Public Affairs

<p>As operations in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate America's adversaries are capable of manipulating domestic and international media with lies distortion and propaganda disseminated via the internet or media outlets. The U.S. military's inability to dominate the global information environment as it does on conventional battlefields represents a strategic and operational weakness that must be addressed. This study investigates the roles and responsibilities of deployed military public affairs officers as they pertain to influencing selected target audiences in order to gain and maintain popular support. Current and past doctrine is examined along with marketing and advertising practices to determine military applicability. The research explores mass communication theories and techniques to improve public affairs officers' ability to influence these key audiences. This study concludes that influencing audiences to include the U.S. domestic audience is the primary role and responsibility of military public affairs officers. Recommendations in this study include altering Public Affairs Joint and Service doctrine to reflect the responsibility for public affairs officers to influence their audiences and change public affairs training to teach mass communication theories that are designed to influence their audiences.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>