Understanding Strategic Communications: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Terminology Working Group Publication No. 3
Understanding Strategic Communications: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence Terminology Working Group Publication No. 3
Contributor(s): Neville Bolt (Editor)
Subject(s): Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, Security and defense, Political behavior, Politics and communication, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Russian Aggression against Ukraine
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Threats and security; strategic communications; NATO; Value-based communications; war; peace; rules-based international order;
Summary/Abstract: When the founding treaty that would bring NATO into being in April 1949 was under-written by twelve signatory nations, the world looked a very different place. The backdrop was dire. The outlook even more so. George Kennan’s ‘Long Telegram’ in 1946 had already warned of a threat from an expansionist Soviet Union intent on exporting communism to the West and depriving millions of Europeans of their freedom. US President Harry Truman had come to the aid of those European populations—afflicted with hunger, homelessness, pestilence, and national bankruptcy. By launching an unprecedented public diplomacy policy, the Marshall Plan, freedom would be preserved through a rebuilding of economies and revival of cooperation be-tween trading nations. Barely two years before the treaty signing, at the invitation of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society had convened a body of august economists, philosophers, and historians committed to staving off the advance of tyranny. Their alarm was palpable: ‘over large stretches of the Earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared’. Red-baiting turned into witch-hunting in the United States as the House Un-American Activities Committee went about its business. Hot wars fought in Korea and Indo-China would eventually give way to proxy wars waged on the African continent—save for one confrontation over Cuba.
- Print-ISBN-13: 978-9934-619-40-3
- Page Count: 44
- Publication Year: 2023
- Language: English
Point of departure: The evolution of understandings of strategic communications
Point of departure: The evolution of understandings of strategic communications
(Point of departure: The evolution of understandings of strategic communications)
- Author(s):Martha Stolze
- Language:English
- Subject(s):International relations/trade, Security and defense, Politics and communication, Present Times (2010 - today), Peace and Conflict Studies
- Page Range:9-18
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:strategic communications; NATO; Origins of StratCom;
- Summary/Abstract:This chapter seeks to capture the different perspectives on strategic communications (StratCom) that have appeared in the first ten volumes of the Defence Strategic Communications academic journal. This emergent field will always be a work in progress and opinions will remain contested as befits any academic and praxis-oriented area of study. From seventy-eight articles the following discussion draws on twenty-five, in addition to the editor’s forewords in several volumes.
Bolt’s paradigm of strategic communications
Bolt’s paradigm of strategic communications
(Bolt’s paradigm of strategic communications)
- Author(s):Neville Bolt
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Security and defense, Politics and communication, Theory of Communication, Peace and Conflict Studies
- Page Range:19-21
- No. of Pages:3
- Keywords:Strategic communications; authority; persuasion; legitimacy; coercion;
- Summary/Abstract:Strategic communicators inhabit a world of tensions. These act as forces which not only push and pull against each other; they define themselves against one other. Hence they are symbiotic: the one cannot exist without the other.
Definitions explained
Definitions explained
(Definitions explained)
- Author(s):Leonie Haiden, Jente Althuis
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, Security and defense, Political behavior, Politics and communication, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Russian Aggression against Ukraine
- Page Range:22-26
- No. of Pages:5
- Keywords:NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence; Value-based communications; persuasion; coercion;
- Summary/Abstract:In 2019 the Terminology Working Group of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence defined strategic communications as follows: strategic communications, n.: a holistic approach to communication based on values and interests that encompasses everything an actor does to achieve objectives in a contested environment. As of 2022, strategic communications is conceived as a normative project, and as such its theorists and practitioners recognise certain principles that underpin their activities: #1 StratCom affirms the right of the individual to choose between competing ideas or reject them. #2 StratCom affirms a need for transparency and the right of individuals to hold those who practise StratCom to be held to account. #3 StratCom affirms the right of the individual to free speech.
Terms through a strategic communications lens
Terms through a strategic communications lens
(Terms through a strategic communications lens)
- Author(s):Leonie Haiden, Jente Althuis
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Political Philosophy, Security and defense, Politics and communication, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Russian Aggression against Ukraine
- Page Range:27-36
- No. of Pages:10
- Keywords:strategic communications; values; Russia; Ukraine; Conflict; Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’; democracy; autocracy;
- Summary/Abstract:The relationship between strategic communications and values does not only concern how we define StratCom itself. The articulation of values has also been a central part of how actors have shaped and shifted discourses in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. When actors use certain terms and concepts—defending Western values, protecting our freedom, fighting an existential war, to name but a few—they aim to shape how we understand the events going on around us, and how we react to them. But in doing so they also shape and sometimes (re)define the terms themselves. It is worth considering the origins of some of these terms, and setting out how and why they have recently been used and contested by different actors. The discussion below is by no means exhaustive. It addresses the most relevant and contested terms that have regained currency in discourse surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. The status of the debate is depicted below, rather than any fresh definition of the terms selected. Terms have already been extensively conceptualised during a rich history that has seen lively academic debate. Instead of redefining them here, better to show how contested some are, and contextualise how they are used today.
Endnotes
Endnotes
(Endnotes)
- Author(s):Not Specified Author
- Language:English
- Subject(s):Editorial
- Page Range:37-42
- No. of Pages:6
- Keywords:NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence;