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For many scholars, the issues of propaganda and deception have been largely taboo subjects. There is only fleeting attention to deception from political scientists whilst communication scholars pay minimal attention to the issue of propaganda. And yet we live in an age in which debates about deception and propaganda are prevalent. Recent angst over fake news and foreign propaganda activities have become part of political discourse. In fact, as this chapter shows, questions of deception and lying in politics are perennial and date back to ancient times whilst propaganda remains an integral component of contemporary democracies. Moreover, deception as a political strategy has become pervasive in contemporary liberal democracies because of the range of institutions now involved in the manipulation of information. These institutions include media, academia, think tanks, and intelligence services. Furthermore, the emergence of internet-based digital communication creates new opportunities for powerful actors to manipulate beliefs and conduct. These developments raise profound questions with respect to the health of contemporary liberal democracies, and accordingly, the study of propaganda and deception needs to become far more central and mainstream than has been the case to date.

From the sophists of ancient Greece, chastised by Plato (360 BC) for their specious rhetoric and Aristotle’s analysis of the operation of persuasive rhetoric (Hesk 2000; Aristotle 2013 [230 BC]), through to the 16th century realpolitik of Machiavelli and the 20th century advocacy of the necessity of deception in politics by thinkers such as Leo Strauss (1958; 1975), the issues of lying and deception more widely are perennials of politics. The 20th and 21st Centuries have witnessed numerous examples of political lying and deception, from the ‘big lie’ approach that Adolf Hitler (1939 [1924]: 184-185) attributed to the Jews but which is now seen as staple of Nazi propaganda (Herf 2006); through to the Pentagon Papers which exposed, among other things, the secret enlargement of the US war in South East Asia to Cambodia and Laos and the lies of US President Richard Nixon during the 1970s Watergate scandal (Sheehan 1971; Ellsberg 2003); and deception by US and UK political leaders about the certainty and threatening nature of the intelligence relating to Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the period before the invasion in 2003 (Mearsheimer 2011; Herring and Robinson 2014, 2014-15). Indeed, according to some analysts, lying and deception are pervasive elements of politics (Jamieson 1992; Alterman 2004; Oborne 2005). It is therefore of no surprise that we live in times of profound distrust of politics and politicians, at least in much of the Western world, as evidenced by opinion polls spanning the 1950s to the current day from the USA, Australia and Europe (Bakir and Barlow 2007).

The propaganda model devised by Herman and Chomsky has provided a major service for scholarship in media and communication studies and political science/international relations. The model has explained and demonstrated how mainstream media perform a propaganda role for powerful economic and political interests. Today, there have been no serious challenges, so far as this author is aware, to its empirical accuracy. Nevertheless, the model only tells half the story because it remains focused on analysis of media performance at the expense of critical exploration of the actual propaganda apparatus that shapes the information environment even before mainstream media enter the equation. This chapter extends the propaganda model by attempting an initial mapping of the organisational and bureaucratic entities which work to shape the information environment, and which determine what is understood to be true and what is understood to be untrue. It is argued that a combination of ‘PR professionals’, intelligence services, academics, think tanks, and co-opted elite journalists play a pivotal role within an extended apparatus seen deep in the bureaucracy of the state and which overlaps with commercial interests. The author argues that by widening the focus to include the propaganda apparatus itself we will be able to critically engage with and reveal the processes that play a major role in determining our perception of political reality.

This chapter examines the academic debates over the relationship between US public opinion, media, and foreign policy. It first considers the nature of US media and public opinion, including democratic expectations of mass media and public opinion, before discussing pluralist and elite approaches to understanding the links between media, public opinion, and foreign policy. It then explores the role of propaganda and persuasion with respect to US power projection, with particular emphasis on the ways in which public opinion and media can be understood as a source of power for — and as a constraint upon — US foreign policy. It also reviews contemporary debates regarding the impact of technological developments, such as the emergence of global media like the internet and social media, upon US power and influence.

