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.
