplomacy, and information operations professionals. (White House, 2010, p. 2)

Public Communication in Pursuing and Promoting the Interests of Security Actors – a Taxonomic Approach

BULLETIN OF "CAROL I" NATIONAL DEFENCE UNIVERSITY

This paper aims to identify the best ways to support security actors in the process of promoting and pursuing their interests, through public communication. In this respect, we have considered it relevant to identify and present the forms of public communication most often used in the information environment for the purpose of influencing power games, and we have classified them into two categories: constructive and destructive, taking into account ethical aspects in terms of transmitter’s intentionality, as well as the whole set of effects that they produce on the security environment (direct effects – short term, and indirect effects – long term), on its dynamics, and ultimately on the world order. Following our analysis, we will have identified strategic communication (and the techniques derived from it) as the form of public communication whose whole set of effects generated suits the interests of the actor – transmitter, the citizen – as an exponent of international society –, ...

Modeling the audience’s perception of security in media discourse

Humanities & social sciences communications, 2024

Combining the concepts of securitization with a discourse analytic approach, the study presents an attempt to investigate how the audience's perception toward an unconventional security issue has been shaped in media context. As a case study, this paper delves into the portrayal of the Confucius Institute in the U.S. media discourse. By analyzing the coverage of the Confucius Institute in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal from 2004 to 2022, it aims to unpack the narratives and representations surrounding this institution. With a particular focus on how the use of language shapes the audience's perception and subsequently influences their cognition in the context of the securitization of Confucius Institutes, a select sample of texts from the corpus was collected for coded qualitative analysis to allow for a deeper understanding of how the media constructs and disseminates information about the Confucius Institute. The findings turn out that American media actors deliver a bottom-up securitizing move by interacting with socio-political value positions on Confucius Institutes in the United States, grounding a cognitive construction of security threat into shaping public emotive perceptual experience with dialogically patterned linguistic configurations.

How is National Security implicated in communication?

This discursive paper examines the implications of communication to national security from the perspective of strategic communication and its relationship to national security interest. The paper dissects the concepts of communication against the frameworks of national security, it makes inferences to the news media and how it is implicated in national security. It argues on the criticality of human communication and its direct effect on journalism practise especially in Nigeria

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION IN THE FUNCTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY

Vojno delo, 2019

The concept of strategic communication has become a matter of topical interest in nowadays social relations. Strategic communication is referred to as an activity, a topic of theoretical study or due to planning and operation of organizational entities at all levels, from corporations to states and their alliances, with the concept still insufficiently defined. This paper analyses the concept, structure and forms of strategic communication based on a wide variety of scientific and professional literature. Also, the paper considers the implementation of strategic communication in the function of fulfiling national interests with a review of its role and effect on the defence and security system. The correlation between strategic communication and the hybrid concept of violation of national security has been made. The paper contributes to defining the concept of strategic communication and propose modelling and management of public opinion as a genesis of the implementation of the communication strategy.

Security, Democracy, and the Rhetoric of Counter-Terrorism

Democracy and Security

The-war on terrorism‖ is both a series of institutional practices and an accompanying set of political narratives. Employing the methodology of critical discourse analysis, the study suggests that the language of the-war on terrorism‖ is not simply a neutral or objective reflection of policy debates and the realities of terrorism and counterterrorism; rather, it is a very carefully and deliberately constructed public discourse that is specifically designed to make the war seem reasonable, responsible, and inherently-good.‖ More importantly, as it is currently constructed, the language and practice of the-war on terrorism‖ poses severe challenges to the democratic state, including destabilizing the moral community, weakening democratic values and civic culture, undermining the legitimacy of democratic institutions, and preventing the articulation of potentially more effective counter-terrorism approaches. INTRODUCTION 1 The-war on terrorism‖ is both a set of institutional practices (military and intelligence operations, diplomatic initiatives, special government departments and security bodies, standard operating procedures, specific legislation, and so on), as well as an accompanying discursive project. That is, it is simultaneously a special political language of counterterrorism with its own assumptions, symbolic systems, rhetorical modes and tropes, metaphors, narratives and meanings, and its own exclusive forms of knowledge. It is a distinct discourse, analogous to discourses in other fields-advertising, medicine, education, art, psychology, and the like. If we are to fully understand how the-war on terrorism‖ functions as a particular kind of political project, I believe that in addition to explaining its military, political, and economic dimensions, we must also appreciate how this particular discourse has been constructed and how it functions to legitimize and normalize the institutional practices of counter-terrorism. The analysis of public political discourse as a methodological approach reveals how some forms of knowledge are privileged over others, how identity is constructed and maintained, how power is legitimized, how political and institutional practices are normalized, and in this case, how social and political consensus is produced and reproduced ideationally. Political discourses are not neutral reflections of social and political reality; rather, they are partly constitutive of that reality-they have a reality-making effect. The practice of the-war on terrorism‖ in its military and political dimensions would not be possible without the accompanying language or discourse of counter-terrorism: discourse and practice are interdependent or co-constitutive. Moreover, political discourses possess a clear ideological character; they are the construction and deployment of-meaning in the service of power.‖ 2 Or, more specifically, discourses act as constructions of meaning that contribute to the production, reproduction, and transformation of relations of domination in society. 3 Applying a critical discourse analysis (CDA) method, 4 the primary phase of this research involved an examination of over 100 speeches of senior members of the Bush administration from September 11, 2001 to December 31, 2003. These texts were a representative sample of

The role of narratives in the global security framework

Fermo Summer School , 2023

The term security comes from the latin sine cura which most security studies authors like Johannes Stripple, translate it as «without worry» Albeit the correct translation is "without remedy or treatment" as the word cura both in Latin and in Italian means treatment or remedy. If security means "without remedy", the whole structure of the security ambitus should be questioned.In order to understand how security issues are constructed, the securitization theory focuses on the speech acts of political elites. The elites convince the audience that an issue is an existential security threat to a referent object that must be protected. They thereby legitimize the subsequent implementation of extraordinary measures to overcome this threat. In this paper we have examined the major global emergencies of the past 20 years and found out that they are basically narrative plots whose main marketing property is to have enough credibility to be "bought" by the global audience and to saturate the media.

Investigating the Culture-Media-Security Nexus

Drawing upon the observation that every conflict with necessity includes a cultural dimension, the present chapter outlines key conceptual and analytical tools that enable an understanding of how technologically mediated cultural expressions such as films, or computer games interfere with and impact upon processes of conflict formation and transformation. In doing so the chapter outlines ways of understanding the potential impacts of media, art, and popular culture on politics and society.