Television presentations were often compelling enough to stir other significant actors to important decisions. An ITN telecast viewed by an Oxfam staff member was apparently a major contributory factor in that organization's precipitous mounting of a large relief campaign. (Oxfam, incidentally, found to its surprise that Biafran officials in London could provide it with no pictures at all of starving children-the only photographs they had were of the 1966 massacres-and it had to rely on friends in the popular press for the picture which, in a cropped form, it featured in its publicity materials.) Similarly, a New York television appearance by Abie Nathan in late 1968 was seen by a member of . . . [a U.S. Senator's] staff and was responsible for a chain of conversations which awoke the Senator to the importance of the war and convinced him to visit the area early next year. Quite obviously, the mass media did not communicate just with the masses.

*****

MEDIA OF COMMUNICATION AND PROPAGANDA*

BY B. S. MURTY

The choice of means to communicate a message or appeal across national boundaries will often depend on the control the communicator has over these means.

The medium employed indicates the speed and reach of the communication and the expectations likely to be formed about its impact on the audience. The following are the most common media of communication employed by the strategists:

HUMAN BEINGS

....Travelers, traders, students, scholars, agents of political parties, people working in secret intelligence services, public information agencies of governments, all serve the function of channels of dissemination and /or intelligence. The extent to which each of these classes of persons functions, and their efficacy, indeed vary. [There are] advantages that strategists may derive by organizing or disintegrating groups, and by controlling intragroup communication processes.

... The elite which vigorously employs the ideological strategy generally takes to organization of strictly disciplined groups in its own state. and in the opposing states. It also builds transnational political parties and tries to infiltrate men into other groups, either to disintegrate or gain control over them.1

MAILS

In addition to written and printed materials transmitted through the mails, postal markings and stamps may be used to disseminate prop

*Excerpts from Propaganda and World Public Order, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1968. Reprinted with the permission of Yale University Press, copyright holder.

aganda symbols. As a means of transnational communication the potentiality of mails is limited, for the territorial authority may censor, refuse to transmit, or confiscate the mails if anything is found in or on them prejudicial to its interests.

Censorship of mail serves another purpose also, and that is to learn some secret information which the opponent is suppressing. Especially during war, censoring of mail may yield considerable useful information regarding the enemy.3

PRINTED MATERIALS

These constitute a very important medium of communication. When used as a means of transnational communication, the effectiveness of the medium can be minimized by the government of the territory to which the materials are despatched by adopting measures such as seizure at the customs posts. If the opposing elite tightens the frontier controls, printed materials may be transmitted by air-dropping, shooting leafletshells, and dropping by means of plastic balloons.5

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Under this head may be included telegraph, telephone, and wireless communications transmitted either in Morse code, or by teleprinter, or in the form of multidirectional radio communications. Although these channels provide very rapid means of transmission of intelligence to processing centers and the processed materials to centers of dissemination, the extent to which strategists could use them in ideological strategy is limited by one factor: the government of the territory in which the transmission or reception points are located may exercise a high degree of control, weeding out anything likely to prejudice the government's interests.

RADIO BROADCASTING

This is by far the most effective means of mass communication available now to reach instantaneously audiences practically all over the world, and is believed to be the most efficacious means of transnational communication. The government that does not make use of this medium is exceptional. The Soviet Union initiated its use for transnational propaganda and all the leading states have, since the 1930s, copied its example."

The government of the state to which transmission is made may, however, attempt to prevent its people from listening to the broadcasts by prohibiting listening to foreign broadcasts, jamming the radio waves, and denying to the people radio sets capable of receiving foreign broadcasts. Limiting reception to transmission by wire is another device. It was reported in 1951 that in the Soviet Union 18 percent of the receiving sets were capable of direct reception and the rest were useful only for reception by wire. In addition, the Soviet Union's jamming operations were at one time employed on a colossal scale. However, restrictive

measures such as these to prevent listening to foreign broadcasts may rouse the curiosity of the audience and induce them to adopt a good number of devious methods to circumvent the measures.

TELEVISION

Television may, for all practical purposes, be included in the category of radio broadcasting. It supplies additionally the advantage of combining visual image with aural communication. 10 The advent of the communication satellites has tremendously increased the reach of television broadcasting.

MOVIES

Movies are a very effective medium of mass communication. But they can be used in an opposing state only within the limits permitted by its government.

It is not possible to say categorically that one medium of communication is more effective than another. Each has its merits and shortcomings. There is little doubt, however, that the most effective means of influencing the audience are communication by mass media followed by face-toface contact by human agents.1 11

2.

For instances, see New York Times, March 27, 1957; the Crusade for Freedom postmarks were placed on mails transmitted from the U.S.A. to Hungary and stopped by the Hungarian government. For controversy between the governments of India and Pakistan over similar use of postal markings by Pakistan, see 6 Foreign Affairs Record 86 (Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Extern Publicity Division, 1960). See also in this connection the editorial in the New York Times, April 19, 1962, on Communist propaganda through mails.

3. See Koop, p. 5 et seq.

4.

In September 1963, Soviet officials searched 92 Chinese passengers, army officers proceeding to the U.S.S. R. for training, at the railway station at Zabaikalski; when they refused to surrender some newspapers and printed materials alleged to be anti-Soviet, they were not permitted to proceed further and were sent back. See New York Times, Sept. 14, 1963.

5.

For a description of the operations of leaflet drops by plastic balloons, see New York Times, February 11, 1956; balloons were used as early as 1871 (Whitton and Larson, p. 24).

6.

For a description of the various means by which telecommunications are currently used to transmit news, see F. Williams, Transmitting World News, A Study of Telecommunications and the Press (Paris: UNESCO, 1953).

