This book focuses on the social process of conflict news production and the emergence of public discourse on war and armed conflict. Its contributions combine qualitative and quantitative approaches through interview studies and computer-assisted content analysis and apply a unique comparative and holistic approach over time, across different cycles of six conflicts in three regions of the world, and across different types of domestic, international and transnational media. In so doing, it explores the roles of public communication through traditional media, social media, strategic communication, and public relations in informing and involving national and international actors in conflict prevention, resolution and peace-keeping. It provides a key point of reference for creative, innovative, and state-of-the-art empirical research on media and armed conflict.

This book focuses on the social process of conflict news production and the emergence of public discourse on war and armed conflict. Its contributions combine qualitative and quantitative approaches through interview studies and computer-assisted content analysis and apply a unique comparative and holistic approach over time, across different cycles of six conflicts in three regions of the world, and across different types of domestic, international and transnational media. In so doing, it explores the roles of public communication through traditional media, social media, strategic communication, and public relations in informing and involving national and international actors in conflict prevention, resolution and peace-keeping. It provides a key point of reference for creative, innovative, and state-of-the-art empirical research on media and armed conflict.

This book represents the first international investigation of military recruitment advertising, public relations and propaganda. Comprised of eleven case studies that explore mobilisation work in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe, it covers more than a hundred years of recent history, with chapters on the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, and the present day. The book explores such promotion in countries both large and small, and in times of both war and peace, with readers gaining an insight into the different strategies and tactics used to motivate men, women and occasionally even children to serve and fight in many parts of the world. Readers will also learn about the crucial but little-known role of commercial advertising, public relations and media professionals in the production and distribution of recruitment promotion. This book, the first of its kind to be published, will explore that role, and in the process address two questions that are central to studies of media and conflict: how do militaries encourage civilians to join up, and are they successful in doing so? It is a multi-disciplinary project intended for a diverse academic audience, including postgraduate students exploring aspects of war, propaganda and public opinion, and researchers working across the domains of history, communications studies, conflict studies, psychology, and philosophy.

The trinity of government, military and publics has been drawn together into immediate and unpredictable relationships in a "new media ecology" that has ushered in new asymmetries in the waging of war and terror. To help us understand these new relationships, Andrew Hoskins and Ben O'Loughlin here provide a timely, comprehensive and highly readable survey of the field of war and media. War is diffused through a complex mesh of our everyday media. Paradoxically, this both facilitates and contains the presence and power of enemies near and far. The conventions of so-called traditional warfare have been splintered by the availability and connectivity of the principal locus of war today: the electronic and digital media. Hoskins and O'Loughlin identify and illuminate the conditions of what they term "diffused war" and the new challenges it raises for the actors who wage and counter warfare, for their agents and mechanisms of the new media and for mass publics. This book offers an invaluable review of the key literature and presents a fresh approach to the understanding of the dynamic relationships between war and media. It will be welcomed by a broad range of students taking courses on war and media and related modules, especially in media, communication and cultural studies, politics and international relations, sociology, journalism, and security studies.

Introduction : message, messenger, medium, and political environment / Andrea J. Dew, Marc A. Genest, S.C.M. Paine -- Introduction : committees of correspondence & early newspapers / Andrea J. Dew, Marc A. Genest, and S.C.M. Paine -- The message heard "round the world" and the first American political campaign / Marc A. Genest -- Why communication mattered in the war of 1812 / Troy Bickham -- Introduction : mass circulation newspapers, magazines and the telegraph / Andrea Dew, Marc Genest, and S.C.M. Paine -- The communications revolution during the Civil War / Martin Manning -- The Cuban junta in exile and the origins of the Spanish-American war / Michelle D. Getchell -- Narrating the war in the Philippines, 1899/1902 / David J. Silbey -- John Reed and US perceptions of the Russian revolution / Bruce A. Elleman -- Theodore Roosevelt's verbal insurgency against Woodrow Wilson in World War I / J. Lee Thompson -- Introduction : early mass media : print & radio / Andrea Dew, Marc Genest, and S.C.M. Paine -- Edgar Snow and shaping US perceptions of the Chinese civil war / S.C.M. Paine -- Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II / Michael Carew -- Selling a limited war in Korea, 1950/53 / Steven Casey -- Introduction : mass media : print, radio, television & cable / Andrea Dew, Marc Genest, and S.C.M. Paine -- How presidents explained Vietnam, 1954/1975 / David Kaiser -- American wartime communication strategies during Gulf War I / Judith Baroody -- Introduction : the twenty-first century information age : print, radio, cable TV, internet, and social media / Andrea Dew, Marc Genest, and S.C.M. Paine -- Struggling to overcome the Afghan Taliban's master narratives / Thomas Johnson and Matthew Dupeø -- The challenge of out-communicating the Islamic State / Haroro J. Ingram and Craig Whiteside -- Communicating the global war on terror from speeches to tweets / Andrea J. Dew -- Conclusion : tweaking the tweets / Andrea J. Dew, Marc A. Genest, S.C.M. Paine -- List of contributors.

How does the American public formulate its opinions about U.S. foreign policy and military engagement abroad? War Stories argues that the media systematically distort the information the public vitally needs to determine whether to support such initiatives, for reasons having more to do with journalists' professional interests than the merits of the policies, and that this has significant consequences for national security. Matthew Baum and Tim Groeling develop a "strategic bias" theory that explains the foreign-policy communication process as a three-way interaction among the press, political elites, and the public, each of which has distinct interests, biases, and incentives. Do media representations affect public support for the president and faithfully reflect events in times of diplomatic crisis and war? How do new media--especially Internet news and more partisan outlets--shape public opinion, and how will they alter future conflicts? In answering such questions, Baum and Groeling take an in-depth look at media coverage, elite rhetoric, and public opinion during the Iraq war and other U.S. conflicts abroad. They trace how traditional and new media select stories, how elites frame and sometimes even distort events, and how these dynamics shape public opinion over the course of a conflict. Most of us learn virtually everything we know about foreign policy from media reporting of elite opinions. In War Stories, Baum and Groeling reveal precisely what this means for the future of American foreign policy.