Communicators, Audiences, and Strategies

Cosmin-Ștefan Dogaru

Communicators, audiences, and strategies: What can we learn from past experiences and to what extent can they be useful today? An Introduction

The current volume – Communicators, Audiences, and Strategies: Past Experiences and Contemporary Perspectives explores the relations between particular communicators and their strategies in connection with their audiences in the late nineteenth and mainly the twentieth-century Europe and the United States. To what extent various communicators made use of old forms of political communication and propaganda strategies and created new ones during the twentieth century – as effective strategies – in various countries and societies is of great relevance for the fields of social science and humanities. The historical episodes examined in this volume enable a large number of readers to better understand various socio-economic and political situations in connection with countries from Europe and the United States. Thus, major changes occurred in the European and American societies at that time, concerning the links between politics and the media; the development of social and political transformation because of the two World Wars; the existence of political, social, cultural, and economic cleavages; and the diplomatic transformations between particular European countries with the United States, as well as between countries of the European continent. Hence, depending on the society, communicators oriented their message towards a diverse audience – the electorate, the public in general – using forms of political communication and propaganda tactics aiming at addressing various socio-economic, cultural, and political difficulties in those respective societies. Of course, the relationships and resulting networks between various communicators and their target audiences attracted a strong impact in society on various levels, and in some cases shaped new political regimes.

Various politicians, diplomats, statesmen as well as intellectuals, entrepreneurs, managers, business owners, etc. have become since the late nineteenth and mostly the twentieth century very resourceful and have developed new ways of designing and transmitting their messages by constructing efficient strategies.¹ But how they managed to change and mould the behaviour of their audiences is a challenging matter to be examined throughout this volume. We believe therefore that the book will prove more useful to readers interested in history, political science, sociology, and communication studies.

Thus, the main aim of this volume is to emphasise to what extent the twentieth century produced new forms of political communication and propaganda strategies in connection to public relations. We are also interested in how these strategies enabled links between various communicators and their audiences and their answers compared to how this occurred in the last century. Accordingly, this book attempts to uncover particular relationships and networks between various communicators (e.g., politicians, civil society actors, academics, different kinds of employees, syndicalists, State officials) and their audiences (e.g., reading audience, working class, revolutionary masses, employees) and the means employed to create a dialogue. Both parties pursued numerous goals aimed at identifying elements that they had in common although sometimes disagreements and conflicts emerged. Negotiations functioned as bridges, but unfortunately, they were not always successful. Thus, from this point of view, the book sets out to explain which were the links between the two parties, the reasons for conflict or competition, and the channels used to communicate: images, printed and visual media, political speeches delivered by politicians, social reformers, state officials, civil society actors, and so on. It also focuses on public relations and the policies implemented by the State and, last but not least, on strategies inaugurated by communicators regardless of the state of affairs.

The chronological dimension of this book allows the reader to integrate the intriguing case studies from the late nineteenth and mostly the twentieth century in a coherent time frame. We believe this to be an intriguing period, during which numerous cultural, socio-economic, and political occurrences, historical episodes, and regime change occurred in different countries, societies, and cultures with significant consequences on a medium and long term. At the time, old political leaders were replaced by newly emerging actors as new regimes were established by the latter. Additionally, during the twentieth century, new persuasive forms of political communication and propaganda emerged. As Archie Brown strongly pointed out, numerous statesmen were known as “good communicators” or “strong leaders” who produced major changes in their societies, positive as well as negative.²

Thus, political communication is an intriguing domain of investigation exposing a set of theories or techniques, but it is also a process, as Jacques Gerstlé highlighted.³ He argued that new methods of communication were developed in connection with the new technological discoveries,⁴ a phenomenon which arose precisely in the twentieth century. Of course, “political communication is as old as political activity,”⁵ as Darren Lilleker clearly stated, which has improved over time, as new ways of communication come into sight, especially the mass communication. Bill Kovarik, in his analysis on “great revolutions in communication,” describes four major types of revolutions, as follows: “the printing revolution,” “the visual revolution,” “the electronic revolution” and “the digital revolution” where the communicators interacted with a series of audiences in different social, cultural, economic and especially political contexts.⁶

