INTERNATIONAL COALITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS CONTENT: THE CASE OF NEUTRALISM

In: Public opinion quarterly: journal of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Band 16, S. 681-688

Abstract

The finding of key symbols such as 'Free World', 'their articulation through concrete operational references and their diffusion by the utterances of the various elites, is both an index and an agent of the development of international coalitions. They provide clues to the shared purposes of the coalition, and data on their durability.' Content analysis of elite and mass media of communications makes it possible to follow the career of symbols which unify the parties to a coalition. The usefulness of this mode of analysis is illustrated with an analysis of neutralism, the refusal to join either the Soviet-centered or the Free World coalition. If attention had been paid to the symbols to which early neutralist sentiments were attached, it would have been clear that they corresponded more closely to the symbols diffused by the Soviet coalition than those diffused by the Free World; and if, further, the signif of the early neutralist groups (the Keep Left group in England, and the Combat group in France) had been analyzed in terms of their place in the communications network of their countries, the political consequences of their selection of key symbols could have been foreseen and prevented. Neutralist perception tends to be selective in such a way as to evade questions of responsibility in the Free World coalition, especially with respect to armament, and while paying little attention to the Soviet coalition, focuses on American shortcomings. Unless neutralists retreat further from the political arena, they must join one coalition or the other, and if recent trends continue, are more likely to add their voices to the Hate-America campaign. 'An appropriate strategy of persuasion needs to be worked out to recover for substantial numbers of neutralists a shared purpose with the Free World coalition' Democracy is a key symbol, which might unify the Free World coalition if research in international communications is brought to bear on 'the specifications of democracy, those common desires which Americans share with other people of the Free World.' A. Simmel.