Public Affairs

As operations in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate, America's adversaries are capable of manipulating domestic and international media with lies, distortion and propaganda disseminated via the internet or media outlets. The U.S. military's inability to dominate the global information environment, as it does on conventional battlefields, represents a strategic and operational weakness that must be addressed. This study investigates the roles and responsibilities of deployed military public affairs officers as they pertain to influencing selected target audiences in order to gain and maintain popular support. Current and past doctrine is examined, along with marketing and advertising practices to determine military applicability. The research explores mass communication theories and techniques to improve public affairs officers' ability to influence these key audiences. This study concludes that influencing audiences, to include the U.S. domestic audience is the primary role and responsibility of military public affairs officers. Recommendations in this study include altering Public Affairs Joint and Service doctrine to reflect the responsibility for public affairs officers to influence their audiences and change public affairs training to teach mass communication theories that are designed to influence their audiences.