Strategy in Information and Influence Campaigns: How Policy Advocates, Social Movements, Insurgent Groups, Corporations, Governments and Others Get What They Want

Information and influence campaigns are a particularly cogent example of the broader phenomenon we now term strategic political communication. If we think of political communication as encompassing the creation, distribution, control, use, processing and effects of information as a political resource, then we can characterize strategic political communication as the purposeful management of such information to achieve a stated objective based on the science of individual, organizational, and governmental decision-making. IICs are more or less centralized, highly structured, systematic, and carefully managed efforts to do just that.

Strategy in Information and Influence Campaigns sets out in comprehensive detail the underlying assumptions, unifying strategy, and panoply of tactics of the IIC, both from the perspective of the protagonist who initiates the action and from that of the target who must defend against it. Jarol Manheim’s forward-looking, broad, and systematic analysis is a must-have resource for scholars and students of political and strategic communication, as well as practitioners in both the public and private sectors.

Jarol B. Manheim is Professor of Media and Public Affairs, and of Political Science, at The George Washington University, where he was the founding director of the School of Media and Public Affairs.

1. Points of Origin 2. Information and Influence Campaigns 3. Strategy and Tactics in Campaign Communication I: Winning the Argument 4. Strategy and Tactics in Campaign Communication II: Shaping the Decision 5. Networks and Netwaves: Organizing for Influence 6. Riding the Waves: Strategy and Tactics in Network Activation 7. Feeling the Pressure: The Dimensionality of Targets 8. Guarding the Castle: Deterring, Deflecting, Minimizing or Defeating Information and Influence Campaigns 9. Information, and Influence Appendix A. Need to Know: Strategic Intelligence and Research in the Campaign Appendix B. The IIC Knowledge Base: A Selective Bibliographic Inventory Appendix C. A Bibliography for IIC Strategy (Including Sources Cited)