Political leaders took advantage of political communication to ascend to power and afterwards they adapted the political propaganda, looking for legitimacy and solidification of the political regime. In democratic regimes, the main aim of the candidates is to attain as many votes as possible, while authoritarian or totalitarian rulers seemed to seek for their people’s love.⁷ In this regard, a fitting example is Tito Mussolini.⁸ During the twentieth century, when war was a dominant element, both in the form of conventional wars (the two World Wars) and as a cold war (the Cold War), propaganda was a convenient instrument for various political regimes.⁹ It is safe to say that “although propaganda is thousands of years old, it came of age in the twentieth century.”¹⁰ During the twentieth century, propaganda strategies evolved mostly in times of war and hard-wearing political struggles. Political leaders benefitted from many propaganda tools such as films, posters, newspapers, the radio, but also used monuments and other symbols to attract mass audiences and forge strong connections. In view of that, in its various forms, propaganda developed further as a leading and alluring phenomenon of the twentieth century as particular communicators from different societies interact with their audiences looking for various benefits.¹¹ But the most important fact is that “the major goal of political communicators is to influence citizens’ political opinions, attitudes, and behaviour.”¹² Politicians adapted their messages to their target audiences by appealing to tempting methods and strategies in election campaigns. State officials tried and managed in many cases to instrumentalise various national policies – all together aimed at looking for the support of their citizens. They used persuasive and sometimes manipulative practices and appealed to leadership qualities and rhetoric skills, and eventually managed to persuade others to follow them as it happened mostly in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.¹³ As for these regimes, the most frequent and well-known leaders were undeniably Tito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, or Yosef Stalin. Looking towards another angle, for certain authors, “propaganda is fundamentally political communication.”¹⁴ Nonetheless, both democratic and non-democratic communicators employed it in view of achieving their objectives in relation to their target audiences.

The audience plays a very important part in this equation as well. The audience is a captivating and complex notion. As Lilleker argues, “the audience is introduced into political science as the public sphere.”¹⁵ Diverse communicators used strategies and ways to persuade and convince different parts of society to support and follow them. Even totalitarian leaders seizing power in emerging democratic societies supported the existing voting system for their benefit as they encouraged several forms of political communication and propaganda tactics to maintain and increase their influence and authority within the new established regimes. Elections were seen as a legitimising instrument which became useless as the authoritarian and totalitarian were inaugurated.

In the European and American societies, the ruling elites tried to diversify their contacts with the electorate – the public opinion (a modern concept that appeared at the time), pursuing various forms of political communication and propaganda. The relationships are, of course, different, depending on the society, the cultural and political contexts, and the foreign influence as regards, for instance, certain Eastern European countries at the time, i.e., Romania, Bulgaria, or Serbia.¹⁶ Therefore, the social and political elites performed a key role in shaping regimes and constructing political behaviour and attitudes. However, the mass audience – the general public – slowly but surely announced its presence on various levels of society.¹⁷ In this regard, the transition from the census to the universal suffrage after the First World War led to a higher participation, as more citizens acquired the right to vote and engaged into the political process. Thus, mass audience is more visible at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, being affected also by mass communication. Hence, “in the course of the nineteenth century even more social groups acquired a foothold in the political system in much of Europe and in America as economic status ceased to be a determinant of the right to vote.”¹⁸ The extension of the right to vote for the educated male population occurred in the late nineteenth century in many European states. In contrast, the political and social emancipation of women took more time. Various societies and organisations led by women from the upper and the rising middle classes developed across Europe and the United States. Of course, during the twentieth century, issues such as race, gender, and class led to confrontations on the political, social, and ideological grounds, allowing the emergence of central figures in various societies. Additionally, this path led at the same time to the appearance of some groups or leaders with radical visions of how a state and a society should function. Examples are to be found in the already established democratic states as well as in the new democratic states in the interwar period and further in the second part of the twentieth century.

