Propaganda, psychological warfare and communication research in the USA and the Soviet Union during the Cold War

Abstract

This article discusses the role of communication research in the Cold War, moving from a US-centered to a comparative-transnational point of view. It examines research on prop-aganda and mass communication in the United States and the Soviet Union, focusing not only on the similarities and differences, but also on mutual perceptions and transnational entanglements. In both countries, communication scientists conducted their research with its benefits for propaganda practitioners and waging the Cold War in mind. It has been suggested that after an initial period of close cooperation between politics and communication science, early expectations of the potential of systematic research for controlling the hearts and minds of people through propaganda started to fade. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, communication research eventually became a ‘normal’ scholarly discipline.

Harold D. Lasswell: propaganda research from the 1920s to the 1950s

“…Lasswell became, from 1940 to 1943, director of the Experimental Division for the Study of Wartime Communications at the Library of Congress, funded, like many other wartime research projects, by the Rockefeller Foundation (see, for example, Gary 1999;Levyatan 2009;Nietzel 2016;Pooley 2019;Simpson 1994). As Gary (1999, p.89) has argued, wartime communications research is an example of collaboration among the academy, private foundations and the state.…”

A Few Observations About State-Centric Online Propaganda

“…In the United States, for instance, it was the aftermath of the First World War that prompted a newly founded interdisciplinary interest on propaganda research. Initially led by figures such as sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, the interest led to many well-funded, methodologically oriented, and practice-focused research programs that were later continued by other well-known figures, such as critical theorist Theodor Adorno and communication scholar Harold Lasswell [1,29]. Lasswell's work in the 1930s also resulted a definition: "Let us be clear about the meaning of propaganda.…”

Socialist gerontology? Or gerontology during socialism? The Bulgarian case

“…Recent research has warned against overestimating the Cold War context as a factor in the history of science (Nietzel, 2016: 61) and has suggested an approach based on ‘middle-range contextualizations’ (Isaac, 2007), including broadening of both the historical perspective and the institutional context (Engerman, 2010). In line with such an approach, a number of studies have demonstrated the permeability of the Iron Curtain in certain respects and situations.…”