Showcasing the international atom: The IAEA Bulletin as a visual science diplomacy instrument, 1958-1962

Abstract

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began operations in 1958, one of its first routine tasks was to create and circulate a brief non-Technical periodical. This article analyses the creation of the IAEA Bulletin and its circulation during its first years. It finds that diplomatic imperatives both in IAEA leadership circles and in the networks outside them shaped the form and appearance of the bulletin. In the hands of the IAEA's Division of Public Information, the bulletin became an instrument of science diplomacy, its imagery conveying the motivations for member states to strengthen ties with the IAEA, while simultaneously persuading them to accept the hierarchies and geopolitical logics implicit in those relations, as well as to endorse the central position of the IAEA as a clearing house and authority of globally circulating nuclear objects and information.