Spokesperson - the institution of transparency in situations of politico-military crisis
Spokesperson - the institution of transparency in situations of politico-military crisis

Summary/Abstract: The present study aims to investigate the profile of the Spokesperson institution in situations of politico-military crisis. The first part of the analysis highlights both the low frequency with which the subject “Spokesperson”, as an institution, appears in the literature, and the very small space given to this topic in academic courses, communication and PR academic books, communication studies. The second part of the analysis tries to verify the working hypothesis, according to which, within politico-military crisis situations we deal, in fact, with a derivative of the spokesperson’s institution when compared to the fundamental attributes of it during peacetime (transparency, fact-based information, honesty). Case analyses of the behaviour of this institution in the Cuban missiles crisis (1962) and the Security Council of the UN (2003), along with specific information offered by the military personnel who activated in the fields of operation during the first military intervention in Iraq (1991) offer consistent support for the fact that the politico-military crises cannot have a spokesman institution that respects the basic characteristics that define it during the peacetime. In the conclusions we consider that we have to do with a validation of the research hypothesis concerning the falsification of the spokesperson institution during the politico-military crises, at least for the cases in which the transparency, the honesty, the information based on facts, endanger the life of soldiers in the war field or the state interest.

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