Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - Volume 3, Issue 3, 2012

This article describes the role of foreign radio propaganda in Portugal in the years that preceded and the years during World War II. It demonstrates how the BBC became the most effective weapon to counterattack the German propaganda in the country and comments on the strategies used by the British in order to reach the Portuguese public. Among those strategies the most important was the promotion of the objectivity of the broadcasts from London, as opposed to the German transmissions that were known for airing mainly ‘toxic propaganda’. Evidence is also presented according to which news bulletins and talks broadcast by the BBC were perceived by the receivers as independent from political interference while the Axis transmissions were mostly considered as airing ‘toxic information’, demonstrating how during the war British white propaganda became very effective in regards to its impact on the Portuguese public.

The set-up of a European Semester, under which EU Member States’ public budgets and accounts are supervised by the European Council, along with the prospect of a fiscal harmonization across Eurozone Member States that would limit the agency of national governments’ economic policy, has thrown the EU political system into the spotlight of public (and published) opinion. This article argues that, in the context of an absent European identity that would be commensurable with the scope of European institutions, Europe seems to be heading for a technocratic regime backed up by a revival of the nineteenth century’s ‘Concert Européen’ (what press commentators nowadays call the ‘European directorate’). Drawing from in-depth interviews with policy makers, journalists and civil society actors from Brussels and two contrasting countries (the United Kingdom and Spain), on their acceptance of EU institutions, I discard the ‘communications gap’ theory to explain the distant and bureaucratic character of European institutions, resorting instead to an explanation related to the kind of political system the European Union is, based upon principles that are inherently biased against the publicity of procedures: corporatism, diplomacy and technocracy.

Global environmental risks are set to play an increasingly prominent role in world affairs. As detailed by Ulrich Beck in his theory of the World Risk Society, such risks are an inevitable outcome of an increasingly globalized world, while their existence can also serve to deepen processes of global interconnectedness and cosmopolitanization. Global communication flows are integral to the construction and understanding of risk. While Beck acknowledges the centrality of media and communication, his analysis is largely at the level of broad social theory. This article critically examines some of his concepts in light of empirical work in communications scholarship, in particular his notions of ‘risk cultures’ and the ‘global public sphere’.

An important part of political activism has always consisted in the capacity to rapidly generate politically usable information and to use it where it will have most impact. This article focuses on the action repertoire of digital rights activists, advocating the protection of fundamental rights in digital environments and targeting European directives in the domain of patent or copyright reform and telecommunication law. The increasing use of digital tools triggers new social and political issues. Copyright, patent law, the protection of personal data or the governance of the Internet infrastructure attract increasing attention. Decision makers repeatedly attempt to regulate these issues, providing spaces of power struggle for industry groups who lobby for their rights to be (re)affirmed in digital environments and for activists and citizens who fight for the protection of emergent practices and civil rights. The focus lies on how these activists use the Internet to monitor and collect information and generate spaces of production and diffusion of specialized information on these issues. Findings from two campaign case studies highlight new practices of collection and management of political information in the digital age.

The Internet represents a fertile ground for the communication and dissemination of information about health in general, and about health risks in particular. Moreover, new media can play a key role in shaping the public perception of risk and uncertainty, potentially allowing everybody to have a say in public discussions. More and more activist groups profit from this opportunity and increasingly exploit new media to draw attention to and make sense of the diverse information delivered in the public debate on health issues. Moving from the results of a content analysis of 702 messages posted between 2001 and 2007 in a Swiss activist group’s online discussion forum discussing the risks linked to non-ionizing radiation, this article explores the ways communication flows within new technologies. Non-ionizing radiation is an interesting topic because there is no scientific evidence that supports either its positive or negative effect on health, shifting the burden of proof and discussion to the population. Lacking clear and definitive institutional communication about the topic, we assume that the information presented on the Internet in general, and by online activist groups in particular, could have a great impact on people’s risk perception.

Popular representations of the advertising industry are marked by both celebrations of its creativity and criticisms of its manipulative or ideological role in the consumer society. One long-standing aspect of this ambivalence is the creation and popularity of ‘confessional’ accounts published by the industry’s leading practitioners. The highly successful Australian television programme The Gruen Transfer is a contemporary articulation of advertising professionals offering an ‘insider’ view and critique of advertising to the public. This article critically examines the first three seasons (2008–2010) of The Gruen Transfer in order to analyse how advertising professionals on the programme offer the public the opportunity to understand how advertising ‘works on them’. We analyse the practices of ‘exposing’ advertising The Gruen Transfer panellists employ and consider how these practices of exposure are part of the work of managing advertising. We argue that the panellists’ narrative of exposure celebrates rather than critiques the role of advertising in society. By claiming the space where such a debate might be facilitated The Gruen Transfer stabilizes advertising as a mechanism for creating brand value.

Self-help books are one of the most prolific and commercially successful book genres of the past 30 years (Smith 2002). Described as a genre of books that outline a particular problem in the leading title, which is then followed by its remedy in the subtitle, the self-help genre has also undergone substantial product diversification to include inspirational pamphlets, affirmational daily journals, audio books and miniature self-help books (e.g. The Little Book of Hope) to emerge as a very lucrative global cultural industry. While it is estimated that the self-help industry is worth $10 billion in America, this strong consumptive relationship with self-help books is not an exclusive American phenomenon, but can also be found to be on the increase in Britain, as well as Japan, China and India, among other countries. However, despite the sizeable presence of self-help books in contemporary popular culture, the practice of consuming and reading self-help books has yet to receive the scholarly attention that this phenomenon now deserves. In this article I will attempt to rectify this impasse by conducting a critical review of the research already conducted into self-help books and their readers, highlighting the inconsistencies and impediments that hamper a sustained and systematic analysis of self-help books, with a view to signposting new areas for development and a fusion of different perspectives in the years ahead.