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Article ID: CBB595787869

Cold War Atmosphere: Distorted Information and Facts in the Case of Free Europe Balloons (2019)

Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Volume: 61
Issue: 3
Pages: 153-177
Publication date: 2019
Language: English

URI: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1600-0498.12225

DOI: 10.1111/1600-0498.12225

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Methods of communication; media Technology and society Propaganda Balloons and ballooning Cold War 20th century, late

Radio Free Europe used balloons to drop leaflets in an attempt to supplement radio with printed words in the 1950s—a historical moment when closing borders, censoring the press, jamming foreign radios, tapping telephone lines, and tracking letters from abroad created an almost hermetically sealed space without many means for exchanging information across the Iron Curtain. This article traces how distorted and limited information shaped Cold War propaganda and practices of information-gathering. The article further examines unpredictable environmental factors that were transformed into persuasive political rhetoric. A comparative analysis of communist media shows similarities of imagination in a visual propaganda campaign across five communist countries. Fantasies evolved into an object of public interest when propaganda strategies embraced a language of facts.

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Article István Rév (2019) Neither Objective nor Subjective. Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology (pp. 143-152). unapi

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