A leading foreign correspondent looks at how social media has transformed the modern battlefield, and how wars are fought Modern warfare is a war of narratives, where bullets are fired both physically and virtually. Whether you are a president or a terrorist, if you don't understand how to deploy the power of social media effectively you may win the odd battle but you will lose a twenty-first century war. Here, journalist David Patrikarakos draws on unprecedented access to key players to provide a new narrative for modern warfare. He travels thousands of miles across continents to meet a de-radicalized female member of ISIS recruited via Skype, a liberal Russian in Siberia who takes a job manufacturing "Ukrainian" news, and many others to explore the way social media has transformed the way we fight, win, and consume wars-and what this means for the world going forward.

This book contains 45 essays from more than 60 mass media scholars around the world. It is the most comprehensive analysis available of the media's role in the 2003 Iraq war. The book is ideal for use in communication, political science and sociological courses on media and politics.

Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.

In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.

Winning the Social Media War outlines how conservatives in the United States ceded the culture war to the left and provides a playbook with techniques on how to effectively win back influence over the culture through the use of social media. Through novel interviews, independent research, and case studies of particular accounts and individuals, Alex Bruesewitz threads together conceptual and mechanical ways of engaging with and using social media for maximum impact and influence. Winning the Social Media War reveals why conservatives lose to the left on social media and provides a tool kit to turn the tide back toward conservatism. Whether you are seeking to advance your personal social media status or that of a candidate, organization, brand, or movement, you will benefit from the collective years of experience of influential conservative figures. This book is required reading for conservatives aiming to stand athwart history yelling, “Stop!” with the amplitude that people—and God-willing, the nation—can actually hear.

A war’s outcome is determined by more than bullets and bombs. In our digital age, the proliferation of new media venues has magnified the importance of information – whether its content is true or purposely false – in battling an enemy and defending the public. In this book, Philip Seib, one of the world’s leading experts on media and war, offers a probing analysis of the role of information in warfare from the Second World War to the present day and beyond. He focuses on some of the thorniest issues on the contemporary agenda: When untruthful and inflammatory information poisons a nation’s political processes and weakens its social fabric, what kind of response is appropriate? How can media literacy help citizens defend themselves against information warfare? Should militaries place greater emphasis on crippling their adversaries with information rather than kinetic force? Well-written and wide-ranging, Information at War suggests answers to key questions with which governments, journalists, and the public must grapple during the years ahead. Information at war affects us all, and this book shows us how.

Communication decisively impacts upon all our lives. This inherent need to connect may either be soothing or painful, a source of intimate understanding or violent discord. Consequently, how it is brokered is challenging and often crucial in situations where those involved have quite different ways of being in and seeing the world. Good communication is equated with skills that intentionally facilitate change, the realisation of desirable outcomes and the improvement of human situations. Withdrawal of communication, or its intentional manipulation, provokes misunderstanding, mistrust, and precipitates the decline into disorder. This international collection of work specifically interrogates conflict as an essential outworking of communication, and suggests that understanding of communication’s potency in contexts of conflict can directly influence reciprocally positive outcomes.