Digital War Reporting examines war reporting in a digital age. It shows how new technologies open up innovative ways for journalists to convey the horrors of warfare while, at the same time, creating opportunities for propaganda, censorship and control. Topics discussed include: How is the role of the war reporter evolving as digital technologies become ever more prominent? What is the rhetoric of war in digital journalism? How does an emphasis on liveness, immediacy or realness shape public perceptions of the nature of warfare itself? Is technology widening the gap between 'us' and 'them', or are new kinds of empathy being established with distant others as time, space and place are effectively compressed? A key focus is journalists' use of digital imagery, real-time video and audio reports, multimedia databases – as well as satellites, broadband, podcasting, and mobile telephones – in the reporting of a range of wars, conflicts and crises. The examples analysed range from 24-hour television news coverage of the Persian Gulf War, the first 'internet war' in Kosovo, digital photography, from September 11 to Abu Ghraib, and bloggers in Iraq, including journalists, soldiers and ordinary citizens. Digital War Reporting is required reading for students, researchers and journalists.

Digital War offers a comprehensive overview of the impact of digital technologies upon the military, the media, the global public and the concept of ‘warfare’ itself. This introductory textbook explores the range of uses of digital technology in contemporary warfare and conflict. The book begins with the 1991 Gulf War, which showcased post-Vietnam technological developments and established a new model of close military and media management. It explores how this model was reapplied in Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), and how, with the Web 2.0 revolution, this informational control broke down. New digital technologies allowed anyone to be an informational producer leading to the emergence of a new mode of ‘participative war’, as seen in Gaza, Iraq and Syria. The book examines major political events of recent times, such as 9/11 and the War on Terror and its aftermath. It also considers how technological developments such as unmanned drones and cyberwar have impacted upon global conflict and explores emerging technologies such as soldier-systems, exo-skeletons, robotics and artificial intelligence and their possible future impact. This book will be of much interest to students of war and media, security studies, political communication, new media, diplomacy and IR in general.

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists’ shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC’s practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the "former audience" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC’s news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation. While the focus of the book is on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.

Reporting War and Conflict brings together history, theory and practice to explore the issues and obstacles involved in the reporting of contemporary war and conflict. The book examines the radical changes taking place in the working practices and day-to-day routines of war journalists, arguing that managing risk has become central to modern war correspondence. How individual reporters and news organisations organise their coverage of war and conflict is increasingly shaped by a variety of personal, professional and institutional risks. The book provides an historical and theoretical context to risk culture and the work of war correspondents, paying particular attention to the changing nature of technology, organisational structures and the role of witnessing. The conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are examined to highlight how risk and the calculations of risk vary according to the type of conflict. The focus is on the relationship between propaganda, censorship, the sourcing of information and the challenges of reporting war in the digital world. The authors then move on to discuss the arguments around risk in relation to gender and war reporting and the coverage of death on the battlefield. Reporting War and Conflict is a guide to the contemporary changes in warfare and the media environment that have influenced war reporting. It offers students and researchers in journalism and media studies an invaluable overview of the life of a modern war correspondent.

Reporting War explores the social responsibilities of the journalist during times of military conflict. News media treatments of international crises are increasingly becoming the subject of public controversy, and discussion is urgently needed.

The War Correspondent looks at the role of the war reporter today: the attractions and the risks of the job; the challenge of objectivity and impartiality in the war zone; the danger of journalistic independence being compromised by military control, censorship, and public relations; as well as the commercial and technological pressures of an intensely concentrated, competitive news media environment. This new edition substantially updates the original, ending with an extended section on the return of history and ideology to the reporting of international conflict, and interviews with prominent war and foreign correspondents including John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Mary Dvesky, and Alex Thomson.

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC's coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists' shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC's practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the "former audience" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC's news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation. While the focus of the book is on the BBC's coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.