Out of Their Heads and Into Their Conversation: Countering Extremist Ideology
by Angela Trethewey, Steven R. Corman & Bud Goodall Ideology is often ignored or deemed irrelevant to strategic communication because it is an old, possibly leftist, idea that is associated with academic social critique. It is treated as something that lives in...
Israeli Nukes versus Palestinian Slingshots
by Ronald Lukens-Bull & Mark Woodward Indonesian press reportage of the recent conflict in Gaza claims that the Israelis used “Nuclear Weapons.” To Western readers these reports appear to be wildly inaccurate. But from a local perspective these reports are not...
Strategic Communication on a Rugged Landscape: Principles for Finding the Right Message
Steven R. Corman & Kevin J. Dooley For approximately the last decade, the United States has been moving to centralize and more tightly control its messages. Accelerating this trend, U.S. strategic communication efforts under the current administration follow the...
(Re)Defining the Long War: Toward a New Vocabulary of International Terrorism
by Aaron Hess & Z. S. Justus As the fight against terrorism continues, language plays a pivotal role. In current policies, the language of war continues to dominate. Based on an analysis of President Bush’s September 11th anniversary campaign speeches, we propose...
Islam, Pluralism and Democracy
by Mark Woodward It is now common in both academic and policy circles to ask the question "Where are the liberal Muslims?" Abrurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia, leads the world's largest Muslim organization and advocates for human rights, democracy and...
One Message for Many Audiences: Framing the Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
by Z. S Justus & Aaron Hess Globalization and telecommunications technology have made every message global. The consequence of this phenomenon is that when the United States makes announcements concerning the Global War on Terrorism a global, rather than a local...
Strategic Ambiguity, Communication, and Public Diplomacy in an Uncertain World: Principles and Practices
by Bud Goodall, Angela Trethewey, & Kelly McDonald There is widespread recognition that the U. S. public diplomacy efforts worldwide have failed. In response to this image crisis, the Pentagon, State Department, and other agencies of the federal government are...
Credibility in the Global War on Terrorism
by Steven R. Corman, Aaron Hess, & Z. S. Justus The perceived credibility of the United States government on the global stage has never been lower. This impedes its ability to fight, much less to win, the “war of ideas” that is so much a part of the global war on...
The Iranian Letter to President Bush: Analysis and Recommendations
by Bud Goodall, Linell Cady, Steven R. Corman, Kelly McDonald, Mark Woodward, & Carolyn Forbes On May 9, 2006, world media outlets released news of a letter written by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to U.S. President George W. Bush. The letter was the first...