ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several key challenges associated with state communications. It examines the forms and purposes of state communication and discusses problems of message formulation. The chapter addresses parallel problems of message reception and describes the specific difficulty of multiple audiences. At a more abstract level, state communications may be directed at framing an issue in a particular way. ‘Framing’, Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman argue, ‘refers to the process by which people develop a particular conceptualization of an issue or reorient their thinking about an issue’. Framing can be one part of the wider swathe of activities increasingly known as ‘public diplomacy’. States can also engage in the propagation of strategic narratives and dissemination of strategic communications. The populations of states with a terrorism problem are often segmented in complex ways, with sectarian identifications, ethnic or tribal backgrounds, physical location, political values, ideological orientations and calculations of interest dividing people into clusters, albeit with fluid or flexible boundaries.
