Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
The rule remains: _Consistent analysis of the same output with reference
to basic topics over a sustained period will inevitably reveal the
propaganda intention of the source._ (It must be pointed out that the
expert analyst still is needed to select topics and to confirm
interpretations.) To make a first guess as to whether the intended
effect is being achieved or not, the analyst uses himself as a
propaganda guinea pig. What does he think of the issues? What might he
have thought otherwise? What would he think if he were a little less
intelligent, a little more uncritical, than he is? And to complete the
analysis, the analyst must go out to the audience that receives the
materials and find out what effect the propaganda has had by asking them
about it (see interrogation, page 145).
=Printed Materials.= The most readily available sources of propaganda
are not printed ones. Especially in time of hostilities, it may not be
easy to subscribe to enemy materials by the process of sending an
international postal money order. Delays involved in transmitting the
printed materials may make them useless for spot analysis, and valuable
only for long-range basic studies of morale. The propagandist who is
being analyzed may oblige by reading large numbers of editorials on the
radio. (During the last war, officers and citizens occasionally exploded
with alarm when Radio Tokyo quoted a _Life_ or New York _Times_
editorial several hours after it appeared. They naturally supposed that
the Japanese had a secret short-wave transmitter running from New York
City direct to Tokyo, and overlooked the fact that the OWI may have
quoted long excerpts in slow Morse code on its trans-Pacific beam to
China. The Japanese had picked it up, used subquotes, and beamed it
back.)
Printed matter goes on the air in any major news operation. It is only a
matter of time before telephoto facilities develop in line with the
experimental New York _Times_ edition printed in San Francisco during
the United Nations organizational conference. This was sent, all in one
piece, by wirephoto to Frisco and reprinted. The delay between the two
editions was merely a matter of minutes. In the future, wireless
telephoto may reduce this to seconds, so that all belligerents can
simply tune in on each other's major newspapers.
=Radio.= For the present radio remains the biggest source of propaganda
intake. Radio is convenient. It can be picked up illegitimately without
too much fear of detection. For the cost per person reached, it is
certainly the cheapest way of getting material to millions of people
promptly. It lends itself to monitoring, and even standard (long)
wavelengths can be picked up from surprisingly great distances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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