Explore the vast range of titles available.

Traces the shifts in presidential discourse on terrorism since World War II. Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association The topic of terrorism has evolved into an ideological marker of American culture, one that has fundamentally altered the relationship between the three branches of government, between the government and the people, and between America and countries abroad. In the Name of Terrorism describes and analyzes the public communication strategies presidents have deployed to discuss terrorism since the end of World War II. Drawing upon internal administration documents, memoirs, and public papers, Carol K. Winkler uncovers how presidents have capitalized on public perceptions of the terrorist threat, misrepresented actual terrorist events, and used the term \"terrorism\" to influence electoral outcomes both at home and abroad. Perhaps more importantly, she explains their motivations for doing so, and critically discusses the moral and political implications of the present range of narratives used to present terrorism to the public.

Robert P. Newman was a man of firmly held and passionate opinions. He lived his life according to the bedrock belief that scholars had an obligation to critically analyze and publicly engage with key turning points in U.S. foreign policy no matter what the ensuing controversy. His underlying motivation was straightforward: \"We study foreign policy because we hope to increase our chances of survival.\"1 He understood that such a path was inextricably tied to contested values, but rather than avoid such messy endeavors, he doggedly examined some of the most challenging subjects of American foreign policy in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He focused on fundamental questions: Should President Truman have used the atomic bomb in Japan? What were the motivations, strategies, and consequences of the anti-Communist movement that reached its peak in the McCarthy era? Did myths about China unduly prolong the U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War? What were the doctrinal origins of George W. Bush's use of preemptive war? What happens when ideology instead of evidence guides contemporary American foreign policy?

As the world has increasingly embraced globalization, temptations to encroach on traditional boundaries of state sovereignty for reasons of self-interest mount. Argumentation studies provide an important lens for examining the public discourse used to justify such moves. This essay examines the Bush administration’s strategic use of the definitional processes of association and dissociation to build its public case for regime change in Afghanistan. After exploring how the Bush administration’s early rhetoric after 9/11 failed to actually provide the Taliban a choice to remain in power, the essay reveals three combinations of the terrorism/state relationship that functioned as an argument by definition to gain support for the US campaign to overthrow the regime.

Images of death and dying in the media around the globe have a symbiotic relationship with nation states as they can bolster state control by defining who has the right to take lives in the interests of the community, by identifying enemies of the state, by demonstrating dominance over enemies, and by lending a moral posture to the state’s war efforts. Previously, the growing corpus of research on media’s display of death and about to die images has focused almost exclusively on media outlets that bolster established states on the global stage. By analyzing 1965 death and about to die images displayed in Dabiq, ISIS’s English-language magazine, and al-Naba’, the same group’s Arabic-language newspaper, this study adds an understanding of the messaging strategies deployed by groups striving to challenge, rather than reinforce, existing national boundaries. The findings suggest that while ISIS adopts some standard media practices, it also utilizes unique and audience targeted approaches regarding the frequency of image use, the identify of the corpses, the display of dead bodies, and the presentation of those responsible for the pictured dead bodies in its media campaign.

The decision to target leaders of groups like ISIS to hamper their effectiveness has served as a longstanding principle of counterterrorism efforts. Yet, previous research suggests that any results may simply be temporary. Using insights from confiscated ISIS documents from Afghanistan to define the media leader roles that qualified for each level of the cascade, CTC (Combating Terrorism Center) records to identify media leaders who died, and a content analysis of all ISIS images displayed in the group's Arabic weekly newsletter to identify the group's visual framing strategies, this study assesses whether and how leader loss helps explain changes in the level and nature of the group's visual output over time. ISIS's quantity of output and visual framing strategies displayed significant changes before, during, and after media leader losses. The level of the killed leader within the group's organizational hierarchy also corresponded to different changes in ISIS's media framing.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, scholars in the field of rhetorical studies presented presidential war rhetoric as a genre of public discourse. More recently, some have questioned the genre's continued relevance given the current challenges of U.S. warfare. This essay examines whether preemption conducted in the context of the war on terror alters or reinforces the conventional substantive and stylistic expectations of war rhetoric. Analyzing the public communication strategies of the Bush administration on Iraq and the Reagan administration on the bombing of Libya, it demonstrates that despite changes in the situational exigencies, the nation's leadership uses a heavy reliance on strategic misrepresentation to maintain compliance with the genre's expectations.

Reports on the rationales used by viewers in determining winners and conclusions about televised political campaign debates. Studies responses of 370 viewers of the 1992 presidential and vice presidential debates. Analyzes data and determines trends suggested by the results. (HB)