International Journal of Communication Publishes a Special Section on Media and Propaganda
What does propaganda look like in the digital age?
This Special Section on Media and Propaganda, guest-edited by Nelson Ribeiro and Barbie Zelizer, calls on researchers to reconsider what propaganda looks like in the digital age. It approaches propaganda as a theoretical construct that problematizes the different strategies and tactics used in the digital environment to deceive and manipulate a range of publics. Even though propaganda is a concept with a long tradition in communication and media studies, it has been mostly absent from discussions of contemporary information ecosystems. This Special Section aims to draw together traditional understandings of propaganda and current information disorder. It assembles a collection of articles that use propaganda as a construct to problematize how different media can be turned into tools of deception and manipulation.
The authors present a set of critical cases that demonstrate how propaganda is still with us, living on in new, old, and hybrid forms. The discussions differentiate its study by time and space. Time is reflected in the first two articles that address the relevance of generational understanding, where propaganda is shown to cross generations effectively by targeting age groups through the media that make the most sense to them. Space is reflected in the three articles that follow, which use various contexts of reception to assess the ways in which propaganda spreads spatially. Whether it is the pandemic or the invasion of Ukraine, how propaganda unfolds depends on the circumstances in which it does so.
Together, the articles help us grasp how propaganda permeates the current environment. They call on us to understand where propaganda lives on and they pay special heed to the venues where it thrives, largely unawares to those around it.
To this end, we invite you to read these articles published in the International Journal of Communication on September 9th, 2024.
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Where Propaganda Lives On—Editorial Introduction
Nelson Ribeiro, Barbie Zelizer
Long Live Chairman Mao: Propaganda About Mao Zedong in Chinese Primary School Textbooks (1984–1999)
Shenglan Zhou
“Today’s Children, Tomorrow’s Mujahideen”: A Discourse-Theoretical Analaysis of the Militarist Discourse in a Turkish Cypriot Children’s Magazine
Mazlum Kemal Dagdelen
Propagandistic Use of Fact-Checking in Health Crisis: The Case of Pro-Government Fact-Checking in Hong Kong
Mengzhe Feng
“She Played All the Pregnant Women!” Russian Disinformation, Symbolic Annihilation, and the Mariupol Hospital Attack
Valentyna Shapovalova
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Silvio Waisbord, Editor
Kady Bell-Garcia, Managing Editor
Chi Zhang, Managing Editor, Special Sections
Mark Mangoba-Agustin, Webmaster
Nelson Ribeiro, Barbie Zelizer, Guest Editors
Please note that according to the latest Google Scholar statistics, IJoC ranks 7th among all Humanities journals and 9th among all Communications journals in the world — demonstrating the viability of open access scholarly publication at the highest level.
USC Annenberg Press 