publications

The study of politics, culture, and media is now well-established in Britain. The pioneering approach of the Birmingham Culture Studies movement and the empirical analysis of the Glasgow Media Group has been followed in the last decade by specialist scholarship on War and the Media, such as Philip Taylor’s surveys and the in-depth critiques of Susan Carruthers.

War and the Media is a quickly-produced volume which comes out of one of the leading research units, Goldsmiths College’s Media and Communications Department. The book features contributions from colleagues in Glasgow, the Institute of Communications Studies at Leeds, and the University of Westminster’s Centre of Communications as well as scholars from India, Canada, and the US and broadcast journalists and editors. Unfortunately, the outcome does not do always justice to this line-up.

My disquiet is not over the general approach or structure of the volume: the areas of global politics, public diplomacy and military operations, “old” and “new” media, and journalistic practice are suitably laid out. The problem is that, with one or two exceptions, the essays fail to do more than lay out a quick survey of strategy, politics, and media after 9-11.

Part of the problem is the brevity of the essays and the apparent speed with which they were produced. While the fast turnaround of the book may have been necessary to ensure that contributions were not old news even before they appeared, there is a lack of depth in the assertions. With some essays, such as Frank Webster’s ideas on “information warfare”, it is a case of wanting more analysis. In others, such as Noureddine Miladi’s account of the “al-Jazeera phenomenon” or Bruce Williams on Internet chatrooms, information which will be new for most readers needs consideration beyond the descriptions or outlines of “alternative” space.

Many of the contributions re-tread familiar ground for those who have had an interest in politics and media, especially since 11 September 2001. The contributions on “cultures of journalism” offer little beyond reminders of the demands of reporting from conflict zones. Essays on the American “war on terrorism”, “media control”, public diplomacy, and psychological operations serve as surveys for the newcomer to the subject rather than examinations of the dynamic between geopolitics, the Government and the media in the State’s effort to mobilise public support for its objectives.

The highlights of the volumes are those submissions which move beyond this general level. The empirical work of the Glasgow University Media Group, this time on media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, is as thorough as ever, although this article reinforces previous findings rather than breaking new analytic ground. More challenging are the hypotheses of John Downey and Graham Murdock, extending the argument of “information warfare” in light of the challenge of “globalized guerrilla warfare”. Jonathan Burston’s research on the new intersections of the military, academia, and the “entertainment” industries, for example through training simulations and video games, brings work on the Pentagon’s developing relationship with film and television companies in the 1950s into a contemporary media environment. Jean Seaton’s thoughtful consideration calling for “understanding not empathy” in news is the one critique of “journalism” that stands up, leaving the reader in expectation of her book Carnage and the Media.

Both the weak and strong aspects of the book point to the wider problem that it only occasionally confronts. Many of the contributions would have been fresh 10 years ago, trying to capture transitions in news in a global environment breaking out of the Cold War. The real-time televised fireworks of the 1991 Gulf War are a relic now, however, of a simpler 24/7 time. State structures, such as the Office of Global Communications established in Anglo-American discussions from October 2001, are more elaborate and Government interaction with journalists and the media, too often reduced to the phenomenon of “embedding”, is even more complex in its negotiations, distortions, and manipulations. “News” is no longer a matter of round-the-clock television coverage but also of reporting, analysis, and speculation via the Internet. Whereas the previous Gulf War brought CNN to the fore, the media is now far more than the emergence of Fox News in the US. Not only Al-Jazeera but Al-Arabiya, Abu Dhabi Television, Al-Manar, and Al-Alam have established an alternative space for coverage and commentary, a development not taken up beyond Miladi’s essay. And all of this is now occurring in a state of “quasi-war” in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq where not only civil conflict and disorder is ever-present if not escalating, where Western forces, in an all-but-declared permanent occupation, face insurgency/rebellion/resistance and where the line between “official” and “private” military and security forces is blurred.

War and the Media is important as a marker of where we have been. What is needed in these challenging times, however, is a perspective on where we are likely to go.

Scott Lucas
University of Birmingham

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