Dr Marcos Centeno-Martín illustrated how Japanese wartime newsreels were repeatedly circulated in Spain to serve shifting political agendas, utilising media to shape propaganda and collective memory.
In a time of growing geopolitical tension, polarisation, and extremism, the ways images, stories, and cultural narratives circulate play a powerful role in shaping how conflicts are understood and remembered. Education, media, and the arts are not neutral in this process: they can reinforce dominant perspectives, but they can also challenge them, and create open and safe spaces for dialogue. At the same time, universities and educators are increasingly asked to justify education’s value in contexts where national narratives, funding priorities, and political agendas frame education as expendable or secondary. Whether through the reproduction and repurposing of propaganda images, the use of education and the arts as forms of soft power in peace-building, or the creation of spaces where disagreement can be expressed without turning into hostility or extremism, plenary speakers reflected on how education might be defended, reimagined, and practiced as a public good, and how we can disagree well with each other in uncertain and contested times.
In photo: Dr Marcos Centeno-Martín (University of Valencia, Spain) during his keynote presentation at BCE/BAMC2025
In his keynote presentation titled ‘Circulation of Japanese Newsreels on the War in Asia (1931-1945) in Spain’, Dr Marcos Centeno-Martín of the University of Valencia, Spain, told a story of a time during WWII, ‘when cinema and images [newsreels] emerged as a modern tool for propaganda’. By showing examples of how images that were being produced by the Japanese Empire were reinterpreted during and after WWII, he drew parallels to Francoist Spain.
Dr Centeno-Martín explained that Spain recognised the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in 1937, making it one of only three countries (alongside Nazi Germany and Italy) to do so. This diplomatic relationship facilitated the circulation of Japanese newsreels to Spanish audiences through Nazi Germany. The Spanish Fascist Party Falange used these materials as part of their propaganda strategy to establish their legitimacy, particularly since they lacked their own film production capabilities in the early years of Franco’s regime. He proceeded to show concrete examples of how the same Japanese footage was reinterpreted to serve changing Spanish political needs. Initially (1939-1943), the newsreels emphasised Japanese victories against the British, feeding Spanish fascist fantasies about potentially taking Gibraltar. However, after 1943, when the Axis defeat became apparent, Spain strategically repositioned itself. By 1945, Spain declared war on Japan following the massacre of Spanish civilians in Manila, using this as justification to align with the Allies and secure entry into the United Nations in the 1950s.
“Global circulation of propaganda images plays an important role in shaping collective memory.” (Dr Centeno-Martín)
Dr Centeno-Martín’s analysis revealed how images do not simply present reality but represent it from specific perspectives, changing meaning as they circulate across different contexts. Global circulation of propaganda images plays an important role in shaping collective memory. The same visual materials can serve completely different political narratives depending on their context of reception. Spain was not the only country in which such a reinterpretation occurred. It was at a time of the booming newsreels industry (news showed in theatres) that the United States had also repurposed Japanese images and newsreels of the Nanjing massacre in China to mobilise the American public opinion about the necessity to enter World War II. According to Dr Centeno-Martín, ‘this transnational and interdisciplinary approach to these images is very interesting because they reveal this global circulation of images… which is key to understanding how we socialise or how we create collective memories—the socialisation of memory through images. They don’t tell us much about what was going on in Asia, but they tell us something about the changing needs that were taking place in Spain’.
What does this mean for the news we consume in today’s geopolitically volatile environment? ‘This may be surprising,’ Dr Centeno-Martín revealed in a post-conference interview, ‘but during WWII, journalists had more freedom to move around and film whatever they wanted. Today it is more difficult to do this than before’. He proceeded to explain how the freedom of the press became a big problem for the United States during the Vietnam War, where journalists filmed both sides of the conflict, causing great discontentment among US citizens and leading to the US Army’s withdrawal. ‘Since then, the Americans said there would be no more interviews on the other side,’ using security reasons as an excuse for journalists to stay with the Army at all times. While official news became more limited in its coverage, Dr Centeno-Martín argued that, fortunately, today, we have social media and ‘individuals who can act as new agents for providing information outside of the main agencies’. However, there have been attacks by state governments on both formal journalists and individuals, and the Geneva Convention that protects journalists is often violated, he explained. This is a real problem we are facing in journalism, media, and democracies today that needs to be addressed, Professor Centeno-Martín concluded.
Watch the full keynote presentation in the video below.
Dr Centeno-Martín further expounded on the topic during his interview below with IAFOR’s Academic Operations Manager, Dr Melina Neophytou.
This article is an excerpt from the Conference Report and Intelligence Briefing: BCE/BAMC2025.
Banner image: grace speer, Unsplash