In this critical overview of the research to date on media and foreign policy, the relationship between media and public opinion and key international relations theories is described and two key research strands are examined. The first research strand concerns the liberal-pluralist approach to analyzing media and foreign policy and considering the media (and public opinion) as both a constraint on foreign policy and an instigator of policy. The second strand concerns the elite-driven model and theorizes media as largely subservient to foreign policy elites and, frequently, as an agent of manipulation and influence with regard to public opinion. It is argued that, on balance, there is greater theoretical and empirical evidence in support of the elite-driven model. Before concluding with a suggested research agenda for the future, two key developments concerning the new media environment and contemporary propaganda are discussed. In particular, it is maintained that research on media and foreign policy needs to give closer attention to propaganda activities and that urgent questions remain unanswered about whether or not the new media environment is increasing or decreasing the power of publics and media to influence foreign policy.

Ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there has been a widely shared public perception in the UK and beyond that the British Government lied in making the case for war. One major theme has been the view that the Blair Government lied about the strength of the intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the extent of the WMD capabilities claimed by that intelligence. A second theme that has received less attention has been the view that the Blair Government lied in claiming that its actions at the United Nations (UN) were aimed at securing peaceful Iraqi compliance with its disarmament obligations. Instead, most think that the UK was actually committed to a policy of regime change by force, which the British Government accepts would have been illegal, and did not want the 'UN route'€™ to produce a peaceful outcome. The article argues that the conceptual focus of the discussion needs to be broadened from lying to also considering deception by omission and deception by distortion as part of a campaign of organized political persuasion. It argues that, on the WMD intelligence, it is now apparent that a campaign of deceptive organised political persuasion was conducted by UK officials. With respect to the UN route, there is mounting though not conclusive evidence that the Blair Government ran a campaign of deception on this issue as well to pave Britain's road to war in Iraq.

The 2016 Iraq Inquiry Report (the Chilcot report) was highly critical of the British government and its involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation. Drawing upon the authoritative material in the report, this article provides the most comprehensive and conceptually grounded post-Chilcot assessment of the empirical evidence now available regarding whether deception and propaganda were used to mobilize support for the invasion of Iraq. Employing a conceptual framework designed to identify deceptive organized persuasive communication (OPC), it is argued that the Chilcot report supports the thesis that, through distortions and omissions, deceptive OPC campaigns presented a misleading impression of both the threat posed by Iraqi WMD and Britain’s commitment to a peaceful resolution via the ‘UN route’. Moreover, based upon UK-US communications in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Chilcot report also provides suggestive but highly significant evidence of a broader and covert geo-strategic policy, including action against Syria and Iran, and which was underpinned by a ‘close knit propaganda campaign’. In light of this, it is argued that a major expansion of scholarly inquiry is necessary involving sustained analysis of the establishing phase of the ‘War on Terror’, the role that deception and propaganda might have played with respect to its enablement, and, more broadly, the implications of this for our understanding of propaganda and deception in liberal democratic states.\ud

Overview The term propaganda is frequently understood to be an activity that can be relegated either to history or to non-democratic ‘enemy’ states and actors. For example, the term often conjures up images of World War II (WWII) Nazi activities headed by Joseph Goebbels or the demonisation of Germans and Japanese during US and British WWII propaganda campaigns. In the contemporary context, when talking of enemies, any given political actor will frequently dismiss their media output and claims as propaganda. As an activity, however, that is inherently geared towards persuasion and influence through some kind of manipulation, propaganda is not always clearly distinguishable from many, although not necessarily all, of the activities that Western academics and practitioners label in more benign terms. These include perception management, psychological operations (psy ops), public diplomacy, public affairs and strategic communication. In fact, scholars such as Philip Taylor, a leading historian on the subject of war and propaganda, have little patience for the use of these alternative labels:Let us first dispel with the euphemistic nonsense that surrounds this topic and which does in fact obscure what we are actually talking about – namely propaganda. … an entire euphemism industry has developed to deflect attention away from the realities of what they do, ranging from ‘spin doctoring’ and ‘public affairs’ at the political level to ‘international information’ and ‘perception management’ at the military level. … despite the euphemism game, democracies have grown ever more sophisticated at conducting propaganda, however labeled, which only they deny to be propaganda in the first place.

