The National Opinion Research Center

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The Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) at Columbia University, the Institute for International Social Research (IISR) at Princeton, the Center for International Studies (CENIS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and (NORC) are a few of the academic recipients of decades of government research grants. Private funding also came from the Rockefeller Foundation and other elite interests who stood to gain from the research.

In the simplest of terms, the science of communications boils down to the study of “who says what to whom and with what effect.” Far from being a new idea, Harold Lasswell's 1926 dissertation, Propaganda phone number list Technique in the World War, explored persuasive communications strategies, audience psychology and the manipulation of symbols. Lasswell wrote in 1933 that “propaganda is one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence...and other possible control techniques,” adding that, “successful social and political management often depends on proper coordination of propaganda with coercion, violent and non-violent; economic inducement; diplomatic negotiation; and other techniques.”

The term “psychological warfare” originated in 1941 from the Nazi term Weltanschauungskrieg, translated as “ worldview warfare,” and meaning the scientific application of propaganda, terror and state pressure as a means of securing an ideological victory over one's enemies.