Politics, Propaganda, and Pop Culture is a senior capstone book project that examines the role of television in projecting, shaping, and amplifying Cold War ideologies.
In the context of the global Cold War, television became the most important medium of communicating ideologies, values, and worldviews to citizens at home and societies abroad. The essays in this volume examine this truism at a variety of discrete historical moments, including the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; the broadcast of experimental nuclear detonations in the American desert; the persistence of fascism in the resurrection of the postwar Italian television service; and coverage of the 1972 World Chess Championship. The authors show that television intervened in social questions such as the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, and shifting representations of gender, but not always in the ways that we might expect. The volume demonstrates that programming can indeed shape attitudes, but just as important are the structures that underpin shifting industrial conditions of television production, distribution and reception.
