International Broadcasting and Its Contested Role in Australian Statecraft: Middle Power, Smart Power (Anthem Studies in Soft Power and Public Diplomacy)

This book offers an insightful reappraisal of international broadcasting as discursive rather than ‘soft’ power in service of democratic statecraft. This at a time when issues of transnational media, the credibility of news and the perils of disinformation and information warfare, figure worryingly in public discourse. Reflecting the perspective of middle power Australia, author Geoff Heriot locates the strategic utility of multiplatform international broadcasting with reference to contemporary theories of soft/hard/smart power projection and intercultural communication. He applies a fresh model of strategic analysis to the political history of Radio Australia, examining the various external and internal variables that resulted in its flawed success in political communication during the late Cold War period.

Geoff Heriot is a former Australian broadcasting executive and strategist, a foreign correspondent and journalist, with extensive Indo-Pacific regional experience.