Increasingly political PR people resemble James Jesus Angleton – the infamous CIA counter espionage head – who probably did more harm to the CIA than any other single individual.

Angleton disappeared into a vast conspiratorial web created by his obsession with what things really meant. If The Russians did one thing what were they really trying to signal? If I work out what they were trying to signal, he thought, then perhaps the hidden message was actually the real disinformation. In Angleton’s defence he spent much of his later career recovering from the shock that his good friend Kim Philby was a spy for the Russians – and Angleton didn’t even have the benefit of thinking, like Philby’s English colleagues, that “one of us” could be unsound. read more

Around the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th anarchists were great believers in the propaganda of the deed. Bombs, assassinations and so on were deeds which also acted as propaganda and promotion of the cause.

In reality the concept was old and the phrase was actually just a new way of framing actions. Similarly, over centuries rebels, fighters for freedom and defenders of the status quo fought over just how to frame the other sides’ actions. This was exemplified by the comment that one person’s terrorist was another’s freedom fighter as illustrated by the differing views of Nelson Mandela or the American Revolution. read more

What do the current Federal election poll numbers actually mean for the result of the next election – particularly now we are a bit more than 12 months out?

Nate Silver’s use of Bayesian theory to predict election results has been referred to by the blog from time to time. Last time it was to use Australian data and Silver methodology to give a rough prediction of the probability of the Victorian ALP winning last year’s State election. The blog, based on Silver, put it at about 65%. Bookies were even more confident and started to pay out on the ALP before the election. read more

PR people are quick to embrace the new – whether it is social media or something else in the past (like the fax machine) which became the banes of the lives of the people they were targeting with promotional material.

At RMIT under the then head of the Media and Communications School, Lauren Murray, there was growing emphasis on understanding design as a crucial part of communication and in some courses today there are preliminary attempts to introduce students to infographics. Lauren is a great fan of Edward R. Tufte whose book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is one of those astonishing books which metaphorically and literally changes the way you look at things. He also produced a pamphlet, The Cognitive Style of Power Point: Pitching out Corrupts Within, which points out why all those endless Power Point slides are not only boring but also often misleading and a source of mistaken thinking. read more

After a recent presentation on community engagement strategies the blog asked what advice could be given to the Prime Minister, assuming he might listen, on the reconciliation referendum. The response: “Trust the people.”

The comment says much about Tony Abbott, much about the dire state of Australian politics and much about the evolving nature of community consultation and engagement. read more

For many years the blog always felt a bit of displacement when travelling to and from the US. Even when your travels tend to be limited to the east and west coasts there is no doubt that the US – its politics, culture, gross inequalities, eating habits and social problems – was always a stark contrast to Australia. read more

PR for terrorists

Most terrorist organisations have fairly significant PR operations. Governments are responding – often not very effectively to this – but much of the response seems to be centred on trying to crack down on their use of social media to recruit more martyrs.

Yet the real problem might be that governments themselves are feeding the terrorist PR campaigns. According to the ABC “ a terrorism expert has warned that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is feeding Islamic State’s own propaganda machine by calling it a death cult”. The expert,  Abdul-Rehman Malik, was reported as saying: “I think to call [Islamic State] a death cult, as the Australian Prime Minister does, is a complete misnomer and it actually feeds in to IS propaganda. The propagandists of the Islamic State, when they hear themselves referred to as a death cult hell bent on global domination, are patting themselves on the back because you know what? You’ve bought in to their narrative.” read more

The blog is taking a break…..but, in the meantime….

Kipling as prophet

Reading a review by Jonathan Barnes in the TLS of a new edition of Rudyard Kipling’s On the Orient, a collection of his travel writings, the blog was struck by some of the Kipling quotes which are remarkably apposite today. He speaks of never-satisfied dilettante travellers and describes them in turns which capture not only his contemporaries but also the boring comments of those who post on TripAdvisor today. But what seemed most apposite is a comment on the Hong Kong markets. Asking a passer- by “how is it that everything smells of money?” he is told “it is because everything the island is going ahead mightily. Because everything pays….it is not a boom. It is genuine. Nearly every many you meet in these parts is a broker and he floats companies.” Not apposite, of course directly to Hong Kong which is, when compared with Chinese markets, relatively sedate but very much to current Chinese markets. It’s good to know booms and bust are always with us. read more

Over recent years a number of studies have suggested that conservatives are happier than more liberal (in the US sense of the word) people. As this is where most of the studies have been done the blog will stick to the US usage even though it is potentially misleading in a European or Australian context. read more

The blog has always thought a good conference is one where you learn something you didn’t know; get prompted to think anew about something you thought you knew; and where you get hot under the collar about some speaker’s comments.

The recent Military History and Heritage Victoria conference – The Great Debate: Conscription and National Service 1912-1972 – managed to tick the boxes for all three success criteria. read more