CAMRI Seminar Jörg Becker: Journalism and media/communication studies under Hitler: The example of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann University of Westminster Harrow Campus (tube stop: Northwick Park, Metropolitan Line) Wed, April 2, 2014 14:00-16:00 Room A6.08 http://www.westminster.ac.uk/camri/research-seminars/journalism-and-mediacom... Registration at latest until Monday, March 31, by e-mail to [email protected] It is generally known that propaganda played a crucial role in Germany under Hitler. Concrete examples of journalism and media studies conducted during this time in Nazi Germany are however far less known and have hardly been analysed. In this talk, Jörg Becker sets out the context of media and communications in Nazi Germany and discusses the example of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, who during the Nazi time was both a media and public opinion researcher as well as a journalist. Noelle-Neumann (1916-2010) has internationally mainly become known in Media and Communication Studies for her approach of the spiral of silence. The role she played in National Socialism has long been a blind spot of research and public attention. New evidence shows that she was much more involved in different Nazi activities as publicly known. Her engagement with the Nazis had many consequences for the post World War II situation. Until the early 1950s the US Government refused to grant her an entry visa into the US but changed this negative attitude towards her when they changed their politics from anti-Fascism to anti-Communism. Inside Germany Noelle-Neumann's former Nazi-involvement had two different results after 1945: * With the support of her old Nazi network she was able to start her new privately owned Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research; * Old social-Darwinist and Nazi ideas from her 1940 PhD dissertation could survive in her book on the spiral of silence in 1980. In this talk, Jörg Becker analyses and uncovers the ideological underpinnings of a person who was an important part of and major influential figure in German and international Media and Communication Studies after 1945. Summary and review of Jörg Becker's German book about Noelle-Neumann: http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/489 Biography Professor Dr Jörg Becker has taught at the Departments of Political Science at the University of Marburg in Germany and the University of Innsbruck in Austria. He studied German, political science and pedagogy in Marburg, Bern and Tübingen and obtained his PhD in 1977 and his habilitation in 1981. In 1987 he became honorary professor at the University of Marburg. He held a Heisenberg scholarship of the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 1987 until 1992. His fields of teaching and research are international, comparative and German media-, communication and cultural studies, technology assessment, peace research. He has published numerous works in more than 10 languages. Example publications are the monograph “Communication and Conflict. Studies in International Relations. Preface by Johan Galtung” (2005) and the collected volumes “Information Technology and a New International Order” (1984), “Communication and Domination. Essays to Honor Herbert I. Schiller” (1986), “Transborder Data Flow and Development” (1987), “Europe Dpeaks to Europe. International Information Flows between Eastern and Western Europe. With a preface by Willy Brandt” (1989), “Internet in Asia” (2001), “Internet in Malaysia” (2001), “Internet in Malaysia and Vietnam” (2002).