7. The Voice of America, in 1956, broadcast in 43 languages to Europe, Latin America, the Near East, South Asia, Africa, and the Far East; see Martin, p. 28. The B.B.C., by 1946, was broadcasting on 31 transmitters, in 46 languages, for 616 hours weekly; ibid. p. 38. In regard to the U.S.S.R., see ibid. p. 47; Whitton and Larson, p. 50; regarding Communist China, see Houn, pp. 156-58.

8.

Inkeles, p. 238; also see H. N. Graves, Jr., War on the Short-Wave, Foreign Policy Headline Series No. 30 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1941), p. 52. The author says that the Nazis introduced a receiving set called the "People's Set" which was incapable of receiving foreign transmissions. In 1938, only about one third of the sets in Germany were capable of receiving foreign transmissions. After the war broke out, listening to

foreign broadcasts was banned. See also Sington and Weidenfeld, p. 145. In Japan, from 1933, possession of short-wave sets was banned and penalties were provided for listening to foreign broadcasts. In occupied territories, as for example in Burma, the receiving sets of the people were remodeled. See Peter de Mendelssohn, Japan's Political Warfare (London, Allen and Unwin, 1944), p. 33; Communist China uses extensively wire-transmission (Houn, pp. 162-66).

9.

For details of the transmitters used for jamming when the cold war was intensifying, see 21 Dept. of State Bull. 312 (1949); also, the speech of the U.S. representative before the U.N. General Assembly (G.A.O.R., Fifth Sess., 3rd Committee, 1950, p. 279). However, in recent years there has been a progressive decrease in jamming operations. President Kennedy reported at a press conference on October 10, 1963, that for many months the Voice of America broadcasts had not been jammed by the Soviet Union. See The Hindu, Oct. 11, 1963.

10. It is said that at present, apart from the United States, 82 nations have television broadcasting. There are about 56 million receiving sets and 996 broadcasting stations outside the United States. In the United States there are over 500 TV broadcasting stations. See Gordon, Falk, and Hodapp, pp. 137-38.

11.

For detailed information see J. T. Klapper, "The Comparative Effects of the Various Media," W. Schramm, ed., The Process and Effects of Mass Communication, pp. 104-05, and the editorial note, p. 91 et seq. Four factors, it is said, are relevant in this context: (1) time-space (i. e. whether the communicator has control over the material to be communicated and when to introduce it); (2) participation (by the audience in the communication process); (3) speed; and (4) permanence. Printed material has the advantage of fairly good time-space control and of permanence, but is not useful if the audience cannot read, and is slower than radio broadcasting. In favor of radio broadcasting are factors 2 and 3, but not 1 and 4. Human agents have in their favor factors 1 and 2.

NONGOVERNMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS IN THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR*

BY MORRIS DAVIS

A discussion of the multiplicity of communication channels in an internationalized "domestic" crisis.

To describe accurately and clearly so complex a quasi-system as that of the [unofficial] international communications about the Nigerian-Biafran War involves difficulties not unlike Joyce's attempt to convey the boredom of church sermons in his Portrait of an Artist without at the same time boring the reader. Phenomena and their descriptions are, to be sure, separate in theory, but their separation is in practice still quite difficult to achieve. In the comments below we shall try to describe facts usefully and yet not impose more of a "system" on activities than they reasonably bear.

*Excerpts from "The Structuring of International Communications about the NigeriaBiafra War," a paper prepared for delivery at the Eighth European Conference, Peace Research Society (International), London School of Economics, August 20, 1971, pp. 1–12. Reprinted with the permission of The Peace Research Society (International), copyright holder and the courtesty of the author.

STUDENTS ABROAD

Many Nigerians and Biafrans-particularly students-lived away from their homeland during the war. Often they kept in touch with their government's local officials and would receive various propaganda material. For at least two interconnected reasons, however, they were rarely crucial communicators in their country of domicile. On the one hand, the withdrawal of Ibo leaders left most overseas Nigerian organizations without sophisticated and experienced direction. On the other hand, students loyal to Biafra were politically inhibited by the fact that continued residence under a Nigerian passport was somewhat a matter of sufferance.

The extent of the inactivity should not be exaggerated. Nigerian students from the Rivers State, for example, managed to form a cause group in Britian that attracted considerable notice; and they received material encouragement from the High Commissioner and his public relations advisers. Some members of the Biafra Union were similarly willing to be demonstration fodder at Trafalgar Square rallies, at Whitehall burnings in effigy, and at Shell petition marches. In general, though, the fairly dense network of Nigerian and Biafran organizations abroad strove after mutual support and good fellowship. Their members were better at running dances in St. Pancras than lobbying or pamphleteering. They were bound to be ineffective communicators anyway, since—as foreigners—their interventions in domestic politics would tend to be either resented or ignored. They were really nobody's constituents; and their communications influence has surely been much overstated.

FOREIGN PRESSURE GROUPS

Indigenous pressure groups were politically better situated to communicate in their own countries about the Nigerian-Biafran War. This fact, reinforced perhaps by Ibo clannishness, helps explain why the "Biafra lobby" in Britain (to use that country as an example) was so lily-white. Of those groups which arose solely because of the GowonOjukwu* struggle, only the Friends of Biafra, a relatively minor organization, had a sizeable African component. The others-the Britain-Biafra Association, Save Biafra Committee, Biafra '69, an unnamed association of ex-colonial officials, and even the rather tardily arranged and shortlived Coordinating Committee for Action on Nigeria/Biafra-were almost entirely Caucasian. An occasional foreigner, from Israel perhaps or from the United States or Germany, participated prominently, just as a person from Britain might play an important role in a counterpart American group; but the overwhelming impression is that the Biafra lobby exemplified typical British cause group development.

*Nigerian Prime Minister, Lt. Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Biafran Chief of State C. Odumegwu Ojukwu.