This chapter examines the relevance of media and public opinion to our understanding of foreign policy and international politics. It first considers whether public opinion influences foreign policy formulation, as argued by the pluralist model, or whether the public are politically impotent, as argued by the elite model. It then explores whether the media can influence foreign policy formulation, as argued by the pluralist model, or whether the media are fundamentally subservient to the foreign policy process, as argued by the elite model. It also integrates these competing arguments with theoretical frames used in the study of international relations: namely, realism, liberalism, and critical approaches (including constructivism and post-structuralism). The chapter concludes by discussing contemporary debates concerning organized persuasive communication and the ‘war on terror’.

After the ‘CNN effect’ concept was coined two decades ago, it quickly became a popular shorthand to understand media-conflict interactions. Although the connection has probably always been more complex than what was captured in the concept, research needs to be updated in order to better understand the multifaceted contemporary environments of both media and conflict. There are growing numbers and types of media sources, and multiple interactions between media and conflict actors, policymakers and engaged publics from the local to the global and back. We argue that understanding the impact of media reporting on conflict requires a new framework that captures the multilevel and hybrid media environments of contemporary conflicts. This study provides a roadmap of how to systematically unpack this environment. It describes and explains how different levels, interactions, and forms of news reporting shape conflicts and peacebuilding in local, national and regional contexts, and how international responses interact with multiple media narratives. With these tools, comprehensive understandings of contemporary local to global media interactions can be incorporated into new research on media and conflict.

Debate over media coverage of foreign affairs has been dominated by a range of theoretical positions, here characterized as the `elite-driven,' 'independent' and 'oppositional' models. In this article, we explore the relative cogency of these theoretical positions in the context of British media coverage of the 2003 Iraq War. We find that coverage generally conformed to the elite-driven model, reinforcing the coalition. Nevertheless, our analysis also provides evidence to support the independent and oppositional models. Regarding casualties and the humanitarian situation, we find significant levels of coverage which support the oppositional model and the notion of event-driven news. Overall, our study points toward a more nuanced understanding of media-state relations than is suggested by the existing elite-driven paradigm.

Media's role in wartime has long been the subject of controversy, marked by claims that media promote, or indeed constrain, military action, and over the impact of patriotism and new technologies on wartime levels of media autonomy. Based on a detailed examination of U.K. press and television coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and of the U.S./U.K. coalition's media briefings, this report summarizes initial findings concerning media management and press content. We show that the coalition consistently promoted the humanitarian case for war, humanitarian operations and àslow but sure' military progress, while U.K. press coverage largely reflected this focus upon military progress, accepting and even promoting the broader humanitarian rationale for war. Nevertheless, we uncovered a degree of media criticism that emerged in response to events outside the coalition's control, such as civilian and military casualties. We also direct readers to further outputs from the project analyzing various aspects of British media coverage of the invasion in greater detail.

Having launched the first issue of Critical Studies on Terrorism, and with the second part of the Symposium on the state of terrorism studies ready for publication, this is an opportune moment to s...

In this article, the authors draw upon the results from a substantial content and framing analysis of the British media's treatment of the 2003 Iraq War to show how Britain's national press managed their coverage of the initial combat phase of the war against the background of substantial public and elite opposition. They show that reporting was dominated by coverage of the ongoing battle, that newspapers offered a similar subject agenda to one another and that coalition actors were prominent and likely to be reported neutrally. But the article uncovers a substantial diversity of opinion and tone across the British press and identifies five different editorial approaches to the conflict which are sustained across the news and editorial pages of different newspapers. Through a closer examination, the authors attempt to account for the existence of these approaches in relation to the effects of public opposition to the war, patriotism and newspapers' longstanding political allegiances. Finally, they suggest that, in the British press at least, this plurality of opinions and forms of coverage offers a challenge to longstanding assumptions about the extent to which the media have tended to offer support to official positions in relation to war.

