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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism pp 1–17Cite as

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The Military-Entertainment Complex, US Imperialism and

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The growth of the USA as an empire has been tied to war, and since World War I, the US military has routinely collaborated with the entertainment industries to shape and influence public opinion about war. The relationship between the US State’s military propaganda agencies, the entertainment industries, media products, and public opinion is of interest to researchers, and the alliance of the military and the entertainment industries is often conceptualized as a “military-entertainment complex” (MEC). This entry focuses on some relevant concepts for studying the MEC (the military-industrial complex, the military-industrial-communications complex, the military-industrial-media-entertainment network, the media war/virtuous war, and interactive militainment), identifies the political and economic institutions that make up the MEC (the Department of Defense’s public affairs office and US media and entertainment corporations), and highlights synergies between the DoD and...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Communication and Digital Media Studies, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada

    Tanner Mirrlees

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  1. Tanner Mirrlees
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Correspondence to Tanner Mirrlees .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College, New York, NY, USA

    Immanuel Ness

  2. Independent Scholar, Belfast, UK

    Zak Cope

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Mirrlees, T. (2019). The Military-Entertainment Complex, US Imperialism and. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_48-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_48-1

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