The advancement of particular political figures, union leaders, but also civil society actors arose in connection with the progress of technology. The media, the radio (since the 1920s), and afterwards the television (since the 1950s) constituted effective and frequent communication channels which various political and social actors used frequently, as an instrument of propaganda, regardless of the political regime, to attain and preserve political power. Of course, in democratic regimes, citizens have more ways to filter the information they receive. Additionally, the element of responsibility is taken seriously into consideration and thus political leaders are held accountable if they do not respond to the demands of their electorate, their target audiences. Political communicators used words, images, and symbols to influence throughout their speeches, public discourses, manifestos, reports, and media appearances.¹⁹ Starting with the interwar period, political speeches and mass gatherings changed along with the political game. Obviously, a series of factors mattered, such as the society, the political culture of the citizens, and the social, economic, and political crises that gave rise to the formation of providential leaders. Various audiences perform as an important factor in the way different communicators accommodated their actions and decisions in connection to their audiences’ aspirations. Of course, the participation of citizens within the political process is very limited in authoritarian and, even more so, in the totalitarian regimes; still, they are subject of propaganda in the respective societies.

During the twentieth century, socio-economic and political crises appeared causing major consequences in both European and American societies. Many sensitive issues have generated a series of struggles regarding the granting of rights for women, the national civil rights movement in the mid-late 1950s USA, the establishment of some political regimes, and the disintegration of others in some countries in Europe. In the same manner, the electorate changed being much more attentive to the interaction with political actors, with some movements, social groups, etc. mostly towards the second part of the twentieth century.

“Strategic communication” is also a vibrant concept for James Farwell who claims that “it requires a strategic appreciation of all of the political, economic, military, and cultural factors that affect the ability to achieve success.”²⁰ The three concepts connected in this book aim to draw attention to how different communicators in the late nineteenth and mainly the twentieth century exploited diverse forms of political communication and propaganda tactics in relation to their audiences. The central theme of the volume therefore aims to clarify the way in which communicators made use of various strategies, forms of political communication and propaganda, succeeding to influence or even to mould the behaviour, the attitudes, opinions, and actions of their audiences, eventually reaching the intended political, social, and economic objectives. Communicators (i.e., political leaders, intellectuals, civil society actors, social reformers, academics, entrepreneurs) used strategic approaches and methods which are perceived in many situations as still relevant in present days for the study of political communication, propaganda, and public relations. Jesper Strömbäck and Spiro Kiousis argue that “politics, political communication, and political public relations are inextricable linked together.”²¹ For the two authors, “communication is at the heart of public relation as well as politics and political communication.”²² In this regard, this volume aims at exploring, from a contemporary perspective, the past experiences related to political communication, public relations, and propaganda.

The originality of this volume stems precisely from the way it connects intriguing subjects that are covering various facets of networks and relationships established by different communicators with their mass audiences in the late nineteenth and mainly the twentieth century. The reader has the possibility to examine how different communicators from the European and American societies operated and used different tools of visual communication and propagandistic (images, paintings) devices as symbols, to influence their audiences – be they politically engaged citizens or simply spectators of the political life. Furthermore, diverse propaganda strategies were displayed in the twentieth century both in democratic and totalitarian regimes, ranging from political propaganda to ideological tools.²³ So why do we still have to appeal to past experiences? The reasons are multiple, but the assertion of Bill Kovarik is quite revealing: “History is also an active investigation of what happened and what we can learn from the past.”²⁴ From this point of view, the twentieth century is a relentless period of captivating historical episodes, in terms of the fight for some rights and civil liberties (especially in Europe and the USA), technological progress (the radio and the television for instance), the emergence and decline of political regimes (the end of autocratic regimes after the First World War and the founding of totalitarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and Russia, and authoritarian regimes in Spain and Portugal), gender and race issues across Europe and the United States, and, of course, the examples can continue.

Regarding the above subjects and others connected to them, we can see in what manner this book tackles the relations between particular communicators and their audiences, from different societies, states, and cultures, exploring whatever forms of political communication and propaganda became effective strategies in the late nineteenth and mainly the twentieth century. As Harold Lasswell pointed out is important to see who were the communicators, which were the messages and the channels and delivered to whom – their target audiences, and for what reasons?²⁵ From domestic issues (on social, cultural, and political cleavages) up to foreign policy matters, issues related to race, gender, and class are connected to each other and analysed from a contemporary perspective by renowned historians, political scientists, and specialists in communication sciences offering a straightforward image of what happened in the past, offering undeniably valuable historical lessons. It is thus fundamental to appreciate from a contemporary perspective how past experiences (such as those examined in this book) can arise as compelling examples in the present day for the fields of history, political communication, propaganda, and public relations.