Full Programme for Military and the Media symposium

2 June 2015: School of Media and Communication, Clothworkers’ Building North

The Military and the Media Symposium is bringing together researchers interested in the military, media, communications and popular culture.

The symposium is organised as part of a British Academy funded project on ‘Representations of contemporary soldiering in digital and visual cultures’ which asks how mediated discourses of ‘war’ and ‘the end of war’ might work to facilitate, complicate or obstruct the wider cultural and political understandings which occur both within the armed forces, and between them, their families and the wider public. The British soldier has become a regular focus of mainstream media attention, but also the producer or co-producer of digital materials disseminated via various media forms and museum displays. Whilst the UK military provides a focus for our own research, we are also interested in the representations of the military and soldiering in other national and international contexts.

9:45 – 11:30: Panel 1: Veterans in the Media

Jenna Pitchford-Hyde (University of East Anglia) – Invisible Bodies: Trauma, American Identity, and the Ethics of Representation in the Iraq Wars
Matthew Green (Aftershock author) – Tsunamis, “time bombs” and “bow waves” – how competing narratives over PTSD in Britain’s military are leaving the big questions unanswered
David Jackson and Kevin Spruce (Veteran to Veteran) – Using Poetic Representation within Visual Media to gain some ‘sense’ of the Aftermath of War
Katharine Millar (University of Oxford): Doing Their Bit: “Supporting the Troops” as Form of Military Participation

11:45 – 13:15 Panel 2: Military Social Media

Alasdair Pinkerton, David Denny, and Rikke Jensen (Royal Holloway, University of London): The Social Military: Social media, military personnel and their families
Helen Thornham (University of Leeds ) and Sarah Maltby (University of Sussex): ‘Beyond’ Pseuydonmity: the socio-technical structure of online military forums
Adi Kuntsman (Manchester Metropolitan University): Selfie Militarism: social media, military occupation, and ordinary violence
Maria Hellman, Eva-Karin Olsson and Charlotte Wagnsson (Swedish National Defense College): Armed Forces’ use of social media in areas of deployment

14:00 – 15:30 Panel 3: (In)visibilities and the Soldier

Neil Jenkings (Newcastle University): Friendly Fire, by a (un)friendly news media: Accounting for (our misunderstanding of) Fratricide
Nick Robinson (University of Leeds): Military Videogames – from a virtual to a lived experience of war?
Pierluigi MusarÓ (University of Bologna): Mare Nostrum: the visual politics of a military-humanitarian operation in the Mediterranean Sea
Chris Paterson and Toussaint Nothias (University of Leeds): Underrepresentation of the US military in Africa

16:00 – 17:30 Panel 4: Documentary and the Military

Debra Ramsay (University of Glasgow): Whose War? Soldiers, Archives and the Afghanistan War
Eileen Culloty (Dublin City University): Images as Evidence: strategies of filmtruth in Iraq War Documentaries
Chris Terrill (Uppercut Films): Shooting Soldiers

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