Four Roles of Media during War

1. Information

The first role of the media in wartime is as a timely source of relevant information. Despite the shifting mediums that the media takes, this remains its primary function during a war. This naturally leaves large room for various interpretations and raises the question, how much information should the media be sharing about the war? At what stage does information become counter-productive in itself? One paper (Kalb and Saivetz, 2007) note that during the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, “journalists…broadcast their reports from hotel roofs and hilltops, as they covered the movement of troops and the rocketing of villages – often (unintentionally, one assumes) revealing sensitive information to the enemy.” Therefore the informative element of the media can have a strategic as well as a purely information-for-information’s sake element. To date, the information-for-information’s sake seems to be the largest area occupied by social media channels such as Twitter. As a paper by Sarah Joseph (Joseph, 2010) notes: “anyone in the vicinity with audacity and a (still or video) camera… can document brutality and spread it on the net, sometimes instantaneously with those same mobile phones.”  This role of the media, being new, is still being defined and may evolve into something else as once outsider technologies becomes more mainstream.

2. Shaping Public Opinion

One of the historical roles of media is to shape public perception and opinion, and even, to “mobilize” support for the conflict among one side or another. Cetus paribus, domestic news media will generally reflect official views on the war at the initial stages. Thereafter Bennett, Livingston and Laurence refer to “reality management,” and how, during Israel’s conflict with Lebanon, Hezbollah in particular was able to exploit the media for its own purposes. Traditionally, this might have been referred to as propaganda but as media has become democratic and less influenced by government and censorship (at least, that is how it seems), the element of propaganda – if it still exists - is increasingly difficult to separate from the opinion and editorial pieces.

Journalists: selling stuff.

3. Providing Legitimacy/Notoriety to a Cause or Movement

As the paper, Social Movements, Protest and Mainstream Media (McCurdy, 2012) notes, “social movements and mainstream media have a contentious and longstanding history.” It appears that a major difference between a movement which remains on the fringes and one which joins the mainstream, is access to the media. This was particularly evident in the conflict in Northern Ireland, where Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA, were not allowed any access to the media in the 1980s. Because of the concerted media campaign against them (or maybe in spite of it), the organization adapts some of its modus operandi and/or central message. It is not always the intention of media to provide legitimacy to a cause or movement. Sometimes, in reporting on the movement, the media provides notoriety, itself a kind of legitimacy. The case of Al Quaeda and Osama Bin Laden are a case in point. Kalb and Savietz (2007) report one Middle Eastern analyst, who provides them with the soundbite, “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave.” Likewise, movements on Twitter are given some legitimacy by reports in more mainstream media: this in turn provides legitimacy and/or notoriety to the new cause or movement in a war or conflict setting.

4. To sell things

This is perhaps slightly off-topic from the readings and materials, but relevant nonetheless. During peacetime or conflict, we must not forget that one of the primary purposes of the media is to sell products and services. With people paying less for media subscriptions (particularly so in print media) all the time and media outlets themselves increasingly depending on advertising revenues, it follow that one of the primary purposes of the media is to sell us things. In an article entitled Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be tweeted, (Gladwell, October, 2010) the  author discusses how, despite claims to the contrary, Twitter hadn’t changed anything in Iran up until the time the article was written. What is clear, however, when one looks at Twitter’s revenue in the same period (which was growing in double figures) is that one thing did change: Twitter was selling more. Several things stop during wartime; media advertisements do not.

Bibliography

Bennett, L., Livingston, R., Laurence, S., (2007). When the Press fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. Chapter 5: Managing the News. The University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226042848

Gladwell, M., October 4, 2010. Why the Revolution will not be televised. The New Yorker.

Joseph, S., (2014). Social Media, Human Rights and Political Change. Working Paper.

Kalb, M., Saivetz, C., (2007). The Israeli-Hezbollah War of 2006: The Media as a Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict. Presented at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, February 18, 2007.

McCurdy, P., (2012). Social Movements, Protest and Mainstream Media. Sociology Compass 6/3 (2012): 244–255