The Bush administration-led ‘war on terror’ saw the dissemination of a plethora of visual and linguistic rhetoric aimed at galvanising different audiences. Using an interdisciplinary approach to draw on French intellectual Bruno Latour’s analytical tool of inscription and Cottle and Rai’s framing theory, this thesis interrogates notions of ‘propaganda’, its mediatised diffusion in the US-led invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) and the robust contestations of this. The durability and malleability of propaganda in these conflicts and antecedents, such as the Vietnam War, along with the ‘otherness’ of designated and dehumanised enemies, is also examined. The utility of other propaganda models for examining rhetorical devices, particularly Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model, is considered. Key research aims include analysing the continuing use of specific rhetorical devices justifying violence and presenting it as unavoidable and unchallengeable. By analysing varied rhetorical devices including but not limited to photographs, cartoons, speeches and specific phraseology, the thesis examines the persuasion of audiences as to the necessity of violence, related militaristic valour and its reflection in political figures, along with the coterminous distancing of specific constituencies from the consequences of bloody carnage carried out in their name. The thesis departs from prevailing liberal conceptions of propaganda and Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model to extrapolate from Latour’s work to indicate the rhetorical persuasiveness of propaganda in terms of the ‘hard facts’ of repetitive inscriptions
