REFLECTIONS ON DISCOURSE FORMATION AND INFLUENCE
REFLECTIONS ON DISCOURSE FORMATION AND INFLUENCE

Author(s): Neville Bolt
Subject(s): Government/Political systems, International relations/trade, Political behavior, Comparative politics, Geopolitics, Peace and Conflict Studies, Russian Aggression against Ukraine
Published by: NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence
Keywords: Ukraine; Russia; Discourse Formation and Influence; Kremlin;
Summary/Abstract: At this point the discussion broadens to include a wider consideration of how discourses move in relation to one another in societies. Discourse shaping seeks to create a new norm. As the philosopher Timothy Garton Ash observes: ‘The deepest power is that of determining what people consider normal. If you can persuade others that your way of doing things is normal, you have won. At the moment many mature democracies are experiencing the normalization of the anti-liberal far right.’ And ‘normalization’ as a term now widely employed, he reminds us, ‘came to prominence after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It meant the attempt to return a European society to Soviet communist norms.’ Here we emphasise that any two-dimensional representation misses an important component in creating new norms. Communicators rarely seek to influence a single mainstream conversation but several aspects of the same conversation simultaneously.

• Details
• Contents