Editor’s Remarks: Learning from History and Recognizing Propaganda

Abstract

This issue of the Journal, of Radio & Audio Media fits well with our current times and readers should find familiar themes that are timely for contemporary media research. Co-editor Anne MacLennan and guest editor Nelson Ribeiro have selected a strong variety of research built around our symposium theme “Broadcasting in (De)Colonial Settings.” One of the interesting components of our special symposium issue is that the articles cover different regions and different time periods (colonial/ postcolonial) but all point to the idea of international connections between broadcasting systems in different world regions and countries, not only under colonialism but also in more recent decades. As scholars, we should have an ability to recognize propaganda compared to neutral facts, yet the average person may be less engaged in recognition of or concerns about what media and information effects can be within their society. Spiral of Silence theory, defined as “the tendency of people not to speak up about policy issues in public—or among their family, friends, and work colleagues—when they believe their own point of view is not widely shared” (Hampton et al., 2014, p. 3), is just one of the various means we can use to demonstrate how certain voices within any given discourse can be minimized. Our guest editor contributes an important article to this edition. Nelson Ribeiro is the principal investigator of the project “Broadcasting in the Portuguese Empire: Colonialism, Nationalism, Identity” funded by the Portuguese Science Foundation and the European Union, and this relationship connects to why he is with us as guest editor of the symposium. In his article, Ribeiro shows how Portugal, under dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, failed to recognize the importance of radio in the 1930s, leading to dependence on colonial stations for the dissemination of colonialism. Instead of the government, private radio clubs mostly owned the stations set up in the African territories under Portuguese control (Ribeiro, 2022). Continuing the international and historical angle, Morten Michelsen reveals ways sound was used as a means of enculturation as much as it was as information and entertainment. Michelson draws on his research as JOURNAL OF RADIO & AUDIO MEDIA 2022, VOL. 29, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2022.2055066