Hosted by the William Pitt Debating Union - Dr. John Oddo, Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, a scholar of rhetoric, discourse, and war propaganda. John has more than a decade of experience researching news discourse and wartime propaganda.

John’s scholarship theorizes propaganda as an elaborate collection of processes that enable the circulation and spread of disinformation within the United States. Taking the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War as exemplar case studies,John describes how media institutions recontextualize and modify the claims of political leaders to enhance “call-to-arms messag[ing].” This process manipulates the public as the politicians draw the nation into hostilities.