Measuring Propaganda and Motivation : Nazi Radio Towers, Wehrmacht Soldiers and the Nuremberg Effect / Charles Miller, Benjamin S. Barber.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Charles, author.

Barber, Benjamin S., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motivation research (Marketing).

Propaganda.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

London, England : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2025.

Summary:

In the project this case study is about, my coauthor and I attempted to answer an age-old question using modern causal inference techniques, namely to what extent does political propaganda motivate soldiers to fight in war? The case we used was that of Nazi Germany in World War II, given that we have good measures of our outcome (performance in war) and our proposed cause (radio propaganda) for a large sample of German troops from that conflict. Each German soldier who took part in the war had a service record, many of which have been digitized by economic historians at the University of Aachen. These records contained information on soldiers' geographic origin and measures of military performance such as the award of medals and imposition of punishment. We used each soldier's geographic origin to calculate their exposure to Nazi radio propaganda and then regressed soldiers' medals and punishments on this measure. We found that exposure to Nazi radio propaganda had a significant effect on combat performance defined as medal awards. In this case study, I outline the details of how we carried out our research and why we can have confidence that this effect is genuinely causal.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-03-621508-3

9781036215088

OCLC:

1523171034