The Propaganda War on Terrorism: An Analysis of the United States' "Shared Values" Public-Diplomacy Campaign After September 11, 2001

Abstract

Drawing from midcentury and contemporary theoretical work on propaganda, this study provides an analysis of the propagandistic properties of the "Shared Values" initiative developed by Charlotte Beers, former chief of public diplomacy under U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The campaign was broadcast in several Muslim countries before it was abandoned in 2003. The campaign's utilization of truth, its treatment of Muslim audiences as means to serve broader policy objectives rather than as a population to be engaged on its own terms, and its use of palaver all suggest the "Shared Values" videos, as an example of mass communication, had serious ethical shortcomings.