The American Civil War was a period of intense political, cultural, and technological upheaval that laid the groundwork for modern U.S. government policy. It came at a time when the declining popularity of the artistic Romanticism movement's concepts of liberty in expression still influenced newspapers reporting on the war. This article aims to explore the war's effect on American journalism of the era and how it clashed with the ideals of romanticism, centered on freedom of the press and its strong connection to the government. Firsthand accounts, government legislation, and later research will follow newspaper publishers’ struggles with the civilian government on the home front and journalists’ encounters with military interference on the frontlines. These experiences will highlight how the theoretical romantic alliance between the press and politics broke down due to mutual interference without resulting in profound policy changes.
This article responds to recent calls to expand political communication research through renewed engagement with propaganda studies. It addresses two related challenges: the need for a deeper understanding of organized, manipulative communication in liberal democracies and the need for terminological clarification in its analysis. The article develops the analytical category of Organized Psychology-based, Persuasive Communication (OPPC) that provides a framework for the examination of the deliberate use of soft-power-techniques within organized, persuasive communication. The interdisciplinary OPPC model used to illustrate the analytical category of OPPC includes five key elements of the communicative process (transmitter, receiver, process, effects, and feedback loop) and adds a psychological layer by distinguishing between inner-, and extrapsychological aspects and by integrating the inner-psychological process of information processing into the communicative framework. Furthermore, it embeds the individuals within their social, historical, and cultural contexts. The model is intended as a medium-level analytical framework and starting point for future empirical research rather than as a complete account of psychological mechanisms. Its contribution is to provide a clearer conceptual and interdisciplinary basis for analyzing the construction, dissemination, processing and effects of organized persuasive communication.
This study examines how international graduate students at U.S. universities experience chilled academic speech under conditions of surveillance, visa precarity, and institutional monitoring. Existing research documents chilling effects, but less attention has been paid to how they shape the everyday academic lives of noncitizen students. Drawing on 12 in-depth interviews, the study uses an inductive thematic approach to analyze how students perceive and manage risk in research, writing, teaching, and classroom participation. Findings show that students engage in anticipatory self-regulation, including moderating tone, narrowing research agendas, and adopting defensive methodological strategies under conditions of perceived risk and unequal consequence. Academic freedom emerges as conditional and unevenly experienced. These dynamics reshape not only expression but also knowledge production, limiting which questions are pursued and whose perspectives enter scholarly discourse.
