Defence Strategic Communications

30

Authors: Nicholas Michelsen, Jonathan Woodier

This article draws on content and sentiment analysis of a sample of international English-language media reports to identify the core elements of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) strategic communications campaign conducted at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, and to establish groundwork for an assessment of its effectiveness. Using the Olympics as a stage for strategic communications is as old as the games themselves. The article examines the structure and elements of a DPRK Strategic Communications campaign by locating it in historical and theoretical context, and shows how it bears the hallmarks of a carefully crafted and timed agenda-setting campaign. Subsequent to the games, the supreme leader of the DPRK, Kim Jong-un, met with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, to discuss a full peace treaty and, in June 2018, met with President Trump of the United States. Irrespective of the ultimate outcome of these engagements, a month before the games such a meeting would have been inconceivable. We contend that the 2018 Winter Olympics held in the Republic of Korea (ROK) provides a case study for assessing how influencing discourses in the media space may impact the conditions of possibility for international political action.

36

Authors: Kitty Lovegrove

Governments using strategic communications to influence an audience should continue to reassess the intellectual grounds of the discipline. Current thinking on how best to construct a campaign and influence an audience is mixed, sparse, and incomplete. Insights from musicology present an opportunity for a refreshed perspective. Music, as a social text, a practice, and an ecology, provides a powerful means of communication from which lessons of influence can be learnt. This article serves as a study into the parallels between two interconnected topics. It proposes that insight from musicology has the ability to improve strategic communications practice on two levels—constructing a compelling narrative and best influencing an audience. Two case studies are compared to illustrate the benefits of persuading through emotionally-based strategic communications—a Daesh nasheed with music and a counternarrative campaign without. This article highlights how communicating through a rational-actor model is outdated; to best affect the physiological and emotional state of the audience, musicology must be incorporated.

41

Authors: Gulizar Haciyakupoglu

This article analyses the information garboil caused by the politicisation of disinformation and the term ‘fake news’, and interruptions in the flow of information during the 14th General Elections in Malaysia. It pays particular attention to the distortion of the information environment by politicians and political parties, the control of the media (traditional and new), and the mobilisation of cyber troops and bots by political agents. The Anti-Fake News Act is central to the discussion as a law passed before and submitted for repeal after the elections. The article also looks into the subsidiary debate on foreign intervention and the supporting measures, such as cyber attacks and legal actions, that interrupted the information flow. An examination of these activities suggests a need for reform in the conduct of politicians and political parties, and of the media, as well as a closer look at other measures employed to disturb the information sphere. An evaluation of the problem and the introduction of a new approach are very timely, given the political changes the country is currently experiencing.

14

Authors: Charles Kriel

A Review Essay

27

Authors: Žaneta Ozoliņa, Jurģis Šķilters, Sigita Struberga

Humour entertains, but can also be used for propaganda purposes if it reaches a large audience and influences their emotional response to specific topics. The article focuses on humour as a comprehensive concept: elements of humour that serve a propagandistic function, including shared knowledge, the target audience, the perception of humour, the functions of humour, and the communication process, are identified and analysed in New Year’s Eve programming on Russian television.

32

Authors: John Williams

A Review Essay

36

Authors: Robyn Kriel

This research paper examines and assesses how members of the Somali jihadi insurgent group al-Shabaab have attempted to influence the mass media for strategic communications purposes. Using the group’s activities between the years 2005 and 2017 as a case study, this paper asserts that al-Shabaab’s attempts to influence the mass media for news coverage purposes, despite its own operational security concerns since it withdrew from Mogadishu in 2011,is forward-looking, fast-paced, aggressive, and by and large successful. But the conclusions also assert that despite the group’s focused strategic communications and its opportunistic use of Propaganda of the Deed, its successes correlate directly to the failure of the poor and generally uncoordinated communications efforts of the international coalition working to counter it. The generally poor handling of strategic communications by an expensive combination of the Somali government, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), the United Nations (UN), and some members of the international community has allowed the strategic communications of al-Shabaab a relatively free, unchecked, and unchallenged passage. In some cases related to major attacks, al-Shabaab’s strategic communications are even viewed by members of the mass media as more authentic, realistic, timely, and truthful, than those of those of the coalition working to counter it.