A B S T R A C T ■ The 2003 Iraq War was highly controversial in the UK, generating domestic opposition and a widely supported anti-war movement, the Stop the War Coalition. This article assesses the extent to which anti-war protesters were successful at securing positive coverage in the British press immediately before and during the invasion of Iraq. The study shows that, although anti-war protesters received more favourable than unfavourable coverage prior to the war, once the war got under way, a `support our boys' consensus led to the narrowing of what Daniel Hallin has termed the `sphere of legitimate controversy' with the anti-war movement relegated to a `sphere of deviance'. The article also demonstrates that elite-led protest was more successful at influencing newspaper debate than grassroots protest. Overall, the results highlight the problems protest movements have in securing positive media representation during war. ■

This short article is a response to an overview of research on media-political relations written by John Street and published in the Political Studies Review in 2005. The usefulness of the exercise is recognised but issue is taken both with the organising concepts of Street's account and the way he excludes a significant body of research from his assessment, raising questions about his characterisation of the field under scrutiny. A case is made for assessing the tensions and the varieties of work in this broad area by the use of other categories, including the play-off between media-centric and politics-centric accounts, the continuing strand of work informed by critical theory and the sheer variety of the topics upon which researchers have chosen to focus as a way into a broader agenda. The importance of work engaging with issues at an international level is emphasised together with the value of new comparative studies. In conclusion, the state of the area is judged more positively than in Street's assessment. Questions of power are argued to be the principal point at issue in comparing research approaches and the need for further explicitness and clarity here is noted.

Noam Chomsky argues that, while the US news media are adversarial towards the US government on foreign policy, institutional filters operate to ensure that the criticisms made generally stay within narrow bounds set by the US political elite. Chomsky's research in this area is largely ignored even by academics who agree with this conclusion. The institutional tendency to filter out anti-elite perspectives applies not only to the news media but also to academia. Consequently, Chomsky's work is marginalised due to its emphasis on corporate power, principled opposition to US foreign policy and the role of academia in buttressing elite power.

Of Noam Chomsky’s many contributions, this chapter focuses on his analysis of mainstream US news media and its role as a propagator of elite interests. Published in 1988 and written in collaboration with communications scholar Edward Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media presented a clear-cut and uncompromising critique of the US media. In essence, their provocatively titled propaganda model argued that mainstream US media output were being driven by corporate business interests and reliance upon advertising as a source of profit, while being constrained by over-reliance upon official sources, bullying right-wing think tanks, and Cold War ideological imperatives. As a consequence, US news output presented a truncated and fundamentally distorted view of the world, and one that served the interests of US political and economic elites. Within the framework of the propaganda model, enemies of the US government were highlighted by US media as abusers of human rights, undemocratic, and belligerent, while the crimes of the US government and its allies were largely ignored. Most importantly, underlying the framing of all media reporting was the representation of the United States as inherently benign, peace-loving, and the indisputable leader of humanity. At its very worst, this misrepresentation of reality enabled wars such as Vietnam, which involved the deaths of millions of people, to be understood by the US public as a noble and dignified war in pursuit of freedom and democracy. In short, the critique of US media developed by Herman and Chomsky could not have been more fundamental and disconcerting.

This chapter explores debates over public opinion, media, and war, addressing the extent to which public perceptions can be shaped via propaganda and perception management. The historical backdrop to contemporary media management operations is outlined through an examination of the so-called Vietnam syndrome. Contemporary research into wartime media–state–public opinion dynamics is then discussed. Concerning domestic audiences, it is argued that early in a conflict government has considerable scope to influence opinions via propaganda activities. However, as a conflict becomes extended, and certainly by the point of ‘tactical transition’, the combination of rising casualties and elite debate reduce the potency of propaganda activities. Within a conflict zone, the utility of propaganda and perception management is significantly less, at all stages of a conflict. It is concluded that greater focus should be placed on substantive policy, as opposed to propaganda and perception-management activities, when seeking to ‘win hearts and minds’.

