International Broadcasting in International Relations

International broadcasting has always had a role to play in world politics since the beginning of the industry when technology made long- distance transmission of signals possible.

The development of international broadcasting experienced peak moments following the outburst of events in history with the realisation by states of the increasing significance of information. The use of information in dealing with international affairs started during the world wars when states realised that ideological narrative would influence the legitimacy of each side in the war internally and externally. As early as 1917, the US government created the Committee on Public Information targeting both Americans and foreigners, and dissolved it in 1919 following the end of World War I. But the tactics were adopted by countries like Germany during the post- war period (Pratkanis and Aronson 1991), which witnessed the first beginnings of national and international broadcasting around the world, especially in the West: the United Kingdom founded BBC in 1922 and started its Empire Service in 1932, accompanied by Russia (1926), Holland (1927), China (1928, international service in 1941), Germany (1929), France (1931), Japan (1934) and the United States (1942). Then came the period of the Cold War, when ideological war between the socialist bloc and the West entered another peak moment with the dominance of BBC Overseas Service, Voice of America (VOA), Radio Moscow, Deutsche Welle and other proxy stations like Radio Free Europe, Liberty and Asia (Rawnsley 2016). An obvious feature in this period of international broadcasting was its close connection with states. States used broadcasting to mobilise for war or counter the frames of rival parties. In the United States, for example, there were organisations in history like the Office of War Information, which later evolved into part of the Bureau of Public Affairs, and the Central Intelligence Agency, then the Office of the Coordinator of Information with a unit called Foreign Information Service under which VOA was started, in charge of overseeing propaganda related to the US stance at war, providing rhetorical support to allies. The United States Information Agency (USIA) (1953– 99) played a significant role after World War II ‘to persuade people in other nations that the US national interests and national security policies should be supported’ (Hacker and Mendez 2016, 75).