In an era of globalization, international communication constantly takes place across borders, defying sovereign control as it influences opinion. While diplomacy between states is the visible face of international relations, this “informal diplomacy” is usually less visible but no less powerful. Information politics can be found in propaganda, Internet politics, educational exchanges, tourism, and even popular film. 

The International Politics of Communication examines this informational dimension of international politics, investigating how information is generated, conveyed through channels, and directed specifically at audiences. While citizens are often portrayed as faithfully loyal supporters and beneficiaries of the modern nation-state—a fiction supported by passports, identification papers, and other notarized credentials—they are subject to the pulls of loyalty from transnational tribal affiliations, mythological and historical narratives of ethnicity, as well as the transcendental claims of religion and philosophy. Increasingly, social media also enchants non-state individuals, providing new virtual communities as the center of loyalties rather than national affiliations. By reinterpreting taken-for-granted concepts in journalism, media, political economy, nationalism, development, and propaganda as information politics, this book prepares serious-minded scholars, citizens, politicians, and social activists everywhere to understand the power plays in international communication and use alternatives to begin transforming power relations.

Alan Chong is Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“The International Politics of Communication shows mastery of a range of diverse literatures and cases, and carves out a distinct focus area in the political science literature around media in world society. It considers international communication in today’s global context as inherently a political process, in which factors of technology and national power and commercial interest and socialization are all interacting.”— Adam K. Webb, Johns Hopkins University

“This is a project that I have been dreaming of doing myself, or wishing someone else would do. Without simply critiquing the traditional International Communications and International Relations theories (though they do this as well), the author masterfully weaves them together, adding more sources, especially the ones whose voices have been less heard in the past.”— Kenneth S. Rogerson, Duke University