Abstract

During the Cold War, the United States Information Agency (USIA) carried out extensive American public diplomacy operations, a type of foreign policy that was designed to conduct diplomacy with other countries through communication to and with their publics. This independent study seeks to answer the question: How did American perception of a foreign threat through ideological congruency with USIA program content, urgency of foreign relations with the target country, and the USIA’s ability to mobilize American minds shape domestic support for the agency from 1959-1999? Using case studies of two USIA programs, the U.S. pavilion at the 1967 World’s Fair “Expo 67” in Montreal, Canada, and Radio Martí, a radio station developed in the 1980s to disseminate information to Cuba, this project performs an empirical analysis that examines domestic reactions to USIA programs through language and imagery from printed and archival sources to determine whether three factors of a perceived foreign threat – ideological congruency, urgency, and mobilization – contributed to support for the agency. This work examines the role that domestic publics play in shaping public diplomacy and what factors affect how they perceive it, a phenomenon that is under-represented in the political science and historical literature of American foreign policy.

Advisor

Hettinger, Madonna

Second Advisor

Lantis, Jeffrey

Department

History; Political Science

Disciplines

Political Science

Keywords

public diplomacy, soft power

Publication Date

2026

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

Download

Share

COinS
 

© Copyright 2026 Emma C. McKone