Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The use of →  strategic communication has an ancient history dating back at least to Aristotle's Rhetoric (→  Rhetoric, Greek ). But technological and theoretical advances beginning in the twentieth century, most notably the growth of electronic media and media studies, have resulted in dramatic improvements in the scale, sophistication, and effectiveness of purposive communication and in the rise of contemporary communication campaigns. Billions of dollars are spent globally each year on commercial, political, and public service campaigns aimed at influencing consumer decisions, mobilizing support for political candidates, changing unhealthy behaviors and reinforcing healthy ones, advocating for social issues and policy changes, and much more. Contemporary communication campaign theory and practice owe much to public health movements (→  Health Campaigns, Communication in ), such as Benjamin Rush's efforts to promote smallpox immunization during the American revolution ( Artenstein et al. 2005 ), and to the abolition of slavery movement in America and Britain beginning in the late eighteenth century, both of which are early examples of large-scale organized attempts to influence mass publics through the use of communication. Fears about the effects of Nazi propaganda during World War II launched decades of primary and applied research on the social psychology of persuasion, ... log in or subscribe to read full text