Center for Strategic Communication

CSC Director Steve Corman has co-published an essay on the role of the Zeng He myth in Chinese public diplomacy. It's part of a project sponsored by the DoD Minerva Research Initiative

“China's Columbus” Was an Imperialist Too: Contesting the Myth of Zheng He | Small Wars Journal By pushing the narrative of Zheng He, the Chinese state has attempted (and succeeded to a degree) to construct collective memory through mythical and inaccurate historical rebranding. The goal of this public diplomacy campaign is to increase regional support for China’s pursuit of geostrategic int...

Here is an op-ed in Scientific American CSC Director Steve Corman and some colleagues in ASU's Disinformation Working Group just published. It's about the important role local celebrities have to play in encouraging vaccine acceptance.

The Power of Local Celebrities in the Fight against Vaccine Hesitancy They can play a key role in the fight against misinformation

Please join us for a lecture by Prof. Craig Scott entitled "Weaponized Narrative and Hidden Organizations" on March 14, 2017, at 6:30 pm in Payne Hall* Lower level, Room 27 on the ASU campus. Here is a description of the talk:

Concerns about what some have called weaponized narrative can be seen in the rise of fake news, science/climate deniers, and other aspects of a post-factual era. Behind many of these efforts are a variety of organizations—some of which are generally known and others that are in various ways concealed. These hidden organizations include front groups, astroturfing, fake news organizations, various cloaked websites, and other collectives whose identity is at least partially concealed from key audiences—often enhancing (though possibly restricting) the ability to weaponize narrative. It may be possible to better understand this phenomenon by integrating it with recent work in organizational communication related to the management of visibilities and clandestine/hidden organizations. This presentation outlines the work on visibility management and hidden organizations, strategies of concealment for organizations and their members, as well as motivations for and appropriateness of that concealment—and then applies that work to phenomena such as fake news and climate science denial. This sort of effort has the potential to help us better understand the communicative construction of a key form of weaponized narrative and more effectively confront some of the dangers it poses.

Craig R. Scott is Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication at Rutgers University. His research and teaching are primarily focused on organizational communication, where he examines issues of anonymity and identity/identification in various organizational settings. His current interests center around “hidden organizations,” which are found when an organization and/or its members conceal key parts of their identity from various audiences. His 2013 book, Anonymous Agencies, Backstreet Businesses, and Covert Collectives: Rethinking Organizations in the 21st Century has won multiple awards. He is Co-Editor of the recently released International Encyclopedia of Organizational Communication and edited an award-winning special issue of Management Communication Quarterly on Hidden Organizations (published in 2015).

*Payne Hall is denoted ESB on some campus maps. The lower level is accessible from the elevator or stairs in the breezeway.

CSC recently received a grant from NCAA to study communication about concussion in Pac-12 athletes. Here's more.

Studying the silence of concussions ASU's Center for Strategic Communication has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the NCAA Mind Matters Research Challenge to study how vested interests and team culture influence concussion reporting among college athletes.

New CSC white paper

De-Romanticizing the Islamic State’s Vision of the Caliphate | CSC Center for Strategic... De-Romanticizing the Islamic State’s Vision of the Caliphate Written by editor on October 27, 2014 · Leave a Comment by R. Bennett Furlow, Kristin Fleischer and Steven R. Corman Calls for restoration of the Caliphate are a regular feature of Islamist extremist communication, most recently and notabl…

http://warontherocks.com/2014/08/dont-bs-the-american-people-about-iraq-syria-and-isil/

Don’t BS the American People About Iraq, Syria, and ISIL The apparent beheading of American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a stark reminder of the group’s...

ISIL Influence is Fueling Sectarianism in Indonesia | CSC Center for Strategic Communication ISIL Influence is Fueling Sectarianism in Indonesia Written by editor on August 22, 2014 · Leave a Comment by Mark Woodward* [Editor's note: Yesterday there were news reports that an ISIL-inspired plot to bomb a Carlsberg brewery in Malaysia was foiled.] Iraq and Syria have become magnets for Indone…