I’ve been reading W. Phillips Davison’s 1965 Council on Foreign Relations volume International Political Communication (New York: Praeger) – the dust jacket is here img007 and the contents pages are here.
A few quick thoughts
1. The emphasis on the limits of communication – Davison was part of a generation of scholars who were both familiar with the realities of psychological warfare and had were involved in the development of academic studies of communications.
2. The link between communication and organization. Davison is sceptical of the capacity of communication to persuade the opposed but argues that it plays useful role in organizing friends.
3. Duplication, lack of focus, limited resources, failure to integrate policy and communication in US public diplomacy. It’s all here.
Public Diplomacy, Networks and Influence 