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Paul Musgrave quoted in the Japan Times

Paul Musgrave and J. Furman Daniel in 2017 examined the impact of popular culture on policymakers’ world views and how they can change or reinforce their opinions and conclusions in an academic journal. Musgrave and Daniel argue that novels, movies, and television can generate what they term “synthetic experiences,” which “reinforce, induce, and even replace identities and beliefs that affect how audiences behave in the real world.”

In the article, they show that a movie like Patton could influence a president’s decision to launch a military campaign. Among other things they write: “Given that both the mass public and senior policymakers are often non-expert generalists without specialized knowledge in more than a few realms, a great many actors in world politics may prove susceptible to accepting claims presented in fiction as factual.”

In other words, there is the possible danger that policymakers, enthralled with a particular work of fiction, may be more susceptible to fighting the fictional war of their imagination, influenced by war fiction, instead of the conflict unfolding in front of them. As a result, they base their decision on a fictional rather than actual war narrative. This charge that can certainly be leveled against Nixon in April and May 1970 up to a point, as I outline below. (Japan Times, 2/25/19)

 

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