To recount the development of the propaganda analysis movement before and since World War I, this paper reviews the precursors of the movement, traces the propaganda conciousness produced by wartime campaigns and subsequent domestic campaigns, and looks at major obstacles to propaganda analysis produced by social and academic conditions after…

Examines the inability of the propaganda paradigm to maintain its position as the standard framework for rhetorical inquiry in the sociointellectual atmosphere that surrounded World War II and the Cold War. Discusses the epistemological and ideological roots of the shift from propaganda to statistical/experimental communication research. (JD)

The Johnson Administration rationale for commitment to Vietnam was supported by a series of claims about the nature of the Vietnam war and the logic of U.S. involvement in it. This paper states and supports the thesis that the exaggerated tone of certainty in the administration case for commitment had a dual effect, undermining both the rhetorical…

Provides an historical survey of efforts by social groups to monitor and influence classroom instruction that treats the ethics of political and social practices, beginning with the rediscovery, after World War I, of the importance of ethical communication practices in democratic politics. (NKA)

Examines the development and historical inaccuracies of the "magic bullet" interpretation of American propaganda studies, which asserts that propaganda critics between the world wars treated messages as "magic bullets" directly and powerfully infused into passive receivers. Considers why this misconception of the progressive…

The fissures, if not chasms, between two recently published histories of the field of communication demonstrate that teachers/scholars of communication lack an agreed-upon recollection of their social and intellectual origins. The influence of muckrakers has been so great that, paradoxically, they seem easy to ignore in constructing a history of…

This paper maintains that American thinking on propaganda revolves around five approaches--progressive propaganda critics, media practitioners, textual rationalists, communication scientists, and political polemicists--that all have deep roots in the twentieth century social and intellectual history of the United States. The paper examines the…

Defining propaganda as "efforts by special interests to win over the public covertly by infiltrating messages into various channels of public expression ordinarily viewed as politically neutral," this book argues that propaganda has become pervasive in American life. Pointing out that the 1990s society is inundated with propaganda from…

The issue of whose "facts" and whose perspective will control classroom discussions of social questions tends to surface in one of two related ways: (1) in connection with efforts to mandate the content of the instructional matter, and (2) in connection with attacks on teachers whose instructional material contains facts or evaluations offensive…