The British government published a dossier on 24 September 2002 setting out its claims regarding Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). 1 Parliament was recalled for an emergency session on the same day to hear Prime Minister Tony Blair’s presentation of it. The dossier stated that Iraq had WMD and was producing more. After the invasion in March 2003, no WMD were found. Ever since, there has been controversy as to whether the dossier reported accurately intelligence which turned out to be wrong, as Blair has claimed consistently, or whether the dossier deliberately deceived by intentionally giving the impression of greater Iraqi WMD capability and threat than the intelligence suggested. Despite a great deal of attention to the September dossier, there has not been any analysis conceptually well developed enough, or sufficiently grounded in the empirical evidence, to make much headway in resolving this disagreement. This article assesses the extent to which the dossier was part of a campaign of organized political persuasion and whether that campaign involved demonstrable deception. It shows that the dossier did not accurately represent the content and strength of intelligence that turned out to be wrong. Instead, the dossier portrayed a misleading picture of greater capability and greater certainty than the intelligence warranted. The misleading nature of the dossier was not an accident. There was a concerted effort by many of those involved in producing the dossier to push the claims about the intelligence as far as possible. The phrase “dodgy dossier” was originally used to describe this September dossier. 2 The British government published another dossier on 3 February 2003 which was exposed as being mostly plagiarized. 3 Subsequently, the term “dodgy dossier” has tended to be applied mainly to this second dossier. In view of the arguments in this article, the September dossier ought to be known as the deceptive dossier. The argument in this article is structured in four sections. The first section surveys official claims regarding the dossier, the results of four successive inquiries (the fifth has not yet reported), and the scholarly literature to date. Here the article shows that, despite some discussion of the dossier in numerous publications, there has still not been an in‐depth analysis of its contents and production which is conceptually well developed and which draws on vital information that has become available in the last few years. The second section sets out the conceptual framework, while the third applies it to the empirical record. The article shows that the dossier was fundamentally misleading about the intelligence and that deliberate deception through omission and distortion was involved. The conclusion considers the significance of the deceptive dossier.

Richard Holbrooke, To End A War (New York: Random House 1998). Pp.432, illus., biblio., index. £27.95/$27.95 (cloth); £15.95/$15.95 (paper). ISBN 0–3755–0057‐X (cloth) and Revised (May 1999) ISBN 0–3757–5360–5 (paper). Ivo H. Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America's Bosnia Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press 1999). Pp.xiii + 204, 5 figs., chronology, index. $39.95/£31.25 (cloth); $16.95/£13.25 (paper). ISBN 0–8157–1692–3 and ‐1691–5 Tim Ripley, Operation Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO Campaign in Bosnia 1995 (Lancaster: Centre for Defence and International Security Studies 1999). Pp.360 19 maps, chronology, 10pp. photos, biblio., orbats, index. £14.99 (paper). ISBN 0–9536–6500–3.

US intervention in Somalia (1992) and Iraq (1991) are held as evidence for a more powerful media in the post Cold War era and the thesis that media coverage of suffering people is a major cause of humanitarian intervention. This paper investigates the role of mass media during the 1992 decision to deploy ground troops in Somalia. A media influence model is outlined and then applied to the decision to intervene in Somalia. The research indicates that significant levels of media attention actually followed the intervention decision and that this coverage was framed in a way that built support for the intervention. I conclude there is little evidence to support the claim that media coverage compelled policy makers to intervene or that media coverage was a major factor in policy deliberations. Overall, the role of media in causing intervention in Somalia has been substantially overplayed, instead other factors are likely to have had a far greater effect in causing the intervention. This finding challenges both the thesis that media coverage is a major cause of the deployment of ground troops during humanitarian crisis and suggests caution be exercised with regard to post-Cold War claims of a more powerful and influential media.