CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Georgiev, Georgi |
|---|---|
| Title | Noise Wars: A Comparative History of Gathering Information under Cold War Constraints |
| Summary | The dissertation discusses the interrelationships between technology and politics during the Cold War. The work is primarily inspired by the monumental archival collection of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Institute. This key Cold War archive reflects the political constraints that formed an integral part of the broadcasting operation targeting communist states behind the Iron Curtain between 1950 and 1989-91. Broadcasting practitioners faced unexpected challenges at a time when radio was a well-established means of communication across borders. Before broadcasting news, RFE/RL collected unprecedented amounts of unreliable sources from communist countries. Pieces of questionable information entailed propaganda newspaper clippings, manipulated statistics from official party institutions, and extracts from non-representative interviews with refugees and travellers to the West. The RFE/RL research institute scrutinized available data to draw factual conclusions about political processes beyond ideologically imposed borders. In this context, the radio team paid special attention to gathering technical information associated with the practice of jamming. Introduced by the Soviet authorities in 1948, jamming’s aim was to overwhelm “enemy” frequencies with mechanical sounds or repetitive music making unwanted content incomprehensible to listeners. Ubiquitous noise in the ether signaled the limits of wireless technology and, at the same time, evolved into an integral part of communication creating new media practices and meanings. In a response to the challenge of jamming, Western broadcasters supplemented inaudible radio frequencies with printed leaflets attached to weather balloons in the 1950s. Meteorological observations of favorable winds justified the investment in a medium that temporarily embodied the dream of sending messages across the Iron Curtain. Available technologies were re-defined in the course of the conflict, while the natural environment was imagined as an active component of the ideological clash. Later, jamming became an integral part of Soviet military thought. In the 1970s, noise machines served as tools to paralyze technologically superior enemies in sea battles by blocking their access to naval electronic communications. Meanwhile, noise became an object of research. Technical monitors at RFE gathered information about signal strength. Across the Iron Curtain, jamming technicians supplied communist authorities with data on noise quality. Acoustic information served as a valuable political indicator when limited reliable information constituted a norm. Noise was endowed with meanings. While positioning the RFE/RL research institute as a fundamental resource to study the practices of jamming and information gathering, the dissertation engages a diversity of technical sources from both sides of the divide. The work uses insights from the fields of history of science and technology, media studies, sound studies, and military history. The historical analysis of noise wars invites parallels with contemporary concerns related to information warfare, surveillance, and software tools designed to filter online content. |
| Supervisor | István Rév |
| Department | History PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/georgiev_georgi.pdf |
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