Shaping the Battlefield: Museum Features Military PR, Public Affairs

摘要

The US federal government’s use of PR to mobilize citizens and galvanize support can be traced to the Revolutionary War. Through the Federalist Papers urging New Yorkers to ratify the proposed constitution with simple messages-“No taxation without representation”- or staging the Boston Tea Party, our founding fathers knew a bit about public opinion. But it wasn’t until 1917, in response to the country’s entry into World War I that the federal government, under President Woodrow Wilson, created a large-scale propaganda agency -the Committee on Public Information (CPI)-charged with mobilizing public opinion in support of the war.