Issue #02, August 2023
Strategies of Public Communication. Actors – Institutions – Aims
This second issue is devoted to the actors, institutions and goals of public crisis communication, especially, but not exclusively of the recent years. In doing so, strategies of influencing the formation of society-wide opinion and behavior governance, the struggle for interpretive sovereignty and the limitation of the discourse space as well as their connection to power structures and interests, but also their tense relationship to fundamental principles of democratic communication will be illuminated.
Introduction to the second issue
Hannah Broecker , Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung, Issue #02, August 2023, Pages 301-304
Permanent Link: https://cdoi.org/1.1/065/000038
PROPAGANDA, PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
Intelligence Agencies’ Communications with the Public
Tim Hayward , University of Edinburgh
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung, Issue #02, August 2023, Pages 305-329
Permanent Link: https://cdoi.org/1.2/065/000027
This article outlines concerns about the involvement of intelligence services in public communications, particularly those aimed at affecting public opinion in their home nation. It differentiates the main kinds of activity, assessing their anticipated benefits and disbenefits both for the agencies and for the public. Section 1 considers the kind of communication intelligence agencies can directly address to a public audience, and finds this is mainly limited to public relations statements on the organisation’s own behalf and affirmation of intelligence that governments have already publicised. Section 2 looks at how sometimes positive intelligence is disseminated publicly, as was notably the case as Russian forces gathered on Ukraine’s border prior to the 2022 invasion, and sets out reasons for regarding this as necessarily a limited exception rather than the norm. Section 3 examines the rationale for intelligence agencies to coordinate counter-disinformation activities as part of their counterintelligence mission, highlighting the significant coordinated steps that countries in the NATO alliance have taken to support these. It identifies as a central problem that the definition of disinformation operationalised in this work can include true information if that serves an adversary. This does not help the public become better informed. In fact, as shown in Section 4, because counter-disinformation operations allow the subsumption of reasoned dissent under the label of adversarial interference, they arguably constitute a more real, present and rigorously describable danger than is presented by the alleged problem of ‘disinformation’. For they are largely unaccountable, often unethical, and sometimes illegal and unconstitutional. In the worst of cases, they can support unjust war and crimes against humanity. Accordingly, there are good reasons for citizens, and certainly for academic researchers, to maintain rigorous critical distance from communications of intelligence provenance.
PROPAGANDA, PUBLIC COMMUNICATION
Cognitive warfare, propaganda and nudging with the use of soft power techniques: a challenge for Western democracies
Jonas Tögel , Universität Regensburg
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung, Issue #02, August 2023, Pages 331-341
Permanent Link: https://cdoi.org/1.2/065/000036
PUBLIC COMMUNICATION, PROPAGANDA
Propaganda and Censorship in the Digital Corporate State
Michael Meyen , Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung, Issue #02, August 2023, Pages 343-358
Permanent Link: https://cdoi.org/1.2/065/000034
BOOK REVIEW
Is resilience the magic bullet against this and future pandemics? A book review essay on the book by Roland Benedikter and Karim Fathi, “The Coronavirus Crisis and its Teachings”.
Harald Walach , Kazimieras Simonavicius University Litauen
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung, Issue #02, August 2023, Pages 590-599
Permanent Link: https://cdoi.org/1.2/065/000039
 
Kritische Gesellschaftsforschung
Issue #02, August 2023
ISSN: 2751-8922
In this Issue:
Hannah Broecker
Introduction to the second issue
Tim Hayward
Intelligence Agencies’ Communications with the Public
Jonas Tögel
Cognitive warfare, propaganda and nudging with the use of soft power techniques: a challenge for Western democracies
Michael Meyen
Propaganda and Censorship in the Digital Corporate State
Harald Walach
Is resilience the magic bullet against this and future pandemics? A book review essay on the book by Roland Benedikter and Karim Fathi, “The Coronavirus Crisis and its Teachings”.
 
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