In Brazilian Propaganda, Nina Schneider examines the various modes of official, and unofficial, propaganda used by an authoritarian regime. Such propaganda is commonly believed to be political, praising military figures and openly legitimizing state repression. However, Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1985) launched seemingly apolitical official campaigns that were aesthetically appealing and ostensibly aimed to "enlighten" and "civilize." Some were produced as civilian-military collaborations and others were conducted by privately owned media, but undergirding them all was the theme of a country aspiring to become a developed nation. Focusing primarily on visual media, Schneider demonstrates how many short films of the period portrayed a society free from class and racial conflicts. These films espoused civic-mindedness while attempting to distract from atrocities perpetuated by the regime. Mining a rich trove of materials from the National Archives in Rio and conducting interviews with key propagandists, Schneider demonstrates the ambiguities of twentieth-century Brazilian propaganda. She also challenges the notion of a homogeneous military regime in Brazil, highlighting its fractures and competing forces. By analyzing the strategy, production, mechanisms, and meaning of these films and reconstructing their effects, she provides an alternative interpretation of the propagandists' intentions and a new framework for understanding this era in Brazil's history.

In Brazil, the United States, and the Good Neighbor Policy: The Triumph of Persuasion during World War II, Alexandre Busko Valim studies the use of cinema in Brazil as an instrument of political persuasion by the United States during the period of the so-called Good Neighbor policy during World War II by examining extensive documentation found in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. In doing so, Valim demonstrates the modus operandi of media imperialism: its mapping strategies and control of the market, its actions, and its objectives of domination. When thinking about the place of images as a means of convincing and imposing an ideological project, the author notes the methods necessary to examine this relationship between art and politics, a problem that is central in the contemporary world. Scholars of Latin American Studies, international relations, history, political science, and media studies will find this book particularly useful.

Democracy at Work: Pressure and Propaganda in Portugal and Brazil addresses democracy both as an institutional value system and as a practice. How are the media exerting their mediation role? How are the media re-(a)presenting the political world to society? Are different media voices offering diversified and complementary perspectives on politics? How is propaganda perceived within different democratic and economic contexts? Is political trust and mistrust shaping the strategy of propaganda? These questions are addressed in theoretical and empirical chapters in a book that addresses problems which are in need of urgent discussion, as their impact and consequences are deeply transforming politics and the way politics is communicated, lived and understood by its main actors. Within this framework, Political Communication Studies has a major role in identifying and urging new diagnosis of, and insights into, the political and the media systems, and, above all, how both the people and political institutions can both survive crisis and improve democracy in the Lusophone world. This book aims at making a contribution to that acknowledgment.

Following completion of the U.S. air base in Natal, Brazil, in 1942, U.S. airmen departing for North Africa during World War II communicated with Brazilian mechanics with a thumbs-up before starting their engines. This sign soon replaced the Brazilian tradition of touching the earlobe to indicate agreement, friendship, and all that was positive and good—yet another indication of the Americanization of Brazil under way during this period. In this translation of O Imperialismo Sedutor, Antonio Pedro Tota considers both the Good Neighbor Policy and broader cultural influences to argue against simplistic theories of U.S. cultural imperialism and exploitation. He shows that Brazilians actively interpreted, negotiated, and reconfigured U.S. culture in a process of cultural recombination. The market, he argues, was far more important in determining the nature of this cultural exchange than state-directed propaganda efforts because Brazil already was primed to adopt and disseminate American culture within the framework of its own rapidly expanding market for mass culture. By examining the motives and strategies behind rising U.S. influence and its relationship to a simultaneous process of cultural and political centralization in Brazil, Tota shows that these processes were not contradictory, but rather mutually reinforcing. The Seduction of Brazil brings greater sophistication to both Brazilian and American understanding of the forces at play during this period, and should appeal to historians as well as students of Latin America, culture, and communications.

Bringing together some of the world’s leading scholars, practitioners, and human-rights activists, this groundbreaking volume provides the first systematic analysis of the 2012–2014 Brazilian National Truth Commission. While attentive to the inquiry’s local and national dimensions, it offers an illuminating transnational perspective that considers the Commission’s Latin American regional context and relates it to global efforts for human rights accountability, contributing to a more general and critical reassessment of truth commissions from a variety of viewpoints.