Trials of Resilience

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A century on from the Paris Peace Conference that redrew the map of the Middle East, and the region has endured constant conflict. Alongside the military and economic wars, the West and Arab states have fought to control public opinion by managing the narratives that explain and validate their actions. This story charts the often hidden information war, from the propaganda coup of the entry of British forces into Jerusalem in 1917 to the campaign of perception management that sold the case for regime change in Saddam's Iraq in 2003. As the West has embraced the abstractions of public diplomacy and soft power, the propagandists of Islamic State have developed global reach and impact using a simple message and cutting edge digital and social media to generate publicity and harvest recruits. In the Trump era of fake news, media manipulation, and cyber warfare, the battle to control public opinion in the post Arab Spring Middle East has raised the stakes for winners and losers.