Communication pathologies of intelligence systems

Strategic Communication and the Marketization of Educational Exchange

“…At worse, evaluation instead "functions to reassure, exonerate, and glorify" the organization that has paid for it. 61 Within a marketization paradigm, the products of evaluation risk becoming self-serving: The goal of increased mutual understanding becomes subordinated to the goal of bureaucratic continuance and resource accumulation. While the marketization of relations among government agencies is designed to improve efficiency and effectiveness, marketization discourse discounts a perspective that views public diplomacy as a taxpayersupported function with a responsibility to critically inform not just other federal agencies, congress, and the executive branch, but also scholars and citizens.…”

Switch-Side Debating Meets Demand-Driven Rhetoric of Science

“…Later, Robert Newman's article "Communication Pathologies of Intelligence Systems" would deploy this same framework to show how intelligence failures ranging from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam were rooted in systematic institutional pressures that distorted communication between intelligence analysts and policymakers, causing them to mishandle evidence. 31 As one traces the evolution of evidence studies beyond the debate-contestround context, a host of other argument-informed analyses come into view. Some of these projects measure empirically the psychological dimension of evidence uptake by audiences, 32 whereas others, oft en working under the banner "informal logic, " explore the field dependency of evidence norms.…”

Information Control

“…Hiding the facts can provide multiple benefits: concealing weaknesses or advantages from outsiders, making outsiders powerless to anticipate or counteract one's actions, increasing the value of privi-leged information and the status of those known to possess it, and relieving people from responsibility who do not know what they are doing (Simmel, 1950;Goffman, 1959;Coser, 1963;Westin, 1967;Lowry, 1972;Newman, 1975). Hiding the facts can provide multiple benefits: concealing weaknesses or advantages from outsiders, making outsiders powerless to anticipate or counteract one's actions, increasing the value of privi-leged information and the status of those known to possess it, and relieving people from responsibility who do not know what they are doing (Simmel, 1950;Goffman, 1959;Coser, 1963;Westin, 1967;Lowry, 1972;Newman, 1975).…”