Roselle was invited to contribute to the Strategic Multilayer Assessment Future of Great Power Competition & Conflict project at the request of the Joint Staff J39 and in collaboration with USEUCOM, USINDOPACOM, USCENTCOM, USSOCOM, the Services, DHS, DOS, ODNI and NATO.

The stated goals of the SMA were “to provide an assessment of how the US can strategize to defend global interests across the spectrum of cooperation to competition and conflict over the coming decade. Additionally, this SMA effort will support the development of an integrated campaigning framework that enables the Joint Force to prevent, rather than simply react to, the activities of adversaries and offer additional ways that the Joint Force can achieve desired policy objectives and align its efforts with inter-organizational, non-military activities to achieve acceptable strategic outcomes.”

Roselle was invited to respond to the following question — “What are the elements of a narrative that lends coherence to US military activities and can help shape Chinese and Russian behaviors?”

Her response and the full report on the question can by found at:

Roselle’s essay addresses how strategic narratives affect U.S. alliance behavior—and hence international order—in two specific ways.

First, alliance behavior can be affected by other allies’ narratives as demonstrated in the case of military intervention in Libya in 2011. Here the evidence suggests that the UK and France were able to use strategic narratives to influence the decision of the U.S. to agree to military intervention in Libya by using narratives that could evoke a fear of abandonment.

Second, alliance cohesion can be affected by narrative contestation by non-allies as demonstrated in the case of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Russia has used strategic narratives in a new media environment in an attempt to elicit a fear of entrapment to counter the U.S. attempts to coordinate alliance support for economic sanctions. 

A new book by Laura Roselle, professor of political science and policy studies, explores how political actors can shape the global power structure as much by the use of strategic narratives as by the military and economic resources they can bring to bear. 

“One of the things that intrigued us from the very beginning about the concept of strategic narratives was the understanding that you can’t just use power resources, such as how many guns a country has, to explain how the international system works, and who has power,” Roselle said. “It goes beyond the material resources they have to the ideas. The ideas and narratives — the values a country has — those shape what happens in the world as well.”

In the volume, Roselle and her colleagues have collected insights from a range of scholars who take a broad geographic look at how strategic narratives are impacting international relations, with chapters focusing on China, the Middle East, Japan and the European Union. Roselle, Miskimmon and O’Loughlin have also contributed their own chapter to the book, which follows their earlier work, “Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order.”

The book’s publication comes as Roselle prepares to receive the Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Communications Section of the International Studies Association at the association’s annual convention later this month. The award recognizes Roselle as a top scholar in her field, with the meeting to include a panel discussion of her work and research. 

Roselle is also co-editing a special issue for the peer-reviewed journal Politics and Governance with Matthew Levinger, professor of international affairs and director of the National Security Studies Program at The George Washington University’s Ellitt School of International Affairs, that will be published this fall.

Roselle spoke with a number of NATO communications and strategy specialists while at headquarters for her current research on strategic narratives and alliances. Included in this group was Jamie Shea, deputy assistant secretary general for Emerging Security Challenges Division.  

Roselle also presented a talk entitled Strategic Narratives: Bridging the Hard and Soft Power Divide. She was a part of a panel related to the book Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War, to which she and co-authors Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin contributed a chapter. Included in the panel was Professor Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former NATO secretary general.

We’ll be discussing the Policy Studies major, minor and courses. 

For more information, contact Dr. Roselle lroselle@elon.edu.

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The award this year went to the panel “Strategic Narrative in International Relations.” Professor Laura Roselle helped organize the panel and presented the paper “Strategic Narratives of Great Powers” as part of it.

Roselle’s book, “Strategic Narrative: Communication Power and the New World Order,” written with colleagues from Royal Holloway, University of London, Alister Miskimmon and Ben O’Loughlin, is now out in paperback.

Wednesday, Oct. 2
4:30-5:30 p.m., KOBC (Business School) 101

Peter Levine is the Lincoln Filene Professor Citizenship & Public Affairs in Tufts University’s Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

sponsored by the Turnage Family Fund

Laura Roselle, a professor in the Department of Political Science & Public Administration, has been named a co-editor of the new book series: Routledge Studies in Global Information, Politics and Society.  

Roselle will work with Professor Ken Rogerson of Duke University to bring at least three books out each year. Areas are of particular interest include: 1.) research that focuses on empirical support for theoretical and conceptual development in communication and information processes; 2.) research that is historically grounded and temporally expansive; and 3.) research that is comparative and explores the world in both geopolitical and non-geopolitical categories.

Individual and co-authored manuscripts, as well as edited volumes, are welcome. Contact Roselle at lroselle@elon.edu if interested in submitting a manuscript for review.

Having studied the role of the media in politics for more than two decades and currently president-elect of the Internet Technology and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, Roselle specializes in international political communication. She earned undergraduate degrees in math, computer science and Russian from Emory University where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

She worked as an intern at the Carter Center during her undergraduate studies, and later continued her work with the Carter Center as assistant director of the program on Soviet Media and International Communication. Roselle holds a master’s degree and doctorate in political science from Stanford University, where she served as a teaching assistant to Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State.

Roselle has published articles and book reviews in leading journals, including the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, and in the American Behavioral Scientist. Her edited volumes include books on media and democracy and media and elections.

In 2011, she published an updated paperback edition of her book from five years earlier, Media and the Politics of Failure: Great Powers, Communication Strategies, and Military Defeats. Roselle collaborated in 2011 as well with fellow Elon professor Sharon Spray to publish a second edition of Research and Writing in International Relations, a supplementary text for students studying international relations and comparative politics.